The flyer lay on the bench like a dare.
Mamori stared at it; Sena stared at you; you stared at the wind curling around the chain-link fence. The lunch bell rang below like a distant alarm you didn't need.
"Throw it away," Mamori said.
You didn't answer.
Sena nudged the corner of the paper with his fingertip. "It says 'optional.'"
"With Hiruma," Mamori replied, "that word means the opposite."
You picked up your bag. The flyer stayed where it was.
"Class," you said.
"Good," Mamori muttered, scooping up the sheet and folding it hard enough to crease the ink. "We're done here."
Sena tucked his bento into his bag, eyes flicking to your face and away. "You okay?"
You nodded once. "Yeah."
The three of you filed down through the stairwell haze into Deimon's afternoon hum.
Classes dragged and blurred. Chalk scraped. Fans clicked. Teachers filled the room with words that couldn't find purchase. You wrote nothing; you listened to everything.
Hiruma didn't come to homeroom.
His empty chair sat beside the window like a loaded trap. When the final bell hit, the hallway vomited noise. Doors banged. Laughter broke apart like glass.
Kurita lumbered up to your desk with a lunchbox that was mysteriously fuller than it had been at lunch.
"Alex-kun!" He beamed. "Heading home?"
"Eventually."
"Want to see the field?" he asked, then flinched at his own forwardness. "Ah—only if you want. It's kind of… muddy. And small. But it's ours."
He said the last part with a quiet pride that hadn't changed.
You stood. "Lead the way."
Kurita brightened like windows opening. "Okay!"
Mamori intercepted you both at the door, arms crossed, the folded flyer now gone but not forgotten. "You're not going."
"I'm walking."
"To Field 3."
"That's where the path leads."
Sena hovered a step behind, clutching a clipboard and a stopwatch he hadn't realized he was carrying. "I—I have to drop this off at the shed anyway," he said. (Manager errands.)
Mamori groaned like surrender hurt. "Fine. But you're just looking."
Kurita glanced at the clock and jolted. "Practice! I'll run ahead and tell them—meet you by the gate!"
He jogged off—fast for his size—down the stairs toward the back fields.
You didn't promise anything to anyone. You just walked.
Field 3 tucked itself behind the baseball diamonds, pressed to a fence where grass gave up and became gritty dirt. A crooked scoreboard leaned like a drunk. The uprights were a different yellow at the top where someone had painted as high as a short ladder allowed.
It was perfect.
You breathed in cut grass and earth and the copper of old water fountains. The wind carried voice and rhythm—
"AGAIN!" Hiruma's bark tore across the field like a starting pistol. "You call that a block, you pansy?! Hit the sled like you owe it money!"
Monta sprinted by, monkey-grinning even through a grimace, then dove for a sideline catch no one had thrown. "WAAAH—! I CAUGHT THE INVISIBLE BALL!"
"Catch the real one, moron," Hiruma snapped, rifling a pass that nearly took Monta's head off. It stuck. Monta whooped like a siren.
Kurita spotted you at the gate and waved, not surprised—just glad. "Alex-kun! You made it!"
Mamori muttered, "He walked."
Hiruma didn't look over. He didn't have to. You felt his attention like a scope when he tilted his head the slightest fraction.
"Line up for forties," he said lazily. "Ishimaru, you first. Kobayakawa—clock him."
Sena flinched forward on reflex, manager clipboard clutched tight. He jogged to the sideline cones where a chalk line marked forty yards of uneven turf and raised the stopwatch.
Ishimaru—track-club legs, football lungs—set, shoulders low.
"Go!" Hiruma's whistle cut the air.
Ishimaru launched and skimmed the chalk like a dropped razor, light feet, neat arms. He finished, bent at the waist, and Sena clicked the time, holding it up without being asked.
Hiruma glanced. "Not trash," he allowed. "Again."
You watched Ishimaru's foot strike, the way he loaded his hips, where his first step bled speed. Monta bounced on the sideline, narrating to himself like an announcer who'd had too much soda.
"Like it?" asked a voice, and you turned to find Hiruma at the fence beside you without any in-between.
"Field's small," you said.
"Dream's big," he replied. "Bigger if the right bodies show up."
