Source A: Before the final whistle

The sports hall looked simple from the corridor: one broad rectangle, a row of high windows and a floor marked out in red, blue and white. Rain blurred the windows until the trees outside seemed to be moving underwater. Inside, the lamps laid long gold bars across the varnished boards. For a moment, the hall seemed almost calm.

Then the doors swung shut behind us. A ball struck the floor at the far end, and its sharp report came back from the roof. Voices followed it, overlapping until a call from the far wall sounded close enough to answer. The painted lines crossed and doubled in the shine; the corners seemed to shift whenever I moved. I had thought I could see the whole room from the entrance. Now I was not sure where one game ended and another began.

Along the wall, pupils carried folded benches towards the centre. Their feet slipped slightly on the polished boards, and each bench scraped out a rough note against the echoing noise. The hall was not just a bright space for games: every sound travelled, and every movement had to negotiate the busy floor.

When the last whistle sounded, the voices stopped so quickly that the room seemed to grow larger. Rain tapped the windows again. The bright lines were still there, but without the movement they looked less like routes and more like marks someone had left behind. I turned back towards the corridor, glad to have a straight line to follow.