The fog still clung to the field like a ghost that refused to fade. Early morning dew slicked the grass beneath Kyrie's cleats as he jogged the perimeter, trying to warm himself before practice officially began. The others were still filing in—some joking, some yawning, some dragging their boots like prisoners on the way to war. Kyrie didn't speak. He had already been here for an hour.
On the bleachers, his notebook lay open beside him. Pages lined with codes, formations, player heatmaps sketched with obsessive precision. And above all of it—Dante's name. Circled. Underlined. Then crossed out. Then rewritten.
"Still trying to figure him out?" Coach Dominguez's voice cut through the mist. He held a thermos and wore that unreadable smile that coaches loved to wear when they knew more than they were letting on.
Kyrie nodded without looking up. "He doesn't follow any logic. He makes wrong decisions... and they still work. It's like trying to solve an equation where numbers lie."
Coach shrugged. "Some players are chaos. You don't solve them—you sync with them."
Kyrie didn't reply. The idea sat like a splinter in his brain.
---
They were put together during drills. Dante and Kyrie. Again.
"Try to link up," Coach said. "Kyrie, you're attacking mid today. Feed him. Read him."
Kyrie clenched his jaw. Of course.
From the first pass, it was off. Kyrie moved like a metronome—precise, measured. Dante played like a jazz solo—offbeat, improvised, unpredictable. Twice, Kyrie passed into space where Dante was supposed to be. Twice, he wasn't. The third time, Kyrie anticipated a one-two. Dante went solo and scored.
Kyrie didn't celebrate.
"Yo, you alright?" Dante jogged back, flashing that relaxed smile. "You looked stiff out there."
"I made the correct decision," Kyrie said flatly. "You didn't."
Dante blinked. "And yet the ball's in the net. So... maybe it wasn't wrong."
Jordan's voice chimed in from the sidelines. "Maybe perfection ain't enough anymore, Barnes."
The words lodged in Kyrie's chest. Perfection had always been enough.
But now? It felt like it was crumbling
---
Kyrie left early. No cooldown. No shower. The notebook under his arm was drenched by the drizzle that had started mid-practice.
He walked home. Didn't take the bus. He needed time to think. But thoughts were knives now—cutting, jagged, loud.
He reached the bus stop anyway, out of habit. Sat on the bench. Opened the notebook.
Blank page.
He stared at it. Tried to write. The pen hovered. Nothing came.
"Why can't I understand you?"
His hands shook. A scribble. A diagram. Dante's movement from this morning.
Wrong. The arrows didn't match the memory.
He tore the page out and let it flutter into a puddle.
---
Home was quiet. His dad was at work. Hannah was at school. Charlie was on the porch, hoodie up, earbuds in. Reading some old manga she found at a garage sale.
Kyrie dropped onto the porch steps beside her, soaked and silent.
She noticed. Pulled out an earbud.
"You look like you lost."
He scoffed. "I didn't lose."
She shrugged. "Okay. You just look like someone who forgot what winning feels like."
Kyrie didn't answer.
Charlie waited a moment. Then: "Is this about soccer or something else?"
He tilted his head back against the wall. Rain tapped the gutter in soft, rhythmic beats. "It's always soccer. That's all there is."
"No, it's not."
"It is for me. I don't have... distractions like you do."
Charlie squinted. "Is that what you think I am? Distracted?"
He rubbed his face. "Forget it."
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "You think if you just calculate harder, if you just memorize more patterns, it'll work out. But people aren't codes, Kyrie. They're stories."
He looked at her then. Really looked. She was twelve. But her eyes didn't feel twelve.
"And what story is Dante telling?"
"Maybe one you're too scared to read."
Silence fell again.
Charlie stood. "You're not broken. Just... human. Start there."
She left him on the porch, notebook soaked in his lap, mind spinning.
---
That night, the screen flickered in the dark.
Match footage. Again.
Kyrie sat cross-legged on his bed, blanket pulled around him like armor. Rewatching every second Dante touched the ball. Frame by frame. Paused. Rewound. Played. Again.
Still didn't make sense.
He tried to overlay his own notations on the screen. Movement grids. Heatmaps. Calculated decisions. None of them matched. The System didn't work.
"Deviation cannot be predicted. Only responded to."
That line echoed in his head like static. Where had he even heard it?
Maybe it was something he wrote. Maybe it was something he was becoming.
Dante was a glitch. No—he was more than that.
He was a blind spot.
Maybe he's not a glitch in my system, Kyrie thought, maybe he's what the system was missing all along.
He closed the laptop. For the first time in weeks, he didn't take the notebook with him to bed.
He just lay there.
Listening to the rain.