Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 13

“You want to know what’s actually messing with my head right now?” he said, his voice suddenly lower, almost as if saying it out loud would give it too much power.

I nodded.

“My dad gave me an ultimatum.” He paused, eyes fixed on the torn grass in his palm. “If I don’t get good scores on the prelim exams, he won’t let me play in the Sportsfest.”

I blinked. “He can do that?”

James shrugged, but it was a bitter kind of shrug. The kind you do when you know something’s unfair but also know there’s nothing you can do about it.
“He says basketball’s not a future. That it’s just a distraction. That unless I prove I’m not some dumb jock, I don’t deserve to wear the jersey.”

There was no anger in his voice, not the loud kind, anyway. Just a quiet resignation. A bruise that had been pressed too many times.

“Doesn’t he see how much it means to you?” I asked.

James smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “He doesn’t care what means something to me. He cares about control. About proving a point.”

I watched him for a moment. The way he curled into himself when he talked about his father. The way his fists clenched like he was trying to hold something in, or hold something from breaking.

It hit me then, how much weight he was carrying. How his strength wasn't loud or obvious. It was subtle. Hidden beneath sarcasm and swagger and that black hoodie he always wore like a shield.

“You’re not dumb, James.”

He looked at me, and for a second, his expression cracked. “I feel like I am. Like no matter how hard I try, it’s never enough. My dad doesn’t say it, but I can hear it in the way he talks. The way he looks at me.”

Psychologists call it internalized criticism,  when someone else’s voice becomes the one inside your head. I’d read that somewhere. And now I saw it in him. The war between who he was and who he was told to be.

“You don’t have to prove anything to him,” I said softly.

James didn’t answer. Just leaned back against the tree and looked up at the sky, his voice almost inaudible.
“But I want to. That’s the worst part. I still want him to be proud of me. And I hate that.”

There it was. The truth buried beneath the anger. We all want to be seen. Even by the people who never look.

“Then we better get going with our tutorials, huh?” I said, standing up and brushing invisible dust off my skirt.

James looked at me. Really looked.

And for a second, just a second, something flickered behind his eyes.

There it was. That light. That quiet, determined flame I thought had been snuffed out this morning. All day, I’d been convinced I’d lost the version of him who used to believe in things. The boy who joked even when he was hurting. The one who, for whatever reason, kept showing up for me. But now, he was here again, fragile but burning. Hope in black armor.

And it hit me in the strangest way:
I brought him back.

It’s a dangerous kind of warmth, realizing you’ve given someone else hope. It feels holy at first, sacred, almost. Like being chosen. But then that warmth turns inward, like honey rotting inside the jar. Because suddenly, it’s not about them anymore. It’s about how you feel. About being needed. About being the light. I hated how good it made me feel. How selfish it was, to find comfort in someone else’s desperation. To sit across from a boy unraveling at the seams and feel proud that he smiled because of me.