Idris, usually the eternal optimist, the guy who could find a silver lining in a garbage fire, looked… defted.

  Like someone had just let the air out of his tires. “Okay,” he admitted, his voice subdued, almost whisper-quiet. “Maybe… maybe dribbling isn’t, uh, his strong suit.”

  He tried to rally, desperately searching for a silver lining, grasping at straws like a drowning man. “But… but Kiyoshi must know what he’s doing, right? There has to be a pn! Please tell me there’s a pn!” His voice was pleading now, bordering on desperate.

  Manager Tahera’s face was tight with concern, a visible knot of worry forming between her eyebrows.

  She gripped her clipboard so hard her knuckles were turning white, like she was trying to crush the bad vibes into submission. She knew James could shoot. She’d seen it in practice, countless times and she also saw that in his first shot.

  The effortless accuracy, the lightning-fast release – it was beautiful, poetry in motion. But the dribbling… oh, the dribbling.

  The dribbling had always been… a “work in progress.”

  And by “work in progress,” she meant “a potential source of cardiac arrest for coaches.” To put it mildly. She’d secretly hoped, maybe even prayed a little bit (don’t tell anyone), that in a real game situation, adrenaline, focus, some kind of magical game-day pixie dust would sprinkle down and miraculously improve his ball-handling.

  But watching this initial, utterly clumsy dribble dispy? Yeah, those hopes were dwindling faster than her phone battery on a camping trip.

  “No, Tahera, snap out of it,” she mentally scolded herself, trying to inject some positivity into her spiraling thoughts. “Stay positive! Kiyoshi put him in for a reason.

  There has to be a reason. He’s not an idiot.” She took a deep breath and tried to refocus.

  “Focus on the positives. He can shoot. Dude can really shoot.

  Like, Steph Curry levels of ‘swish’ in practice.”

  Okay, new pn, new pn! “Maybe… maybe we just need to get him the ball in a position where he doesn’t have to dribble.” Genius! Sort of.

  She chewed on her lip, her mind suddenly a chaotic race track of strategic possibilities. Trying to formute a pn, a way to salvage this situation, to somehow turn James’s… “unique” dribbling style into… well, not a strength, let’s be realistic here. But at least not a complete and utter liability that would cost them the game.

  She was officially in damage control mode.

  Back on the court, amidst the tsunami of ughter and the mocking comments swirling around him like a particurly annoying, taunting wind, James remained… utterly, completely, and almost suspiciously unfazed. Seriously, you’d think he was deaf to the world.

  His expression didn’t change. Not even a twitch. No flicker of annoyance, no hint of embarrassment, absolutely no fsh of anger.

  Dude was a statue of chill.

  His focus was unwavering. Locked in.

  Laser-focused on… something. It was almost unsettling how unaffected he seemed by the public roasting session happening all around him.

  But inside James’s head? Oh, that was a whole different ball game.