Reina Kurogami learned early that the world didn't care how much you cried.
The first memory that stayed sharp in her mind wasn't a birthday, or a present, or some warm family dinner. It was the sound of shattering glass and a woman screaming somewhere down the hallway of a cramped apartment block in Yorkdale's slums. She had been six, barefoot, peeking through a cracked door while her older brother, Takashi, stood between her and the chaos outside like a wall.
"Stay behind me, Reina," he'd said, voice low and steady. "No matter what you hear, you don't move without me."
She had obeyed. That was the first rule she ever trusted: Takashi's word is absolute.
Their parents were gone before she was old enough to remember their faces. Some whispered about an overdose, others about a debt that got called in. Those stories changed, but one thing didn't—Takashi. He became mother, father, and shield all at once. By the time he was thirteen, he was already running errands for local gangsters. By fifteen, people in the neighborhood spoke his name with a mix of fear and respect.
By seventeen, he was the leader of a rising crew that called themselves the Yorkdale Destroyers.
Reina watched all of it from the shadows of that tiny apartment: the arguments, the late-night meetings, the cold stacks of money that passed through their kitchen table. She watched Takashi clean his knuckles in the sink, watched him come home limping but still smiling at her like nothing hurt.
"You're all I've got," he'd tell her, ruffling her hair. "So I gotta make sure the world thinks I'm a monster before it ever looks at you."
She hated those words, even then.
The slums of Yorkdale were a patchwork of rusted fences, cracked sidewalks, and neon lights that never quite worked. Kids grew up learning three things fast: where not to walk, who not to look at, and what never to say.
Reina learned a fourth: how to listen.
When Takashi's men came over, she'd sit on the floor in her room, door cracked just enough to hear their voices. She learned which names made grown men nervous, which territories mattered, which gangs were rising and which were marked for extinction. She learned that power wasn't just fists and knives; it was reputation, strategy, and knowing when to walk away.
She also learned something else—that no matter how loud the Destroyers got, no matter how many stories the streets whispered about them, Takashi always came back to her softer than anyone else ever saw.
He made sure she went to school, even when kids whispered about her brother. He kept food on the table. He walked her home when he could, one hand in his pocket, the other tapping idly against a cigarette he never lit in front of her.
But violence seeped into everything.
One afternoon, when Reina was ten, she saw her first real fight. Takashi was arguing with a man in an alley, voices low but sharp. Things escalated. The man pulled a knife. Takashi moved faster than her eyes could track. A punch to the throat, a grab to the wrist, a twist—suddenly the man's weapon clattered to the ground and he was choking against the wall.
Reina had frozen. Takashi noticed her and, just for a moment, his eyes changed—fear, not for himself, but for the fact that she'd seen.
"Reina," he said later, after walking her home in silence, "the world doesn't listen to people who cry. It only listens to people who can't be ignored."
"How do you become someone like that?" she'd asked.
He'd smiled sadly. "By getting strong enough that no one ever puts a knife to your throat."
She took that to heart.
There was an old man who ran a tiny martial arts studio above a pawn shop near their building. Most people in the neighborhood considered him strange—a relic from another time who refused to close down, even though hardly anyone paid for lessons.
Reina walked in one day after school, thirteen years old and tired of feeling like a bystander in her own life.
The old man looked up from sweeping the floor. "You're Takashi's sister."
"Yes," she'd replied, meeting his eyes without flinching.
"He keeps trouble away from this block," the old man said. "What do you want here, girl with the fire eyes?"
"I want to learn how to fight," she said.
He studied her for a long time and then shook his head. "You don't want to fight. You want to not be afraid."
She bristled. "Can you teach me or not?"
He chuckled, then nodded to the empty mat. "Shoes off. We'll see if you're worth teaching."
What she expected was punches, kicks, sweat, and pain.
What she got at first was stillness.
