Chapter Text
Football always sounded different before sunrise.
By six in the morning, the school was still asleep.
The corridors were empty, the classroom windows dark, and the only sounds that drifted across the campus were the distant hum of traffic and the relentless chorus of cicadas hidden somewhere among the trees. Dew clung stubbornly to the grass, soaking through the cuffs of Michael’s training pants as he crossed the football field with a ball tucked beneath one arm.
He liked it better this way.
By seven o'clock the school would belong to everyone else.
The corridors would echo with laughter. Lockers would slam shut. Teachers would call sleepy students into classrooms. The football field would fill with whistles and shouting and boots carving muddy scars into the ground.
But now—now, it belonged only to him.
Michael let his duffel bag fall beside the bench with a soft thud. The zipper was already half-open, revealing spare socks, a water bottle, and a notebook whose pages were crowded with hastily sketched formations instead of class notes.
He slipped a football from the bag and set it gently on the center circle. For a moment, he simply stood there. The campus still slept around him.
The classroom windows reflected a sky painted in pale lavender and gold. Somewhere beyond the fence, a train rumbled awake. Birds hopped across the empty bleachers as if they, too, knew this hour belonged to no one.
Michael smiled to himself, and then he started.
One touch. The ball rolled smoothly beneath the inside of his right foot. A second touch.
He nudged it forward before sending a firm pass against the concrete practice wall at the edge of the pitch.
Thump.
The sound rang through the empty grounds. The ball came spinning back and Michael trapped it cleanly.
Again.
Pass.
Receive.
Turn.
Again.
He had long since stopped counting repetitions. Numbers made practice feel like work. Instead, he chased feeling. The satisfying weight of a perfectly struck pass. The gentle resistance of wet grass beneath his boots. The fraction of a second where the ball seemed almost weightless before returning to earth. His father used to tell him that football wasn't played with feet.
"Anyone can kick a ball," he'd say. "The best players know where the ball wants to go before it gets there."
Michael had never forgotten those words. So while other boys practiced shooting—he practiced passing. Not because he couldn't score. Because he liked the invisible parts of football. The run nobody noticed. The pass that split two defenders by inches. The quiet satisfaction of creating something another player could finish.
There was beauty in that which his teammates never understood.
"Why don't you just shoot?"
Because someone else was already running. Because the goal had already happened in his head three seconds earlier. Because football, to Michael, had always felt less like taking and more like giving.
The ball rolled back to him once more. He stopped it with the sole of his boot.
Silence settled over the field again, clear and crisp—until a tap and then two, until there were footsteps which didn’t sound hurried, or hesitant. Perfectly measured in a way which Michael only notices in sportsmen, soft studs clicking softly against the concrete path that led from the locker rooms.
Michael looked up. Someone was crossing the field. At first, he noticed only the navy training jacket slung loosely over broad shoulders.
Then the football tucked comfortably beneath one arm. Then the number stitched across the back.
7.
His chest tightened before he even saw the face. Everyone at Saint-Exupéry knew number seven. Teachers, students, the birds—the cat which Michael would feed on the corner of the café across the street.
Even the children from the primary school who sometimes pressed their faces against the fence during afternoon practices knew who wore number seven.
Kylian Mbappé.
Third-year. Captain of the senior football team. The kind of player scouts travelled hours to watch.
Michael had seen him play more times than he could count. From the bleachers. From behind chain-link fences. From classroom windows whenever senior practice happened to overlap with detention.
He'd watched defenders chase him until they couldn't breathe. Watched goalkeepers guess the wrong corner before Kylian had even struck the ball. Watched crowds erupt into applause before the net had finished shaking.
He had never spoken to him. Never had a reason to.
Their worlds existed only a few classrooms apart, yet somehow felt impossibly distant.
Kylian reached the opposite penalty area and placed his own football carefully on the grass. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then Kylian glanced up, their eyes meeting for the briefest moment before Michael looked away almost immediately.
Heat crept embarrassingly up the back of his neck. He bent to adjust his bootlaces that weren't loose.
When he looked up again, Kylian had already started training. The first shot slammed into the back of the net. Another one following.
Then another. No wasted movement. No celebration. Just repetition.
Michael found himself slowing his own practice without meaning to. He wasn't watching because Kylian was famous. At least, that's what he always told himself.
He watched because football with Kylian looked—different. Simpler. Not easy, with the way he sees the elder’s knee bending a certain angle and ankle straining against the grass. Not easy. Just simple.
