Lâm did not go to the fight.
That became its own wound.
People would misunderstand it later if they ever heard. Some would call it smart. Some would call it weak. Some would say rehab kept him away, as if the body had made the decision for him.
The truth was uglier.
He stayed because going would have made him useful to the wrong people.
So he sat under fluorescent convenience-store light, hand aching, tournament poster turned map beneath his phone, and did what his body still allowed.
He counted.
Medical transport timing.
Rain delay.
Traffic lights.
Which cameras faced the wrong way.
Which Thälmann boys arrived too early to be reacting.
Which route Huyền Kha wanted Minh to see first.
Every note felt like a smaller version of basketball, stripped of joy. Timing remained. Angles remained. Anticipation remained.
The jump was gone.
The release was gone.
But the court had widened into streets, gates, clinics, and lies.
Lâm hated that this was useful.
After the empty-room photos arrived, he wanted to throw the phone so badly his hand cramped around it.
Instead he zoomed in.
Tea cup.
Wheel marks.
Strap cut.
Back exit.
He sent the route to Minh and Lãnh Phong.
Then he leaned back and let himself breathe badly for ten seconds.
Only ten.
At eleven, the convenience-store auntie placed a warm soy milk beside him without asking.
"Con học khuya quá," she said. Studying too late.
Lâm almost laughed.
"Dạ."
Yes.
Let it be studying.
Let one adult in the city be wrong in a harmless way.
His phone buzzed with Minh's message.
Got it.
Two words.
Alive words.
Lâm looked at the tournament poster under his notes. The printed player still hung midair, forever before landing, forever before knowing whether the shot went in.
Lâm folded the poster carefully along the route lines.
His hand hurt.
Functional.
He hated the word.
Then he used the hand anyway.
That was not healing.
Not yet.
But it was his.
Later, after the night broke open and the convenience-store lights stopped feeling like shelter, Lâm brought the poster map back to the small recovery apartment near the clinic.
Lâm's route map looked insane until explained.
Tournament poster underneath. Clinic schedule taped over it. Delivery times along the left edge. Screenshots of shoes, jackets, and receipts layered across the lanes where players should have been. A basketball court turned into an operation chart because that was the only shape his mind trusted under pressure.
His mother saw it once and stopped at the doorway.
"Con đang làm gì vậy?"
Lâm almost lied. Homework. Club project. Helping a friend.
Instead he covered the Hạ Yên photo and said, "Trying not to be useless."
Her face changed in the quiet way parents changed when their child said something too adult to scold and too painful to comfort easily.
"Functional is not useless," she said.
He looked at his hand.
The clinic had used that word. Functional grip. Functional recovery. Functional range. It had sounded like a downgrade from dream to maintenance. From athlete to person who could carry groceries.
Now the word returned differently.
Functional meant his notes had kept Minh from the first door. Functional meant the clinic threat had been recognized as cover. Functional meant staying away from the fight had not been cowardice even if it still felt like it.
He wanted that to heal something.
It did not.
The tournament poster beneath the map still showed a player suspended before a shot. Lâm traced the printed ball with one finger and imagined the release he could no longer trust.
Then he folded the map along the route lines.
Not because the dream was gone.
Because tonight, it had changed jobs.
When he finished the exercises, his hand shook from fatigue. Lâm watched it shake and did not hide it. Shame fed on secrecy. So he let the tremor happen in the open until it became only a tremor, not a verdict.
He put the folded poster in the same pocket as the clinic schedule. It felt wrong, then right, then wrong again. Lâm decided that was probably what surviving a broken dream felt like.
The next day, Lâm returned to the clinic with a secret map in his bag and a normal appointment card in his hand.
The receptionist smiled at him differently. News had not reached her fully, but unease had. Adults in ordinary systems always knew when paperwork had brushed against something ugly. They became softer, more careful, sometimes more useless.
"Hand still painful?" she asked.
"Yes."
"More than before?"
He thought about the water bottle, the map, the way his fingers cramped when Hạ Yên's empty chair arrived on screen.
"Different," he said.
During therapy, the specialist asked him to perform the same grip sequence as before. Lâm did it. Pain came. Delay came. Nothing miraculous had happened because one night had given his injury narrative value.
That almost made him laugh.
Stories loved to reward suffering with clean transformation. Bodies did not. Bodies negotiated. Bodies remembered damage even after the mind found meaning.
After the session, the specialist said his control had improved.
"Enough for basketball?" Lâm asked before he could stop himself.
The specialist hesitated.
There it was. The professional pause.
Lâm nodded before the answer arrived. "Right."
Outside, he sat on the clinic steps and opened the folded tournament poster map. The player printed mid-shot looked ridiculous now, frozen forever in a version of life where the only question was whether the ball would go in.
Lâm added one new route line beside the player's arm.
The dream had not died.
It had stopped being the only court.
He did not tell Minh about the specialist's pause. Not yet. Minh had enough missing people to carry. Lâm let that hurt remain private for one more day, not out of secrecy, but because friendship also meant choosing which wound did not need an audience immediately.
On the ride home, Lâm kept his injured hand on top of the folded map instead of hiding it in his pocket. The tremor was visible. Let it be visible. A dream had cracked there. So had a route. Both were true.