Chapter 22: The Grid
The locker room was a pressure cooker. While Kuon was frantically sketching arrows on the whiteboard, Eshan sat in the corner, methodically taping his ankles. He didn't look at the board; he was mentally reviewing the texture of the turf he'd felt during his solo session.
"Listen up!" Kuon shouted, tapping the screen. "Team Y isn't just defending. They're using a concentric circle system. If we enter their half, they don't just mark us; they shrink the pitch. We have to move the ball fast to tire them out."
Eshan stood up, his height forcing the rest of the team to look up. "Tiring them out is a loser's strategy," he said, his voice flat and resonant. "They're waiting for us to get tired of passing sideways. The moment one of you makes a lazy pass, they'll kill us. Don't worry about 'tiring' them. Just get the ball to me in the final third. I'll break the circle myself."
He led the team out, his silver-gray eyes already locked on the tunnel's exit.
The Wall of Silence
The stadium was a cathedral of blue light and artificial grass. Across the halfway line, Team Y stood like a military unit. At the center was Niko Ikki, his eyes scanning Team Z with a terrifying, clinical stillness. Beside him, their striker Okawa leaned in.
"That's him," Okawa whispered, nodding toward Eshan. "The one with the most goals in Team Z. He's the only one who doesn't look panicked."
Niko adjusted his bangs, his gaze sharpening as he watched Eshan's effortless stride. "He's the 'King' of this team. If we isolate him, the rest of them will crumble. Saito, Suzuki—don't let him turn. If he gets his face to the goal, the simulation ends."
The referee blew the whistle. Kickoff.
Team Z pushed forward, but the air immediately felt different. When Isagi received the ball, he saw a wall of five white jerseys shifting in perfect synchronization. He tried to find a gap, but Team Y's midfield was a dense web.
"They're too tight!" Isagi muttered, forced to play the ball back to Gagamaru.
For ten minutes, the match was a grueling territorial struggle. Team Y was playing a 1-5-4-1, but it wasn't a passive defense. It was an active trap.
Eshan was positioned in the right-center channel, and immediately, the pressure intensified. Saito, a thick-set defender, stepped in front of him to block the vertical pass, while Suzuki stayed glued to his back.
"Nice hair, No. 1," Suzuki sneered, his forearm digging into Eshan's spine. "But you're in a coffin today. Niko's already figured out your stride length. You're not getting a single yard."
Eshan didn't blink. He felt the weight of Suzuki's arm and the angle of Saito's hips. He was reading their "rhythm."
In the 14th minute, the stalemate broke. Bachira, tired of the sideways passing, fired a "no-look" pass—a hard, zipping ball that curved toward Eshan's feet. It was a "difficult" ball, meant to bypass the midfield line.
"Now! Close the trap!" Niko screamed from the center.
Saito lunged, his boot aiming to intercept the ball mid-flight. At the same time, Suzuki threw his full weight into Eshan's back to knock him off balance.
Eshan didn't resist. Using his Absolute Ball Feel, he reached out with his trailing left foot. As the ball arrived, he didn't stop it; he let it hit his laces and cushioned it with a "dead-trap" that absorbed all the velocity.
In the same motion, he used the contact from Suzuki's chest to pivot. Seven years of plyometrics exploded in his calves. He performed a "No-Look Turn," rolling the ball under his sole and spinning into the tiny gap between Saito's lunging leg and Suzuki's torso.
"He... he didn't even slow down!" Saito gasped, his face hitting the turf as Eshan bypassed him.
"Don't let him out!" Niko shouted, his calm facade cracking. "Kameyama, rotate now!"
Team Y's left-back, Kameyama, abandoned his post to join the pursuit. Suddenly, Eshan was near the right touchline, pinned in a triple-team. Saito was recovering behind him, Suzuki was hacking at his ankles from the side, and Kameyama was blocking the path forward.
The sideline was a wall. Three defenders were a cage.
Eshan felt the friction of the grass and the heat of the defenders' breath. He saw Isagi waving frantically for a back-pass, terrified of a turnover. But Eshan's Awareness saw something else—a tiny, three-inch gap between Suzuki's feet and the sideline.
"You're trapped, King!" Suzuki yelled, lunging for the ball.
Eshan's eyes narrowed. He didn't pass. He didn't look back. He dug his toe under the ball, the leather whispering against the damp grass.
"The only person trapped here," Eshan said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, "is the one who thinks he can touch my ball."