Every touch seemed inevitable, as though Kylian had already lived through the next few seconds before everyone else caught up.
Michael wondered what that felt like. To be so good at it that even a bypasser would love to join. He looks away, shaking his head. Focus. He’s Kylian. The state’s best. You’re Michael, barely the top of your grade.
Michael huffed, a dry chuckle leaving him as he turned back toward the practice wall.
Pass.
Receive.
Turn.
Again.
For nearly forty minutes, the only conversation between the two of them was the sound of footballs travelling across grass. One striking the net. The other striking concrete. Neither interrupted the other's rhythm.
By the time the first students began filtering through the school gates, sunlight had spilled completely across the pitch. The spell of morning breaking as the noise started rising and the air turned balmy.
"Olise!"
The sharp whistle cut cleanly across the field.
Michael turned. Coach Bernard stood near the touchline, one hand shielding his eyes from the rising sun.
"The juniors are already warming up."
Michael glanced at the time. He hadn't even noticed. "Sorry, Coach."
"You can apologise by running."
Michael laughed quietly, tucked the ball beneath his arm, and jogged toward the adjoining practice pitch where the junior squad had already begun passing drills.
The familiar chatter settled around him immediately.
"You're late."
"You practicing alone again?"
"One day you're actually going to sleep in."
Michael only smiled.
The coach blew the whistle again and soon, everything started as usual—possession drills, quick triangles, one-touch passing.
Coach Bernard paced slowly along the touchline, correcting body positions and calling for faster movement.
"Open your shoulders."
"Don't stare at the ball."
"Move before you receive.”
Michael slipped naturally into rhythm. Receive. Turn. Pass. Everything is instinct at this point, the same routine they always followed, since the day they started last year. Since Michael set foot in the field and joined a real team—not with the neighbourhood kids who’d kick a ball straight into gutter and then run away.
The ball travelled from one player to another until it reached him. Michael barely looked before threading it between two defenders into space. His teammate ran onto it effortlessly.
Coach Bernard nodded once. "Again."
Across the low fence separating the two pitches, the senior team had begun arriving. Navy jackets and louder voices. More confident laughter.
Michael tried not to look but he is only another underclassmen who can look up to them in awe. Everyone was already distracted anyway, all of their gazes going over to the seniors who seemed like celebrities in the pitch and hallways. Michael could look just once too. Just once.
He caught sight of number seven stretching near midfield. Then he forced himself back into the drill. One pass at a time.
He didn't notice the commotion on the senior pitch until a whistle echoed sharply across both fields.
The whistle that cut across both pitches carried a different kind of urgency, one that instinctively pulled every pair of eyes away from the ball. Conversation died almost immediately. The seniors, who only moments before had been laughing among themselves as they stretched, converged into a loose circle near the edge of the penalty area, where one of their midfielders sat with one leg stretched awkwardly across the grass.
From where Michael stood, he couldn't hear what was being said.
He didn't need to.
The boy tried to stand.
Made it halfway.
Then stopped abruptly, his face twisting with the quiet frustration of someone who already knew the answer before testing it. He shook his head once, more to himself than to anyone around him, before sinking back onto the turf.
There was something strangely sobering about watching an injury happen.
Football always looked invincible from the stands. Ninety minutes of impossible speed and impossible goals made it easy to forget how fragile the game really was—that everything could change because of one awkward landing, one mistimed tackle, one foot planted at the wrong angle.
Michael found himself staring a little longer than he should have.
Not because he knew the player.
Because, for the first time that afternoon, the senior team stopped looking untouchable.
-
The conversation between the two coaches lasted less than a minute.
Michael didn't hear a single word of it. He only noticed Coach Bernard glance across the line of junior players, his expression unreadable beneath the brim of his cap, before his gaze settled—unexpectedly, unmistakably—on him.
Michael felt his stomach tighten.
There was a peculiar kind of silence that settled over football pitches when something unusual was about to happen. It wasn't true silence; boots still shifted against the grass, someone somewhere still bounced a football idly at their feet, a breeze still rustled through the trees bordering the school grounds. But the noise seemed to retreat, leaving behind the distinct feeling that everyone was waiting for the same thing.
"Olise."
Coach Bernard didn't raise his voice. He never needed to.
Michael looked up immediately.
"Yes, Coach?"
For a brief second, Coach Bernard simply studied him, as though weighing something over in his mind. Then, with a small nod toward the adjoining pitch, he said, "Come with me."
