Practice ended late.
The gym emptied in pieces: shoes squeaking toward the locker room, bottles tossed into bags, tired jokes echoing under fluorescent lights.
Lâm stayed behind for one last shot.
Swish.
Then another.
Swish.
The captain clapped twice. "Enough. Save some for tomorrow."
Lâm caught the ball and grinned. "I have unlimited supply."
"Your ego does."
They laughed their way out into the night.
Lương Thế Vinh's campus was quiet after hours. The air smelled of rain, hot concrete, and the cheap fried food from the convenience store across the street. The team walked together at first, loose and tired, still replaying plays from practice.
Then the streetlights flickered.
Lâm noticed the white-and-red jackets before anyone else did.
Three boys stepped out near the convenience store. Two more blocked the alley beside the bike racks.
Not random.
Positioned.
The captain of Lâm's team slowed. "Problem?"
The boy with taped fingers smiled.
"No problem. Just wanted to wish you luck tomorrow."
Lâm shifted his bag higher on his shoulder.
"Move."
A bigger boy cracked his neck.
"Hear that, Khánh? He thinks this is his court."
Khánh laughed. "Everything's a court if people watch."
Lâm's blood cooled.
Names.
He filed them away.
The quiet one in the clean jacket stood behind them, face half-shadowed under the lamp.
Quân.
Lâm did not know how he knew. He only knew the others kept glancing back at him before moving.
The first shove came fast.
Not at Lâm.
At the first-year guard.
The kid stumbled toward the curb as a motorbike sped past. Lâm grabbed his collar and yanked him back just before the mirror clipped his shoulder.
"Run," Lâm snapped.
Nobody ran.
Basketball boys were proud in stupid ways.
Then Hùng swung a metal water bottle toward the center's knee.
Lâm moved without thinking.
He blocked with his forearm, drove his shoulder into Hùng's chest, and shoved him back.
Pain flashed up his arm.
Khánh whistled. "Protector type."
"Wrists," Quân said quietly.
Lâm heard it.
So did the team.
The attack changed shape.
No wild punches. No messy brawl.
They slapped hands. Stomped near ankles. Drove shoulders into ribs. Every strike looked like it could be explained away if someone looked from too far away.
Sports rivalry.
Teenage fight.
Nothing supernatural.
Nothing organized.
The quiet forward went down holding his knee. The center took a hit to the ribs. The captain tried to pull him up and caught an elbow across the mouth.
The quiet forward had been texting someone when the first shove came. His phone lay face-up near the curb now, screen cracked, one unfinished message still glowing under a smear of rain:
Done soon. Don't wait.
Lâm did not read the name. There was no time to make a life out of a notification.
Hùng moved toward the phone first, not the boy. That made Lâm understand the cruelty better than any speech. Some people hit the body. Others looked for the person the body would crawl toward.
Lâm hooked the quiet forward by the back of his jersey and dragged him behind the convenience store shutter before Hùng's shoe came down where his face had been.
Lâm saw Khánh swing toward the first-year guard's wrist.
The kid froze.
Lâm stepped between them.
The blow landed across his shooting hand.
Crack.
White pain tore through his fingers.
For one second, the whole street disappeared.
Then sound rushed back.
Lâm grabbed Khánh by the collar with his good hand and slammed him into the convenience store shutter hard enough to rattle it.
"Touch them again," Lâm said, voice shaking, "and I don't care about tomorrow."
Khánh smiled through split lips.
"Tomorrow already started."
Quân raised one hand.
The Thälmann boys backed away.
Just like that.
Organized in, organized out.
Hùng spat blood onto the pavement. "See you on court."
They vanished into the side street before adults arrived.
------
The team gathered under the convenience store light, breathing hard.
"Hospital," the captain said.
"No." Lâm clutched his hand against his chest.
"Your fingers—"
"Tape it."
The captain stared. "Are you insane?"
Lâm looked at the younger boys. Bruised. Shaken. Trying not to cry because pride was the last thing they had left.
"If we don't play tomorrow," Lâm said, "they win before the match."
"And if you can't shoot?"
Lâm forced a smile.
"Then I pass."
It fooled no one.
When his phone buzzed, Minh's name lit the screen.
Lâm looked at it.
Then turned the phone face-down.
He would tell Minh tomorrow.
After they won.
That was the second mistake.
Lâm took the long route home and stopped beneath the awning of a closed pharmacy when the rain thickened. The team chat kept filling with jokes about the semifinal. One teammate posted a photograph of his swollen lip and called it a collision with a door. Another asked whether anyone had seen his missing shoe bag. Nobody used the word ambush.
Lâm typed Minh's name, deleted it, and opened the damaged video instead. The frame caught only a shoulder, a strip of school jacket, and the reflection of a motorbike plate in a puddle. He enlarged the reflection until the numbers broke into squares. It was not evidence. It was enough to keep him from believing the attack had been random.
His injured hand tightened around the phone. Pain climbed from the knuckles into the wrist. He released it before the fingers locked.
The coach called. Lâm let it ring once, then answered with his ordinary voice. Yes, the boys had left together. Yes, everyone could still play. No, there was no reason to cancel.
When the call ended, he sent the team one instruction: arrive through the front gate tomorrow, in pairs, with parents if possible. The chat answered with laughing stickers. Lâm watched them appear and understood that protection sometimes looked ridiculous to the people being protected.
He reopened his message to Minh. The cursor waited after three words: We were attacked.
Lâm erased them again. If Minh saw the bruises before the game, he would come hunting instead of watching.
Tomorrow, Lâm told himself. After the semifinal.
Across the street, a rider in a raincoat lowered his phone and started the motorbike.