The Crossfield United Girls' High cafeteria was a cathedral of controlled chaos.
Trays slammed, laughter ricocheted off tiled walls, and a hundred conversations wove into a single, deafening hum.
At the table pinned beneath the school's glaring griffin logo, however, the world had shrunk to the size of a phone screen.
"Oh. My. God." Isabelle's whisper was a sharp dart in the din. She clutched her phone like a holy text. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen."
She shoved the device at Chloe, who was demolishing a tuna sandwich with the usual focus of a midfielder.
Chloe took it, her chewing slowing to a stop. On screen, under the sickly yellow of a streetlamp, a hoodie-clad figure moved with a desperate, beautiful precision.
A lunge, a twist, a falling ball met not with a foot but a shoulder—thump—and launched in a perfect, silent arc until—
CLANG.
The metallic echo from the tiny speaker was absurdly satisfying.
Somewhere, a dropped tray sent a clatter of plastic and cutlery across the floor, prompting a scattered round of applause and groans. Chloe didn't flinch, her eyes locked on the screen.
"Hang on," Chloe muttered, wiping mayo from her corner of her lip with a thumb. She leaned in. "I know this guy. I've seen him."
The memory danced just out of reach. She passed the phone to Maya without looking away from the screen.
Maya didn't watch; she dissected. Tap. Rewind. Play. Her face, a canvas of neutral focus, betrayed nothing. No gasp, no smile.
Her eyes tracked the vectors—the angle of the dodge, the point of impact on the ball, the parabolic certainty of the trajectory ending in the mouth of a trash bin. It was chaos, but it was calculated chaos.
She handed the phone back to Isabelle as if returning a borrowed pen. "It's the boy who trained at my dad's field on Saturday." She speared a lone chickpea from her salad.
The glasses were the key detail, the one constant between the grainy street clip and the boy bleeding on her turf.
Her father, Hal, had spoken about those same frames with a reverence she didn't understand. Now, a million strangers were looking at what they could do.
"Saturday… the scrimmage?" Chloe's face lit up. "The one who face-planted and then buried that top-corner finish? Umm... Leo?"
"Leo," Isabelle breathed, cradling her phone. Her cheeks were flushed. "You know him? For real? Can I come to the field later? Please?"
Maya's dry chuckle held no mirth. "Isabelle, you think of grass stains as a fashion crime."
Chloe immediately launched into a pitch-perfect impersonation, fluttering her lashes. "Ugh, it's so sweaty out there. And the smell!"
Their table erupted. Isabelle stuck her chin out. "I don't want to play," she insisted, her thumb hovering over the save button. "I just want to… observe. He looks… intense. And the glasses are kind of cute."
Maya tuned out the chatter, her mind pulling up a different file reported to her by King: Leo on the pitch that morning. Not the scissor-kick goal, but the moment before. The way he'd stepped in to command the leftover strikers, the shift in his posture that made a senior back down.
The video showed a desperate physics hack. The tryout showed a mind that could orchestrate chaos. Both were weapons.
Her father's voice, a low rumble from her childhood, surfaced: 'The best players aren't the strongest, Maya. They're the ones who see the game on a different graph.'
She looked at the paused video. This boy wasn't just on a different graph. He was using a different program. This hints at her potentially suspecting something "systematic" about his ability.
A food fight was brewing two tables over,a freshman boy ducking a flying bread roll with a yelp. The lunch monitor's whistle cut the air, a sharp counterpoint to the roar. None of it registered at the griffin-table.
A lunch tray hit the table with a decisive clatter. Sasha slid into the empty seat, her presence immediately changing the gravity at the table.
"What'd I miss?" she asked, already unpacking a burger the size of her fist. Her sharp gaze flicked from Isabelle's dreamy stare to Chloe's grinning face.
"You remember Leo? From the field?" Chloe prompted.
Sasha took a savage bite, chewed, and nodded once. "The reed that bent but didn't break. Yeah."
"Well," Chloe said, drawing out the word. "Belle's got a crush on him."
Sasha choked. She coughed, pounding her chest. "What? She wasn't even there!"
"Viral video," Chloe sing-songed. "One trick shot, and boom—heart stolen."
"It's not a crush," Isabelle protested, her voice climbing an octave. "It's an appreciation of… kinetic artistry!"