Michael's heartbeat stumbled. He became acutely aware of everything at once—the football tucked beneath his arm, the sweat cooling against the back of his neck, the way every one of his teammates had quietly stopped what they were doing to watch him cross the field.
A few exchanged confused glances.
Someone muttered, "What's going on?"
Another shrugged.
Michael didn't know either. He only knew that with every step toward the narrow gate separating the two pitches, his pulse seemed to climb higher.
The gate wasn't much to look at. A weathered metal frame painted green years ago, its paint chipped away in places where countless boots and footballs had scraped against it. Michael had walked past it almost every day since starting at Saint-Exupéry. He'd never once imagined he would be asked to walk through it.
The senior coach was waiting on the other side. He looked Michael over—not dismissively, not critically, but with the careful attention of someone trying to decide whether a puzzle piece belonged where he thought it might.
"You play midfield?"
"Yes, sir."
"What kind?"
Michael hesitated. "I... create chances."
Something about saying it aloud made him feel oddly embarrassed. Most boys his age would've answered differently. Striker. Goalscorer.
Playmaker sounded less impressive than the players who filled highlight reels.
The older man smiled almost imperceptibly. "So Bernard wasn't exaggerating."
He reached for the gate. The latch clicked open with a sound far louder than it had any right to.
"Our midfielder's injured," he said. "We're finishing practice one player short, and Bernard seems convinced you can solve that problem."
Michael looked through the open gate. Beyond it, the senior squad waited. Some curious. Some openly unconvinced. Some barely paying attention.
And among them—Kylian Mbappé.
For the first time since Michael had arrived at Saint-Exupéry almost two years ago, they weren't separated by a fence, or a crowd, or a set of bleachers. All that remained between them now were a few uneven steps of grass.
It should have been nothing. A few metres. The distance between two training pitches.
The sort of thing Michael had crossed hundreds of times without thinking whenever a ball had rolled astray or Coach Bernard had sent someone to fetch cones from the equipment shed.
Today, somehow, it felt different. He couldn't explain why.
Perhaps because, until this moment, the senior pitch had always existed as something to observe rather than enter. It was where the older boys trained after school, where scouts occasionally gathered with notebooks tucked beneath their arms, where names were spoken with a certain admiration in the corridors. Michael had spent two years watching football happen there from the outside, never once imagining that anyone on the other side of the fence knew who he was.
Now every pair of eyes seemed fixed on him.
He became painfully aware of the way his boots sounded against the ground as he stepped through the gate. The metal latch clanged softly behind him, and for reasons he couldn't understand, the noise lingered in his ears longer than it should have. It felt strangely final, as though something had quietly closed behind him.
The senior players didn't say anything at first. They simply looked.
Some with open curiosity, others with the mild annoyance of having their session interrupted. One defender folded his arms across his chest, his expression suggesting he had already decided this wasn't going to work. Another exchanged an amused glance with the teammate beside him, the corner of his mouth curling into a smile that wasn't quite unkind, but wasn't encouraging either.
"A junior?"
The words were barely louder than a murmur, but in the silence that had settled over the pitch, they carried farther than the speaker probably intended.
"He looks about fifteen."
"Second-year, isn't he?"
"Bernard's kid, maybe?"
A quiet laugh followed.
Michael kept his eyes on the grass. Not because the comments hurt. They didn't. If anything, they were exactly what he would have expected. He was a junior. He was younger than almost everyone standing here. He had no reason to believe he belonged among them, and they had even less reason to believe it.
Still—his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the football tucked beneath his arm. He wished they wouldn't look at him like he was already a mistake.
Coach Laurent—the senior coach—didn't seem particularly interested in the whispers.
"They're one man short," he said matter-of-factly, addressing the group rather than Michael. "Olise will finish the session with us."
No grand introduction. No speech about potential. Just a decision.
One or two players shrugged, accepting it without much thought. Others looked less convinced. A tall midfielder standing near the centre circle glanced openly at Michael before letting out a slow sigh.
"So we babysitting now?"
Coach Laurent answered before anyone else could. "If you think completing five passes with a younger player is babysitting," he replied evenly, "perhaps you're not as good as I thought."
A few snickers rippled through the group. The midfielder immediately looked away.
Michael almost smiled. Almost.
"Warm up," Coach Laurent continued, turning toward him for the first time since opening the gate. "You're joining the possession game."
Michael nodded. "Yes, sir." His voice came out quieter than he'd intended.
