The walk into the locker room on Monday afternoon felt like a funeral procession. The usual pre-practice energy—the loud, boastful arguments over music, the snapping of towels, the easy laughter—was gone, sucked into a vacuum of grief. The air was heavy, stale, and silent, broken only by the metallic rattle of combination locks and the grim zipping of bags.
Tristan's eyes, like everyone else's, were drawn magnetically to one spot: Aiden Robinson's locker.
It was still full. His spare ankle braces hung from a hook. A half-empty bottle of Gatorade sat on the top shelf. A small, laminated photo of him and Christine, laughing at last year's school fair, was taped to the inside of the door. It was a small, quiet shrine to a season that had ended too soon.
Marco, a man whose personality was defined by its sheer volume, was the first to try and break the suffocating silence. He slammed his own locker shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet room.
"Well," he announced to no one in particular, his voice overly bright and painfully false. "Look on the bright side. At least our chances of winning the team's 'Best Hair' award just went up significantly. Aiden's fade was always just… unfairly perfect."
He tried to force a grin. It was a grotesque, pained expression. No one laughed. No one even smiled.
Gab, who was slowly, methodically taping his ankles, didn't look up. "That's not funny, Marco."
Marco's bravado crumpled. The forced grin vanished, replaced by a raw, frustrated anger. "I know it's not funny, Gab! What do you want me to do? Huh? You want us to sit here and cry? You think that's going to help? We have two weeks! Two weeks until the Nationals, and we just lost our second-best scorer! So yeah, I'm going to make stupid jokes, because it's either that or I punch a hole in this locker!"
He slammed his hand against the metal, the clang ringing with a note of pure despair.
The room fell silent again, the truth of his outburst hanging in the air.
Tristan, zipping up his practice jersey, finally spoke. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the tension with the authority of a captain.
"He's right," Tristan said. Everyone looked at him. "He's right that sitting here won't help. Aiden's at home right now, with his leg in a cast, thinking his season is over. The only thing we can do for him, the only thing that matters, is to go out there and work. We honor what he did by not folding. By not giving up. We owe him that."
He shouldered his bag. "Let's go."
One by one, they filed out of the locker room, a somber, heavy-hearted procession, and walked into the gym. The absence on the court was even more pronounced. The space where Aiden would be, running his precise, fluid warm-up drills on the left wing, was starkly, painfully empty. It was an Aiden-sized hole in their universe.
Daewoo, the man tapped to fill that void, was standing off to the side, already stretching, his movements jerky and filled with a nervous, coiled energy. He wasn't just another player anymore; he was the replacement. The weight of it was visible in the tense set of his shoulders.
Coach Gutierrez stood at center court, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He let the team assemble, the silence stretching out, forcing them to confront the new, uncomfortable reality.
"What happened on Saturday was a tragedy," he finally said, his voice clipped and devoid of emotion. It was the voice of a surgeon, not a father. The paternal comfort from the hospital room was gone, locked away. This was the gym. This was his office.
"It is a part of this game we all hate," he continued, his eyes scanning each of them, "but it is a part of it. Aiden Robinson is out for the season. That is the fact. We will not waste one second of our precious time feeling sorry for ourselves. We will not mourn. We will adapt. The Palarong Pambansa will not send us a sympathy card and reschedule our games. The monsters from NCR and Cebu do not care about our feelings. They smell blood, and they will be coming to finish the job. Our job is to make sure that does not happen."
His gaze settled on Daewoo, who looked like he was about to be sick.
"Daewoo," the coach barked, making the young man flinch. "You are no longer a role player. You are no longer a defensive specialist. You are now the starting small forward for a championship-contending team. You will be expected to perform as such. The time for development is over. The time for results is now."
He blew his whistle, the shrill sound ripping through the heavy air. "On the baseline. We have work to do."
The practice began, and it was a disaster.
The first drills were simple 5-on-0 offensive sets, plays they had run a thousand times. But the entire mechanism was broken. The rhythm was gone. The precise, intricate clockwork of their offense now had a missing gear.
Coach called a play, one of their bread-and-butter sets designed to get Aiden a mid-range jumper off a baseline cut.
"Run it! Let's go!"
Tristan brought the ball up. Marco and Cedrick set a staggered screen. Daewoo, his mind racing, tried to replicate Aiden's path. He cut, but his timing was off. He was a half-second too early. Tristan, operating on muscle memory, threw the pass to the spot where Aiden would have been. The ball sailed past Daewoo's outstretched hand and bounced harmlessly out of bounds.