He didn't look at you when he said it. That was the point.
Mamori stepped in by reflex. "He's just watching."
"Great," Hiruma said. "Spectators make my day."
He flicked his gaze at the sled. "Sled's light," he lied. Two plates a post: doom for freshmen. "Care to watch it from closer?"
Kurita fidgeted. "Ah—Hiruma…"
"It's optional," Hiruma added, smiling like a shark.
Sena looked from the sled to you, then down at the stopwatch in his hand, manager-brain grinding gears. "I—I can time, if… if you want," he said to no one in particular.
"You will," Hiruma said. "Everyone else—cones and lanes. Move."
Monta tried to salute, nearly hit himself in the eye with a cone, and shuffled off.
You stepped closer to the sled. The plates stared back.
"What are you testing?" you asked.
"Gravity," Hiruma said. "Start with a push. Then we see if Newton still cries when people hit each other."
Mamori moved closer, eyes narrowed. "Don't."
You didn't look at her. You looked at the metal.
"Two plates each side," Hiruma called. "He's big, right? Prove the brochure."
Kurita hesitated. "Hiruma…"
"Two," Hiruma repeated, and Kurita—pained but trusting—stacked them.
You slid your palms under the handles. Cheap leather bit skin. Dirt under your soles. Air heavy and clean.
"Set," Hiruma said, like a man announcing a sunrise.
You bent your knees, locked your core, stacked your hips. No noise. Movement is a sentence best finished mid-word.
"Drive," you told your body, and it listened.
The sled jumped.
Not a crawl; not a grind. It bit then slid like the ground turned into a belt, grass tearing thin scars behind it. You kept your pads imaginary and your spine straight, short choppy steps blooming into long, hungry ones. Ten meters. Fifteen. The metal did the screaming for you.
"Holy—!" Monta yelped. "He's shopping-carting it!"
Kurita clapped before he remembered to feel guilty about it. Sena forgot to breathe and then remembered he was supposed to be holding time for the other lane, jabbing the button on instinct.
"Stop," Hiruma said at twenty meters, and you did, easing the sled down with a last, hissing scrape. You walked it back without flourish and set it where you found it.
Your hands didn't shake when you peeled the grip. They only itched, the way they always did when your blood remembered things your mouth refused.
Hiruma's eyes were all knives and math. "Cute. Again."
"No," Mamori said, steady. "That's enough."
Hiruma tilted his head. "From manager to mother hen in one bell, Anezaki."
"From quarterback to ambulance chaser in zero," she shot back, not missing.
He ignored her. "Field says you belong," he told you, like a priest with a gospel you hadn't asked for.
You rolled your wrists and let the itch pass. "Legs or lungs?"
"Both," he said. "Ishimaru—reset. Monta—hands. Kurita, water."
Sena lifted the stopwatch, waiting.
You stepped in again without a word. Hiruma nodded: two more plates. Kurita's face crumpled into apology as he loaded them, but he did it.
Extra weight turned the sled into a mood.
You didn't push harder; you pushed cleaner—angles right, foot strike under center, hips snapping. It moved. Slow at first. Then the stubborn gave way to momentum, and momentum kissed inevitability. Ten meters took longer. You took them anyway.
The iron taste touched your tongue by the end, the way honest work always did.
You set the sled down softer than before. Your breath came low, even.
Monta made little fireworks noises with his mouth. "P-chh! P-chh! BOOM—"
Mamori elbowed him without looking.
Sena stared at the stopwatch he hadn't used on you, then at you anyway. "That was—uh—good," he managed.
"Passable," Hiruma translated dryly, grin saying other things. He tapped the folder under his arm. "Notre Dame weight room make men or just numbers?"
"Both," you said.
"Good. I like numbers that hit back."
He flipped his unlit cigarette between fingers and jerked his chin toward the chalked forty. "Let's see if the myth grew legs."
Mamori stepped between you and the line. "He's done."
"It's optional," Hiruma said.
"You don't know what that word means."
"Sure I do." His eyes slid to you. "He chooses. That's the deal."
Everyone looked at you as if you weren't used to being looked at.
You walked to Sena and put the stopwatch back into his palm. "You time," you said.