The old man taught Tai Chi—slow, deliberate movements, breathing, balance, redirection. Reina found it infuriating at first. She wanted to hit something. Instead, he had her move through forms like water pouring from one cup into another.
"Your brother's world is blunt force," he told her. "Power trying to crush power. If you want to survive there, you can't just be strong. You have to be smarter than force. You have to be the current, not the rock."
She'd scoffed, but as days turned into weeks, she noticed something: her body started to feel different. Lighter, sharper. She noticed where people put their weight when they walked, where their balance faltered when they got angry. She could sense intention before a hand was even raised.
The old man would occasionally stand behind her, adjusting her posture with careful hands.
"Breathe, Reina. You're too tense."
"Isn't tension good?" she'd ask.
"Tension breaks," he'd reply. "Flow bends, and then it breaks what needs breaking."
She didn't fully understand, but she listened.
Tai Chi gave her the language of motion. But she still needed teeth.
There was a Taekwondo studio three neighborhoods over, run by a former tournament fighter who'd blown out his knee years back. Takashi didn't like the idea of her walking there alone, but Reina had already started changing. She insisted.
That gym smelled like sweat and determination. Heavy bags lined the walls. Kids and adults alike drilled kicks until their legs trembled.
Reina fell in love instantly.
Here, she learned to kick—high, fast, precise. Roundhouses that could snap across a jaw, spinning heel kicks that felt like whips, low sweeps that could take out knees. Taekwondo gave her the explosive force Tai Chi had been quietly preparing her body to handle.
Her instructors noticed quickly.
"She's got insane control of her center," one coach muttered to another, watching her drill. "Where'd she learn that?"
She never answered. She didn't talk much at the gym. She just trained.
By fifteen, she was sparring with adults and holding her own. By sixteen, she wasn't just holding her own; she was dominating.
Strength didn't save Takashi.
Reina was eighteen the night her world cracked.
It started like any other evening. Takashi had ruffled her hair on his way out, jacket thrown over his shoulder.
"Big meeting tonight," he'd said, grinning. "The Destroyers are stepping up. When I'm done, no one in Yorkdale will be able to touch us."
She'd rolled her eyes. "Just don't get killed. I still need you to carry the groceries."
He'd laughed, kissed her on the forehead, and left.
He never came back.
News traveled fast in places like Yorkdale. A deal had gone bad. Another gang—one of the older, more established families—had set him up. There'd been gunfire in an abandoned parking lot. When the smoke cleared, Takashi Kurogami, the man who had built the Yorkdale Destroyers with his bare hands, lay in his own blood.
Reina heard the story in fragments—from frightened underlings, from rival whispers, from half-finished rumors on the street. None of it mattered. The only hard truth was this: her brother, the center of her world, was gone.
At the funeral, some of the Destroyers came. Many didn't. Power vacuums made people careful about where they stood.
Reina stood in front of the cheap coffin and felt nothing at first. No tears, no screams. Just a cold, hollow quiet.
Later that night, alone in their apartment, it finally hit.
She tore through the place, fists punching walls, feet kicking doors. She broke mirrors, overturned tables, screamed until her throat was raw. Every memory she'd ever tried to cling to felt like it was being ripped out of her chest.
When she collapsed to the floor, gasping, one thought kept repeating in her head:
If I had been stronger, he wouldn't have needed to protect me. He wouldn't have had to shoulder everything alone.
Grief hardened into resolve.
"I'll never be that weak again," she whispered to the empty room. "And no one will ever take from me what I am willing to bleed for."
The Yorkdale Destroyers began to fracture almost immediately.
Without Takashi, rival gangs circled. Some Destroyers talked about disbanding. Others wanted to pledge themselves to another family in exchange for protection. A few ambitious ones whispered about claiming leadership for themselves.
Reina listened.
She let them squabble for a week. Let them show their true colors. Then she walked into one of their gatherings—a half-abandoned warehouse filled with cigarette smoke, cheap alcohol, and wounded pride.
