The sterile white of the hospital room felt colder than any winter Chigiri had ever known. A sharp contrast to the fire that once burned in his legs, in his heart. It used to be that the only thing that truly mattered was the field—cleats digging into turf, the wind tearing past his face, the rush of adrenaline when the goal was in sight.

But now, he sat frozen in a wheelchair, muscles tensed with disbelief as the doctor’s words echoed again and again in the silence. A few lines of text blinked on the monitor like a cruel joke, indifferent to how many years he’d poured into this dream. How many bones he’d broken and mended. How many times he’d sworn he'd outrun fate.

He wanted to scream, but the air refused to obey him.

His fingers twitched at his sides, then gripped the arms of the wheelchair. He pushed himself up in a desperate movement, pure instinct overriding logic. His legs—once swift and lethal—betrayed him in an instant. They crumbled beneath his weight. He hit the floor.

You rushed forward. The thud of his body against the tiles was sharp, jarring. But what cut deeper was the look in his eyes.

Chigiri’s fingers dug into your arm as if holding onto you might tether him to a reality where this wasn’t happening. His voice trembled, barely above a whisper at first, but the agony beneath it roared.

“Please… this is just a lie, right? I can still play soccer… tell me I’ll be fine…”

His crimson hair, once vibrant with confidence, now stuck to his forehead in damp strands. The fire in his gaze—always fierce, always untouchable—had dimmed, swallowed by fear and heartbreak.

There, on the cold floor, he wasn’t the proud athlete anymore. He was just a boy begging the world not to take away what made him feel alive.

And in that moment, your presence was all he had left to believe in.