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### Mr. Sobu's POV
From the heights of the VIP room, the world looked small. Twenty-two children chasing a ball, yet hidden among them were sparks—rare flames of potential that could burn the world itself.
Naoki.
Rika.
Dusk.
Three minds born of different eras, yet bound to the same stage. *Ah… how magnificent. The strings tighten, and the puppets begin to dance.*
I sipped the bitter diet Coke. A fitting taste for the performance below. Sweetness without substance—much like the illusions these students wrapped themselves in.
But I grew bored of the view from above. Puppetry is most beautiful when seen up close, when you can hear the breath of the marionettes as they strain against their strings. So I descended, silent as the weight of inevitability.
There—Mr. Unagi. Haruto beside him, watching nervously, ignorant of the web already woven.
I sat beside them. Mr. Unagi nearly leapt from his skin. How fragile.
"Sorry… did I scare you?" I asked with a smile I did not mean.
Relief washed over him. "Oh, it's just you, Principal Sobu. What are you doing here? I thought you were in the VIP room."
"I was," I said softly, almost tenderly. "I decided to come here to observe… a little closer."
"But… this is the farthest row from the stadium," he said, still trying to reconcile the contradiction.
I lifted a finger to my lips. "Shhh. It's about to restart."
The whistle cut through the air. Restart.
The seniors charged. The freshmen… did not. They stood still, waiting, calculating. My lips curved faintly. *Ah… they're learning.*
Dusk hesitated, a flicker of confusion. Even at this distance, I saw it, hidden though his eyes were behind that curtain of hair. He accepted the ball cautiously. And in that instant, the trap closed—freshmen swarmed, suffocating the lanes, pressing Scarlet at every turn.
Scarlet hesitated, passed wide. Pressure. Another pass back. Pressure again. Her expression sharpened—yes, she felt it too. The children were adapting. How rare, how precious, to see minds evolve in real time.
But evolution is never smooth. It demands blood.
Scarlet grew impatient. A flick of her heel, a sudden break—she slipped past, leaving one boy writhing in agony on the ground. His ankle twisted grotesquely, his scream shattering the stadium's rhythm.
Scarlet paused. Just for five seconds. A human moment in the middle of war. *How ironic. The fastest in the school… stalled by empathy.*
But Dusk arrived, silent as shadow, and the wheel of play turned again. A pass. A curved release. A shot—Scarlet's strike sliced through Minato's guard. Goal. 1–2.
The crowd erupted. But not for the goal.
No, their eyes were on the fallen boy. The broken toy. The casualty of progress.
Mr. Unagi muttered something, worry heavy in his voice. I did not listen. My gaze was fixed on the field, and on the gap that had been created.
The referee raised the yellow card. A warning. Scarlet would not be chained; she would only burn brighter now. But the true question was—who would replace the fallen?
The substitute, Kaito, was far from here, occupied. The freshmen needed someone, not later, but *now*.
Someone who understood the rhythm of the game. Someone with intelligence sharp enough to slice through chaos. Someone with ego strong enough to refuse being a background piece.
My gaze drifted left.
There, a few rows down.
Kei Fushimiya.
A quiet smile stretched across my lips.
*How beautiful. The missing piece falls into place by its own will. Ego calls to ego. The puppeteer does not pull the string—he only provides the stage.*
I leaned back, closing my eyes for a moment, hearing the screams of the crowd, the thunder of feet, the agony of the injured.
"Come now, Kei," I whispered, though no one could hear me. "Show me what you really are. Show them… why I chose you."
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(a few minutes later...)
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The ref's eyes trembled when I leaned in close.
"Announce it," I whispered, my tone silk yet laced with steel. "A random freshman will serve as a temporary substitute."
She opened her mouth to protest—pitiful. I tilted my head, smiling with the softness of a knife's edge.
"Do it now… or you're fired."
Her silence was my victory. It always is.
I returned to the VIP room. Ms. Ito stared at me with those hesitant eyes of hers—like a rabbit staring at the fox, still unable to accept what lurks beneath the smile.
"You're going to let that boy Kei Fushimiya play, aren't you?" she asked.
I smirked. People never ask the right questions.
"As far as I'm concerned, every player on that field is irrelevant… except the ones I've marked as S. The rest? Just noise."
I discarded my half-empty diet Coke into the trash, almost laughing at the metaphor. Half-finished, meaningless, forgotten. That's what most of these children are.
The announcement came, just as I'd orchestrated. The wheel spun—a spectacle for the sheep watching in the stands. Hundreds of names, hundreds of possibilities, a façade of fairness. The illusion of chance is a stronger leash than chains.
Of course, the wheel landed on Kei. As it was meant to.
I stepped toward him with a mask of joy painted across my face. "Congratulations," I said smoothly. "You're the lucky one who got picked."
His eyes were sharp, calculating. A dangerous glimmer. He wasn't fooled.
"Do I look stupid to you?"
Oh… delightful. So he already knows.
His mind unraveled the trick in seconds—350 names, 0.29% chance, and yet his number surfaced. His reasoning precise, clinical. This wasn't a guess. It was a dissection.
He's far more dangerous than the rest. A boy who sees through the veil.
When he took the uniform from my hand, he brushed past me with a line that lingered like venom.
"Fine. I'll play your little game. But soon… I'll be the one running the game."
The corner of my mouth twitched. He thinks he can turn the board against me. How amusing. How human.
I watched him walk away, stepping into the costume of a player. Onto the stage I prepared. The crowd gasped at his sudden presence. Even Scarlet—the self-proclaimed prodigy of speed—dismissed him as a nobody.
Her mistake. Everyone's mistake.
I returned to my seat beside Mr. Unagi, who could never hide his suspicion.
"What was that about, Principal Sobu?" he asked.
I smiled, soft and hollow, the kind of smile that terrifies those who understand its meaning.
"Nothing, Mr. Unagi. Nothing at all. But I think you'll find this match… more interesting."
The whistle blew. The game resumed.
And on the field, the board shifted.
The pawn I placed is no pawn at all.
The stage is mine. The pieces are moving.
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