The room went quiet when they saw her. She was dressed in black, braids hanging down, eyes cold.
"Takashi's little sister?" someone scoffed. "This isn't a place for you. Go home."
She walked to the center of the room.
"I am home," she said. "And I'm here to give you a choice."
Laughter rippled across the crowd.
"A choice?" one of the older lieutenants sneered. "You think anyone's going to follow you? You're just a kid playing dress-up."
Reina smiled—just barely.
"My brother died for this gang," she said, voice calm, every word razor sharp. "So I'll say this once. Either you follow me… or you fight me. There is no third option."
The room crackled with disbelief, then anger. The vice commander, a mountain of a man covered in scars, stood up, cracking his knuckles.
"You think you can talk like that because you're Takashi's sister," he growled. "You want to lead us? Fine. Prove it."
Three more of the strongest officers stepped forward beside him. Fleet leaders—men her brother had trusted.
"We'll take you together," one of them said. "If you survive, maybe you're worth something."
Reina nodded, eyes burning. "All at once then. Good. Saves time."
They moved first.
The vice commander charged with a roar, fists swinging like sledgehammers. The others flanked, trying to corner her with their bulk.
Reina's world narrowed to movement, breath, and instinct.
Tai Chi. She stepped aside, guiding the vice commander's arm with the barest touch. His own momentum sent him stumbling past her. She twisted, pivoted, and drove a heel into the back of his knee. Something popped. He collapsed with a roar.
A fist came for her jaw. She bent backward, the strike grazing past, then snapped up with a Taekwondo roundhouse that cracked across a face. Blood sprayed.
Another tried to grab her from behind. She trapped his wrist, twisted, and used his weight to flip him over her shoulder and into the fourth man. They crashed to the floor in a tangled heap.
It became a storm of bodies and violence. But Reina didn't panic. She flowed.
Parry, redirect, strike. Every movement was calculated: a knee to the ribs, an elbow to the throat, a kick to the temple. She used their size against them, made their power fold into itself. In less than a minute, the four strongest men in Takashi's organization lay groaning on the concrete.
Reina stood over them, chest barely heaving, golden braids swaying.
The warehouse was silent.
She scanned the room slowly. "This is your second choice," she said. "If anyone else wants to fight, step up. If not… kneel."
One by one, they did.
The Yorkdale Destroyers bent the knee to Reina Kurogami that night. Not because of Takashi. Not because of his memory.
Because she had become someone the world couldn't ignore.
The decade that followed carved her name into Yorkdale's bones.
Under Reina's rule, the Destroyers became sharper, leaner, more disciplined. She cut dead weight, trained her commanders personally, and made sure every member understood one thing: loyalty didn't just flow upward; it flowed outward. Anyone who harmed a Destroyer answered to her.
Rivals tested her. Some tried to move on their territory. Others attempted assassination. None succeeded.
Reina controlled her aura like a blade. In negotiations, she let it seep out slowly, suffocating weaker men until they could barely speak. On the streets, rumors grew: standing too close to the Black Flame felt like being caught in the quiet center of an explosion, waiting for it to go off.
She built wealth—clubs, fronts, legitimate businesses. Money bought influence. Influence bought safety, for herself and for the people she chose to protect.
Yet, for all her power, something inside her remained hollow.
Men approached her sometimes—cocky upstarts, smooth-talking lieutenants from other crews—trying to impress her. Some only wanted her body, some her reputation, some a shortcut to control.
None of them could hold her gaze without flinching. None of them carried an aura that matched hers, let alone surpassed it.
She grew used to walking into rooms and feeling everyone shrink back. Used to silence following her like a shadow. Used to the loneliness of being a legend.
But in the quiet hours, high above Yorkdale's flickering lights, she would sometimes stand on the roof of her headquarters, arms folded, and whisper to the wind:
"Somewhere out there, there's someone stronger than me. There has to be. Someone whose presence makes me feel small… someone I can respect without limits."
