It was strange how quickly things became routine again.

Coach gladly moved Shin back to the dorms, and only a few days passed between his last meeting with Hiruma and his walking out onto the same old field, helmet in hand. When he scanned the teammates that he'd be training with, he was surprised to find largely the same roster as before. It had felt like an entire lifetime since he'd last been here, yet so little had changed.

For several days, no one spoke to him, though he caught glimpses of them laughing and bantering without him—in the moments when they didn't notice him approaching, or after they thought he had gone. He couldn't be sure they were laughing at him, but it seemed probable that he was the topic of at least a few of these instances, especially the ones where they quickly quieted down at the sight of him. He had always been solitary in training, but in the past it had been because he outran and outlasted the others. Now it felt like they were staring at his back for different reasons.

Surprisingly, it was Takami who first broke the silence. About a week in, after a particularly grueling practice, during which Shin had twice sacked Takami and once blocked his pass, the quarterback approached to clasp arms with him. "I don't care what they say. It's good to have you back, Shin. Painful, but good."

Shin didn't know what to make of that. Takami, the one who should have been the most furious with him, was speaking as if there were no animosity between them, or at least, as if he wanted there not to be.

"I'm behind on my training," said Shin cautiously.

"Then you've come to the right place." Takami seemed to spot the uncertainty on his face, and smirked at him, not unkindly. "No one can control what that crazy coach does, or where he puts them. Not Sakuraba, not you."

Well, that was simply false. "I asked him to take me off the team," Shin corrected him. "I said I'd refuse to play, if he put me on the field. He didn't have a choice."

"You asked for it? To be assigned to... that brothel?"

Sensing that he'd spoken too much, Shin fell silent, and Takami raked a frustrated hand through his hair. "Shin, why would you do that? When Sakuraba... when he..."

Shin had some idea of how hard it must have been for Takami to keep going, when he'd lost the tall receiver that had finally made him shine. Shin suspected that, even now, the quarterback was on the verge of losing his position on the team—an old injury, and new grief, straining his performance. Shin hadn't been thinking of those things, when he'd made his decision. He'd only thought of Sakuraba, and his own part in it all.

"Do you think Sakuraba would have wanted that? When he had no choice, for you to throw yours away too?"

Shin looked up, surprised. "But he did have a choice—"

Just like that, Takami slapped him. On this familiar field, Shin might have expected a punch, or a tackle, but not a slap. For a moment, he was jarred back to his other life: restrained, helpless, some patron, angry or laughing or aroused, taking it out on him. Then he remembered where he was, and knew he had actually earned that slap, which made it even worse.

"Don't you dare say that," Takami hissed, which was unlike him. "Sakuraba didn't leave us because he chose to."

Numbly, Shin put a hand on his cheek, which was already starting to swell and radiate heat. Now he knew why Takami had been the first to approach him. Takami hadn't forgiven him: Takami didn't even know what he had done.

Once, he might have corrected Takami's misapprehension, but he had learned over the past several months to keep his mouth shut, and it was long past time to apply those lessons to the present conversation. "I apologize," he said, instead, and turned away. "I'll go for my run now."

He selected the proper attire on autopilot: something that would allow freedom of movement, but keep him warm in the fall chill. Takami didn't know, which meant that, in all likelihood, most of them didn't know. They had no idea why Sakuraba was gone.

Shin made his way out onto the streets with no awareness of how he'd gotten there. All he saw in his mind's eye was Sakuraba in that hospital bed, asking him and only him: "If I had been in that game, would I have made a difference?" Shin had never sugar-coated a truth in his entire life. And so, when Sakuraba had left the hospital, it wasn't to come back to the team, but to be a... a...

As he noticed a pair of kids coming the other way, Shin shook himself out of his thoughts, and forced himself to focus on his form, his breathing, to make every stride count. Sakuraba was successful as a—say it, Shin—a prostitute, in a way that he'd never been as an athlete. He was immensely popular, seeing clientele of a higher caliber than any who would have deigned to visit Shin. It was unlikely that Sakuraba was tied and beaten on a regular basis, as Shin had been. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't convince himself that it was what Sakuraba would have wanted, even if it was what he'd chosen. But what he did know was that he would probably never see his friend again in his lifetime, not with their vastly different roles. Such was the fate of a slave.

As he rounded the next corner, it was only to see those same kids again, this time being hassled by the Zokugaku punks on their bikes. The sight cleared his head, like a shock of fresh air. He would never see Sakuraba again, no. But these children were well within his power to help.

Several of the punks had their backs to him, but Shin didn't consider for a moment attacking from behind. Instead he charged straight through and aimed for their leader, Habashira, who looked his way first with a smirk, then with an expression of horror. Shin poured his all into his trident tackle, and Habashira crumpled around it. He was rusty, but no one could withstand a charge from the side.

The kids were smart enough to take the opening and run, one boy grabbing the other, but the gang members were starting to close ranks. They'd never make it. Shin dropped Habashira, preparing to go help, but then the first boy accelerated impossibly, cut to the side, and slipped through the scant opening. The punk who'd been trying to block him turned to give chase, leaving an opening for the second boy to pass as well.

Almost absently, Shin deflected another blow from Habashira, this one with a knife. He replayed the motions in his mind, and again. The legs, the stance, the motions.

That was undoubtedly a 4.2-second 40-yard dash.

When Hiruma had mentioned it, Shin had assumed it was some kind of bluff, a lie fashioned into a ladder to drop into his pit of despair. He'd taken it, because there had been nothing else, but he hadn't fully believed it. Could it possibly have been truth?

"Are you Hiruma's runner?" he called after them, and the boys stopped. Turned.

The runner was short and slight, with a boyish face, but he was no child. For a moment it looked like he might speak. Then he kept going, dragging the other one with him.

"Hiruma's?" Habashira groaned, just as his phone began to buzz. "Oh, shit."

Shin turned to face him, but Habashira waved him away. "We're not going after them. Jesus, leave us alone, we got enough to deal with."

The rest of the gang began to disperse. Now that the kids—no, the other athletes—were out of harm's way, Shin saw no reason to stick around. Taking Habashira's word at face value, he weaved between a couple motorcycles and resumed his run. He knew he wouldn't be able to catch up to that light-speed runner, not at this distance. He was better off finishing up and heading back, before his tracker activity registered as suspicious.

Even so, he found himself adopting a slightly quicker pace than before, the memory of that run still blazed into his mind's eye.