Age 16

Winter Cup

I push and shove and yell my way across the crowd of the airport, eyes scanning for a red banner meant for me as I pray to every deity known to man to please, please don't let me be too late.

Because I am late, and damn if this isn't the worst day in the world.

I have been gone for nearly two years studying in Paris, just like my Mother threatened when we were thirteen. Throughout that whole time, Seijuro and I were forbidden to communicate with each other, and as much as that saddens me, I can only wonder how much it wrecked my beloved Seijuro inside.

The past few days my Mother has allowed me to get news about him at last, and what I heard didn't make me happy. My Seijuro has cracked, and everyone around him has celebrated it.

Fury bubbled down my throat, tears stinging my eyes as I thought of what my beloved has possibly been feeling. He has likely felt lonely and abandoned, deemed himself the only person to trust, turned his mind into a ticking time bomb just about to explode.

And I just know he is going to do just that today.

I need to get there as soon as possible. I need to be with him.

Because I may not be able to prevent him from breaking, but I will not let my Seijuro crumple all alone.

I will be with him, and I will not let go.

The stadium is jam-packed with fans of both sides, and it's hard enough to enter as a spectator, much less as a spectator hoping to see things at close quarters. But I need to be by his side so I made my bodyguard do the work and left a wad of cash in the fallen guards' pockets as an apology.

I run through a maze of corridors, following the wild screams of the crowd to get to the gate and rush through the doors just in time to see him transform into a ferocious beast on the court, owning each and every one while leaving out the rest of his team.

He is fighting alone. I hold back the urge to cry.

I wish I can do something, anything to prevent this. I can see him battling himself inside his mind even as he shoots a three-point shot from outside the his opponents defense range. I can see a pair of red eyes peeking out through the gold, seeing things far more clearly, devastatingly, than his counterpart. I know he knows how this will end.

He will lose.