The soft knock on his door was a ghost of a sound.
"Leo? Sweetheart? Breakfast is ready."
Clara waited in the hallway, listening to the silence. Not the silence of sleep but the deep, resonant quiet of an empty room.
A mother's instinct, fine-tuned by seventeen years of listening to her son breathe, hummed a warning note. She pushed the door open.
The bed was a museum of exhaustion. Blankets thrown back in a final, desperate surge, pillow dented deep from a head that had refused to rest. The room smelled of sweat, determination, and the faint, clean scent of the leather polish he'd used on his boots.
Her eyes were drawn to the wall.
Overnight, it had been transformed.
Pages from David's old playbooks were taped up in a sprawling, obsessive mosaic. Complex diagrams of diagonal runs, arrows denoting passing lanes that cut through defenses like scalpels, and dense, handwritten notes in her husband's familiar, slanted scrawl covered the plaster.
Phrases jumped out at her, echoes of a ghost coaching from the grave:
"ANTICIPATE, DON'T REACT."
"THE SPACE BEHIND THE DEFENDER ISN'T EMPTY—IT'S YOURS."
"YOUR FIRST TOUCH ISN'T CONTROL. IT'S A DECISION TO END THE GAME."
A soft ache bloomed in her chest, a familiar cocktail of loss and fierce, burning pride. He was diving headfirst into a world she could barely comprehend, chasing the shadow of a man who saw football as sacred geometry. He was trying to become a ghost, to wear his father's intellect like a second skin.
Her gaze fell to the small nail by the desk, where the pristine blue and white kit had hung like a promise.
It was gone.
In its place, the framed photo of David—young, laughing, holding a trophy aloft—now held a new inscription. Written in black marker directly on the glass, the letters bold and unwavering:
I'LL MAKE YOU AND MUM PROUD.
A single tear traced a hot path down Clara's cheek. She didn't wipe it away. She stepped into the room, a trespasser in her son's war room, and smoothed the tangled sheets with hands that trembled just slightly.
A small, grounding act of order. A mother's prayer laid over a soldier's bed.
────────────
The thwock of the ball hitting the back of the net was a sharp sound in the dawn quiet.
Leo stood in the center of the empty school field, chest heaving like a bellows. Sweat dripped from his chin, darkening the turf between his bare feet.
His school shoes sat neatly to the side like sacred relics. He was working with only socks on, feeling every blade of grass, every imperfection in the ground—the true canvas of the game.
[REPETITION 47: FAR-POST CURLER. SUCCESS.]
[ACCURACY: 98%. POWER: 78%.]
[STR: 6.1-> 7]
[AGI: 7.1 -> 8]
[VIT: 7.1 -> 8]
[INT: 84]
[PER: 92 -> 93]
[ADVISORY: CONSISTENCY ACHIEVED. INCREASE DIFFICULTY.]
He ignored the prompt. Consistency wasn't the goal. Perfection was. He wanted the net to billow with the same obedient sigh every single time.
A slow, appreciative clap echoed from the bleachers, shattering his focus.
Leo turned, squinting against the low, honeyed sun.
A boy with a wild mop of curly brown hair and a grin that seemed permanently etched on his face leaned against the railing. Max Freeman. A decent player, known campus-wide not for flashy skill, but for a motor that never quit—the human embodiment of hustle.
"And here I thought I'd be the first psycho on the field," Max called out, his voice echoing in the emptiness.
Leo wiped his brow with thumb. "How long have you been watching?"
"Long enough to see the software update," Max said, hopping the fence with practiced ease. He gestured at the goal with his chin. "Last week, you were the Leo I know who'd panic if the ball came within ten feet of him. Now you're putting shots in the corners like you're placing an order." He stretched a hamstring, a playful, challenging glint in his eye. "Looks like you need more than an empty post, though."
Max toed off his own sneakers, jogged to retrieve the ball, and rolled it back with a crisp, respectful pass. "Show me what the new model can do."
