Time had passed, but the energy of the game continued to vibrate in the new generations.
Haruki, now far from the center of the scene, was dedicated to accompanying from silence. Watched
how the legacy expanded without the need for his presence.
One morning, he received an unexpected email. He came from a small country in West Africa. One
group of local educators had found one of his texts translated into French and, using
their principles, they had adapted "Bridges of Play" for children displaced by conflict. In the
Attached to the mail were a photo: a dirt court, a cloth ball, and a dozen children
Smiling.
Below, a handwritten phrase:
"Thank you for showing us that you don't have to have everything to get started."
Haruki stared at the picture for minutes. Not by surprise, but by emotion. Later
He opened his gold-covered notebook and wrote:
"Chapter 11: When Seeds Bloom in Lands You Don't Know."
In the days that followed, Haruki shared the story with his former students and colleagues. The
reactions were immediate. Kaori suggested translating new materials from the web. Itsuki organized a
virtual day with young people from different continents. Souta reached out to NGOs to offer support
logistical.
Everything flowed without the need for hierarchies, without a central figure. Haruki was a witness, a bridge, and
a beacon to the
time.
In a meeting with former mentors, Kaori said:
"Perhaps it is time we called him by his real name.
-What? Riku asked.
-This is no longer a project. It's a movement.
And so they began to name it: Círculo de Juego Movement.
Soon, new stories poured in from far-flung corners: an Inuit teacher using rounds of
pass to start the school day; a blind coach who taught only with sounds and words;
a community that turned a field into a classroom of peace.
Haruki documented everything. Not with a desire for control, but with memory. Because I knew that every
History was a page that others would need to read someday.
And every time he was called "founder," he answered the same thing:
-I was only the first to write.
That year he set out to organize the first Global Meeting of the Círculo de Juego Movement. Be
virtual, free, and open to anyone who believed in the power of play as a tool
of transformation. For weeks, mentors met to design activities, talks,
spaces for listening.
Kaori and Itsuki coordinated the agenda. Ami, from her role as an international advisor, summoned old
Allies. Even Ryusei, now a sports psychologist, prepared a module on "emotion as a
pedagogical fuel".
On the day of the event, Haruki did not appear as an exhibitor. He only logged in as a participant.
He listened from his desk, taking notes as at the beginning.
The voices were different. The ideas are richer. The experiences, more diverse.
And yet, it all sounded familiar. Each sentence was an extension of something he had written or written.
lived in his notebook, years ago.
In one of the workshops, a ten-year-old boy shared:
-I passed the ball to a teammate who always made a mistake... And that day he made his first point.
It was as if I had given him wings.
Haruki smiled silently.
The following week, the organizing committee shared the statistics of the meeting: more than 200
activities, 40 countries connected, more than 3,000 participants, hundreds of stories collected in
video, text and audio.
But what moved Haruki the most was an email without a return address that said:
"My son didn't talk to anyone. After his silent pass workshop, he looked me in the eye and told me
Embraced. Thank you for opening a space where words can also move."
Haruki printed that message and pasted it on the wall of his studio.
Soon after, he was invited to an intergenerational dialogue between educators and adolescents. In
Instead of making a presentation, he brought a basket with balls, empty notebooks, colored chalk and
ropes.
"That is all I have," he said. We build the rest together.
Young people took the initiative and created their own dynamics, combined sports, invented
Symbols. One of them proposed a new motto for the network:
"Playing is not wasting time. It's how we win it together."
Since then, that phrase has accompanied every new project of the movement.
At the end of that annual cycle, a transfer of roles was proposed for the first time. The
symbolic founders – Haruki, Ami, Souta, Kaori and Itsuki – had to choose successors. Not because of age or
trajectory, but by vision, listening and generosity.
Haruki proposed a young woman he barely knew: Yuna, a drama student who had
introduced improvisation dynamics in sports workshops. No one understood at first why.
"Because it makes the invisible visible," he said. And that's the heart of the game.
Yuna accepted humbly. Her first act as the new coordinator was to change the way of
Project evaluation: they would no longer be by results, but by emotional impact and participation
Active.
"If someone leaves an activity feeling that it is worthwhile," he said, "that is success.
Meanwhile, Haruki continued to write. He was no longer looking to publish. Just register. Every time
He listened to a powerful story, wrote it down in his green-covered notebook.
One night, at a train station, while waiting to return home, he saw two children playing
with an empty bottle as if it were a ball. One passed it by, the other laughed. An adult looked at them with
contempt.
Haruki, without intervening, noted:
"The game survives even where they don't expect it. And because of that, it will continue to flourish."
As time went on, the Circle of Play Movement branched out beyond imagination.
Universities included it as a training module. Public libraries organized rounds of
Reading experiences. Some hospitals even integrated it into their therapies for patients with
Long stay.
