The silence in the locker room was heavier than any roar from the stands, a void where desperation had consumed all noise. The scoreline—Team X leading 3-1—was a physical weight on every Team Z player except one. The air was thick with the scent of defeat, damp fabric, and the sickening taste of self-recrimination. Three brutal goals had been conceded to Barou Shohei, a self-proclaimed King whose technique was as sophisticated as a swinging wrecking ball.
"We're finished! Three goals in a single half! Against a player who only knows how to move in a straight line!" Igarashi Gurimu wailed, clutching his hair, sweat dripping onto the grime of the floor. His voice cracked with the reality of elimination.
Kuon Wataru, the team's designated analyst, leaned against the wall, utterly defeated. His clipboard was useless. "His power is too high. It's not about strategy; it's brute-force physics meeting a fragile defense. Our line is fracturing the moment he gets within twenty meters of the goal. We have no human answer for pure, overwhelming aggression."
The room was a swirling vortex of low-grade anxiety, a visible cloud of panic. Ayanokouji Kiyotaka stood against the cool concrete wall, an absolute zero point of motion and emotion. He observed the chaos as a scientist observes a flawed experiment, waiting for the extraneous noise to cease.
He didn't speak until the frustration subsided into a defeated silence, ensuring his voice—quiet, toneless—would be the only variable capable of cutting through the emotional fog.
"The information required to win is already available," Ayanokouji finally stated, pushing off the wall. His movement was minimal, yet the sound carried the undeniable, cold weight of a final verdict, silencing Raichi's growl mid-throat and forcing every eye onto him.
He walked past the desperate huddle and tapped the whiteboard.
"Barou isn't a strategy. He is a fixed parameter that I have already processed." Ayanokouji's fingers trailed over the board.
"His movement is governed by simple arithmetic: Highest power, straightest path. He relies entirely on your predictable attempts to stop him, because your struggle to meet his force is his most reliable shield."
He picked up a marker, the sound of the felt tip against the enamel unnaturally loud. He wasn't drawing tactics, but framing the problem as an engineering flaw in Barou's psyche.
Barou's Core: His ego demands all responsibility. He cannot tolerate relying on others or deviating from his script.
His Constraint: He must be the sole point of failure or success. Deviation feels like a fundamental betrayal of self.
Our Opportunity: Forcing him outside of his script causes irreparable psychological damage. The physical game will follow the mental one.
"We will not try to defend him," Ayanokouji confirmed, his eyes flat, reflecting the fluorescent light without emotion. "Trying to match his force is a losing effort, and therefore, an inefficient one. We will attack his will. We will force a psychological surrender, then simply collect the points necessary for survival."
He outlined the plan. Every player, even the deeply skeptical ones, could feel the chilling, irrefutable logic of it.
Isagi Yoichi listened, cold sweat running down his back.
Ayanokouji was proposing to abandon defense and flood the midfield—tearing down their entire tactical foundation—just to expose one player's emotional flaw. It was terrifying, yet perfect. It's not football, Isagi thought, his mind reeling. It's behavioral engineering applied to sports.
"Our objective for the next forty-five minutes is five goals. Team Z will win 5-3."
The locker room emptied, carrying the heavy burden of Ayanokouji's unnerving confidence.
The second half began.
Barou, predictable as gravity, immediately demanded the ball and accelerated. But instead of the usual panicked disarray, he was immediately swallowed by the coordinated Spatial Compression of Team Z's midfield. Raichi, Kunigami, and Igarashi—acting with a unified purpose for the first time—closed every gap, not tackling, but existing in his path. They eliminated his straight-line velocity.
Barou's eyes widened in fury. He was used to smashing objects. This was like hitting an infinitely dense, liquid wall that simply absorbed his impact. His pride screamed, demanding he move, but there was nowhere to go. He was forced to commit the ultimate sin: he lashed out a desperate side-pass to a bewildered Team X midfielder, a pass that held no intention, only release.
Kunigami Rensuke, positioned exactly where Ayanokouji had predicted the ball would be deflected—the most inefficient escape route—instantly intercepted.
