Aubrey's POV

Unlike Isidoro, I wasn’t a prodigy at all, but I could hold my own. Jessica and I were on the same level, So I didn’t feel out of place at all taking her spot in the tournament.

What helped me during this tournament was that I’d spent the last year training mainly to face men, believing I didn’t need to focus too much on facing other women, given their limited presence in the sport.

The only times I could train against a woman were with Jessica, and we rarely dared to use erotic techniques on each other—partly because we’d get too turned on too quickly, and it would end up becoming a way to joke around and flirt instead of training.

Then, three months ago, Jessica had this terrible accident with her leg, and she was still limping from it, so it had been at least three months since I’d trained against a woman.

As I prepared for my next match, deep down I was hoping that Rebecca would lose hers, so I wouldn’t have to face a little bulldozer who thinks I’m trying to steal her boyfriend.

Isidor won his matches so quickly that he kept an eye on me the whole time, which made me feel nervous. Normally I was very confident, but when I felt his gaze on me, I got flustered and absolutely didn’t want to lose or make a fool of myself.

The second match was much harder than the first, because Daniel, the guy I was up against, was very aggressive.

He tried right away to pin me to the ground, and for the entire 5 minutes of the first round, I had to use all my strength to keep his score as low as possible. We ended up at 1-2 in his favor, but I was already out of breath. However, while scoring those two points, my opponent had also earned two warnings for dangerous techniques—one more and he would have been disqualified.

Laura knelt down in front of me, and during the one-minute rest between rounds, she said, “Now is the time to be aggressive.”

We never questioned the coach’s advice, so even though I was exhausted, I listened to her game plan, and when it was time to start the second round, I was ready for anything.

Right from the start, I was aggressive, matching Daniel’s intensity, and just as Laura had predicted, he immediately began to overdo it. It was clear he still had plenty of energy, and in fact, he dared to make a somewhat reckless move, nearly sending me flying off the mat with an unorthodox hold-throw. I wasn’t hurt, but it was clear right away that this would be his third warning and result in disqualification.

Even Daniel noticed it right away; he got up from his position, apologized to me, the referee, and the judges, and walked away before his disqualification was even made official.

I had only 10 minutes to rest a bit, during which Isidor fought his semifinal, winning early in the second round by a score of 10–1, and I learned that my semifinal would be against Rebecca.