He jogged toward the stack of footballs resting beside the touchline, placing his own ball neatly with the others before stretching his calves. His hands moved automatically, following a routine he had repeated before every training session since he was ten years old, but his thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
Don't overthink it. It's still football. The pitch is the same size. The ball weighs the same. The lines haven't changed.
He repeated the words to himself as though they might steady the nervous flutter that had settled somewhere beneath his ribs. Because that was the strange thing about football.
No matter how intimidating the occasion felt, the game itself never changed.
The ball never cared who was touching it.
It didn't know whether you were a first-year or a captain, whether there were five people watching or five thousand. It simply asked the same question every single time it arrived at your feet.
What are you going to do with me?
"Olise."
Michael looked up.
Coach Laurent beckoned him over with two fingers.
"We're running eight against eight." He pointed toward a cluster of players already pulling coloured bibs over their heads. "Blue team."
Michael nodded again before jogging across the pitch. As he approached, conversation dipped almost imperceptibly. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough for him to notice.
One player handed him a bib without saying anything. Another offered a polite smile. A third looked him up and down before returning his attention to tying his boots.
Then someone stepped beside him. "So..." The voice was light. Curious rather than unfriendly.
Michael turned.
A blond defender, maybe a year older than him, tilted his head slightly. "You're Bernard's miracle passer?"
Michael blinked. "His what?"
The defender laughed. "That's what he keeps calling you."
"I've... never heard him say that."
"No?" He grinned. "Guess he only says it behind your back."
Michael didn't know what to do with that information. He settled for an awkward smile. Before he could think of a reply, Coach Laurent blew his whistle.
The players spread out instinctively across the pitch.
Michael drifted into the space between midfield and attack, trying to make himself available without getting in anyone's way. He could feel his heartbeat again. Slower now and steadier.
The initial panic had begun to dissolve, replaced by something quieter. Concentration.
Across the pitch, someone adjusted the captain's armband around his sleeve. Michael's eyes followed the movement before he could stop himself.
Kylian.
He had hardly spoken since Michael arrived. In fact, he wasn't sure Kylian had said a single word at all.
He stood near the edge of the centre circle, rolling a football beneath the sole of his boot while Coach Laurent explained the exercise. Every now and then he nodded once, listening with the easy attentiveness of someone who had heard these instructions a hundred times before.
Then, almost absentmindedly, he looked up. His eyes met Michael's. Not for long. Just a second.
Long enough for Kylian to offer the smallest nod of acknowledgement before looking back at the coach. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't particularly meaningful. He probably would've done the same for anyone.
But for reasons Michael couldn't begin to explain, that tiny gesture eased something inside him. He wasn't invisible anymore. Not entirely.
Coach Laurent placed the ball at the centre of the grid.
"Two touches," he called. "Keep it moving. If you lose possession, you press immediately."
The whistle sounded. The ball rolled.
And without realising it, Michael took his very first touch as a member of the senior team.
-
Michael's first touch was the easiest one he would receive all afternoon.
The ball rolled gently across the grass from one of the defenders positioned only a few metres away, more out of obligation than confidence. It arrived slowly enough that Michael had time to glance over his shoulder before cushioning it with the inside of his foot. One touch to settle it. Another to move it on. The pass travelled straight back to where it had come from.
Simple, safe and forgettable. Exactly what he needed.
The game settled into its rhythm almost immediately.
Eight blue bibs against eight red, squeezed into a compact rectangle marked by faded orange cones. The objective wasn't to score. Coach Laurent cared very little about goals during the first half of training. Possession came first. Angles. Movement. Decision-making under pressure.
"Don't admire your pass!" he shouted as one of the seniors stood watching his own ball travel across the pitch. "Move!"
The players shifted instinctively. The ball moved faster than anyone running after it.
Michael found his place somewhere between the lines, careful not to occupy spaces that belonged to somebody else. He offered himself as an option whenever a teammate looked trapped, opening his body toward the ball the way Coach Bernard had drilled into him over years of repetition.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
No pass came.
It wasn't personal.
At least, Michael didn't think it was.
Footballers trusted familiarity almost as much as ability. They knew each other's habits, preferred feet, first touches, the kinds of risks they were willing to take. Michael was an interruption to that rhythm, a name most of them had probably heard for the first time only minutes ago.
So they chose certainty instead.
The captain.
The centre-back.
The holding midfielder.
Anyone they already knew.
Michael continued moving anyway.
There was a strange loneliness to being available when nobody was looking for you.
