Monday morning wasn't a walk to school; it was a training drill.
Leo moved down the sidewalk in a world of his own, his backpack a cumbersome weight on his shoulders.
His feet executed silent, intricate patterns: a pull-back with the inside of his right sneaker, a soft push forward with the outside, a feigned shift left as he sidestepped a crack in the pavement.
He was dribbling an imaginary ball people he took as defenders, his body remembering the ghostly pressure of the holographic Julius O'Connor.
The system's faint, corrective prompts whispered in his mind: [TOO WIDE. TIGHTER TURNS].
A sharp wolf-whistle cut through his focus. He looked up, blinking. The 8:00 bus had hissed to a stop at the curb beside him. Max Freeman hung halfway out the door, grinning like a lunatic.
"Leo! You do this every day?" Max yelled, drawing stares from other students on the bus. "I've seen you! You look like you're having a silent argument with your feet!"
A flush of heat climbed Leo's neck. He gave a stiff, awkward wave. Max just laughed, a sound of pure, uncomplicated amusement, and the bus pulled away, leaving Leo in a cloud of mild humiliation and diesel fumes.
He resumed his walk, his "dribbling" now self-conscious and slightly stiff. But by the time he reached the school gates, the rhythm had reclaimed him.
The judgment of strangers was a cheap currency compared to the coin of improvement.
Homeroom was a study in gravitational fields. King Vance's presence at the back of the room usually warped the space around him, a dense star of cool arrogance that made the air feel thin for anyone in its vicinity.
Leo took his usual seat, bracing for the familiar, icy pressure.
It didn't come.
He glanced back. King was there, pristine as ever, but his gaze was fixed on the window, his expression one of distant, focused intensity. He was working on a problem Leo couldn't see.
The aura was still there, but it no longer felt like it was meant to crush Leo specifically. It was just… King, existing on a plane where Leo was now a recognized, if minor, variable.
After facing the flowing mountain that was Julius O'Connor, the polished hill of King Vance had lost some of its terrifying scale.
The first-period bell was a starter's pistol for the week's true battle.
Mathematics Final. 2 Hours.
The exam hall was a temple of tense silence, broken only by the scratch of pens and the occasional, despairing sigh. Leo opened his booklet, his mind switching gears from tactical overlays to trigonometric identities.
He was ready. He'd traded sleep for study, football drills for derivative drills.
Across the aisle, Peter Fletcher was a study in contemptuous efficiency. His pen flew across the page, not writing, but transcribing some perfect, internal answer key. He didn't pause, didn't double-check. He was a machine executing a pre-loaded program.
Thirty minutes before the final bell, Peter stood up. The sound of his chair scraping back was a small explosion in the quiet.
Peter placed his completed paper on the teacher's desk with a soft, definitive tap. He didn't look at his struggling classmates. His gaze was already on the door, on the next problem waiting to be solved in the quiet of the library.
A collective, almost imperceptible groan rippled through the remaining students.
Five minutes later, Alicia Chen, the class's other academic titan, also submitted her paper and left. Leo knew the summary notes were the key.
Damn it, Leo thought, a cold spike of panic lancing through his concentration. I should have swallowed my pride. I should have given Peter whatever he wanted for those notes.
He pushed the thought down, viciously. No. Not the glasses. Never the glasses.
He bent back over his work, his own pace feeling suddenly glacial, his solutions clunky and uncertain compared to the ghost of Peter's flawless execution.
The "Good luck" text from Daisy and warm hug from his mum were his motivation.
When the final bell rang, Leo was placing the final full stop on his last answer. He hadn't finished early. He had used every second.
He submitted his paper, feeling drained but intact. He'd survived the first summit.
Recess was a blur of crammed facts and shared panic. Huddled with Kevin and a few others, they fired questions about integration by parts and poetic meter at each other, a frantic game of academic hot potato.
Leo's contributions were sharp but delivered with the hollow-eyed stare of a man running on two fuels: caffeine and stubbornness.
English Final. 2 Hours.
Shakespeare, essay structure, analyzing the bleak beauty of a postwar poem. It was a different kind of endurance test.
Leo's mind, trained to find patterns in movement, now hunted for themes in stanzas, for rhetorical strategies in soliloquies. He wrote until his hand cramped, building arguments with the same systematic logic he used to deconstruct a defense.
The end-of-day bell was a pardon. Students streamed into the hallways, a river of relief and exhaustion, most making a beeline for the freedom of the outdoors.
