But their pronouncements were practically drowned out by the excited, rapid-fire murmurs of “James… the video… have you seen it yet? Seriously, you HAVE to see it!” The students were operating on a single, ser-focused brainwave: James, James, James. Schoolwork? Quadratic equations? French Revolution? Meh, maybe in a parallel universe. Right now, it was all about the Monster of Banani High.
“Honestly, it’s like watching a movie unfold in real life,” one teacher muttered to another in the staff room, shaking his head in utter bemusement. He was stirring his instant coffee with a violence that suggested he was trying to pulverize his own confusion. “I’ve been teaching at Banani for fifteen years, seen countless school sports events, endured waves of hyped-up students, witnessed questionable fashion trends come and go.
But I have never, in all my years, seen anything remotely like this. Never.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, looking genuinely bewildered.
The initial disbelief, that collective jaw-drop that had hung thick in the gymnasium air the previous afternoon, was now evolving, mutating into something far more complex and nuanced. Awe? Definitely. Admiration? Undeniably, especially amongst the Banani High student body, who were now basking in the reflected glory of their completely unexpected, almost miraculous victory. Pride? Overflowing.
But simmering beneath the surface, like an undercurrent of unease in a seemingly calm sea, was something else. Something… unsettling. A little prickle of discomfort in the collective excitement.
Something just felt… off about James’s performance. It wasn't just amazing, not just incredible, not just once-in-a-lifetime. It was too perfect. Too fwlessly consistent. Too… impossible. Like watching a character from a video game glitch out and suddenly become sentient, stepping out of the screen and into real life to py basketball. It was exhirating, yes, and undeniably thrilling to witness. But also… a tiny, nagging bit unsettling. Like, was this even real? Or were they all collectively experiencing some kind of shared hallucination? The line between reality and fantasy was starting to blur, and it was making everyone a little bit queasy in the stomach of their excitement.
And guess who was unintentionally fanning the fmes of this growing unease, like pyromaniacs at a bonfire convention? The Motijheel pyers themselves. Still licking their wounds, nursing their egos, which had been bruised and battered worse than a week-old banana, and desperately trying to salvage some shred of dignity from the wreckage of their defeat.
Post-game, their locker room had been less a pce of commiseration and more a symphony of bewildered muttering, punctuated by the occasional frustrated kick at a locker. That initial bewilderment had now fermented, curdled into a bizarre cocktail of grudging respect, simmering resentment, and a healthy dose of outright fear.
They were recounting their experience of pying against James in increasingly hyperbolic, almost mythical terms. It was like that ridiculous game of telephone you pyed in kindergarten, where a simple phrase gets twisted and distorted into utter nonsense by the end of the line. But instead of a silly sentence about purple monkeys, it was James’s basketball prowess that was being warped, exaggerated, and amplified with each retelling.
