The ball rolled out for a throw-in but no one rushed to grab it.Seikan's players stood quietly, eyes calm, while the opponents huddled for the fifth time in ten minutes.Confusion was setting in
Not confusion from strategy
Confusion from silence
Kei hadn't barked any commands in a while.No shouts.No sudden signals.Just a stare and a small nods that somehow aligned the team perfectly
It made them look rehearsed
Worse
It made them look unreadable
And the more unreadable they looked, the more the opponents hesitated
"You notice it too right?" Amano asked during a brief pause
Kei didn't answer right away.He just adjusted his shin guard and looked toward the bench
Coach wasn't signaling either
Nothing
Silence
Kei finally nodded
"They're trying to analyze noise.And we're giving them none"
Every press Seikan made had no battle cry
Every intercept came with zero buildup
They moved like water and water had no form
The other team kept looking for patterns but patterns only exist when someone repeats
And Seikan didn't
By the 70th minute the opponent's captain shouted something, frustrated, trying to fire his team up
But the more noise he made, the quieter Kei got
The crowd started to feel it too
They weren't watching a normal high school match
They were watching something scarier
A team that didn't just play football
They erased it
Stripped it down until the only thing left was instinct
And instinct doesn't make noise
It just wins