A journalist wrote an article titled: "The game that doesn't need to win to transform." In it
it narrated how in a neighborhood of Caracas, children of different nationalities played together every afternoon
without speaking the same language. They only used gestures, laughter and passes.
"We understand each other the same," said one of them. Play is our translator.
Haruki put that item away carefully. He pasted it on the last page of his green notebook.
One weekend, he traveled to a local meeting in a coastal town. There he met a woman of
eighty years old who guided a group of older women through adapted games. It was not
exercise, it was memory in motion.
"We play so we don't forget who we are," she said. The game gives us back the name.
That phrase stuck with Haruki for days.
And he wrote: "Chapter 11.5: When playing is remembering the essential."
Near the end of that year, Haruki received a very special invitation: to return to his old
not to give a talk, but to inaugurate a new room called "Espacio de Juego
Haruki Nakamura".
It was difficult for him to accept. He felt that the credit was not his. But when he arrived, he understood that the
recognition
It wasn't for him, but for everyone who ever felt like they didn't fit in.
The room was filled with memorabilia, materials, photographs, and notebooks written by students
that had been inspired by the movement. In a carefully protected display case,
There was the original ball from the first game he played as a point guard.
Haruki looked at her with a melancholy smile.
A student approached him and asked:
-Is it true that it all started with a pass?
"Yes," said Haruki. But not because I knew what I was doing. Just because someone made me feel like
I could try.
The student nodded and stared at the ball.
-Then I can start like this, too.
And Haruki replied, as always:
-Of course. You just have to launch it.
During his stay at the institute, Haruki shared a workshop with a group of students from the first
year. Instead of telling their story, he invited them to draw their own fields. Not with lines or
measures, but with emotions.
-What would a court have where you feel safe? -Asked.
Some drew trees, others soft benches, others put words like "listen", "laughter",
"silence".
A shy student raised her hand.
-What if I don't know how to play?
Haruki looked at her calmly.
"Then you decide the rules."
The phrase sparked an intense conversation. At the end, they all left their drawings hanging on a
mural under the title: "Emotional court".
Before leaving, Haruki wrote in his notebook:
"There is no more powerful pedagogy than that which is born from a genuine question."
That night, he walked in the rain to his old bench. He sat down, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
He was not looking to close a cycle. I knew that cycles branch out like roots. The only thing I could
to do was to continue fertilizing the land.
When she returned home, she found a handwritten letter in her mailbox. It was from a child who had
participated in one of the virtual workshops months ago. Said:
"Hello Haruki. Thank you for not teaching me to win, but to wait. Now I like to pass the ball.
It's like telling someone I care. I hope that one day you will pass me one of you. Or an idea. I
I will keep it. Promised."
Haruki sat down to read it several times. Then he folded it carefully and put it in an envelope with the
word "future" written in marker.
That night he did not write. Instead, he reread his old notebooks. Each one was full of
Erasures, marginal annotations, clumsy drawings. But they were also full of life. They were not
Closed works. They were expanding roads.
He realized that perhaps his greatest achievement was not having written much.
It was to have left space for others to write after him.
And so he took his last notebook, still blank, and wrote only two words:
"Your turn."
Months later, in a rural school on the edge of the mountain, a group of students built
a dirt court with his own hands. I had no official lines or professional hoops. Alone
stones marking the ends and a rope tied between two trees.
At the entrance, a carved wood read:
"Zone of trust. Here you play with respect."
The school principal, inspired by the materials of the movement, had transformed the time
of recreation in a laboratory of life. It didn't matter who won. It mattered who helped, who
listening, who shared.
One day, one of the students wrote a letter addressed to the Círculo de Juego Movement:
"Thank you for not forgetting us, even though we never knew their names. This court has no
grass, but hope."
Haruki received that letter while sipping coffee in silence. He closed his eyes and felt that, although he did not
was there, a part of him had also helped to build that field.
Because when the game is authentic, it doesn't need witnesses. Participants only.
A year later, during the closing ceremony of an international educational congress, the
The closing was unexpected. Instead of speeches or statistics, a girl took the stage with a
ball in hand.
"I don't have to say much," he said. I just want to pass this on to someone who is willing to follow.
And he threw it.
What followed was a spontaneous game of passes between those present: researchers, teachers,
students, translators. There was no script. Only intention.
From his home, watching the webcast, Haruki smiled.
"They know," he whispered. You know everything I had to learn through error.
He turned off the screen. He walked to his desk. Not for writing, but for packing.
The next day he would leave for a small island where he would help start a project with communities
of fishermen.
He was no longer looking to leave a mark.
Just sow presence.
Because if he had learned anything, it was this:
"The best legacy is not what we leave behind, but what we inspire to start."
And with that sentence, he closed the notebook.
Ready to start another.
