The Half-Step

Sponsor accounts went quiet. Fans disappeared fast. Two weeks earlier they had called him the future of North America. Now they called him a fake prodigy who had been overhyped from the start. The harshest comment came from an old fan whose avatar was still a screenshot of Logan the day he hit Rank 1. `I defended this guy for two years. I was wrong.` It had thousands of likes. That night, Coach David Moore called him into the meeting room. No screaming. No comfort speech. He just paused the replay on that frame. “Do you know what went wrong?” Logan stared at the screen and nodded. “I was too eager.” “Not just eager,” Coach said. “You wanted to end the game on your terms. You thought you had to win in the prettiest possible way.