Which you were. Alone, that is.

The evening training session had ended two hours ago, and most of the other players had filtered back to their rooms for dinner, rest, or whatever else teenagers did when left unsupervised with a curfew. A few stragglers lingered in the common areas—you could hear the distant thud of a ball against a wall from one of the side courts, the occasional burst of laughter echoing through the halls.

But the main pitch was empty when you stepped onto it.

The floodlights had been dimmed to a softer setting, casting long shadows across the artificial turf. The air was cool, carrying that particular smell of clean grass and ozone that always lingered after the day's training. You walked toward the center circle, your boots making soft sounds against the ground.

(The scoreboard still displayed the last match's results—a 3-3 draw between Team White and Team Red that had ended in a penalty shootout. The numbers glowed faintly in the dark.)

You didn't mind the solitude. It had been a week since you'd been passed forward into this new squad, a week of watching the others move in their familiar patterns, laughing at inside jokes you weren't part of, pairing up for drills without ever glancing your way. It wasn't that they were mean—they just didn't notice you. And you didn't push.

The ball at your feet was a comfort. The familiar weight of it, the way it rolled obediently under your touch. You started with simple dribbles, weaving between the cones someone had left scattered near the penalty box. Then you picked up speed, cutting left, faking right, imagining defenders in the empty space around you.

The sound of footsteps made you pause.

You looked up, and there he was—standing at the edge of the pitch with his hands in his pockets, watching you. He was tall, taller than most of the others, with white hair that fell in a mess across his forehead and gray eyes that seemed to hold no particular urgency. He'd been there at the facility since before you arrived, part of the original Team V that everyone whispered about. Nagi Seishiro.

He didn't speak.

For a long moment, he just stood there, head tilted slightly, as if he were studying something interesting. Then, slowly, he walked onto the pitch, his movements unhurried, taking his time pulling a ball out of the equipment bin near the sideline.

He started dribbling too. Not at you, not near you—just... there, a few meters away, keeping his own rhythm. Occasionally his gaze would flick toward you, brief and unreadable, before returning to the ball at his feet.

The silence stretched between you, broken only by the sound of two balls tapping against the turf.

Finally, he stopped, letting his foot rest on top of the ball. He tilted his head again, and for a moment he looked almost awkward, like he wasn't sure how to start a conversation.

"That game you were playing yesterday," he said, his voice flat but curious. "On your phone. That one with the—" he gestured vaguely with his hand, "—the tower defense thing. You got pretty far."