Chapter 832: Royal Madrid

Madrid, Spain: Real Madrid Training Ground

The next morning, the session had been brutal.

Three hours of high-intensity drills, sprints, pressing and tactical work had left most of the players drenched in sweat, their legs heavy and their lungs burning.

But the mood in the recovery area was light. Players stretched and laughed and traded jokes, and the tension of the session faded into the easy camaraderie of men who had fought together and won together.

Kazuki Yamada sat on a bench with a towel draped over his shoulders and his expression calm. At twenty-eight, he was one of the older players in the squad, a leader whom the younger ones watched more closely than they let on.

Across from him sat Nico Paz.

The Argentine midfielder was quiet, as he always was.

He didn’t talk much, and he didn’t joke around, but when he played he became something else entirely, a conductor and a creator who could change a match with a single touch.

Yamada respected him. They competed for the same position, both attacking midfielders, both exceptional and both driven, yet there was no animosity between them, only the shared understanding that they were fighting for the same thing.

To be the best.

Today, though, something was different. Nico’s gaze was distant, his eyes fixed on the ground and his jaw set tight.

Kazuki noticed. "You okay?"

Nico looked up. "Fine."

"You don’t look fine."

Nico was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I saw the highlights."

"Of what?"

"Hiro. His return."

Kazuki nodded slowly. "He looked good."

"He looked different." Nico’s voice was low. "Better."

"Better?"

"He isn’t the same player. He’s something else now." Nico paused. "Something I’ve never seen before."

Kazuki studied him. "You’re worried."

"I’m not worried." Nico’s eyes met his. "I’m determined."

Kazuki raised an eyebrow. "Determined?"

"I have a promise to keep." Nico’s voice was soft, but there was steel underneath it. "This World Cup, I’m not here to take part. I’m here to win."

Though he had failed to lift the previous World Cup, he had promised that he would put twice the effort he had before.

He had promised his nation to bring the cup back home.

Considering the fact that he had made those promises four years ago, a lot of people had forgotten about it.

However, he hadn’t.

He had inherited his jersey number from one of the greatest, and he had to prove to the world why he deserved it.

Kazuki said nothing for a moment. He had heard those words before, from himself and from other players, from men who had dreamed of glory and fallen short. But Nico wasn’t like the others.

"Good," Kazuki said at last. "Because so am I."

Nico nodded. They sat together in silence, two midfielders and two rivals who understood each other without needing to say anything more.

Across the training ground, two youngsters were watching.

Rafael "Rafa" Vitorino, eighteen years old, Brazilian and explosive, leaned against the fence with his eyes fixed on the veterans.

"Did you hear what they were talking about?" he asked.

Matteo Bellini, seventeen, Italian and calm, shrugged. "Something about Hiro."

"Something about war."

Matteo glanced at him. "War?"

"That’s what it is, isn’t it?" Rafa grinned. "The World Cup. It’s war. And those two"—he nodded toward Kazuki and Nico—"they’re generals."

Matteo studied the two midfielders. "And us?"

Rafa’s grin widened. "We’re the secret weapons."

Matteo didn’t smile. He only watched.

"I want to face him," Rafa said quietly.

"Face who?"

"Hiro." His eyes burned. "I want to see if he’s really as good as everyone says."

Matteo was silent for a moment. "You’ll get your chance."

"How do you know?"

"Because I can see the future."

Rafa laughed. "You’re weird, Matteo."

"I know."

They stood there together, watching the veterans and waiting for their moment.

Later that afternoon.

The session had been over for a long time. The players had scattered, some to the recovery room, some to the showers, and some to the parking lot where their cars waited in rows like patient beasts.

The floodlights had not yet come on, and the pitch lay quiet in the slanting gold of the late sun.

Rafa and Matteo were still on it, and they were there because they wanted to be, not because anyone had told them to stay.

Rafa was juggling a ball, and not only with his feet. He bounced it from his knee to his shoulder, rolled it across the back of his neck, and caught it again on his instep without looking, as if the ball were on a string.

It was a pointless exercise, showy and entirely unnecessary. However, he loved every single thing about it.

Back where he grew up, even the kids around his neighbourhood could perform such tricks.

A few meters away, Matteo stood with his arms crossed and watched. He couldn’t help but wonder if this guy had some kind of hidden energy reserve inside him.

"You’re wasting energy."

"I’m entertaining myself."

"You should be resting."

"I’ll rest when I’m dead."

Matteo tilted his head. "That isn’t how rest works."

Rafa laughed. "You’re so literal."

"I’m precise."

"Same thing."

"It isn’t."

Rafa let the ball drop and trapped it under his foot. He looked at Matteo, more like stared at him, the way a person studies a puzzle they have never managed to solve. "You’re weird, you know that?"

For a moment, he wanted to argue. The fact that the weirder one was calling him weird didn’t make sense at all. Even so, he resisted the urge to speak his heart.

Matteo blinked. "Define weird."

"See? That. That’s weird."

"Asking for clarification is weird?"

"Yes."

Matteo blinked, dumbfounded at his response. What was this idiot even talking about? There had been times when he wondered about his IQ.

He figured it would be much less than a kid’s.

But he just couldn’t prove it.

"Huh?" He raised his brows, confused.

Rafa shook his head. "You’re impossible."

"What’s so impossible about me?"