The iron bench at the bus stop was cold, leaching the last of the day's warmth through Leo's borrowed kit.
He slumped onto it, not sitting so much as collapsing. Every muscle, every bone, echoed the same hollow refrain: used.
He could walk home. It was only a few miles. But the will to move had been scraped out of him, left on Hal's pristine turf alongside his dignity.
His phone chimed in his pocket. He ignored it. The world could wait.
The city breathed around him—the distant groan of traffic, the flicker of a faulty streetlight, the murmur of other people living lives that didn't involve stealing his goal.
The bus, a grumbling beast of yellow light, eventually sighed to a halt before him. The doors hissed open.
Leo hauled himself up and boarded, moving on autopilot. Other passengers dropped coins into the fare box with practiced clinks.
He unfolded and reached into the back pocket of his jeans, where the thick, satisfying fold of two hundred dollars had been.
His fingers brushed only denim.
A cold spike of adrenaline shot through his fatigue. No.
He patted the pocket firmly. Empty. He switched hands, digging into the front pockets—left, then right—his movements growing jerky. He turned the jeans pockets inside out, a few bits of lint drifting to the grubby bus floor. Nothing.
"Hey, kid. You paying or what?" The driver's voice was a bored rasp.
"It… it was here," Leo stammered, his voice thin. He patted down his shirt, his sneakers, a frantic, useless ritual. Two hundred dollars didn't just vanish. It was a brick. A triumph. His.
"Sure it was," the driver sighed, the words heavy with a lifetime of hearing this lie. "Off. Now. I know your kind."
The heat of shame was a brand on his neck. Muttering a curse that lacked any force, Leo stumbled back down the steps onto the curb. The doors sealed with a final hiss, and the bus pulled away, leaving him alone under the flickering light.
The money he won was gone.
It was as if the universe had looked at his small, hard-won victory and simply… deleted the file.
He sank back onto the bench, the iron colder than before. His grip on the clothes and sneakers loosed, letting them fall on the bench.
The full weight of the day settled on him: the brilliant high of the stadium, the electric rush of beating the Goal-ie, the dizzying inclusion with King… and the crushing, systematic dismantling of it all. The stolen goal. The transactional payout. The pity ticket. And now, the final mockery—an empty pocket.
His phone chimed again, a sharp, insect-like buzz against his thigh. Anger, sudden and white-hot, flared in his chest. He wanted to snarl at the screen, to shout into the void. He yanked the phone out.
The notification was from Daisy.
The anger evaporated, leaving a strange, numb emptiness. He opened it.
Daisy: Hey. You still haven't told me why you ran out like that.
Daisy: Hope nothing's wrong.
He stared at the words. He could lie. Type 'it was nothing' and retreat into the shell of his humiliation.
He started to type it, then deleted it. The emptiness in his pocket screamed. The ghost of Rin's smile, taking what was his, flickered behind his eyes.
He needed to tell someone. Anyone. Or he'd scream.
His thumbs moved, halting at first, then faster. He gave her the whole, ugly details. The challenge, the win, King's appearance, the shock of seeing Maya as his girlfriend, the 4v4, the stolen goal, the cash handed out, the "free ticket" comment.
It spilled out in a torrent of text, a raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness. He hit send.
And immediately regretted it. It was a novel. A pathetic sob story. He went to recall it, but the 'Delivered' tag stared back.
Then: 'Daisy is typing…'
He slapped his own forehead. Idiot.
Her reply came in chunks, digesting his trauma with calm efficiency.
Daisy: You beat the Goalie. That's super cool.
Daisy: Oh! The 4v4. That's why I opted out.
Daisy:So sorry it affected you. King's… like that. He sees people as pieces. Maya is worse. She sees them as obstacles or tools.
Daisy: And Rin… yeah. That sounds like Rin. He hates when the story isn't about him.
Leo read her texts, a strange comfort seeping through the numbness. She wasn't surprised. She understood.
Leo: It's fine. Was a good workout, I guess.
He added, feeling stupid even as he sent it.
Daisy: XD
A pause. Then:
Daisy: I really enjoyed our date, though.
Leo: Date?
He blinked at his own message. Immediate, cold regret flooded him. Stupid. Stupid.
Her reply was swift.
Daisy: Yeah.
A heartbeat passed.
Daisy: I guess it's not a date until we kiss >.<
And almost immediately, her status changed to 'Offline'
Leo stared at the screen, his earlier misery momentarily eclipsed by sheer, bewildered shock.
In his seventeen years, no girl had ever been so… direct. A slow, unwilling smile tugged at his lips. It felt alien on his face.
The sky above was darkening, thick clouds blotting out the last of the twilight. If he stayed, he'd get drenched.
He pushed himself up and began the long walk home, his body moving with the heavy, disconnected gait of a man who'd lost a fight. He didn't mind the drag of the boots. They weren't his anyway.
By the time he reached his street, a fine, cold drizzle had begun. He saw a figure at his front door, fumbling. His mother, her head tilted in frustration, was trying to jam the key into the lock the wrong way.
A chuckle, dry and faint, escaped him. He padded up behind her softly. "Wrong way, Mum."
She flinched, turning. Her tired eyes swept over him—the borrowed, dirty kit, the exhaustion etched into his features, the new, grim set of his jaw. Her smile was warm but carried a question she didn't voice. "I always forget," she sighed, reversing the key. The lock clicked, and the door swung open.
