> The ball spun wrong. Kyrie saw it before it left the winger's foot.
He wasn't even playing—just watching a replay on a cracked tablet, cross-legged on his bedroom floor. No sound. No commentary. Just data.
"Center-back's late. Keeper leaning left. Gap opens in three… two…"
A tap-in should've followed.
Instead, the striker hesitated. One touch too many.
The goal never came.
Kyrie paused the screen.
He traced a line across the frozen image with his fingertip.
There. That was the flaw.
His room was a wreck of diagrams and movement charts. Notebooks stacked like bricks. Arrows, angles, overlapping zone maps—all sketched by hand over years.
Not magic. Not a gift.
A system. A language. A Code.
He leaned back, eyes closed.
"They react. I calculate."
And when he opened them again, the simulation continued.