Sasha and Chloe locked eyes. A silent, shared understanding passed between them, and they burst into simultaneous, shoulder-shaking laughter.
Their laughter drew a few glances from neighboring tables—a mix of curiosity and the mild disdain reserved for other social groups. A group of drama kids at the next table over dramatically mimed wiping away tears of joy.
The sound seemed to physically grate against Maya. She placed her fork down with a quiet, final click. The sound was softer than the laughter, but it cut through it like a blade.
"The project on post-war economic policy in Southeast Asia," she said, her voice a flat, arctic plain. "It's due fourth period. We have twenty-three minutes to finish our slides. Can we focus?"
The laughter died as if smothered. Chloe sobered instantly, pulling out a tablet. Sasha took another bite, her eyes now on her food.
Isabelle, suitably chastened, slid her phone into her lap. Under the table, her thumb moved: Save Video to 'For Later'.
Around them,the cafeteria's cycle continued unabated: the scrape of chairs, the slosh of soda cans, the frantic rustle of last-minute homework. Their little island of viral-fueled drama was already being absorbed back into the sea of ordinary school life.
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The Oasis Academy library was a world of hushed tones and sun-dusted dust motes.
At a distant table,a student was having a whispered, frantic crisis over a printer that had just eaten their final essay.
The low, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a basketball being dribbled down the hallway outside seeped through the heavy doors, a faint, persistent heartbeat.
In his usual carrel, a fortress of quiet, Rin Tanaka arranged his universe: textbook, notebook, two pens (one for work, one for corrections), phone face-down.
The phone buzzed, a single, dignified shudder against the wood. A notification glowed: King.
Rin opened it. No greeting. Just a stark link. He tapped it. He tapped it.
Yhe video loaded—grainy, urgent, set to a trending audio track that was all aggressive synth and bass drops.
Rin's thumb found the volume slider, killing the noise. The visual narrative was crude enough without a soundtrack screaming for his attention.
He watched the sequence dispassionately: threat, evasion, improvised physics, unlikely target. His eyes flicked to the view counter: 2.1 M.
His lips quirked. Of course. The internet loved a simple puzzle with a flashy solution. Low cognitive load, high visual reward. Predictable.
He set the phone down, a paperweight on the chapter about differential equations. He uncapped his primary pen.
The clean, empty notebook page promised order.
Buzz.
Another text. King.
Did you watch it?
Rin exhaled, a slow, controlled release of air. His reply was a single character.
Y.
The response was instantaneous.
You sure?
A faint line appeared between Rin's brows. Not frustration—the prickling of an incomplete analysis.
He reopened the link, silencing the tinny music. This viewing was a forensic scan. He ignored the stunt and studied the subject. The height. The narrow shoulders.
The way the hood fell back during the spin—a flash of dark hair, the sharp angle of a jaw caught in the streetlamp's glare for three frames.
Recognition was a cold, clear drop down his spine.
Leo Reed.
Why not? The universe had a tedious sense of symmetry. The clumsy, earnest boy from his past was now generating noise in his present.
The arithmetic of their childhood—his own patience, Leo's consistent disappointment—had summed to this: a viral variable. It was inelegant.
He picked up the phone.
"I see it. The Reed variable. I guess his geometry is better than yours.
He considered the message for a full five seconds, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. It was a perfect move: it acknowledged the threat, insulted King's capability, and framed it in the language King pretended to disdain but secretly craved—intellectual superiority.
He hit send and placed the phone back on the book, screen dark.
It buzzed again almost immediately—King's rebuttal—but the sound was irrelevant now.
A new variable was logged. The calculus of the coming season had just acquired a fascinating, irritating new integer.
He was already scribbling a flawless derivative when the chair opposite him scraped back. He didn't glance up.
Jess stood there, still in her training kit, a sheen of sweat at her temples. Her bright pink goalkeeper wristbands were smudged with dirt.
She looked out of place among the books. To Rin she was a creature of mud and grass trapped in a world of paper.
"You wanted to see me?" she asked, her voice barely disturbing the library's quiet. Her eyes held a question, and a wariness that had nothing to do with overdue books.
She smelled of fresh sweat and turf, a scent that seemed blasphemous in the dry, paper-scented air.
Rin didn't smile. "Sit."