They entered the quiet house. She dropped her work bag onto a kitchen chair with a thud and sank into it. "I'm beat."
Leo wordlessly went to the fridge. "Grab some water for me, thanks!" she called from the living room.
He took the bowl of watermelon slices he'd come for, poured a glass of water, added ice, and carried both to her. She took it with a grateful murmur, her eyes already closing.
He climbed the stairs to his room, the silence of the house a blanket. He pushed his door open, the clothes and sneakers dropped onto the desk and his father's glasses, then simply lay down on the wooden floor.
The coolness of the varnished wood seeped into his back, a small, physical relief. He lay there, a slice of watermelon held on his chest, and let the day replay.
The humiliation was a film reel on the ceiling. King's assessing look. Maya's dismissive glare. Rin's foot, hooking the ball away with perfect precision. The laughter.
He sat up abruptly, the watermelon forgotten. He'd been an idiot. A hopeful, desperate idiot, thinking he could bridge the gap with shared history or a flash of skill.
He thought of Rin at ten years old, standing over him after a bad tackle, small fists clenched, ready to fight a bigger kid for him. "Don't you touch him!"
He'd believed, back then, in forever-friends.
That boy was gone. Buried under years of polished skill and bitter entitlement.
Leo slammed his fist into the wall beside him. A jolt of pain shot up his arm, sharp and clarifying. He wrapped his other hand around the throbbing knuckles.
He looked at his throbbing hand, then at the wall. A hairline crack, no bigger than a comma, had appeared in the plaster. A tiny, permanent mark of the day the old Leo broke.
"Enough!"
The word echoed in the silent room, but the fury behind it had changed. It wasn't about King anymore. Not directly.
Leo sat up, the cold floor a shock against his palms. He replayed the humiliation, the theft, the laughter. But then, cutting through the noise like a blade, he found a different memory. A pure one.
The feeling of the ball hitting the back of the net on Hal's field. The mere sound of it. The raw, torn-from-his-chest scream that followed. "GOOOOOOOAL!"
For a second, just one second, he hadn't been the legacy, the nerd, the tool. He had been a force. He had been the end of the equation. The period on the sentence.
That was it. That was the drug.
Why had he chosen midfielder? Because he was scared. It was the smart, safe distance from the spotlight. It was hiding.
But the system wasn't built for 'safe'. It was built for GOAL.
Rin hadn't just stolen a goal. He'd stolen that feeling. The proof. The right to roar. King and Maya hadn't just dismissed him; they'd told him his place was in the stands, watching them feel the sensation.
A new clarity, cold and sharp, washed over him. He didn't want to out-think King in midfield. He didn't want to be the invisible engine.
He wanted to be the explosion.
He wanted to stand where only the trusted stood, in the area where games were won and lost. He wanted the ball at his feet when everything was on the line. He wanted to look at Rin, at King, at Maya, and show them what a real finish looked like.
He finished the watermelon, dropped the bowl on his desk with a decisive clack, and took a long, cold shower, washing away the sweat of the betrayal and the old, hesitant version of himself.
He balled up Rin's borrowed blue jersey and threw it into the laundry basket. It landed with a final whump right on top of the garish energy-drink jersey from his life before the clarity. He was burying both identities.
Clean, dressed in simple sweats, he moved with a new, singular purpose. He went to the hallway, pulled down the attic ladder, and climbed into the dusty silence. He went straight for his father's boxes.
This time, he wasn't looking for spare glasses. He was looking for the final word.
He bypassed the playbooks on "Build-Up Play" and "Midfield Control." His fingers found the binders underneath, the ones with tabs like "FINISHING DRILLS," "PENALTY AREA MOVEMENT," and "STRIKER'S MINDSET."
He pulled out pages filled with diagrams of the six-yard box, arrows showing runs across the defender's shoulder, notes on shooting with both power and placement.
His father's handwriting filled the margins: "The great ones want the ball when they're tired," "Look at the net, not the keeper," "The first touch is the shot."
His eyes fell on one note, scribbled in the margin of a diagram showing a striker rounding the keeper: "A true striker doesn't ask for the ball. He takes the space, and the ball must follow."
Leo gathered them all, a stack of blueprints for destruction, and carried them back to his room. He spread the pages across his desk, a map not of a battle, but of a conquest.
The cool blue light of his desk lamp fell on diagrams of the goalmouth, on his father's notes about angles and instinct.
A slow, hard smile finally touched Leo's lips, the first real one all evening. This time, it reached his eyes, which glinted with a hungry, focused light.
"They wanted a spectator? Fine. I'd give them a show they'd never forget."
He put on his father's glasses. The world snapped into hyper-clarity. He focused on a diagram of a far-post curler.
[USER RESOLVE DETECTED: MAXIMUM. EMOTIONAL PARAMETERS OVERRIDE PREVIOUS TACTICAL PREFERENCES.]
[NEW PRIMARY DIRECTIVE CONFIRMED: 'PREDATOR ZONE' DOMINANCE.]
[OBJECTIVE: MASTER 'CLINICAL FINISHING' & 'OFF-THE-BALL MOVEMENT'. BECOME THE FINAL WORD.]
[Y/N]
Leo didn't hesitate. "Yes."