It was a secret yearning she never voiced to anyone else.
It was raining the night she met him—the boy who would, years later, return as a king.
The downpour turned the slums into a maze of slick pavement and glistening trash. Reina was twenty then, two years into her reign as the Black Flame, already feared across Yorkdale. She'd just finished a meeting with a local supplier and decided to walk home alone, foregoing her usual escort.
She liked the rain. It washed away the blood and the lies, at least for a little while.
As she passed a narrow alleyway, she heard it: the ugly rhythm of boots hitting flesh, the muffled grunts of someone trying not to cry out.
Reina stopped.
She didn't intervene in every street fight. She wasn't a hero; she was a gang leader. But something about the sound tugged at her. She stepped into the alley's mouth, eyes adjusting to the dim light.
Four older teens circled a younger boy—no more than twelve or thirteen, maybe. He was skinny, clothes worn, hair plastered to his forehead by the rain. One eye was already swelling shut, his lip split. But he wasn't begging. He wasn't pleading. He stood there, fists clenched, teeth grit, taking the blows without collapsing.
One of the punks laughed, shoving him. "What's wrong, village boy? Thought you could just walk through our turf and no one would notice?"
Another kicked him in the ribs. He staggered but didn't fall.
"I'm leaving," the boy said through gritted teeth. "I'm not bothering anyone. Just let me go."
"Leaving?" The leader snorted. "You don't leave this place. You rot in it."
Reina's patience snapped.
"Enough," she said.
The word cut through the rain like a blade.
The thugs turned. The leader scowled. "Who the hell are—"
Then he saw her face. Recognition dawned. Fear followed.
"Black Flame…" one of them whispered.
Reina stepped forward, the alley seeming to shrink around her. Her presence pressed against them like a silent storm.
"You're cluttering my streets," she said calmly. "And you're boring me. Move."
The leader swallowed. "W-We didn't know—"
Her eyes sharpened. "Do you need help understanding?"
They scattered, tripping over themselves in their haste to escape. In seconds, Reina was alone with the boy.
He didn't run.
He stood there, breathing heavily, one hand pressed to his side, the other clenched into a fist. He stared at her—not with worship, not with fear, but with something stranger. Appraisal. Determination.
Reina tilted her head. "You're either very brave," she said, "or very stupid."
He wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "I just don't like running."
"From anything?" she asked.
He shook his head. "If I keep running, I'll never get strong enough to leave."
There was something in his voice—a resolve that felt too big for his battered frame.
"Where are you going?" Reina asked.
"Out of here," he said simply. "I'm leaving the slums. I'm going to find my own power. Something greater than this."
The words rang in her chest like an echo of her own past.
She studied him for a moment, then nodded toward the end of the alley. "Go. No one in Yorkdale will touch you tonight. Tell anyone who asks that the Black Flame said you're not to be bothered."
He blinked. "Why?"
She almost answered, Because I see myself in you. Instead, she shrugged.
"Because I'm in a good mood. Don't waste it."
He watched her for a heartbeat longer, eyes flickering with something she couldn't name. Then he bowed his head slightly.
"Thank you," he said. "I won't forget this."
Reina turned away, stepping back into the rain.
She didn't know his name. Didn't ask. To her, he was just a boy with a stubborn spine and eyes that refused to submit to the world.
But as she walked home that night, water dripping from her braids, she found herself thinking:
Maybe somewhere out there, someone like him will grow stronger than even me. Maybe one day, I'll stand in front of someone and feel the urge to kneel—not from fear, but from respect.
She didn't know that the boy she'd spared would one day return as Zumi Kogane, the reincarnation of the Monkey King.
She didn't know that his path and hers were already entwined.
All she knew was that, for the first time in a long while, her heart felt a little less empty—as if, somewhere beyond the slums, a new flame had just been lit.