His fingers closed around it, startled. "M-me?"
"Trust you more."
His mouth made a small, involuntary 'oh.'
You went to the start. Shoes weren't spikes; ground wasn't track; the line wasn't measured with anything but chalk and hope. None of it mattered.
You set your feet.
"On your—" Hiruma began.
"I'll go on mine," you said.
And you did.
The field moved toward you and then behind you. You didn't feel fast; you felt correct. Each step fell where it should, a drumline laid into earth, tendon and will hugging bone. Air sheared off your cheekbones. The far cone rose and fell. You planted, returned, and let the last strides float because the point had already been made.
You crossed the line and stopped without fanfare.
Sena stared at the number like it might escape. His voice snagged twice before it worked. "Four… two… eight," he said. Cheap stopwatch, crooked chalk—half a tenth either way didn't change the way Kurita's jaw loosened, or the way Monta started vibrating like an unplugged cable, or the way Mamori's fingers whitened on her clipboard.
Hiruma's grin cut across the field like a slice.
"Optional," he said softly, almost to himself.
This time the word didn't sound like the opposite. It sounded like a key.
He clapped once. "Break it down! Sleds away! Ishimaru—one more rep. Monta—catch with hands, not teeth. Kobayakawa—manager station, inventory."
"Yes!" Sena jolted, backing toward the shed, relieved to be firmly inside the role Mamori recognized.
Hiruma walked toward you as the team scattered. He stopped two steps outside conversation distance, so you'd have to choose to close.
You didn't.
"Japanese league's smaller," he said. "Dream's not."
You watched him.
"You don't have to like me," he went on. "Most don't. But you like this." His eyes flicked to the chalk, the sled, the space you carved across the dirt. "And I like people who can turn field into sentences."
"Poetic," you said.
"Practical," he corrected. "We don't have time for poetry."
Mamori arrived at your side with tape and a glare. "You done using him?" she asked, already checking your hands even though the only thing you'd manhandled was metal.
"I haven't started," Hiruma said, then tipped his head at you. "Tomorrow."
"That a threat?" you asked.
"A forecast," he said.
Mamori snapped the tape closed and shoved it in her pocket. "He has a life."
"Then he'll bring it," Hiruma replied, eyes still on you. After a heartbeat, he turned away. "Practice ends at six. Optional."
You left by the service gate. Mamori fell in step, brisk and quietly furious.
"That was reckless," she said.
"Probably."
"You promised you were just going to watch."
"No," you said. "You promised that."
She huffed, then caught herself, then exhaled like she'd been holding her breath since the roof. "You're impossible."
You didn't argue.
Sena jogged up on your other side, still clutching the stopwatch—manager, through and through. "That was—um—cool," he said, then winced at the word choice. "I mean—it was… you know. Fast."
"Thanks."
He glanced down at the number as if it might change. "C-can I write it down? For—uh—inventory?" He brandished the clipboard like a shield.
"Write it," you said.
He smiled, small and real. "Okay."
Mamori didn't smile. "I'm serious," she said. "Be careful. Hiruma doesn't invite people; he eats them. And he definitely doesn't need another player. We barely have enough managers as is."
"I'm not a player," you said.
"Good. Keep it that way."
Ahead, the rusted scoreboard leaned, numbers crooked like a grin.
"Dinner at seven," she added. "Don't be late."
"I won't."
"Liar."
You almost smiled. "Maybe."
Sena walked backward for a few steps, unable to hide the shine in his eyes. "Optional tomorrow… you, um…"
"I heard him," you said.
He nodded like that was a yes and turned before he tripped over his own happiness.
Hiruma watched you to the gate. He didn't wave. He didn't call. He just filed away the way you carried your bag, the way your shoulders never slumped, the distance you kept between yourself and everyone else.
On the bench, the sled gloves sat where you'd left them, palms chewed, straps frayed.
He picked them up, spun one on a finger like a coin, and smiled to himself.
"Asura," he said, tasting the word like gunpowder. "Welcome home."
He tucked the gloves into his folder beside your American stats and a printed still of a Notre Dame jersey flattening a linebacker at the goal line, and he started writing tomorrow.