The whistle sounded like the crack of a whip.
"YOOO-OOO-HOO!" Jen Ryu roared. He charged into Xiao Li, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "SEE THAT?! SEE THAT, YOU FUCKER?! I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU!"
Xiao Li, stunned both by the basket and this rough attack from his teammate, could only nod silently, his eyes wide open. Something resembling a smile trembled on his lips.
Mei Yu, not coming close, wiped his forehead. A rare expression flashed across his usually stone face—not satisfaction, but hard, business-like luck.
"Seems it worked," he thought, and his brain was already flipping through options for the next combination.
On the Yoshida bench, the reaction was instantaneous.
"Oh, fuck," Lu Shen groaned, grabbing the top of his head. "Have they all gone crazy? That rag is scoring for the second time!"
"Not a 'rag'," Haru Lin corrected coldly, his fingers drumming on his knee. "A fucking dick that's finally being used properly."
Jung Ho jumped up, his face serious:
"Hong! Don't fall for Jen Ryu! He's just noise! Look for the one who's silent!"
Hong Ren stood under the hoop, looking at the net the ball had just fallen through. He heard Jen Ryu's shouts, Jung Ho's advice. But his head was quiet. Echoingly quiet. He felt a burning, familiar feeling—annoyance. Pure, simple annoyance:
"Miscalculated and fell for the loud idiot... And most importantly—I lost track of the quietest one..."
He slowly turned around. His gaze fell first on the celebrating Jen Ryu, then on the silent Mei Yu, who had already moved to his position, and finally—on Xiao Li. He, catching his look, lowered his eyes, but his posture no longer held the previous slump. There was only composure.
The referee handed him the ball and Hong Ren took it. The leather was warm and rough. He didn't move quickly, but trudged from his baseline to the center, dribbling with his fingers, almost not looking at it.
"What, slowed down, huh?" Jen Ryu yelled after him, still wound up. "Scared we figured you out?"
Hong Ren didn't answer. He only heard the beat of his own heart and a quiet voice in his head that was no longer just calculation. It was an order to himself:
"Enough playing with them, enough reacting to them... Dictate everything yourself!"
He crossed the half-court line. His eyes, empty and black, slowly lifted. He scanned all five, one by one, as if placing a mental mark on each. On Jen Ryu, on Mei Yu, on Xiao Li, on the other two. He wasn't looking for the weak link, but choosing where to start.
"You're fucked, Hong Ren!" Jen Ryu's roar was loud, but somehow flat.
In response, Hong Ren didn't exactly smirk. Rather, his lips barely twitched, and something like cold bewilderment flashed in his eyes.
"Stepping on the same rake again," flashed through his head.
Hong Ren shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and continued to dribble.
"You smirking, you scum?" Jen Ryu hissed, moving closer. "Your luck's run out! We'll unravel you thread by thread!"
"Jen, don't go alone!" Mei Yu called sharply from behind. "Keep your distance! He's waiting for your lunge!"
But it was too late. Jen Ryu, driven by both anger and that cold gaze, made a lunge. Hong Ren merely leaned his torso slightly, letting the opponent's massive shoulder slide past, and immediately accelerated, passing by him so close he could smell the sweat and rage.
He saw the whole picture: Jen Ryu taken out of the play with one move, Mei Yu too far to help, and Xiao Li frozen in the corner, not daring to step up to challenge the potential drive. The other two were in help position, but didn't stand out.
Hong Ren stepped onto the arc. Now before him wasn't just a defense, but five players, huddled together from confusion. They were closing in, but without the previous caution, almost bumping into each other.
"Don't give him space! Xiao, close in!" Mei Yu commanded, but tension was audible in his voice.
It was at that moment Hong Ren struck. Not calculated, but almost daring. He took a sharp step to the side, making the huddled defenders flinch in one direction, and then, not giving them time to recover, jumped for a shot.
But the shot was off-balance, the ball left his hand awkwardly.
"He just chucked it!" Lu Shen squealed from the bench.
The ball flew on an absurd, erratic trajectory, hit the rim with a crash as if trying to tear it off, bounced off the backboard, and, to everyone's shock, dropped through the basket.
Lu Shen, watching this with his mouth open, yelled out what everyone was thinking:
"Holy fucking shit, he scored!"
Mei Yu turned away, forcefully running a hand over his face. His mask cracked:
"What do we do? He... he's not even playing by the rules, he's just throwing!"
"What fucking rules?!" Jen Ryu bellowed, his eyes wildly darting from one teammate to another. "You see what he's doing? He's just toying with us! While we're overthinking, he's scoring points with his eyes closed!"
He ran up to Xiao Li, grabbed him by the jersey.
"You hear? He's alone! He has two hands, and we have ten! He physically can't cover everyone! Stop thinking! Run, get the ball, and throw it at the hoop! Throw anything, with your foot, your hand, your head! But throw!"
"Jen, calm down, this is madness," Mei Yu tried to interject, but his voice had lost all conviction.
"Madness?!" Jen Ryu laughed, and this laugh was scarier than a scream. "Ha-ha! And what he's doing to us—that's by the textbook?! He already has thirty-two! WE HAVE FOUR AND A HALF! What difference does it make how we score another half-point? We just need to SCORE!"
