Lunch ended the way it always does when you eat fast out of genuine hunger - suddenly, with your plate empty and no mory of the middle section.
Mateo had worked through a full plate without much conversation. Farfán had eaten beside him at the start, asked a few easy questions - where he was staying, had he been through the dical yet and then excused himself before the first team's tactical briefing pulled everyone else away too. Around him the room had emptied steadily until Mateo was the last one sitting.
Mateo watched them go, then picked up his bag and went downstairs to find the youth team canteen.
Daniel was coming out of the entrance as Mateo arrived.
"You ate?"
"I went to the wrong floor. Farfán pointed back down."
Daniel stared at him for a second, then laughed - a short, involuntary sound, like a cough. "I sent you to the first team's restaurant. That's my fault." He waved it off. "You're fed, that's what matters. Bed's sorted too - Ben Kehi has space, you're with him. He'll show you the room."
Ben Kehi appeared from sowhere behind Daniel with the timing of soone who had been listening for his na.
"Already signed a contract and I'm a hotel porter," he said, but he was smiling. "Co on then."
The U18 dormitory block was a three-storey building at the eastern edge of the training complex. The Schalke crest on the front wall had faded to sothing approximate - you could read it if you knew what you were looking at. Inside, though, it was cleaner than the exterior suggested. The corridors had been repainted recently. The rooms were small but functional.
"Daniel pushed for the refit at the start of the season," Ben Kehi said, leading him up to the second floor. "Before that it was genuinely grim. I'm not joking - you could feel the damp. Here."
First door on the left. A single room split into two sleeping areas by a wardrobe. Ben Kehi's side was visibly unused, bed made to a professional standard, nothing on the desk, charger coiled neatly on the windowsill. The spare bed had fresh linen on it and a folded Schalke training kit at the foot.
"Number 38," Ben Kehi said, nodding at the kit. "Belonged to a lad who left in August. Decent enough player, just not quite Bundesliga-track. You can have it for now, if you want a different number you'd have to talk to Daniel."
"Thirty-eight is fine."
Ben Kehi lingered in the doorway. There was sothing on his mind, Mateo could tell from the slightly too-casual way he was leaning on the fra.
"Those passes this morning," he said finally. "I want to ask properly, now we're not in the middle of a session. That first one through Beasley's legs, were you aiming for the gap, or did it deflect off him?"
"I aid for the gap."
Ben Kehi looked at him for a mont. "Right," he said. "Good. That's what I thought." He pushed off the doorfra. "Training's in an hour. Don't be late - Daniel counts it as a personal insult."
He left. Mateo closed the door.
He lay down on the bed and looked at the ceiling for approximately four seconds. Then he opened the system.
The attribute panel appeared in the familiar layout, all grey except the single red bar of his maxed Passing stat. Below the panel, sitting in its own space, was the Golden Treasure Chest. It looked exactly how it sounded: a chest, gold, emitting the kind of faint luminescence that suggested it was waiting patiently and had all the ti in the world.
"How do I open it?"
[Direct contact. Reward content is not previewed.]
He reached out - ntally, in the system space, whatever the correct verb was and touched it.
The system environnt went gold. Not a flash, more like a slow flood of warm light filling the space from the chest outward. It lasted two or three seconds. Then:
[Congratulations. You have received: 1× Legendary Skill Card.]
[Skill: Andrés Iniesta - La Croqueta.]
[Card bound automatically.]
The light didn't fade so much as relocate, it pulled inward and passed through him, and for a few seconds Mateo was sowhere else entirely. Not a dream and not a mory. More like watching a film from inside the screen.
Iniesta at the Camp Nou. Pressed by two defenders, the ball at his left foot. The touch that moved it to his right while his body turned through the gap their closing created. The second touch that moved it back left, splitting the press completely, and the run through the space they'd vacated. The whole thing in under a second, not fast in the obvious physical sense, but precise, each micro-movent building on the last, using the defenders' own montum and positioning against them.
