Suddenly, there was a low chuckle followed by a mesmerising voice.
"You seem to know her quite well."
Adrian quickly turned toward the voice to see that the one who had spoken was the team's striker, Leron Kell.
He still had that signature sly smile on his face with his eyes slightly slanted.
Seeing this, Adrian felt his hand itch, he really felt like punching that smile off his face.
Of course, he didn't do anything to give that away and just narrowed his eyes at Leron before flashing him a warm smile.
"This has nothing to do with understanding her; anyone with a brain would be able to understand what she is trying to do after giving it a thorough thought."
When Henry heard that, he glanced at Oscar who still had a normal expression on his face. He was sure that his friend had no idea that he had just taken a stray bullet from Adrian.
'It's good to be simple-minded.' He thought.
Leron, on the other hand, seemed to have frozen for a moment when he heard Adrian's response.
He had always been observant so he could tell that Adrian was at least acquainted with Noelle. He only said that just to see his reaction, but he didn't expect Adrian to react this way.
Actually, he didn't really mean any harm, it was just in his nature to probe around things instead of being straightforward.
It seemed like the two of them didn't want anyone to know that they knew each other so he decided to stop talking about it.
"Mm. I suppose you're right, my bad." He nodded, still maintaining his smile.
He was about to turn away when he caught sight of Adrian's bandaged palm.
"Hurt your hand?" He asked casually.
"It's just a scratch," Adrian responded with a shrug.
Since he put it that way, Leron didn't put much thought into it and just turned away.
"Can it really be called just a scratch when it's bandaged like that?" Oscar asked, his eyes fixed on Adrian's hand with a weird expression.
A subtle but warm smile appeared on Adrian's face as he raised his hand to look at his bandaged palm.
"Well, someone believed it was serious enough to be bandaged like this."
"Who?"
Noelle blew her whistle at that moment to call everyone's attention back as the training session was about to begin.
She had already placed everyone's name beside Eric's in an RNG system and the order of participation had been decided.
The first person to take the challenge was the defender, Nomer Lino.
Just as Noelle said, five balls were placed in front of him. He was standing a little distance away from them and was just waiting for Noelle to blow the whistle.
Noelle didn't waste time doing that either and the moment she did, she pressed the stopwatch in her hand.
Nomer Lino quickly closed up on the ball and sent it flying toward the goalpost.
He managed to get it past the mannequins, however, Eric didn't have to make a move as the ball ended up hitting the crossbar before flying over.
The second attempt was even worse as he didn't even get to hit the goalpost. The third one was on target, but it was an easy save for Eric. The fifth one, which was also on target, was even more of an easy save as the shot power just wasn't really there.
Finally, he only managed to hit the mannequin with the last shot as he seemed to have lost a bit of his composure.
One thing was certain, Nomer Lino wasn't really cut out for free kicks. However, at the very least he did manage to finish in fifteen seconds.
His defensive partner, Fredines Ramsey did slightly better than him.
The defender managed to get three shots on target in a row, but those weren't really much of a challenge to Eric, who had no trouble saving them. His fourth shot came really close, brushing right past the top right bin and momentarily stunning everyone, including Eric, who didn't even get the chance to move.
That was Fredines' last shot, he didn't get to take the fifth shot as his time was already up.
Everyone after that had decent results, but it was still nothing impressive, as nobody had managed to score so far.
Finally, it was Henry's turn.
"Things are about to start getting interesting," Leron commented with a knowing smile.
"Mm. Henry has at least scored a free kick before," Oscar said in approval.
Adrian didn't comment as he didn't find it surprising that a player of Henry's level would at least be decent with free kicks. As for how good he was, he would be able to get a rough idea after this.
The balls had already been arranged in front of Henry, who had taken three steps backwards.
Noelle blew the whistle at that moment and without hesitation, he quickly closed up on the first ball.
He struck the ball with his right foot, curling it toward the top left with precision and power.
Eric had not felt much threat in between the goalpost until this very moment.
The goalkeeper quickly dived toward the ball, getting a full hand on it to palm it away before crashing to the ground.
Just as he crashed down, Henry took the second shot, aiming for the right side of the goalpost. He tried to place the ball as far away from Eric as possible so the ball ended up making slight contact with the post.
Eric, who had yet to recover, could only helplessly watch as the ball flew into the goalpost.
That was the first goal from this special training session. With two shots, Henry already had one goal and one shot on target.
Observing everything that just transpired, Adrian couldn't help but glance toward Noelle who also happened to be looking in his direction at that moment. The moment they made eye contact, he flashed her a knowing smile which she didn't react to and just turned away.
It wasn't until Henry did what he just did that he realised that while this was a free-kick training session with pressure simulation, it could also be used to train the goalkeeper's reaction speed.
It wasn't like none of the others had tried to do what Henry had just did as this was the most obvious trick if one wanted to at least get a goal.
Unfortunately, none of the previous players was shooters, so although some of them had the shot power, they didn't really have the precision to pull off what Henry just did.
"I wonder what her previous training sessions were like," Adrian muttered under his breath.