"Dammit!" Tristan cursed, slapping his own forehead.
"My bad, my bad!" Daewoo said immediately, his face flushing with embarrassment.
"Run it again!" Coach Gutierrez yelled, his voice like thunder.
They ran it again. This time, Daewoo overcompensated, waiting a beat too long. The pass from Tristan was on time, but the defensive rotation (which was imaginary) would have been there. The rhythm was still wrong.
"Again!"
They ran it a third time. Daewoo, desperate to make the play, ran the cut too wide. He ended up in the corner, not at the elbow. The entire play's spacing was destroyed.
"This isn't that hard, Daewoo!" Marco yelled, his frustration boiling over. "Just run the play!"
"I'm trying!" Daewoo snapped back.
"Trying isn't good enough!"
"Enough!" Coach Gutierrez's roar silenced them all. "Marco, shut your mouth! Whining about it won't fix the problem. Tristan, your passes are lazy! You are throwing to a ghost. Aiden is not here! Open your eyes and pass to the man who is! And Daewoo, you are running like you're scared to make a mistake. You're all in your heads. You're playing like you're defeated. We're done with this. Scrimmage. Now."
He quickly split the teams.
Team White (Starters): Tristan (PG), Marco (SG), Daewoo (SF), Cedrick (PF), Ian (C)
Team Green (Scout Team): Mark (PG), John (SG), Joseph (SF), Gab (PF), Felix (C)
Coach Gutierrez, in a shrewd move, had stacked the scout team with his best defensive players. He wanted to make a point. He wanted to expose the new starting lineup's flaws in the most painful way possible.
It worked. The scrimmage was a bloodbath.
The new starting five's offense was a dysfunctional, sputtering engine. The loss of Aiden's floor spacing was catastrophic. The scout team's defense, led by the tactical genius of Gab and the relentless perimeter pressure of John, simply collapsed into the paint.
Tristan would try to run a pick-and-roll with Ian, but Gab, playing free safety, would leave his man (Daewoo, who was standing nervously in the corner) and immediately double-team Tristan, forcing him to pick up his dribble.
"I'm open!" Daewoo would call out, a second too late.
"They're not guarding you for a reason, man!" Gab yelled back at him, pure, tactical trash talk.
On the next possession, Tristan tried to drive. He beat his man, but the lane was a solid wall of bodies. John and Gab had both sagged in, forming a triangle with Felix.
Tristan was forced into a wild, off-balance floater that Felix easily blocked.
The ball went the other way. Mark, running the scout team offense, found Gab, who used a smart screen to get a mismatch on Daewoo and scored an easy post-fade.
The starters were being humiliated. Marco, unable to get a single clean look against the constant shading from John and Gab, began forcing horrible, contested threes. Ian and Cedrick, with no room to operate in the clogged paint, were reduced to battling for offensive rebounds, which was their only source of points.
It was awful. The chemistry they had built over a year, the fluid, beautiful basketball that had won them a championship, was gone. They were just five talented strangers, getting in each other's way.
The final straw came on a broken play. Tristan, trapped near half-court, threw a desperate skip pass to Daewoo in the corner. Gab was closing out on him, but he was doing it with a clear lack of urgency, practically daring him to shoot.
Daewoo caught the ball. He was wide open. He had ten feet of space. And he froze.
He looked at the basket. He looked at Gab lumbering towards him. He looked at Tristan. And he pump-faked.
He pump-faked an open shot, with no one within five feet of him.
The hesitation was fatal. Gab closed the distance, and Daewoo tried to force a panicked dribble, but his foot shuffled. The whistle blew. Traveling.
"Unbelievable," Marco muttered, throwing his hands up in disgust.
Coach Gutierrez blew his whistle so hard it sounded like a shriek of pain.
"EVERYONE! ON THE LINE! NOW!"
The players, from both teams, sprinted to the baseline, their heads down. They knew what was coming.
"That," the coach said, his voice quiet, which was infinitely more terrifying than his yelling, "was the single most pathetic, cowardly, and disrespectful display of basketball I have ever witnessed in this gym."
He walked right up to Daewoo, who was gasping for air, his face pale.
"You," he said, his voice a low growl. "You are the starting small forward for the regional champions. And you are afraid to shoot a basketball. You just disrespected yourself, you disrespected your teammates, and you disrespected the man you are replacing. You think Aiden would have hesitated? You think Aiden would have been afraid?"
Daewoo looked at the floor, his jaw trembling.