He actually forced the pass to that spot, Kunigami thought, adrenaline spiking, a wave of cold admiration washing over him. The genius of the plan was overwhelming. He sent the ball back to the defense line where Ayanokouji waited.
Ayanokouji received the pass, and his first touch was unnerving. The high-speed ball settled against his foot like a perfect catch, all kinetic energy absorbed by some unseen mechanism in his boot or body.
Bachira Meguru watched from the left flank, his chaotic mind focused solely on the ball. He was running at full tilt, guided only by the feeling that the goal was there. He felt a pull, a magnetic force guiding him to a specific quadrant of the field, a spot of maximum utility.
Then, the pass came.
It wasn't fast, not yet. It was mathematically precise. The ball sliced through the four defenders, its trajectory a luminous, vibrant thread of red that seemed to defy the natural curve of the field. It didn't wobble—it accelerated just as Bachira reached the perfect receiving spot in the opponent's blind spot. It was a pass that required zero adjustment, zero slowing down.
"Whoa!" Bachira grinned, the monster inside him howling in delight. This feeling! The ball is coming to me before I even know I'm open! This guy... his monster is a goddamn map!
He tapped it in.
TEAM X: 3 - TEAM Z: 2.
Moments later, the exact same scenario repeated. Barou, trying to compensate, overextended his next run. Ayanokouji intercepted the resulting clearance with a small, invisible movement of his ankle, taking the ball with the gentle efficiency of a vacuum cleaner. The resulting Golden Path targeted Isagi. Isagi, forced to think spatially at the speed of Ayanokouji's pass, reacted with an instinctual genius he didn't know he
He scored. TEAM X: 3 - TEAM Z: 3. Tie game.
In six terrifying minutes, the game had been flipped. Team X looked lost. Barou looked murderous, his ego boiling over, the humiliation visible in his twitching jaw.
The equalizer shattered Barou's remaining composure. His self-control vaporized.
They are challenging the King! They think they can stand on my field!
His eyes, wide and predatory, fixed solely on Ayanokouji, the calm center of the storm. He bypassed his entire team and charged down the center, the ball magnetically glued to his foot, his body a weapon designed for impact.
He reached the final line. Standing between him and the goal was only Ayanokouji.
"Get out of my way, pebble!" Barou roared, kicking the ball ahead into Ayanokouji's space. His intent was simple: commit to the physical contact, overrun the smaller player with mass and speed, and score.
[BAROU POV]
Barou locked eyes with Ayanokouji. The smaller player didn't brace for impact. He didn't drop his shoulder. He just waited, perfectly still, his eyes boring holes into the ground ten feet behind Barou's trajectory. Barou registered a slight, almost imperceptible adjustment in Ayanokouji's hips, and then... nothing.
As Barou committed to the collision, Ayanokouji moved.
It wasn't a feint. It was a subatomic shift in balance, a calculated movement so minute it defied the limits of human muscle and nerve. Ayanokouji's body tilted 1.2 degrees past the point of human stability, but he didn't fall. His leading foot changed direction, not by pushing off the ground, but by initiating Inertia Manipulation—a force correction only possible with his chip, instantly canceling the massive forward momentum without deceleration noise.
He moved laterally by an impossible 30 centimeters, so quickly that Barou felt the wind of his passage, a faint whisper against his ear where a body should have been.
He's too close! I'm going to hit him!
But Barou's massive body connected with... nothing. He was committed to the physical charge, but Ayanokouji was no longer there. He had accelerated, stopped, and cut three times in the space of half a second, moving his center of gravity flawlessly with each touch. The ball, seemingly detached from his feet, moved in perfect sync, never more than a centimeter away. It was a dribble executed with the precision of a cutting laser, not the clumsy motions of human feet.
It wasn't strength that stopped Barou; it was the failure of his senses to track a movement that felt less like dribbling and more like a quantum leap. He had charged at an opponent, and the opponent had ceased to occupy the space he was aiming for.