Then the Camp Nou again, different match. Sa move, different context. Then La Roja, different opponent. Then again, and again - a dozen instances compressed into the sa few seconds, each slightly different in angle or weight or the exact position of the nearest defender, but all recognisably the sa fundantal pattern.
The slideshow ended.
Mateo lay on the dormitory bed, eyes open, and stayed still for a mont.
The knowledge was there. Not as a mory of watching it - as a physical understanding, sitting sowhere in the connection between brain and muscle. He could feel the geotry of it. The way the first touch had to be angled slightly ahead of the movent to create the illusion of direction before the change. The way the hip drop had to precede the ball movent by a half-beat.
Whether his body could actually execute it under match conditions was a separate question. Understanding a thing and being able to do it were not the sa.
He queried the training points counter - still zero, purpose still unclear and got no answer from the system when he asked about it. He filed it away and closed the interface.
He had fifty minutes before he needed to be on the pitch.
He closed his eyes and went over the La Croqueta chanics in his head, slowly, three tis through, until he fell briefly and deeply asleep.
Ben Kehi knocked on the door with exactly enough ti to spare.
Mateo was already awake and pulling on the number 38 shirt when the knock ca. He laced his boots, splashed water on his face, and followed Ben Kehi back down to the training ground.
Daniel was already in full voice.
"Halim, I told you, one touch in tight spaces or you're giving it away every ti. Don't think about it, just do it. One touch!"
"Benedict! Track back when we lose it, you're not exempt from defending just because you're a striker!"
The session was compact and sharp. German Third Division match at the weekend - Daniel had the team working in a 4-3-3 shape, running combinations through the centre and drilling transitions. The A Team was working the positional patterns while the B Team simulated opposition pressure.
Mateo took up his position on the far side of the pitch and began his warm-up, watching the session structure and reading the shape. He wasn't on yet - Daniel was running Halim in the ten position for the mont, presumably to let him demonstrate whether the morning's dressing-down had changed anything.
From the look of it: marginally.
He was still watching Halim give the ball away for the third ti in five minutes when a shift in the players' attention made him glance toward the path that connected the first team's training complex to the U18 ground.
Two figures. One compact and broad-shouldered, moving with the loose-limbed ease of soone who had been here long enough to own the ground he walked on - Farfán, still in his training gear, apparently with ti between the tactical briefing and the afternoon session. The other - older, shorter, carrying himself with the particular self-possession of a man who had walked into important rooms for twenty years and stopped finding them intimidating so ti ago.
Raúl González.
The effect on the training session was imdiate. Players started making decisions with slightly more intent. Ben Kehi controlled a ball that had been going out of play and sohow kept it in. Even Daniel's volu adjusted, not louder, but sohow more shaped, more conscious of an audience.
Daniel crossed the pitch to greet them.
"Mr. Raúl." He shook hands, professional and warm. "Is this from Magath? Is he sending soone to watch?"
"Just a visit," Raúl said. "Farfán wanted to see the new signing. I ca along."
Daniel glanced at Farfán, understood imdiately, and turned back to the pitch. His voice carried across the session.
"Silva! You're on. Halim, take a breather."
Halim pulled off his bib and walked to the sideline without visible enthusiasm. He'd been replaced by the new signing twice in one day. He glanced at Mateo as they passed each other, not hostile, just asuring, the look of a player recalculating what he's competing against.
Mateo took the bib and walked to his position.
Farfán's voice from the sideline, easy and quiet: "Go on."
Raúl said nothing. He simply turned to watch.
The passing lanes lit up across Mateo's vision - the familiar overlay, green and amber and the occasional sharp red, recalibrating as his teammates moved into their positions. The system read the shape: B Team sitting in a 4-5-1, compact, inviting the ball into the press. Daniel wanted passing combinations in tight spaces.
He was in the right position for exactly that.
Mateo took a slow breath and waited for the ball.
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