"No, Coach," he whispered.
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
"NO, COACH!" Daewoo yelled, his voice cracking with shame and anger.
"And you!" Coach Gutierrez wheeled on Tristan and Marco. "You're just as bad! You're moping. You're blaming him. You're playing like you've already lost. You're not leaders. You're a bunch of entitled, spoiled kids who had one bad thing happen and are now ready to quit! You are not adjusting. You are just feeling sorry for yourselves. And you!" He pointed at Gab and the scout team. "You're letting them! You think this is a joke? You think you're helping them by just standing in the paint?"
He paced in front of them, his rage a palpable force. "Aiden Robinson's season is over. But ours is not! We are going to adapt. We are going to change who we are. We are not a finesse team anymore! We don't have that luxury! From now on, we are a defensive team. We are a gritty, ugly, rebound-and-run team. Our offense is going to come from our defense. And Daewoo," he said, his voice dropping again.
"Yes, Coach?"
"You are not Aiden. I don't want you to be. You are the best perimeter defender in this region. From now on, your first, second, and third job is to lock down the other team's best scorer. Your job is to create chaos, get steals, and start our fast break. That is your role. But so help me God, if you are that wide open in a game and you pump-fake again, you will run until you puke. You will shoot the ball. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Coach!" Daewoo said, a new fire in his eyes. The shame was being replaced by determination.
"Good. Scrimmage again. Same teams. White team's ball. Show me something."
The second scrimmage was like watching a different team. The moping was gone, replaced by a raw, angry energy. The offense was still ugly, but it was purposeful.
Tristan brought the ball up. He ran a simple high-screen with Cedrick. Gab, on defense, sagged off Daewoo. Tristan saw it. He didn't force the pass. He swung it to Daewoo in the corner.
"Shoot it, Woo!" Marco yelled, not as a taunt, but as a command.
Daewoo caught the ball. He hesitated for a split second, then, with a defiant yell of effort, he launched the three-pointer. It was a terrible shot. It hit the side of the backboard.
But something incredible happened. The moment he shot, Daewoo, following his own instincts, crashed the boards from the perimeter. The ball ricocheted off the backboard, and Daewoo, moving at full speed, flew in, snatched the offensive rebound from a surprised Felix, and laid it in.
It was the ugliest two points of the day. And the entire team exploded.
"THAT'S IT, DAEWOO!" Ian roared. "THAT'S YOUR GAME!"
Daewoo landed, a fierce grin on his face. He hadn't made the shot. But he had scored. He had found his way.
The shift was palpable. On the next defensive possession, Daewoo was a man possessed. He was guarding John, but he was a shadow, his hands a blur, making the simple act of dribbling a nightmare. He ripped the ball from John, a clean steal.
He outletted to Tristan. Fast break. Tristan to Marco. Layup.
A new identity was being forged, right there on the court, built not on finesse, but on pure, unadulterated grit. They were still missing a vital piece. But they were no longer a broken machine. They were just a different one, a machine with fewer pretty parts, but a more powerful, angry engine.
The practice ended an hour later. The players were exhausted, but the oppressive, grieving silence was gone. It was replaced by the panting, gasping silence of hard, productive work.
As they packed their bags in the locker room, the mood was still somber, but it was no longer hopeless.
Marco sat down next to Daewoo, who was icing his knees.
"Hey," Marco said, his voice quiet. "Sorry for yelling at you earlier. That was... uncalled for."
Daewoo looked up, surprised. "It's good, man. You were right. I was scared."
"Yeah, well… don't be," Marco said, offering a small, genuine smile. "Just… don't be scared. But maybe let me and Tris take most of the shots, okay? Your form is kind of… special."
Daewoo actually laughed, a short, sharp bark. "Got it, man."
Tristan walked with Gab out of the gym. The sun was setting, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple.
"That was the ugliest practice of our lives," Gab said, his voice a low rumble.
"Yeah, it was," Tristan agreed.
"We're not the same team. We're not as good as we were with Aiden."
"No," Tristan said, shifting his bag on his shoulder. "We're not. We're not a finesse team anymore. We're not going to out-shoot anyone at the Nationals."
"So what's the plan?" Gab asked.
Tristan looked at the setting sun, then at the gym behind them, where the lights were just being shut off. He thought of Aiden, of his promise.
"We're going to be the most miserable, ugly, hard-nosed defensive team in the entire country," Tristan said, his voice cold with a new resolve. "We're not going to win pretty. We're just going to win."