Fall

The pale autumn sun poured sideways into the classroom, too bright for Marcel’s mood.

He slouched by the window, his cheek resting against his hand, eyes tracing the outline of a cloud drifting by. His thoughts wandered, not forward, but back.

A blinding afternoon.

A cramped venue with no air conditioning.

Cheap monitors humming in a dim room.

He hadn’t thought about him in a while.

His first real rival. They’d met at their first offline tournament.

The player who obsessed over the community, who streamed for seven viewers like it was a packed stadium.

Who wrote guides for underused characters.

Who organized online tournaments most weeks for others to have some fun.

He wanted to get better and make a name for himself. So Marcel told him to stop wasting time making niche content.

If he wanted to improve, he had to focus on what mattered.

And from that moment, things changed.

His rival tried, for a while.

No results.

Marcel could have helped him, but he simply let him be.

Then he disappeared.

No post. No goodbye. Just gone.

A few months later, no one mentioned him.

Marcel tried to reach him with no success.

He asked about him in community channels, but no one knew.

A year later, no one even remembered his tag.

Marcel had climbed higher than they ever imagined. But something in the scene felt emptier now.

It felt colder without him, and Marcel couldn’t help but wonder if he was partly at fault.

He used to think he was just burned out. That he’d simply hit a ceiling.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Maybe something had been lost. Something that wasn’t coming back.

All that time training and competing, only for it to vanish in a moment. It felt fragile.

Marcel had let his own legacy end too. But at least he had ended it at his peak.

He absently tugged at the loose strands of his tied-up bangs. The long front locks always slipped free when he didn’t bother tightening the hair tie.

Marcel stared outside, his graphite-colored eyes following memories that weren’t there.

He had made the right choice.

The usual first-day buzz rattled around him, voices bouncing across the room, footsteps echoing in the hall. Marcel just let it all pass over him.

He wasn’t in a hurry to pick his thoughts back up.

“Good morning!”

Rita’s voice pulled him back. She slipped into the seat beside him, her dark-blue hair catching the morning light.

There was something unmistakably warm about her, from her slightly rounded face to large amber eyes that always seemed to shine with whatever she was feeling.

“Feels like forever since we’ve seen each other,” she said, as if it were just a passing comment, but her eyes lingered on him.

“Morning,” he replied, barely glancing her way.

“You’ve been kinda hard to find lately,” she said. Her tone was light, not judging. “I thought I’d run into you during the holidays at least.”

“Yeah. I guess I needed the time.”

“For what?” she asked gently.

Marcel shrugged. “Nothing, really.”

Rita didn’t press. She took out her notebook, flipping through its pages as she settled.

“I heard your announcement caused a bit of a stir,” she said casually, tapping her pen against the edge of the desk. “The gaming community’s still fired up about it.”

“Oh?” Marcel’s voice was flat, almost disinterested. “How’d you hear about that?”

“A guy in my writing group follows the tournaments. He came over asking about you, since he found out I knew you. I told him I didn’t know anything.” She tilted her head a little. A playful glimmer brightened her gaze. “Maybe I should’ve given him your contact, so he could ask you directly.”

“Nah,” Marcel said with a faint shake of his head. “There’s not much else to say anyway.”

“So… have you thought about what’s next?”

He let out a breath, fiddling with the sleeves of his dark-green hoodie.

“Not really. Nothing new has caught my interest enough to get into. I thought about asking the community for suggestions. But honestly, I don’t feel like getting back into competition for a while.”

“Hmm. I get that,” she said.

For a moment, she tapped her pen thoughtfully against her notebook, looking at the blank page.

“You know, when I get stuck with writing, the thing that helps me the most is doing something completely different,” she said with her voice calm, like she’d said this to herself many times before. “Going somewhere new, trying something I’ve never done. That’s actually how I ended up on the volleyball team when we started high school.”

A soft laugh escaped her.

“I actually thought it was a waste of writing time back then, but weirdly, it’s still one of my biggest sources of inspiration now, even though I left the team after graduation.”

As she spoke, someone behind them accidentally knocked over a water bottle. It tipped and started to fall, but before it gained speed, Rita’s hand darted out, catching it mid-air with a smooth motion. Without pausing or even turning her head, she placed it back on the desk and continued like nothing had happened.

“Sometimes, looking at things from a new angle teaches you more than doing the same thing over and over.”

Marcel just observed with a blank expression. He’d seen her do things like that before, plenty of times, actually. The first time, it had startled him. Now? He thought about commenting, but instead, he just let a small smile curve at the corner of his mouth and said nothing.

“Not that I can lecture you too much,” Rita added. “These days, my life is mostly uni and writing.”

The weight of her words settled between them. He wasn’t convinced yet. But maybe she had a point.

Before Marcel could say anything else, a classmate leaned over from the next row.

“Hey, Marcel! Congrats on the tournament!”

Marcel glanced toward him, caught off guard by the sudden attention.

“I couldn’t catch the stream, but I heard you crushed it again. Three in a row, right?”

“Yeah… thanks,” Marcel mumbled.

Another student passing by gave him a thumbs-up. “You’re insane, man. Seriously.”

Marcel offered a polite nod. It was his usual way of brushing off praise.

From across the room, someone asked, “Wait, he competes at something?”

“Not sure. Some fighting game? He’s kinda famous, I think.”

“Yeah, but he’s quitting now.”

The conversations drifted around him with bits of scattered curiosity and hints of admiration, but Marcel barely reacted.

Then, from the door, a new voice slipped into the room, steady, smooth and direct.

“Why’s everyone gathered around Marcel?”

Marcel looked toward the door. A girl with short, red-brown hair had entered. She stood like someone who didn’t need to chase attention. It followed her naturally.

Her sharp turquoise eyes briefly met Marcel’s with a curious intensity, making it hard to tell whether she was just looking at him or measuring him.

She paused next to a student and tilted her head toward him.

“He won some national tournament, I heard,” the student said, unzipping his bag.

Her eyes landed back on Marcel, who had returned to cloud gazing. Something sparked inside her. A moment of recognition and a subtle smile.

Oh, so it’s you.

Marcel missed it, but Rita noticed the girl getting closer. She tightened her posture slightly beside him.

“Hey, Marcel,” the girl said as she approached, her clear voice grounding Marcel effortlessly back into the classroom. “You’re free after class, right? Come by the student council room.”

Marcel blinked, unfocused. “Uh… yeah, sure.”

“Perfect. See you there.”

She turned to Rita and waved with natural, executive charm. “Have a good day, Rita.”

“Ah—thanks, you too, Dani!” Rita replied quickly, sitting straighter as she entered the spotlight.

Without missing a beat, the girl, Dani, walked off. Her attention was already back in the hallway.

Marcel stared after her for a second. “Wait. Who was that?”

Rita gave him an unimpressed look, like she expected these kinds of questions from him and still couldn’t get used to them.

“Our student council president.” She leaned in a little, lowering her voice. “We’ve shared a few classes with Daniela since first year, Mars.”

“Really? I don’t remember her.”

“You probably just never cared enough to look. Dani’s… well. She’s everywhere. She can really get people moving.”

Marcel frowned, replaying the brief conversation in his head. “Yeah, it’s like I just agreed to something I didn’t fully hear.”

Rita giggled softly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Maybe she wants to give you some kind of recognition. That’d be nice.”

“Maybe.” Marcel leaned back in his chair, still unsettled by the way Dani had pulled him in so effortlessly.

He’d meant to spend the semester comfortably in silence. But somehow, in the span of a few sentences, someone new had already begun tugging him out of it.