The sky over Seiryo High had never felt this heavy.
Gray clouds rolled in like slow-moving titans, dragging long shadows across the campus as if the sun itself feared what was coming next. The air carried that strange metallic stillness before a storm humid, thick, a quiet that pressed against the skin.
The team felt it too.
They didn't say it.
But they felt it.
Yuuto arrived before sunrise.
The gym was locked, but that never stopped him. He circled around the building, found the cracked back window Marcus always joked about fixing, and slipped through it like a thief stealing hours.
He needed this time.
He needed the solitude.
Because last night's training
the 500 shots,
the system quests,
the awakening of Self-Actualization
had done something to him.
He wasn't sure what, exactly.
But it felt like the edges of his mind had widened.
Like he could think further ahead.
See more, feel more.
He bounced the ball once.
