What can I even do? Go to social media again, tell my side of the story? Would anyone even believe me?

“I would put down that phone. For at least the next two weeks, or possibly forever,” says a voice from my bedroom doorway. One I haven’t heard in a very, very long time. I look up, dropping my phone in shock.

Of all the people I could have expected to see right now, the very last one is Akari Masuda. My old friend from the training days. She was my closest friend at DB. But she was traded to another company, and when she needed me the most, I wasn’t there for her. And yet, somehow, in my hour of need, she has appeared like a vision.

“Akari?”

“Leah DMed me your new address. And your mom let me in. She even gave me a taste of the soondubu jjigae she’s brewing on the stove. News flash: it’s delicious.” Akari walks right into my room and sits on my bed, as if we’ve done this a thousand times before, even though this is her first time at my parents’ new place, and the first time she’s spoken to me or even been this close to me in over six years, other than our brief eye contact at 1,2,3 Win. Up close, she is a startling combination of exactly the same as I always remembered, and totally different. In addition to the changes to her face, her hair is cropped at a new angle. She looks older and more sure of herself. But the spirit and attitude of Akari are still everywhere, even in her familiar smell of passion-fruit body spray.

A wave of nostalgia washes over me as I recall the countless times we did used to do just this: flop down together on my bed back at my old apartment, and scroll through YouTube together or vent and laugh about our latest training debacles.

“That’s good,” I say vaguely. Umma’s been cooking more in the last few weeks than in my entire childhood, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat much. My mind, sluggish from hours of lying around in my sweats, scrolling through the dark bowels of the internet, is now trying to pick up the pace and understand what Akari is doing here.

But she answers for me. “So. I had to come when I saw the scandal. It’s pretty ugly. I’m sure you’re feeling shattered.”

Ouch. Please don’t tell me she came to throw it in my face when I’m already down… I don’t think I could take that.

“Akari, I know things didn’t end all that well between us, but—”