“I need to talk to Sofia first,” Vy said. “Not through a poster or a press release. I need to know she is choosing this for herself.”
Marcus agreed at once, and by that evening Vy was on a video call with a woman she had never met, sitting in a kitchen with a dog asleep at her feet. Sofia did not perform sympathy. She talked about weight, about time limits, about what techniques she liked to work on, and about how she handled nerves before a match.
“I do not want to be anyone's symbol,” Sofia said plainly. “I want a good, hard, clean match. If we both tap and reset and respect each other, the audience will learn more from that than from any speech.”
“That is exactly what I want,” Vy said, and she felt the truth of it settle.
They agreed on the details together, not as rivals in a drama but as athletes setting a shared standard. Six minutes. Points for position. Submissions allowed, with immediate stoppage on tap, verbal submission, or referee intervention. A medical check before and after. No trash talk for cameras. A handshake before and after, not for show but because that was how they had both been taught to begin and end.
When Vy hung up, Linh Dan was waiting in the kitchen of Vy's small apartment, holding two mugs of tea.
“Well?” Linh Dan asked.
“She is real,” Vy said. “She is not doing this to rescue me or to use me. She just wants to compete properly. That makes me want to do it.”
Over the next days, the tournament organizers did something Vy had not expected: they published the rules. Not in vague language, but in plain sentences on their website and on a printed sheet at the venue entrance. Every match would have a certified referee. A tap, a verbal submission, or a referee stoppage would end the exchange immediately. Any athlete who continued after a stoppage would be disqualified and reviewed. An independent observer would be present for Damian's matches, with video review available. The language was not about Vy. It was about everyone, and that was what made it strong.
Damian's response came quickly, and it was exactly as Vy had feared and hoped. His representative released a statement saying Damian welcomed supervision because he had nothing to hide, but also complaining that the new attention was unfair. Online, his supporters said the rules were written to embarrass him. His critics said the rules were written because of him. Vy stopped reading both kinds of comments. She had learned that the internet would argue about her whether she participated or not, and her energy belonged on the mat.
The media arrived in small waves. A local reporter asked for an interview. A podcast wanted a dramatic retelling. A photographer wanted a portrait of Vy looking fierce beside the mats. Vy declined most of them, politely and firmly, with a short written statement she had prepared with Mai Lan: she would compete, she trusted the rules, and she would speak about her own matches after they happened, not before. She did not want to win the argument before the tournament. She wanted to compete in it.
Her training changed in those final days. It became narrower and deeper. She stopped trying to learn five new things and focused on the few things that would keep her safe and effective under pressure. She drilled escapes from the front headlock until her body could find the frame without her mind having to search for it. She drilled guard retention, not as a defensive crouch but as a way of staying connected to her opponent without giving away her balance. She drilled transitions, because tournaments are often won not by the most spectacular submission but by the person who makes the fewest small mistakes in a row.
Mai Lan watched her closely, correcting not with criticism but with precise adjustments. “Hips lower,” she would say. “Breathe out when you frame. Do not chase the submission if the position is not there. Points first. Patience second.”
Ethan came to one practice, not to coach, but to sit at the edge of the room as an observer, the role he had quietly taken on. Afterward, he walked with Vy along the harbour, where the water was grey and the gulls were loud.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked.
“Better than last month,” Vy said honestly. “Not perfectly. But I am not lying awake rehearsing what I should have said. I am rehearsing what I will do. That feels different.”
“Good,” Ethan said. “Fear that has a job is easier to carry than fear that just circles.”