He drifted into pockets of space almost instinctively, turning his shoulders toward the ball, pointing subtly with his hand whenever a passing lane opened. Years of playing midfield had taught him that creating an option was often invisible work. If nobody used it, nobody remembered it had existed at all.
Yet, he kept moving. Eventually, someone had to notice.
The chance came sooner than he expected.
One of the senior midfielders received the ball with a defender closing quickly from behind. He turned toward the touchline only to discover the passing lane already blocked.
For the briefest moment, panic flashed across his face. Then his eyes landed on Michael. Not because he wanted to. Because Michael happened to be the only blue shirt left unmarked.
The pass was hurried. A little underhit. It skipped awkwardly through the grass before reaching him.
Michael adjusted without thinking.
Instead of trapping the ball completely, he opened his body and redirected it with his very first touch, allowing its own momentum to carry it across his path. The pressing defender lunged toward where Michael had been standing a heartbeat earlier and found nothing but empty space.
Michael was already gone. He carried the ball forward for only two strides before releasing it into the feet of the left-back, who suddenly had acres of grass in front of him.
"Good," Coach Laurent called from the touchline.
Just one word. But Michael felt his shoulders loosen ever so slightly.
The drill continued.
Pass.
Move.
Receive.
Again.
The afternoon sun climbed higher, warming the backs of their shirts until sweat clung uncomfortably between shoulder blades. Every few minutes Coach Laurent stopped the exercise to reposition players by only a metre or two, insisting that football could be won or lost by distances so small most spectators never noticed them.
Michael liked that. It reminded him of something his father used to say after driving him home from youth tournaments.
"People only remember the goal because that's the last thing they see. They forget the ten decisions that made the goal possible."
He wondered if Kylian thought about football that way too. The thought slipped into his mind so naturally that he almost laughed at himself.
Of course he didn't know. He'd never spoken to him. He stole another glance anyway.
Kylian hadn't touched the ball much either.
Not because his teammates ignored him, but because he never seemed to stand still long enough to receive it. He drifted constantly across the front line, checking over both shoulders every few seconds, taking defenders with him even when the ball was nowhere near.
Michael frowned slightly.
That run. It wasn't random.
Kylian wasn't trying to get open. He was trying to pull someone else out of position.
The realization settled quietly in Michael's mind.
Interesting.
A minute later, Kylian repeated the movement. This time, Michael saw the space appear before anyone else did. The centre-back followed. The holding midfielder hesitated.
For less than a second, a passing lane opened straight through the middle of the pitch before disappearing again.
Nobody used it. Nobody except Michael, who had already seen it.
His foot twitched almost instinctively, an old habit born from years of imagining passes long before they existed.
If the ball had reached him then...
He knew exactly where he would've played it. The thought lingered. Not as confidence. As curiosity. He wondered if Kylian knew he was creating those spaces. Or if he simply felt them.
Coach Laurent blew his whistle. "Reset."
The players jogged back into position. The coach folded his arms, scanning the grid with a thoughtful expression. "We're keeping the shape," he announced. "But we're making one change."
His eyes settled briefly on Michael. Then shifted toward Kylian.
"You two." He pointed between them. "Same side."
For the first time that afternoon, Michael's heart forgot its rhythm. Not because he was scared. Not entirely.
But because somewhere deep inside him, beneath the nerves and uncertainty and careful self-control, there was a sixteen-year-old boy who had spent two years watching number seven from the other side of a fence.
And in a few seconds—for the very first time—they were going to play the same game.
The teams shifted without complaint, red bibs separating from blue until new shapes began to form across the pitch.
Michael found himself standing just behind the front line now, occupying the space between midfield and attack where he had always felt most comfortable. It wasn't a glamorous position. Most people watching a match barely noticed the player who lived there. Goals belonged to strikers. Last-minute tackles belonged to defenders.
The spaces in between belonged to people like him. He preferred it that way.
Across from him, Kylian stretched one arm across his chest before bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, his eyes already scanning the field before Coach Laurent had even finished explaining the exercise.
There was a peculiar intensity about him. Not loud or intimidating.
If anything, he looked strangely relaxed. But his eyes never rested.
They flickered constantly from teammate to teammate, then to empty patches of grass, then over his shoulder toward the defenders behind him. It was almost as though he wasn't looking at where everyone was.
He was looking at where they were about to be.
Michael had seen that habit before. Only once. His father.
