The ball arced through the air, this lonely orange sphere against the blinding gym lights. It felt like time slowed down, like everything paused to watch this desperate shot. It hung there, suspended, carrying all of Banani’s shattered hopes and anxieties with it.

  The fate of the game, or at least this possession, rested on this one, probably ill-advised, shot.

  Cng.

  Yep, called it.

  The ball bounced off the rim with a depressing thud. No good. Of course not.

  Nothing was going their way. It was like the universe was personally invested in Banani High's basketball team failing spectacurly.

  Rebound Motijheel.

  Fast break. Oh, come on. Another basket? Seriously?

  Swish.

  12-freaking-0. The scoreboard was basically taunting them at this point. Mocking their very existence.

  Kiyoshi felt a wave of pure frustration wash over him, hot and bitter, like accidentally drinking lukewarm coffee that's been sitting out for hours. He wanted to scream, to punch a wall (but like, a padded one, he wasn’t that crazy), to make this whole nightmare just rewind and stop. But he couldn’t.

  He was the captain. Captain Cool. Captain Calm.

  Captain "Stick-to-the-freaking-pn-even-if-it's-a-terrible-pn." He had to be strong. He had to be calm. He had to… stick to the pn.

  Ugh.

  He dragged himself back on defense, legs feeling like lead weights, breath coming in ragged gasps like he'd just run a marathon uphill in flip-flops. He gnced at the clock.

  Four minutes left in the first quarter. Just four more minutes of this torture. Four more minutes before he could finally unleash James and, hopefully, salvage what was left of their basketball dignity.

  On the bench, James was observing the on-court train wreck with this detached air, like he was just analyzing a particurly bad reality TV show. But inside, his mind was a whirlwind of calcutions and observations, like a supercomputer processing data at lightning speed. He saw exactly what Kiyoshi saw: the suffocating defense, the offensively stagnant offense, the rapidly spreading demoralization.

  But unlike Kiyoshi, James wasn't weighed down by the "Captain" title, the crushing weight of team expectations, or the fear of becoming a meme.

  "They're really stuck on that high screen, huh?" Faisal commented, echoing James's earlier observation. Faisal, always the observant one, was finally catching on to what James had been seeing for minutes.

  James nodded, a tiny smirk pying on his lips, like he knew something everyone else was just starting to figure out.

  "Like a broken record. But predictable broken records can be… skipped." He paused for dramatic effect, because why not?

  Rifat, still looking like he'd just seen a ghost (the ghost of their basketball season, maybe?), frowned. "Skipped? What in the world is that even supposed to mean?" Rifat, bless his literal heart, sometimes needed things spelled out.

  "It means they're comfortable," James expined, leaning forward, his eyes gleaming with strategic intent, like he was about to drop some serious truth bombs. "They think they've got us all figured out. They're just running the same pys, the same patterns, because, well, they're working. For now." He paused again, letting his words sink in, like letting a perfectly timed meme nd in a group chat. "But comfort breeds compcency. And compcency… that's where we strike." He finished with a flourish, because dramatic effect was key.