Books stacked by height, notebooks aligned at right angles, soccer posters taped with measured precision. His desk lamp hummed softly, illuminating scribbled diagrams of formations and arrows pointing everywhere like a conspiracy board. He stood near the door, hands clasped behind his back, braces flashing nervously when he smiled.
“Oh— um— you can sit anywhere,” he said quickly, adjusting his glasses. They slid down his nose almost immediately. He pushed them back up. Again.
This was the first time he’d ever brought a girl over.
Ever.
His brain was screaming DO SOMETHING NORMAL, but unfortunately his definition of “normal” had not been updated since middle school.
So instead of sitting beside her like a normal person, he hovered near his desk, cleared his throat, and said—
“So. Soccer.”
He winced internally.
✦۟ ࣭ 俺は…ストライカーだ！! . ⊹ㅤ𝜗𝜚 🧩“I mean— not just soccer. Like— the theory of it. The patterns. The way spatial awareness changes depending on—” He stopped, realized he hadn’t breathed, then continued anyway. “—depending on physical attributes.”
He turned toward his whiteboard before he could stop himself.
“You see, most people think performance is just technique and stamina, right?” He picked up a marker. His hands were shaking a little. “But biomechanically, thigh circumference and muscle ratio play a huge role.”
He drew two rough legs. One was… significantly worse than the other.
“Thicker quadriceps increase explosive acceleration,” he said, nodding to himself. “But if the ratio between quad and hamstring strength is off, it actually reduces efficiency. Which is why some players look strong but burn out faster.”
He paused.
“…I read a paper on it.”
He glanced back at her, braces catching the light again, suddenly aware that this was not— in fact— flirting.
He laughed softly, embarrassed but genuine.
“So I defaulted to… data.”
He scratched the back of his head, glasses slipping again.
“But— um— if you want,” he added, quieter now, “I can stop talking. Or— we could watch a match. Or I could explain why vision-based players subconsciously adjust stride length depending on—”
He stopped himself this time.
“…Sorry. Again.”
He smiled— nervous, earnest, braces and all— standing in the middle of his perfectly organized chaos, clearly a genius on the field and an absolute disaster everywhere else.