On Sunday mornings, when the local veterans gathered for informal matches, his father would spend half the game looking away from the ball entirely. As a child, Michael had never understood why.
"You're watching the wrong thing," his father had laughed when Michael asked. "The ball tells you where the game is. The players tell you where it's going."
The whistle blew. The drill restarted.
For the first minute, very little changed.
The seniors passed confidently between themselves, exchanging quick one-touch combinations as the defenders pressed aggressively inside the confined space. Michael kept moving, offering angles whenever someone looked trapped, but he no longer found himself worrying about whether the ball would come to him.
He was watching something else.
Kylian.
The captain drifted quietly along the shoulder of the last defender, almost invisible until the precise instant he decided to move.
Then—a burst of acceleration. Not toward the ball. Into space.
Michael's eyes widened slightly. There. The gap opened for barely a heartbeat. The centre-back stepped too high. The full-back hesitated.
A diagonal lane appeared between them before closing almost immediately.
Nobody played it. The ball went sideways instead.
Kylian slowed, turned, and jogged back into position without so much as lifting his hands in frustration. He didn't complain. He didn't ask for the ball. He simply tried again.
A minute later, it happened again. Another run. This time across the face of the defence. Again, the opening was there. Again, it disappeared unused.
The midfielder chose the safer pass.
Michael frowned. Surely they saw it. Didn't they?
His gaze drifted toward Coach Laurent. The older man had stopped writing on his clipboard. His jaw had tightened almost imperceptibly. He saw it too.
The next attack unfolded much the same way. Kylian checked toward the ball before spinning suddenly into the space behind the defence. For one fleeting second, the pass existed. Then it was gone.
The winger turned backwards. The move died.
Coach Laurent's whistle pierced the afternoon. "Stop!"
The entire drill froze. Players looked toward the touchline.
Coach Laurent walked a few slow steps onto the pitch, rubbing a hand across his forehead before exhaling through his nose. “We've created the same opportunity four times." He pointed toward the attacking line. "And we've ignored it four times."
Nobody answered.
"You don't have to force every pass." His voice remained calm. "But if your striker is making the right run..." He paused, looking from one player to the next. "...someone has to find him."
His eyes swept across the group. For the briefest moment—they landed on Michael. Not long enough for anyone else to notice. Just long enough to make Michael's heartbeat stumble.
Because he knew exactly which pass Coach Laurent was talking about. He had already played it in his head four different times.
Coach Laurent stepped back toward the touchline without another word.
The silence lingered for a moment after he blew the whistle again, as though everyone was still turning his criticism over in their heads. Then the game resumed, the ball moving once more between blue shirts as the familiar rhythm slowly returned.
Nothing changed. At least, not immediately. The centre-back received possession. Played it wide. The full-back returned it. The holding midfielder checked toward the ball before turning away from pressure with a tidy first touch.
Football had a peculiar way of pretending nothing important was happening, right up until everything changed.
Michael drifted into space almost absentmindedly, his body moving through patterns it had repeated thousands of times before. He wasn't consciously thinking about positioning anymore. The game had become quieter inside his head, stripped of the nerves that had followed him through the gate only fifteen minutes earlier.
He could hear the ball again.
Coach Bernard used to insist that every football had its own rhythm.
"Listen long enough," he would say, "and it'll tell you when it wants to leave your feet."
Michael had always thought that sounded ridiculous.
Until he realised, years later, that he understood exactly what his coach had meant.
The ball arrived. He opened his body before receiving it, letting his first touch carry him away from the nearest defender.
One touch. Another. A red bib closed the angle in front of him. Nothing unusual.
He turned his shoulders slightly, shaping as though he intended to recycle possession back toward the defence. The pressing player bit immediately, taking two quick steps in anticipation. It was enough. Just enough.
The lane opened.
Not in front of him but beyond.
Michael's head lifted almost instinctively.
There, Kylian had started his run. Not early. Not late. Exactly when he always had.
Only now, for the first time all afternoon, someone was looking. Everything around Michael seemed to slow. He saw the centre-back hesitate for half a second, uncertain whether to follow the movement or hold his line.
He saw the full-back glance over his shoulder a fraction too late. He saw the strip of green grass that had appeared between them, impossibly narrow and impossibly inviting. Most players would've looked at the defenders. Michael looked at the space.
Because the space always told the truth.
His right foot drew back, and for the briefest instant, doubt crept in. The pass was ambitious. Too ambitious, perhaps. If he misplaced it, possession would be gone. If he underhit it, the defender would intercept.