Years later, a pedagogical museum inaugurated an exhibition called "Educating in Motion". In
In the center of the room, there was a display case with a hand-painted ball, an open notebook in a
blank page, and an unnamed sign that read:
"This game has no owner.
Just stories that keep spinning."
A group of children ran in. One of them read the sign, looked at the ball, and asked:
"And can we touch it?"
The guide smiled.
-Not only can. Must.
And the boy passed the ball to the next one.
In one corner, an older visitor watched in silence. He took a note of the collaborative mural,
where everyone could leave sentences.
He wrote only two words:
"Thank you, game."
And as he left the place, with the evening light on his face, a new notebook peeked out of the
Jacket pocket.
It didn't have a title yet.
Because the story, like the pass, was just beginning.
That year, the network hosted its first Global Meeting of the Círculo de Juego Movement. Participated
more than thirty countries, in different languages, with simultaneous activities adapted to each
context. There was no single center, no single language, no single format. There was play. And that was
enough.
The main venue was symbolic: the gym where Haruki had first trained. Herself
had been restored with the help of former pupils and became the point of transmission for the
opening and closing messages.
The organizing team was made up of young people Haruki barely knew. They grew up with
the materials he had helped create, but now they went further.
"Thank you for planting," said one of the coordinators. We are only harvesting.
During the workshops, Haruki sat in a corner, watching. I took notes, not to publish,
but to remember. He heard new ideas, new ways of applying play: in mental health, in
conflict resolution, in urban planning, in participatory design.
A student proposed a phrase that was later painted on a collective mural:
"The pass is a political gesture: I choose to share."
That phrase became the motto of the meeting.
At the end of the event, Haruki was invited to say a few words. He walked to the center of the court,
He looked up, and only said:
-Thank you for continuing to play.
That night he wrote:
"Chapter 11.5: When You're No Longer the Protagonist, But You're Still on the Scene."
Weeks after the meeting, Haruki was invited to participate in a documentary about the
Movement Circle of Play. The production company wanted to tour the different places where the project
It had flourished: from the original gym to rural communities on several continents.
"We want to show that the game can change the world," said the director.
Haruki agreed on one condition: that it was the young people who told the story.
"I'll show up at the end," he joked. Like credits.
The documentary began filming. Trips, testimonies, landscapes. Each place had its essence, but
they all shared the same seed: a ball that is passed, a look that includes, a gesture that
Create a network.
During an interview, Kaori said:
-They didn't teach us how to win. We were taught not to leave anyone out.
The phrase went viral. Some began to print it on T-shirts, others on school posters,
sports centers, hospitals.
Haruki was not looking for fame. But I understood that visibility helped open more doors.
At the end of the filming, the director gave him a copy of the footage on a pen drive. Haruki kept it
in his drawer and he didn't see it right away. I preferred to live in the moment than to look at it from the outside.
Days later, he sat down to write a new letter. This time not a mentor, not a student, not a
to a publisher. It was a letter with no clear addressee.
"For those who have doubts. For those who feel that they do not fit in. For those who believe that playing is a
waste of time. May this story reach you. And serve as a pass."
Some time later, Haruki visited a school where they had created a "pass corner". It was a
space where children wrote down their emotions and delivered them to each other in the form of
anonymous messages. There he found a folded paper with his name on it.
He opened it.
"Thank you for inventing something we can all do."
He had no signature. But it was enough.
As they left the classroom, a group of students were playing with a deflated ball. They laughed, stumbled,
they invented rules. One of them, seeing Haruki watching, approached him and said:
"Do you want to play?"
Haruki thought about it. Smiled.
-Yes. But only if you teach me how.
The boy nodded with the naturalness of someone who does not need to explain anything. He passed the ball to
him. Haruki lo
caught with both hands, as if receiving an invisible inheritance.
That night, he wrote in his notebook:
"Chapter 12: When Others Take the Game Further Than You Dreamed."
And then he understood that his job was not to sustain.
It was letting go.
Months later, Haruki was invited to a ceremony at a new institute that had adopted the
model of the Círculo de Juego Movement as the basis of its curriculum. When he arrived, he saw a mural in the
Main entrance. It had no images, only words. It was a succession of sentences written by
different students.
One stopped him:
"Every pass we make is a way of saying: you're in."
Haruki took a deep breath. He entered the building, waved, listened, smiled. At the end of the day, he asked for
a moment to
Alone in the gym.
The field still smelled of freshly polished wood. But beyond the brilliance, what moved him was what
He found an open notebook on a bench.
On the first page, written with firm strokes, he read:
"Chapter 1: Because someone passed me the ball, now I want to pass too."
Haruki closed it carefully. He didn't touch her anymore. It was not necessary. He left the gym under a sky
orange, with the clear feeling that there were no longer borders, only circles that were widening with
every story shared.
And as he walked toward the station, he felt the game continue.
Only now, he did not guide him.
He accompanied him.