Setting: Their school's scrappy, half-lit practice court. The lights buzz. The tape on the net is peeling. Someone left a half-eaten granola bar on the bench like a tribute to mediocrity. It's late.
Ayumi sat cross-legged at the baseline, her racquet splayed open like surgery gone wrong.
On her phone: a video tutorial by a guy who called himself "The String Whisperer."
In her hands: knots that whispered nothing but confusion.
"You're going to summon a tennis demon," Kenji said from the bench, where he was hydrating like a sensible person.
"It'll be the patron spirit of controlled disasters," Ayumi declared, tightening a string in the completely wrong direction. "Its name will be... Racketanath the Elastic."
"That string's already dead," Kenji said, walking over. "Give it a dignified end."
She pouted. "I was bonding with it."
He gently took the racquet, sat next to her, and began undoing the damage. His hands were quick, sure, focused. The strings sighed with relief.
Ayumi watched. Noticed how he always checked tension with his thumb. How his brow creased just slightly when something didn't line up. How calm had a shape when it wore his face.
"You ever wonder if they're worried about us?" she asked, quieter now.
"Ryota and Hana?"
"Yeah."
"No," he said immediately.
"Brutal," she muttered.
"But," he added, still working, "they should start."
Ayumi blinked. "Oh? Confident much?"
Kenji glanced at her. "We're unpredictable. You're a cyclone. I adapt."
She grinned. "You're calling us... what? A weather event?"
"Something no playbook accounts for."
She liked that. Liked that he didn't say they were good yet. But he believed they were becoming something. Becoming dangerous.
"You're getting better at metaphors," she said.
He finished the last knot, tested the strings, and handed it back.
"Tension's off by a half-pound," he said. "But it suits you."
She took the racquet and stood, spinning it like a baton. "Perfect. I like my weapons slightly unstable."
Kenji stood too. They stood in the halo of the court's one working light, casting long shadows across the cracked surface.
Ayumi looked up at him. "We're not polished."
"No," he agreed.
"But we're something."
He met her gaze. "We are."
And for one breathless second, the match wasn't tomorrow. The court wasn't falling apart. And they weren't the underdogs.
They were just two people, learning how to move in the same direction.