Leo trapped the ball, a slow, genuine smile spreading across his face.
The system, humming in observation mode, instantly highlighted Max's stance: weight slightly forward, knees bent, center of gravity low—the posture of a born pest, ready to harass and intercept.
Before Leo could even initiate a move, the first-period bell shattered the morning calm.
Its industrial shriek echoed across the empty grounds, a tyrannical reminder of the ordinary world.
Max just laughed, shaking his head. "Saved by the bell, Reed. Looks like you got lucky."
Leo laughed back pulling on his boots with deliberate, almost ritualistic speed. "Right back at you, Max."
They walked to class together, an easy, competitive silence settling between them. It was a new feeling—not quite friendship, but a mutual recognition of shared obsession.
As they neared the main bulletin board, a nest of buzzing students, Leo stopped.
"Go on ahead," he said, his voice calm. "I'll catch up."
Max's eyes flicked to the tryout sheet, then back to Leo's face. Understanding flashed there, sharp and clear. He gave a single, solemn nod.
Leo pushed through the crowd, his focus narrowing to the single, worn piece of paper pinned behind plexiglass.
His name was still there, a relic of a more timid, hopeful self.
He stared at it. The boy who'd chosen the position because it was the smart, safe, calculated risk. The boy who wanted to be the invisible engine, the facilitator. The boy who thought he could earn a place by being useful.
That boy had died on Hal's turf last night.
He took a deep breath, the memory a physical sensation: King's casual laugh, Maya's dismissive pity, Rin's foot—so clean, so efficient—hooking the ball away from his shooting arc.
The sound of their celebration as he pushed himself up from the ground.
With a single, decisive stroke of his pen, he drew a thick, black line through his name in that column. An execution.
Then, on a new line, at the very bottom of a much longer, more intimidating list, he wrote in clear, uncompromising capitals:
STRIKERS:
LEO REED
His name looked small down there. Isolated. A declaration of war against every name above it.
He dropped his signed tryout form into the metal collection box—his mother's signature obtained last night with a quiet, determined "I need this, Mum"—and turned away. The hallway to his first class felt like a tunnel leading to an executioner's block.
─────────
The school day passed in a watercolor blur of muted sound and shifting light. Words from teachers dissolved into static before they reached him.
In Physics, Mr. Davidson posed a complex problem involving parabolic motion and air resistance. The solution unfolded in Leo's mind, beautiful and complete, a glowing equation. His hand didn't move. He kept it in his lap, clenched tight.
Save it for the pitch, he told himself. That's the only test that matters.
He adjusted his father's glasses for the thousandth time, the familiar weight a anchor in the sea of mundane dread.
He was counting down the seconds, a prisoner awaiting release. He vaguely registered the French teacher's voice assigning homework, but the words were noise. "I'll get the notes from someone. Or I won't. It doesn't matter."
The final bell was a shockwave of noise and motion. He was already packing his bag while the echo still hung in the air. From his backpack, he pulled the blue and white kit, folded with military precision, and the Jaguar boots.
One boot, slippery with nervous sweat from his palms, clattered to the floor.
Before he could bend, a hand darted down and scooped it up.
Kevin, the chemistry-lab marksman from PE, held it out. "Nice kicks, man. Serious piece of kit."
"Thanks," Leo said, taking it. The leather felt alive in his hands. "You trying out too?"
Kevin shook his head with a self-deprecating smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Nah, man. I'm a specialist. Trick shots and set-pieces only. My fitness is... theoretical. And my shots are slower than a sedated sloth."
They shared a laugh that was half genuine, half nervous energy. Kevin clapped him on the shoulder, the gesture firm. "Good luck out there. You'll need it. And if you ever need a free-kick coach, I only charge $20."
The boys' locker room was a steamy, primal cave of noise and fear. The air thick with the smell of deep heat, cheap deodorant, and naked ambition.