With a sudden, violent burst of acceleration, Eshan performed a "Tight-Rope Dribble," dragging the ball along the very edge of the white paint, his body leaning over the sideline at an impossible angle. He wasn't just escaping; he was dismantling their confidence.
Kameyama, seeing Eshan break past Suzuki, threw himself forward. He wasn't going for the ball; he was going for Eshan's legs, intending to bring him down with a tactical foul before he could enter the box.
Eshan felt the collision coming. His Awareness registered the precise angle of Kameyama's shoulder. Just before impact, Eshan shifted his weight, using Kameyama's charge to propel himself forward. It was like two supernovas colliding, but Eshan used the blast to slingshot himself free. Kameyama hit the turf with a grunt, left clutching at thin air.
Suddenly, Eshan was free. He had broken through the triple-team on the right wing, less than twenty yards from the goal. The entire Team Y defense was in disarray, their concentric circles shattered.
Niko Ikki, however, was already reacting. His eyes, cold and calculating, darted toward his goalkeeper. "Keeper! Left post! He's going for power!"
The goalkeeper, Tanaka, immediately shifted his weight, shuffling two steps to his left, anticipating a cannon shot.
Eshan didn't hesitate. He took one final, heavy touch, setting the ball perfectly. He could feel the tension in his hamstrings, the power coiling in his quadriceps. He was going to put the ball through the net.
Eshan's eyes flickered toward the goalkeeper, Tanaka, who had already committed his weight to the left. He saw Niko Ikki's smirk—a small, triumphant twitch of the lips. Niko thought he had calculated the trajectory. He thought he had solved the physics of Eshan's power.
But Niko's simulation was based on conventional strikers. It didn't account for someone whose Absolute Ball Feel allowed them to manipulate the ball's center of gravity mid-motion.
As Eshan's foot connected with the leather, he didn't deliver a straight-line blast. At the final millisecond, he snapped his ankle downward and outward, slicing across the bottom hemisphere of the ball. Instead of a scream of raw power, there was a sharp, dry thud.
The ball took off like a bullet, heading straight for the left post exactly as Niko predicted. Tanaka, the keeper, launched himself into a full-stretch dive, his fingers inches away from the save.
"Got you!" Tanaka yelled.
But the ball didn't reach his hands.
Halfway through its flight, the extreme backspin and sidespin Eshan had applied caused the ball to "bite" into the air. It suddenly dipped and veered sharply to the right, performing a violent, erratic curve that ignored the keeper's momentum.
It was a Knuckle-Curve.
Tanaka's eyes went wide as the ball swerved behind his outstretched arms. He was frozen in mid-air, a victim of his own momentum. The ball slammed into the top-right corner of the netting with a violent snap, tearing at the fibers before falling to the turf.
The stadium went into a sudden, vacuum-like silence.
The Team Y defenders, who had been sprinting to cover the box, stopped dead in their tracks. Saito was still on one knee; Suzuki was staring at the goal as if he'd seen a ghost. Even Niko Ikki was motionless, his arms still raised from directing the defense, his long bangs trembling as he stared at the scoreboard.
TEAM Z 1 - 0 TEAM Y
Scorer: Eshan (#290)
"What... what was that?" Suzuki stammered, his voice cracking. "That curve... that's not possible from that distance."
Niko didn't answer. He was staring at Eshan, his mind frantically trying to rewrite his "simulation." He had accounted for Eshan's strength. He had accounted for his speed. But he hadn't accounted for the fact that Eshan could change the ball's physics at the moment of impact.
Eshan didn't celebrate. He didn't run to the corner flag or shout at the cameras. He simply stood there, his chest rising and falling in a steady, controlled rhythm. He looked at Niko, his silver-gray eyes showing a faint, dangerous glint of amusement.
"Your 'logic' is too rigid, Niko," Eshan said, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet pitch. "You're trying to calculate a storm. You'll never have enough data."
Bachira was the first to break the silence, screaming with delight as he jumped onto Eshan's back. "Eshan-kun! That was disgusting! Did you see his face? He looked like he just saw a monster!"
The rest of Team Z swarmed him, their previous fear replaced by a manic, desperate hope. They were leading against the "Total Defense." The wall had been shattered in less than fifteen minutes by the singular ego of their No. 1.
Across the field, Niko's hands curled into fists. His "One-Counter" hadn't even had a chance to trigger. He looked at Okawa, who was looking back at him for instructions.
"Reset the formation," Niko hissed, his voice trembling with a mixture of fury and shock. "Triple-team him from the kickoff. I don't care if the rest of them are open. We kill the King, or we die in this building."