"I hear you didn't hit it off with Kevin last month."

"No one warned me he was going to be there," Neil answered, watching the scenery rush by outside the window. "Maybe you'll forgive me for not reacting well."

"Maybe I won't. I don't believe in forgiveness, and it wasn't me you offended. That's the second time a recruit has told him to fuck off. If it was possible to dent that arrogance of his, his pride would have shreds through it. Instead he's losing faith in the intelligence of high school athletes."

"I'm sure Andrew had his reasons for refusing, same as me."

"You said you weren't good enough, but here you are anyway. You think a summer of practices will make that much a difference?"

"No," Neil said. "It was just too hard to say no."

"Coach always knows what to say, hm? It makes it harder on the rest of us, though. Not even Millport should have taken a chance on you."

Neil shrugged. "Millport's too small to care about experience. I had nothing to lose by trying out and they had nothing to gain by refusing me. It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time, I guess."

"Do you believe in fate?"

Neil heard the faint scorn in the other man's voice. "No. Do you?"

"Luck, then," Aaron said, ignoring that return question.

"Only the bad sort."

"We're flattered by your high opinion of us, of course."

Aaron pulled at the wheel, sliding the car from one lane to the other without bothering to check the traffic around him. Horns blared behind them. Neil watched in the rearview mirror as cars swerved to avoid hitting them.

"It's too nice of a car to wreck," he said pointedly.

"Don't be so afraid to die," Aaron said as the car kept gliding across the four-lane road to an exit ramp. "If you are, you have no place on our court."

"We're talking about a sport, not a death match."

"Same difference," Aaron said. "You're playing for a Class I team with Kevin on your line. People are always willing to bleed for him. You've seen the news, I assume."

"I've seen it," Neil said.

Aaron flicked his fingers as if that proved his point. Neil would be hard-pressed to say he was wrong, so he let it slide.

Kevin Day and his adoptive brother Riko Moriyama were hailed as the sons of Exy. Kevin's mother Kayleigh Day and Riko's uncle Tetsuji Moriyama created the sport roughly thirty years ago while Kayleigh was studying abroad in Fukui, Japan. What started as an experiment spread from their campus to local street teams, then across the ocean to the rest of the world. Kayleigh brought it home with her to Ireland after completing her degree and the United States picked it up soon after.

Kevin and Riko were raised on Exy. When Edgar Allan's massive stadium Castle Evermore, the first NCAA Exy stadium in the United States, was little more than blueprints, Kevin and Riko had custom racquets. After Kayleigh's fatal car accident, Tetsuji took Kevin in, but the Ravens' new coach had no time to raise children. Riko and Kevin spent their formative years at Evermore with the Ravens instead and were considered the team's unofficial mascots. When they weren't being coached by Tetsuji, they were coached by the team, and tutors were brought on-site so they wouldn't have to leave the stadium for school.