Boys in various states of undress shouted shaky pep talks, retied cleats with trembling fingers, or sat silently on benches, staring at the floor as if reading their fate in the patterns of the tiles.
Leo changed quickly, a silent island in the storm. The blue and white jersey felt different now—not like a promise, but like armor. The fabric was a statement. I belong here.
He followed the stream of cleats clacking on concrete. The main path to the field was a river of students, mostly girls heading to clubs or claiming spots on the bleachers to watch the spectacle.
The trying-out boys were funneled the long way around—past the silent basketball courts, behind the music rooms, a gauntlet of institutional indifference.
He saw other tryout lists posted for the competition. It explained the sheer number of unfamiliar, anxious faces in cleats.
The senior class was massive, but only this desperate, hopeful fraction was stupid or brave enough to subject themselves to this.
As they spilled out onto the vast expanse of the main field, the scale of it hit Leo. It seemed bigger, the goals gaping like mouths. A coach's assistant with a clipboard and a voice like rusted metal barked instructions.
"Circle up! Jog the perimeter! Keep the line tight! This isn't a picnic!"
Leo fell into the long, shuffling chain of sixty-odd hopefuls, a human caterpillar of anxiety. The rhythm of the run was hypnotic, the collective puffing of breath a low wind. As they rounded the far curve, he saw him.
King Vance.
He was already in his element, jogging at the head of the pack on the opposite side with a loose, powerful grace that looked effortless. He was holding a quiet conversation with two other players who moved with the same predatory ease.
They weren't trying out; they were surveying their domain.
Leo's gut tightened into a cold fist. But the icy focus from last night, the certainty, washed over him like a wave. He didn't look away. He met King's gaze across fifty yards of turf.
King's conversation didn't falter, but his eyes—those cool, assessing grey eyes—flicked to Leo. Held for a beat. Then he looked away, as if dismissing an interesting but irrelevant piece of scenery.
The humiliation from yesterday threatened to surge back, hot and acidic. Leo crushed it. Let him look. Let him all look.
Before any other silent confrontations could happen, a door to the equipment room banged open.
A man strode out.
He didn't walk; he manifested in the center circle. He didn't need a whistle. His presence sucked the sound from the field like a vacuum.
He was in his late forties, but he seemed ageless. His posture was ramrod straight, military-crisp. He had a face that looked hewn from granite, all sharp planes and unsmiling lines, framed by close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair.
He wore a simple tracksuit, but it hung on him like a uniform.
This was the special coach the Principal once spoke about.
He stopped, and let his gaze—cold, pale, and utterly devoid of mercy—sweep over the panting, nervous herd of boys stumbling to a halt around him.
The silence was so profound Leo could hear the flag on the far pole snapping in the breeze.
The man's voice, when it came, was a surprise. It wasn't a roar. It was smooth. Low. A controlled baritone that carried to every ear with chilling clarity.
"Look at all of you."
He let the silence expand, thick and suffocating.
"You're here because you think you can play football." He paused, his eyes scanning, dissecting, discarding. They were pale blue, the color of winter ice. They passed over Leo, and for one terrifying, endless second, stopped.
It wasn't a look of recognition. It was an appraisal. Leo felt utterly transparent, every flaw in his technique, every gap in his confidence, laid bare under that glacial stare. The man's lips thinned, a microscopic twitch of disdain.
Then the gaze moved on, leaving Leo feeling scraped raw.
"I am Coach Arkady." He said it like stating a law of physics. "And this," he continued, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that somehow pierced the silence even deeper, "is a slaughterhouse."
A collective, almost imperceptible shiver ran through the group.
"I need twenty players. Maybe less." He took a single step forward, his eyes locking onto the middle distance, speaking to all of them, and yet Leo felt the words were etched directly into his soul.
"So don't get comfortable."
The sentence hung in the air, not an instruction, but a verdict.
The tryouts had begun.