Life Isn’t So Simple Anymore.

Coach Scott sat behind his desk, which was cleaner than it used to be thanks to the renovation, and he told Zoey she was in the bracket for the Amerikan Olympic Boxing Trials.

"First bout is in twelve days," he said. "Yuki Tanaka. Unseeded draw. Pressure fighter out of Ceattle, nationally ranked, came up through the Golden Gloves circuit. She's twenty-two, she qualified through the Summer Festival, and she's a good fighter."

"Okay," Zoey said.

"That's it? Okay?"

"What else would I say?"

Angelica was already in the corner chair, tablet open. She let Coach finish and then turned the screen toward Zoey.

The announcement had been out for three days. Zoey Winters, The Devil, entering the Amerikan Olympic Boxing Trials. The sports media had done what the sports media always did with anything involving Zoey, which was go completely insane about it. Headlines stacked on top of each other. The Devil going for the Olympics. The FTL star in an amateur tournament. Comeback or publicity stunt. Comment sections several miles long.

"Twelve days," Angelica said, "and it's already everywhere. I have interview requests from six different sports networks. My recommendation is two. I'd do one with SportsNetwork and one with a print outlet, something that lets you be more than a soundbite."

"One," Zoey said.

"Zoey."

"I'll do one. You pick which one."

Angelica closed her eyes briefly. "Fine. One." She opened them. "The narrative I've been managing is simple. You took personal time. You're back. This is you competing. We let the fighting speak for you. But that only works if the fighting actually speaks." She looked at her steadily. "Early exit changes everything. Early exit and the story becomes she came back too soon. It becomes the absence meant something. You understand what I'm saying."

"Haha! You think my star pupil is gonna lose to some olympic chumps?" Coach cackled.

"I'm not talking about losing," Angelica said, not looking away from Zoey. "I'm talking about the whole picture. She has to look like The Devil in there. Not Zoey Winters who came back from vacation."

"I’ll be fine," she said.

It’s not like her Devil persona is that far off from regular Zoey. She just gives in to that part of her that really likes fighting and plays it up for the crowd. Plus, she’s gotten used to her new body stat. Zoey was confident enough to handle fighting again.

"Amateur rules are different," Coach said, leaning forward. "Three rounds, three minutes. Five judges. Headgear. Points system -- they're watching every round separately, you have to win the round to win the round." He looked at her. "I don’t think you’ll have any trouble, but just keep it in mind."

"It is different from what I’m used to." Zoey is used to making knockouts. She wondered if she could accomplish that with normal woman strength and the person she’s fighting wearing a headgear.

"Most of these people aren’t anything anyway. Just smucks that couldn’t hack it in actual fighting leagues." He sat back. "Tanaka is going to come forward. That's all she does. She's good at it. Your job is to make sure she does it on your terms."

"Yeah." she responded, not really thinking much of her.

She actually wished the Coach didn’t tell her the fighting style of her opponent at all. It would’ve been more surprising that way. Zoey was a little excited feeling this weak and vulnerable again. She doesn’t have to intentionally hold back in her fights anymore. She can go all out without accidentally killing her opponents!

Coach looked at her for a moment. Then he picked up his pen and went back to his papers. "That’s what I like to hear." he said.

Coach trained her until the fight. Mornings were conditioning and footwork. Afternoons were technical, Coach on the pads working specifically on the combinations that scored in amateur boxing. The type of combinations that judges could follow. How to be visibly in control of a round.

The second week she sparred. Coach brought in three different fighters from across the city, paid them well to give her real rounds. Each one had a different style, different rhythm, different problem to solve. She worked through them, slightly upset. Zoey couldn’t really give it to them like she wanted since Coach hired them. They’d probably never accept another request to spar against her again. It was like she was being teased. So frustrating!

After the last spar session, Coach told her she was ready.

She already knew she was ready. She'd known before the match was even set.

The tournament was in Huston. Angelica handled the travel side because that was her job. Coach was flying out the next morning. Zoey had packed already.

‘New game plus, baby! Let’s fucking crack some skulls!!!’ Inner Zoey cheered.

‘I can’t sleep with you feeling so excited!’ Zoey told her to shut up.

‘Fuck youuuuu.’ Inner Zoey softly whispered.

She went to sleep.

______________________________________________

Yuki Tanaka found out she was matched against Zoey Winters on a Tuesday afternoon, standing in the break room at Pacific Gear with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, her phone pressed to her ear, Coach Reyes's voice telling her through the speaker.

Her first reaction was to sit down.

"The Devil," she said.

"The Devil," Coach Reyes confirmed.

“That Devil???” She wanted to doubly confirm.

“There’s only one in the fighting world.”

"Okay," Yuki said. And then: "Okay."