If he overhit it—he never finished the thought.
The ball left Michael's foot before thought had the chance to catch it.
It slipped between two defenders as though the gap had been waiting for it all along, skimming across the grass with just enough weight to invite the run without ever forcing it. For a fleeting second, it seemed almost impossible that it would make it through.
Then it did.
Kylian was already there. He didn't have to break stride.
The pass met him as naturally as though they had rehearsed it a hundred times before instead of never playing together until that afternoon. One touch carried the ball into his path. The goalkeeper rushed from his line, narrowing the angle with arms spread wide.
Kylian didn't hesitate. He struck through the ball first time.
The sound of leather against his boot was sharp enough to cut through every other noise on the pitch.
A heartbeat later, the net rippled.
"Yes!"
The shout came from somewhere behind Michael. Then another.
Within seconds the quiet training session had erupted into laughter, cheers and the familiar chorus of voices that always followed a well-worked goal.
"There you go!"
"That's more like it!"
One of the defenders groaned dramatically, throwing both hands into the air before jogging back toward the halfway line.
"You lot are impossible."
Another senior clapped Kylian on the shoulder as he laughed, saying something Michael couldn't quite make out over the noise.
Coach Laurent blew his whistle once, a grin tugging briefly at the corner of his mouth despite himself.
"That's it," he called. "That's the run."
Nobody mentioned the pass. Why would they?
To everyone else, it had simply become another goal scored by the captain. Another finish to add to the countless others they had watched over the years.
Michael hardly noticed. He was still staring toward the goal. Not because he couldn't believe the pass had reached its target. Because he couldn't believe the finish.
The goalkeeper had closed the angle so quickly that, for a split second, Michael had thought the chance was gone. He had already begun wondering whether he'd put too much weight on the ball.
Kylian had made the question irrelevant.
The strike had been so clean, so instinctive, that it barely seemed to belong to the same moment. It was as though the goal had existed long before either of them had reached it.
Without thinking, Michael smiled to himself. It had worked. The move. The run. The timing.
It had worked exactly the way he'd imagined it.
He watched as the senior players crowded briefly around Kylian, exchanging easy smiles and playful shoves before jogging back into position.
This is what it must feel like, he thought. To play football like this every day. To create chances for players who could finish them.
He wondered if every goal felt this satisfying. He wondered if—
"Do that again."
The voice came quietly enough that Michael almost missed it. He turned.
Kylian was standing beside him. Close enough that Michael hadn't even heard him walk over.
The celebration had already moved on without him.
There was no dramatic expression on his face, no wide grin or exaggerated excitement. If anything, he looked remarkably calm, as though asking someone to repeat an exercise they'd done well in training.
His eyes met Michael's for only a moment. Then, with the smallest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, he repeated,
"Do that again."
Before Michael could think of an answer—before he could even decide whether one was expected—Kylian turned and jogged back toward the centre circle, calling for the ball as though nothing unusual had happened.
Michael remained where he was. The afternoon breeze stirred gently across the pitch, cooling the sweat at the back of his neck.
Somewhere in the distance, Coach Laurent was already setting up the next drill. His teammates were moving. The game was moving. Everything was moving.
Everything except Michael.
He watched the number 7 disappear into the crowd of blue shirts.
Then, slowly, a smile spread across his own face.
For reasons he couldn't yet explain—he had a feeling he would remember those three words for a very long time.
The remainder of training passed in a blur.
Coach Laurent altered the drills twice more, occasionally stopping play to correct a player's positioning or praise a sequence of quick passes, but for Michael, everything after the goal felt strangely distant, as though someone had draped a thin layer of fog over the afternoon. He still played. He still ran. He still made himself available whenever the ball found its way toward him.
But every now and then, without meaning to, his mind wandered back to the same three words.
Do that again.
Nothing more. No introduction. No compliment. No congratulations. Just three ordinary words, spoken so casually that they almost disappeared beneath the noise of training.
And yet, somehow, they echoed louder than anything else he had heard all day.
When Coach Laurent finally blew three long blasts on his whistle to signal the end of the session, the atmosphere changed almost instantly.
The intensity dissolved into easy conversation.
Someone groaned dramatically as they stretched sore legs. Two defenders immediately began arguing over whether the goalkeeper should have come off his line earlier. A group near the benches laughed at a joke Michael couldn't hear, their voices carrying across the pitch with the lightness that always followed a good training session.