His shout, desperate and devoid of all logic, jolted the others. In the eyes of even the most passive players, a dim but resolute fire of cornered-rat aggression flared up.
Hong Ren, standing aside wiping his palm on his shorts, observed this scene. He saw how Jen Ryu was breaking his own team, not to surrender, but to turn it into an uncontrollable mob.
"This is more dangerous than any thought-out scheme, because there's no defense against chaos. All that's left is patience and a cold head..."
He took a deep breath, feeling the familiar, chilling focus envelop him completely.
"Now the game is becoming simpler and more complex at the same time. Simpler—because you could expect anything from them. More complex—because it was impossible to predict that 'anything'!"
Sung Wo's whistle, announcing their possession, hung in the air. Jen Ryu gripped the ball, pressing his fingers into the leather as if wanting to squeeze out at least a drop of luck.
"Don't give up, fuck!" he exhaled under his breath.
Jen Ryu charged into the attack again. His dribble was furious, but blind, like a wounded beast. He tried to power through, ram through, bulldoze Hong Ren as in the beginning. But now exhaustion was readable in every movement. He made sharp, clumsy shoulder fakes, trying to deceive.
"Jen, don't go alone!" Mei Yu yelled at him, but his voice already sounded tired. "Play the scheme!"
"What fucking scheme!" Jen Ryu roared back, not taking his eyes off Hong Ren. "We just need to crush him!"
Hong Ren saw it all. Saw the hand gripping the ball tremble. Saw the gaze darting between him and the hoop but unable to focus. And when Jen Ryu made another, too wide and predictable crossover, Hong Ren was already in motion. He didn't just anticipate—he saw the intention. A light, precise step to the side, and his hand stretched forward to strip the ball at its most vulnerable point.
But at the last moment, Jen Ryu, instead of trying to salvage the attack, twisted his lips into a strange, crooked smirk. It wasn't a smile of triumph. It was the face of a man who understood he had lost and now just wanted to make as much noise as possible. He didn't fight for the ball. He hurled it back to the perimeter, where Mei Yu was already standing.
"Don't think it's that simple!" Jen Ryu rasped.
Mei Yu caught the ball in the corner, right at the three-point line. His face was a mask. There was no hope, no anger on it—only cold, automatic duty.
"Shoot it, Mei!" Xiao Li shouted, but his voice sounded weak.
Mei Yu jumped. The shot was fairly technical—arm, elbow, wrist—all by the book. But it had no soul. No faith, not even anger. The ball flew out as if launched from a catapult, on a trajectory perfect from a physics standpoint, but absolutely dead.
It missed everything. Didn't even touch the rim. Just slapped against the backboard with a dull, shameful thud and bounced away.
"FUUUUUUCK!" Jen Ryu howled, throwing his hands to the sky. "NOT A SINGLE CHANCE! WE CAN'T MISS A SINGLE ONE, YOU BITCH!"
It was at that moment everyone saw the breaking point. Panic, thick and sticky, finally enveloped the newcomers' team. Xiao Li's movements became spasmodic, the other two just stood with their heads down. Mei Yu looked at his hands as if not understanding why they had betrayed him.
And Hong Ren simply stood under the hoop. An island of absolute, icy calm in this sea of human collapse. He softly, almost carelessly, scooped up the rebound and cradled the ball against his chest.
"Well, Hong, finish this circus!" Lu Shen shouted from the bench.
Hong Ren turned and charged. He rushed headlong, but at the last moment, when it seemed he would grab the ball with both hands from the oncoming wave, control took over—no double dribble occurred.
And then the newcomers, driven by the last, animal instinct, threw themselves at him. They didn't set up defense. They formed a huddled, trembling mob, a living ring of bodies and despair, surrounding him at the half-court line.
Hong Ren stopped right in the center of the court. Noise, shouts, whistles—it all receded, became background noise. In his world, only the ball, the distant hoop, and the silence within remained.
"What's he doing?!" someone from the spectators gasped.
Hong Ren lifted the ball. From the center of the court.
"Come on, don't fuck it up now!" Lu Shen squealed, digging his nails into the back of the bench.
"Interesting choice," Haru Lin said. "Either genius or idiot."
Ming You, who had been sitting back with his head tilted, contemplating the night sky, slowly lowered his gaze. His black, empty eyes fixed on the ball. His gaze held only cold, detached observation. Then, at the very climax, as the ball soared upward, he simply slowly, with unconcealed boredom, rolled his eyes to the sky. As if all this was a child's squabble that had long ceased to interest him. As if the outcome had been predetermined not here and not now.
The ball flew for a long time. Weightless and relentless. It hit the very top of the backboard with a dull, ugly BANG!, bounced sideways, and fell onto the asphalt, never reaching the hoop. A clean, deafening miss from half-court.
Jen Ryu, whose face had already begun to twist into a grimace of wild, hysterical triumph, opened his mouth:
"YES! SUCK MY...!"
But his shout, this last outburst, was cut off by Sung Wo's sharp double whistle.
The referee raised his hand, and his dry, indifferent voice rang out across the court:
"The game is over! Final score—4.5 to 32 in favor of player number twelve!"