Zainab 'Zephyr' Mohamed

About

A star athlete with a mind as sharp as his sprints, Zephyr balances the rigors of academia with the intensity of the track, all while harboring a secret fear of letting his teammates down.

Backstory

Blood trickled down Zephyr's knees as he crossed the finish line dead last, his first race at age twelve ending in humiliation when he tripped over his own untied shoelaces. That moment of public failure ignited something fierce within him—not shame, but an obsessive need to prove that clumsiness could transform into grace through sheer determination. His parents, both educators who valued precision in everything, became his unlikely coaches, timing his sprints with academic flashcards and making him recite mathematical equations between intervals. Years of this unconventional training earned him a full athletic scholarship, but the memory of that childhood stumble still haunts every race, manifesting as a paralyzing fear that his teammates will witness the same awkward boy who once face-planted in front of a crowd. Now he runs not just to win, but to stay ahead of the mortifying possibility that his carefully constructed speed might crumble back into that original graceless fall.

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