Leo turned against the current.
He didn't go to the lockers. He didn't go to the field with Max. He walked back to the now-empty Mathematics block, the echoes of the day's anxieties still hanging in the silent corridors.
He found an unused classroom, its desks neatly arranged, the whiteboard still smeared with the ghost of Mr. Marcus's last calculus proof. This was his pitch now.
He dropped his bag, took out his father's glasses, and put them on. The sterile classroom snapped into hyper-clarity.
[INITIATE TRAINING MODULE: ADVERSARY SIMULATION - JULIUS O'CONNOR_FLUIDITY.]
[WARNING: PROLONGED USE CONSUMES 'FOCUS' RESOURCE. CURRENT FOCUS: 87/100. ESTIMATED SAFE DURATION: 25 MINUTES.]
Leo nodded.
The air in front of the teacher's desk shimmered. The blue, translucent form of Julius O'Connor materialized, not in kit, but in the same casual posture he'd held in the park—a relaxed, ready poise that was somehow more intimidating than any aggressive stance of King.
The hologram didn't wait. It didn't need a ball. It simply gestured, and a phantom football, glowing a faint white, appeared at its feet.
"Beat me," the simulation said, its voice a synthesized echo of Julius's calm confidence. An annoying feature the System added the night before.
Leo lunged. It was a replay of the park, but faster, more intense. The hologram moved with that impossible, economical grace.
Leo tried a system-suggested tackle. Julius_Fluid sidestepped, his movement a liquid shift of pixels that made Leo overcommit and stumble against a desk.
[FOCUS: 79/100.]
He tried to press, to harry. The hologram simply turned, shielding an invisible ball with its body, its balance perfect.
Leo shoved against the intangible form, meeting no resistance, his own momentum sending him sprawling.
[FOCUS: 71/100. BIOMETRIC FRUSTRATION SPIKING. ADVISORY: MAINTAIN COOL.]
"Beat me."
It wasn't a taunt. It was a statement of fact. Leo couldn't. Not with strength. Not with speed.
He stopped. He stood in the center of the room, panting, and remembered his father's notebook. The keyhole into the game's soul. He wasn't just looking at a hologram; he was looking for a pattern, a tell, a heartbeat.
He engaged the [SIDELINE PERSPECTIVE] sub-module. The hologram's outline gained new layers of data: subtle weight distributions, micro-shifts in the center of gravity.
He watched. He didn't attack for a full minute, just circling, observing as the simulation waited with infinite patience.
There. Just before the hologram initiated a dribble, there was an almost imperceptible drop of the left shoulder—a feint so ingrained it was a signature.
The next time Julius_Fluid made that micro-drop, Leo didn't go for the feint. He went for the space behind it, anticipating the true direction.
His foot swept through the space where the phantom ball would be.
The hologram flickered. For the first time, the ball—the glowing white data-construct—popped loose, rolling a few phantom feet before dissolving.
[SUCCESS: PATTERN RECOGNITION + EXPLOITATION. OBJECTIVE COMPLETE.]
The simulation didn't congratulate him. It simply reset, the ball reappearing at its feet.
"Beat me."
But something had changed. Leo hadn't won with physicality or system-guided angles. He'd won with observation, with the legacy of the sidelined coach. He'd seen the heartbeat.
He didn't beat the simulation again in the next twenty minutes. He was tossed, turned, and schooled repeatedly. But he stole the ball two more times, each theft a tiny victory of perception over power.
[FOCUS: 23/100. WARNING: NEURAL FATIGUE CRITICAL. MIGRAINE PROBABILITY: 65%.]
Leo cancelled the simulation. The classroom was just a classroom again, quiet and empty. A savage, throbbing pain was building behind his eyes, a price for the intense mental expenditure.
He slumped into a chair, pulling off his glasses as the world softened into a painful blur. He was exhausted in every way a person could be—mentally from exams, physically from the simulation, emotionally from the relentless grind.
But as he sat there in the silent, shadowed room, a slow, hard-won smile touched his lips.
He hadn't gone to the field. He hadn't practiced with the team. He was the sub striker, alone in an empty classroom, getting humiliated by a ghost.
And for the first time, it felt like he was exactly where he needed to be. He was learning to see the game not from the bench, but from within the quiet, data-filled heart of the machine itself.
The mountain hadn't moved. But the monkey had just learned to spot a handhold.