Barou, still committed to his collision trajectory, stumbled past the goal, staring back at the back of Ayanokouji's head in disbelief. His mighty momentum was completely useless. He felt like a program that had run into an unforeseen error, halting his entire system.
[ISAGI POV]
Isagi watched the entire exchange, his spatial awareness operating at a terrifying, panicked level. Barou was a charging tank. Ayanokouji was an untouchable ghost.
He didn't waste a single calorie fighting Barou's mass, Isagi realized, trembling, his mind racing to understand the mechanics.
He let Barou's own momentum become his prison.
The moment Barou committed, Ayanokouji had already calculated the exact minimal path needed to avoid contact. He didn't beat him with skill; he beat him with the laws of motion and the perfect execution of the escape trajectory.
[BACHIRA POV]
Bachira laughed, a manic, high-pitched sound. His monster was vibrating with a mixture of terror and ecstatic joy.
It's too smooth! Bachira thought, watching the movement. It's not a dribble, it's just the ball moving, and his body is just following it like a shadow! Barou is a human, but this guy... he's something else. His monster is completely silent!
Ayanokouji was now in open space, the ball settled at his foot. The keeper, Iemon, scrambled to cover the goal, his mind already fried by the impossible dribble he had just witnessed.
Ayanokouji took one final, heavy step. He planted his left leg into the turf, his eyes focused entirely on the goal frame.
He swung his right leg back.
The swing was too casual, too efficient. It lacked the wild muscularity of Kunigami or the reckless flair of Bachira. It was pure applied force.
K-R-A-A-C-K!
The sound was a single, violent fracture of the air itself, a sonic boom compressed into the immediate vicinity of the kick. It wasn't a kick; it was the acoustic signature of a ball breaking the speed threshold of the field.
The ball left Ayanokouji's foot with zero spin, a white blur that traveled on a perfectly straight line toward the net. The goalkeeper, Iemon, relying on the primal reflex of anticipation, dived low and left—the expected curve and trajectory of a standard power shot based on the human body's capacity.
The Railgun Shot flew high and right, directly into the small, perfect triangle where the net met the post, a point no human could accurately strike with such force. Physics dictated the ball should not have been able to reach that point with such velocity from that angle unless the launch was flawless. It shattered through the net, ripping the mesh with the violence of a cannon shot. The metal goal frame vibrated for several seconds afterward, a dull, resonant hum filling the stadium. The ball rebounded, almost instantly, to the center circle.
TEAM X: 3 - TEAM Z: 4.
The entire stadium, the players, and even the staff on the sidelines were silent, stunned by the sheer inhumanity of the kick. The goal had not simply changed the score; it had rewritten the rules of possibility on the field. Ayanokouji had not just scored a goal; he had executed the perfect, irrefutable argument for his superiority. He had revealed precisely enough of his true power to ensure the required outcome.
The final fifteen minutes were spent watching Ayanokouji systematically dismantle Team X's defense with passes so perfect they were unavoidable, and dribbles so economical they were invisible. Team X's formation had collapsed entirely, their collective will broken by the sight of the self-proclaimed King being effortlessly nullified.
Every one of Ayanokouji's subsequent touches was aimed not just at moving the ball, but at maximizing the stress fractures in the opponent's morale. He used his speed not to sprint, but to be exactly where he needed to be without effort, always five steps ahead of the opponent's thoughts, dictating the flow of the entire pitch.
With five minutes left, Ayanokouji stole the ball from a stunned midfielder with a casual toe-poke, his body moving only the necessary few inches. He then dribbled past a bewildered, lumbering Barou with another, smaller Inertia Manipulation cut, the ball tracing an impossible arc around the King as if he were merely a stationary cone.
Barou didn't even try to retaliate; he just stood there, his predatory eyes glazed over, the sheer illogical nature of the defeat freezing his Ego.
Then, instead of shooting, Ayanokouji slid a perfect, low-velocity pass to Isagi, who was rushing the keeper.
