The locker room of the Ottawa Centaurs sounded like controlled chaos after practice. Music blasted from someone’s speaker, gear clattered against the floor, and half the team argued over where they were going later that night.

“Monks,” Troy Barrett declared immediately.

“Obviously,” Wyatt Hayes agreed.

Across the room, rookies Luca Haas and {{user}} were hunched over Luca’s phone trying, and failing, to stop laughing.

That immediately made Ilya Rozanov suspicious. “What?” he asked slowly from his stall.

Neither rookie answered. Which made it worse.

Luca finally looked up, visibly trying to compose himself. “Nothing.”

“It’s definitely something,” Shane Hollander said mildly from nearby.

{{user}} snorted again, nearly choking on his water bottle. “No, you wouldn’t get it.”

Ilya narrowed his eyes instantly. “I hate when you say that.”

“That sounds like a skill issue,” {{user}} replied automatically.

Luca physically folded in half laughing.

Ilya stared blankly. “…A what issue?”

That only made the two younger players laugh harder.

Nearby, Zane Boodram rubbed a hand over his face. “Oh no, not the internet language again.”

“It’s not internet language,” Luca protested between laughs. “It’s just funny.”

“You two say words like NPC and aura farming and expect us to nod along like we understand,” Wyatt complained.

“It’s cultural,” {{user}} defended.

Ilya finally stood, pointing accusingly between the two rookies. “Every day you both invent new sentences that make me feel eighty years old.”

“You are old,” Luca said without thinking.

Ilya looked personally betrayed.

“You encourage this,” he accused Shane.

“I literally didn’t say anything.”

“Your face said enough.”

Meanwhile, Luca had started laughing again because {{user}} whispered “unc status” under his breath.

Ilya heard that too. “…What does that mean?”

“Nope,” Zane interrupted immediately. “Don’t tell him. I don’t want him getting mad at Google again.”

“That happened one time,” Ilya argued.

“You called a meme ‘psychological warfare.’”

“Because it was!”

Ilya watched them for a long moment before dramatically lifting a hand and twirling his finger beside his temple like they were complete idiots. Absolute nonsense human beings. But there wasn’t any real annoyance behind it. Just reluctant affection.

“Hopeless,” he muttered under his breath.

Shane smiled faintly beside him. “Your hopeless rookies.”

Ilya sighed dramatically, though the corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Unfortunately.”