The sun beat down on the back of Saint Joseph's Institution with a relentless, almost vindictive intensity. The open futsal court radiated heat from the concrete, turning the air above it into a wavering haze. Every step Joel Tai Kai Sheng took made the soles of his sneakers stick faintly to the ground before peeling away again with a soft, accusing sound.
Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, soaking into the collar of his school T-shirt. He wiped his palms on his shorts for the third time, but the moisture returned almost immediately, as though his body had decided this was not a day it would cooperate with him.
His heartbeat thudded in his ears—too loud, too fast—an uneven drum that mixed with the distant murmur of students lingering near the canteen and the sharp, occasional shouts from the intrazone match officials. Somewhere, someone laughed. Somewhere else, a whistle blew.
But all of that—the heat, the chatter, the glare of sunlight on concrete—fell away the moment he saw her.
Hidayah Anastasya.
She stood in front of the goal, small but unmistakably steady, her body poised in a way that suggested she was ready to spring in any direction. Her eyes tracked the ball with quiet precision. Her arms were slightly lifted, her knees bent, her weight balanced forward on the balls of her feet. Her hijab framed her face neatly, giving nothing away, but everything about her posture spoke of focus and stubborn determination.
Joel had seen her during intrazone training before. She had always been quick. Always alert. But now, in the sharp, merciless light of midday, she seemed almost impossible to bypass—less like a schoolgirl and more like a final, unmovable line.
He adjusted his footing.
The ball rested at his feet, scuffed and warm from the court. He drew in a breath and tried to slow the trembling in his legs. This was just another shot. He had taken hundreds like it before. He knew how to place it. He knew how to aim.
But adrenaline has a way of erasing good judgement.
The glare of the sun, the heat crawling under his skin, the distant cheers and shouts—all of it fused into a strange, humming blur that made him feel untethered, slightly unreal, as if he were watching himself from a step away.
Then, before he could think better of it, he kicked.
The ball left his foot with a sharp, cracking thud. The vibration shot up his leg, jarring his knee. For a split second, he thought it would sail past her, too fast, too high.
He was wrong.
Hidayah moved.
She lunged forward, not sideways, not back—forward, closing the distance in a way he had not anticipated. There was no time to shout. No time to take it back.
The ball slammed into her chest.
The sound was wrong. Too dull. Too solid.
Time seemed to fold in on itself.
Joel watched, helpless, as her body arched backward, her arms flailing for balance that was no longer there. She folded in a way a body should not fold and hit the concrete with a final, hollow thump.
The court went silent.
Not the kind of silence that comes from politeness or shock—but the kind that feels like the world itself has stopped breathing.
"She's unconscious!" someone shouted.
The words barely reached him.
Panic surged through Joel's body all at once, hot and blinding. His limbs felt distant, heavy, as though they no longer quite belonged to him. He tried to move—towards her, away from her, he wasn't sure—but his knees buckled slightly and he had to grab the nearest goalpost to stop himself from falling.
Ms Poh was already there, dropping to her knees beside Hidayah, her movements quick and controlled.
"She's breathing," she said.
The words should have helped.
They didn't.
Breathing, but unconscious.
Joel's throat closed. He realised he had been holding his breath and forced himself to inhale, but the air felt too thin. His hands were shaking so badly he had to clench them into fists. He could not look away from Hidayah's body, from the shallow rise and fall of her chest against the merciless concrete.
The sounds of the court returned in fragments—murmurs, hurried footsteps, someone swearing under their breath—but they all felt very far away, as though he were underwater.
The ambulance arrived with sirens cutting through the heat like a blade.
Paramedics moved with brisk, practised efficiency, kneeling, checking her vitals, fitting a neck brace. When they lifted her onto the stretcher, her arm slipped slightly to the side, limp, and something in Joel's chest cracked open.
"She's stable, but we need to take her to Tan Tock Seng Hospital immediately," one of them said.
Joel nodded.
He didn't remember deciding to.
The doors slammed. The siren started again. And then she was gone.
The court felt too big after that. Too bright. Too exposed.
The adrenaline drained out of him all at once, leaving him hollow, weak, trembling. He became vaguely aware of people talking, of teammates standing nearby, of someone asking if he was okay.
He wasn't.
All he could think was that he had done this. That one careless kick—one moment of not thinking—had sent someone's life spinning out of his control.
He sank down at the edge of the court and pressed his hands to the concrete as though it could anchor him to something solid.
The scene replayed again and again in his head: the kick, the impact, the fall, the stillness.
I didn't mean to.I didn't mean to.I didn't mean to.
The words meant nothing.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours.
He barely registered Ms Poh returning or the officials calling off the match. All he could see was Hidayah being carried away, small and motionless, her future suddenly no longer something he could imagine.
When the ambulance's siren finally faded into the distance, the heat came rushing back. The sweat. The ache in his chest.
It was too much.
He got to his feet and stumbled towards the SJAB club room without quite knowing why. Each step felt heavy. Each breath felt wrong. His heart would not slow down.
Somewhere, deep inside, a terrible certainty had already begun to take shape:
This was not something he would ever be able to forget.