Isagi, driven by the pressure of not failing the setup—the final, perfect piece of the puzzle—knew failure was impossible. The path to the goal was so clear, so completely optimized, that even a momentary lapse of thought couldn't derail it. He focused his spatial awareness one final time, confirming his path, and scored.
TEAM X: 3 - TEAM Z: 5.
The final whistle blew.
The cheer from the Team Z bench was muted, almost reverent. They had won, but they had won by following a logic that felt alien, guided by a mind that seemed to exist outside the human conflict of the game.
Barou Shohei remained on his knees, sweat and tears mixing on the turf. He watched Ayanokouji walk past him, the smaller player's gait perfectly measured, his expression utterly blank, as if returning from a tedious errand.
"Your method relies on maximum effort, Barou," Ayanokouji said, looking down with a detached finality. "That reliance is why you are predictable. Your path was simply a parameter I had to adjust to. Now, the outcome is correct."
He continued walking, leaving the King of Team X to process the fact that he had been defeated not by a stronger Ego, but by a flawless, cold machine that had no regard for his existence. Team Z had survived.
The changing room afterward was not filled with elation, but a strange, heavy silence. Everyone was staring at their feet, or subtly glancing at Ayanokouji Kiyotaka, who was already fully dressed, his movements economical and swift.
Kunigami Rensuke, the image of raw athletic strength, leaned back against the wall, rubbing the back of his neck. He never struggled. Not once.
"That wasn't football, was it?" Kunigami muttered, half to himself. "It felt like… debugging a glitch. Barou was the glitch."
Bachira, however, was twitching with manic energy. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his grin wider than ever, a spark of dangerous fascination in his eyes. He didn't see a threat; he saw a revelation.
"Kiyotaka-kun… your monster is so smart!" Bachira practically purred, bouncing toward Ayanokouji. "It doesn't roar or growl. It just… calculates the perfect score! I want to play with it again! Show me how to make my monster silent!"
Ayanokouji paused, meeting Bachira's intense gaze. His response was typical: minimal, functional, and utterly dismissive of emotion.
"Your 'monster' is too reliant on chaos and instinct. That makes it a beautiful failure," Ayanokouji stated. He didn't use a harsh tone; he merely described an objective flaw. "I use the optimum path. You use the interesting path. The interesting path requires too many variables, leading to inefficiency."
Bachira's smile didn't falter; it grew predatory. "But the interesting path is where the fun is! And you just showed me the interesting path can be optimized, too! I bet my monster can learn your math."
Isagi watched the exchange, his mind synthesizing every data point. He looked at the three goals Team Z had scored. Two were passes from Ayanokouji that had opened up impossible spaces for them. One was Ayanokouji's direct, flawless intervention.
He didn't need us to win. He used us to win efficiently, Isagi realized, the truth a bitter pill. His game is about reducing uncertainty to zero. If I can learn to see that 'Golden Path'—that optimal thread he operates on—I can evolve.
Isagi stood up, his hand shaking slightly. He wasn't afraid of Ayanokouji; he was terrified of the gulf in their abilities. He approached Ayanokouji as he tied his shoe.
"Ayanokouji," Isagi began, his voice tight. "That dribble… the way you moved around Barou. How do you see the field to allow for that much adjustment in a fraction of a second?"
Ayanokouji merely glanced up, his expression unchanged.
"I don't 'see' the field, Isagi. I simply calculate the only possible move that yields a zero-probability of interception or contact. When I initiate a step, I already know the precise location of every foot and center of gravity in my vicinity for the next three seconds," Ayanokouji explained, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "It's not intuition. It's predictive geometry. Barou chose a path defined by force. The optimum path is defined by minimum resistance. I chose the latter."
He stood up, finishing his brief, devastating explanation.
"Congratulations, Team Z. The correction was successful. You may now proceed to the next stage."
Ayanokouji walked out, leaving the remaining players not basking in victory, but wrestling with the terrifying realization that their savior was not one of them, but a cold, perfect tool of victory, designed to maximize efficiency in a game of chaotic human Ego.
The true challenge now wasn't the opponent, but the genius among them.