She called her mother on the way home from work. Keiko picked up on the second ring.

"Mom," Yuki said, "you know how I said I might fight someone famous in my first bout?"

A pause. "...How famous?"

"Really famous."

Another pause. "How famous is really famous?"

"The Devil famous."

The sound that came through the phone was not exactly words for a few seconds. Then Keiko said, in Japanese: "I'm going to need to call your aunt."

"Mom-"

"Your aunt needs to know this. She watches all the fights."

"Mom, I have to-"

"I'm calling her right now. Drive safe."

The phone clicked off. Yuki stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking at nothing in particular.

Then she texted her group chat: GUYS.

Her group chat had thirty-seven people in it because Yuki had been texting people news about her boxing career since she was fourteen and everyone she'd ever told had simply stayed in the chat.

The responses came fast and vibrant. These people had been following her career since she was winning regionals as a teenager and telling them all about it like it was the most important thing in the world, because to her it was.

NO WAY

YUKI WHAT

THE DEVIL???

okay but wait hear me out

we will NOT be hearing you out

she hasn't lost a fight in forever though

she HAS lost a fight technically

by CHOICE

YUKIIiIiiii

She smiled at all of it. Put the phone in her pocket and kept walking.

That night she watched every Zoey Winters fight she could find.

The Simon Birch one she watched three times. She watched the Angelica Myers fight. She found clips of the FTL matches, the YFTL stuff from before, the early fights where Zoey was still figuring out what she was. She watched a compilation someone had made called The Devil's Greatest Moments that had over thirty million views and took forty-five minutes to get through. She watched interviews where other fighters talked about fighting her. She read breakdowns written by people who did this professionally.

What she found: Zoey Winters did not have a type. That was the thing. Every other fighter Yuki had ever studied had a type, a pattern, a preference, an approach they kept coming back to. Zoey fought differently against the sumo wrestler than she fought against the martial artists than she fought against the grapplers. She had more than one way to win and she used whichever one made sense for the person in front of her.

Yuki sat back from her laptop at around midnight and stared at the ceiling.

There was no scouting this. There was no pattern to prepare for. You couldn't know which Zoey Winters you were going to get until you were already in the ring with her.

She thought about it for a while.

Then she thought: okay. So I'll just be me.

Yuki Tanaka was a pressure fighter. She'd been a pressure fighter since Coach Reyes had spent two years building it into her because she had good feet and good hand speed and a chin that had been tested. She went forward. She made fighters fight backwards. She threw aggression and she didn't stop and eventually the other person broke from the weight of it.

She was going to go forward. She was going to make The Devil feel every punch she threw. She was going to fight the way she'd always fought and she was going to make it the hardest three rounds that woman had seen in a while.

Whether that was enough or not, she'd find out in the ring.

She closed the laptop. Went to sleep.

…

The night before their fight, Yuki sat on her hotel bed with her phone.

She opened the search results for her name + Zoey Winters.

The results were exactly what she'd expected. Articles about the matchup. Headlines that mentioned her only in relation to The Devil. Discussion threads on boxing forums asking who was going to win.

She read them.

Nobody expected her to win. Not one person. The forum threads were debates about how long she'd last, not whether she'd win. In rounds, sometimes. In punches, once. Someone had written a detailed analysis of Zoey's fighting history and concluded that Tanaka had a five percent chance based purely on statistical modeling, and the replies under it were largely people agreeing that five percent felt generous.

One thread had the title: Has anyone even heard of Yuki Tanaka before this week?

The replies were mostly no.

Yuki read that one twice.

She put the phone down. Looked at the ceiling. Thought about her father in the back of the gym, watching her train without saying anything, and the drive home where he'd tell her one specific thing he'd noticed that was good.

She thought about her mother, who had watched every fight she'd ever had and had learned the rules of boxing from YouTube videos so she could understand what she was looking at.

She thought about the group chat with thirty-seven people in it, people who'd been in it since she was fourteen, who had been there for every win and every loss and who were going to be watching tomorrow.

She picked the phone back up.

She looked at the five percent.

They don't know me, she thought. That's fine. They're about to.

She wasn't afraid. She'd been matched against Zoey Winters and she was sitting in a hotel room in Huston and tomorrow she was going to walk into that ring and fight her. She was going to go forward. She was going to make it hurt. She was going to throw everything she had for three rounds and she was going to make every person who wrote her off feel every punch she landed on The Devil's face.

And she was going to win.

She was going to win. She was going to win. She was going to win.

I'm going to win. She felt the words settle into her. I am going to win.

She put the phone away.

When I win, she thought, every single person who wrote that five percent is going to feel the punch I put in Zoey Winters's face.

She smiled at the ceiling.

She went to sleep.