Base scores ran by sport. Endurance athletes (runners, swimmers, cyclists) were a five. Team sport players were a seven, because you had to isolate them from the herd. Combat sports were an eight, on account of the inherent risk that they might hit you. Artistic sports (gymnastics, diving, etc.) were a nine, because they were beautiful and they knew it.
Then there were modifiers.
Previous medal winner: plus ten. Current world-record holder: plus fifteen. Endorsement deal with a major corporate entity: plus five per brand, capped at three. Someone whose nation had a current geopolitical conflict with your own: plus twenty, because nothing sharpened the thrill of a shag quite like the abstract possibility of it causing an international incident.
Gender and orientation were open categories. The Tally was an equal-opportunity operation. Darius was exclusively interested in women but had once, while extremely drunk in Marbella, kissed a Portuguese kickboxer on the mouth and described it afterwards as “not bad, actually. Though a bit scratchy,” which the group had unanimously agreed counted for partial credit.
Lex was…well, Lex didn’t think about it in categories. He thought about it in specifics. He’d had girlfriends, he’d had a few lads, and he didn’t see the point of drawing a line between the two when the whole exercise was about finding someone whose body made his brain shut up for five minutes.
The top-ten list was where things got competitive.
It lived on a separate tab. Ten targets, ranked by estimated difficulty, refreshed every forty-eight hours as new intelligence came in. The scoring was cumulative: base sport value, plus modifiers, plus a subjective difficulty rating agreed upon by group vote. The highest tier, the God Tier, had only ever been occupied by one category of athlete in the history of the Tally, across three Olympic cycles and two World Championships.
Russian gymnasts.
They were, by universal consensus, the most beautiful and least approachable human beings in the Village. They moved through the dining hall in formation, ate in silence, and looked at you with the flat disinterest a house cat reserved for a particularly unimpressive moth. They had bodies that bent in ways that challenged the basic principles of anatomy, and an institutional hostility to small talk that bordered on performance art. Nobody in the Tally’s history had ever successfully pulled a Russian gymnast. They were the white whale. The Everest. The guaranteed hundred-pointer that nobody would ever cash in.
Lex was lying on his narrow Village bed, ankles crossed, scrolling through the group chat on his mobile with a grin that was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.
The Tokyo Tumble Tally
Lex:Right lads. I’ve got a nomination for the God Tier
Darius:go on
Lex:Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester. Eventing. British. Marquess of something. I don’t know what a marquess is but I think it means his dad owns a county
Mick:eventing is horses yeah?
Lex:Horses yeah. Posh horses. Not like your uncle Dave’s knackered thing at the Romford fair
Darius:base score?
Lex:nine. artistic sport adjacent. man rides a horse in a top hat for one of the rounds. I’ve googled it. it’s called dressage. the horse does a little dance. he wears a fucking TAILCOAT
Darius:that’s not artistic sport that’s just being rich enough not to care about looking like a prat
Lex:NINE.
Mick:what are his modifiers
Lex:no medals yet but this is his first games. no endorsement deals that I can find, probably because his familyhas more money than Nike. BUT here’s where it gets good. here’s where i earn my place in this group
Lex:difficulty rating: GOD TIER
Lex:I tried to talk to him at the airport. he put on headphones
Lex:I tried to talk to him at the gym. he literally ran away. on a treadmill. increased his speed to escape me faster
Lex:he is the coldest, frostiest, most absolutely buttoned-up man I have ever met in my life. makes the Russian gymnasts look like the welcome committee at Butlin’s
Darius:sounds like he just doesn’t fancy you mate
Lex:INCORRECT. his ears went pink
Mick:his ears went pink
Lex:PINK. confirmed tell. I touched him on the back and he went rigid. full body. like someone had plugged him in
