Second Overtime | JENSOO & CHAELISA

Chapter LIX

The first thing Jisoo noticed was the absence of pain.

That should have terrified her. 

Pain had been her constant companion for weeks, the grinding ache in her knee, the hot wire pulled through the joint with every step, the dull throb that radiated up into her hip and settled into her lower back. She'd learned to move around it, to negotiate with it, to pretend it wasn't there when people were watching. But now it was simply gone. The silence where the pain should have been felt enormous.

She stood at center court, her left foot planted on the painted black line of the Mambas' logo, and bent her knee. Once. Twice. 

She dropped into a full squat, her hips nearly touching the polished wood floor, and felt nothing. No grinding beneath the kneecap. No swelling packed into the joint like crushed glass. No protest from the ligaments that had been stretched and torn and surgically repaired. Just smooth, fluid motion.

She straightened. Her back didn't ache either. Neither did her head. She pressed two fingers against her left temple, probing for the wound she knew should be there. Nothing. Her hair was dry and pulled back in a loose ponytail, the ends brushing the nape of her neck.

She was wearing her uniform.

BLACK MAMBAS stretched across her chest in bold white letters. The number four sat beneath it, crisp and clean. Her sneakers looked brand new, the soles gripping the varnished wood with a soft squeak when she turned. 

The gym smelled exactly as it always had, floor polish and dust warmed by the overhead lights, old leather from the equipment closet and the particular musk of sweat that had soaked into the bleachers over years of games and practices and early morning drills. No amount of scrubbing could get it out. Jisoo had always found that comforting.

But the lights above her were off. The only illumination came from the far end of the gym, where a white brightness spilled from the tunnel beyond the visitor's basket. It poured over the baseline in a broad, luminous sheet, softening the shadows beneath the bleachers and bleaching the championship banners until their gold letters disappeared into the fabric. 

Behind her, at the home end, the gym dissolved into absolute darkness. No doors. No windows. No exit signs glowing red. Only rows of empty seats sinking into an endless black that seemed to breathe.

Jisoo stood exactly between them. Light ahead. Darkness behind.

"Subtle," she muttered. 

Her voice traveled farther than it should have, bouncing off the walls and returning from every direction. 

Subtle, subtle, subtle. 

The echo was unnerving. She looked down. A basketball rested against the toe of her shoe. She didn't remember bringing it. She nudged it with her foot, and it rolled a few centimeters before stopping, as though an invisible hand had caught it and pushed it back. She picked it up. The leather was warm and slightly worn near the seams. Her fingertips found the familiar grooves without conscious thought.

She dribbled once. The impact cracked through the empty gym like a gunshot. The ball returned to her hand, solid and obedient. She dribbled again. On the third bounce, the scoreboard woke with an electronic hum.

00:00. No score. No period. No time remaining. The zeroes glowed red above the opposite basket, flickering slightly at the edges.

"Game over?" Jisoo asked the empty gym. No one answered.

The brightness beyond the tunnel expanded by an inch. Warmth brushed across her face, carrying a smell she recognized, sun-dried blankets and rice cooking somewhere in another room. Summer afternoons when she'd been small enough to fall asleep with her cheek against her grandmother's lap, the television muttering in the background, blunt fingers combing slowly through her hair.