The older boys gathered naturally, as though pulled together by an invisible thread formed over years of shared afternoons. Someone slung an arm around Kylian's shoulders. Another tossed him a towel.
The conversation drifted effortlessly from football to homework to whatever plans they had for the evening.
Michael watched them for only a second before lowering his gaze. It wasn't envy. Not really.
It simply looked...nice. He had always imagined senior football would feel different. More serious. More intimidating.
Instead, it looked like friendship.
Coach Bernard clapped him gently on the shoulder as he walked past.
"Good session."
Michael looked up, surprised.
"You think so?"
"I wouldn't have brought you over if I didn't." The older man gave him one of his familiar half-smiles. "Don't let it get to your head."
"I won't."
"I know." Coach Bernard continued toward the equipment shed without another word, trusting Michael to follow eventually.
He didn't. Not yet. Instead, Michael remained where he was, watching the pitch slowly empty around him.
One by one, players disappeared toward the changing rooms, their laughter fading with every step until all that remained was the soft rustle of wind moving through the trees beyond the school fence.
Only then did he notice it. A lone football rested quietly inside the back of the net.
The same net. The same goal. His goal.
Or rather—Kylian's goal.
Michael walked toward it slowly. The grass, churned by nearly two hours of training, had begun to flatten beneath the evening light. Long shadows stretched across the pitch, turning the white goalposts golden where the sun caught them.
The ball lay tangled lightly against the netting, perfectly still. He reached through the mesh and lifted it free.
For a moment, he simply held it. Turning it once between both hands. He could still remember exactly how it had felt leaving his foot. The weight. The angle. The faint curve he'd tried to put on it.
He smiled before he realised he was doing it. It had worked. Not because it had been spectacular. Not because everyone had seen it. Because, for one impossibly brief moment, the football in his imagination had become the football on the pitch.
That was the feeling he chased every morning before sunrise.
"You planning on taking that home?"
Michael startled so violently that he nearly dropped the ball. He spun around.
Kylian stood a few metres away, one hand shoved casually into the pocket of his training jacket, his water bottle dangling loosely from the other. His forehead still damp with sweat, a few droplets trailing down the sides that he wipes easily, and despite the long training session, he looked as though he had enough energy to play another ninety minutes if someone asked him to.
Michael blinked. "I..." Heat crept immediately into his face. "No."
Kylian glanced toward the ball still tucked awkwardly beneath Michael's arm. "I was kidding."
"Oh." Michael pulled the ball closer, scratching his neck sheepishly. "...Sorry."
A grin tugged briefly at the corner of Kylian's mouth. "It's alright."
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. It was simply unfamiliar.
Michael couldn't remember the last time he had stood alone with someone he had spent two years quietly admiring from a distance. He suddenly became very interested in the grass beneath his boots.
"I should..." he began, lifting the ball slightly. "I should probably put this away."
Kylian nodded once. Together, they started walking toward the equipment shed. Neither of them hurried.
The evening air had cooled noticeably since training began, carrying with it the faint scent of freshly watered flowerbeds from somewhere near the main school building. The campus had begun settling into that peaceful hour between the end of clubs and the arrival of the night staff, when the corridors emptied and the whole school seemed to exhale.
Halfway across the pitch, Michael slowed. A handful of orange cones still marked one corner of the training grid, forgotten in the rush to leave.
Without thinking, he stepped away from the path and crouched to gather them, stacking each cone neatly inside the next with the absent-minded ease of someone who had done it countless times before.
Behind him, he heard Kylian stop walking.
"You always do this?"
Michael glanced up, still holding the stack of cones. "Do what?"
"This." Kylian nodded toward the equipment scattered across the pitch.
Michael looked around as though only just noticing the forgotten bibs and footballs for the first time. "Oh." He nodded slowly, picking up another cone. "I guess. Someone has to."
For a brief moment, Kylian simply watched him. There was no judgment in his expression. Only a quiet sort of curiosity, as though this explained something he'd been wondering about.
Then, without another word, he bent down and picked up the remaining cones.
Michael frowned. "What are you doing?"
"Helping."
"You don't have to."
"Probably not." Kylian straightened, balancing the stack beneath one arm before glancing sideways at Michael. "But neither do you."
Michael stared at him for a moment before looking back down at the cones in his own hands.
There wasn't really an argument to make.
So they continued walking side by side toward the equipment shed, one carrying footballs, the other carrying cones, the quiet between them filled only by the gentle scrape of boots across the grass.
The equipment shed stood at the far edge of the training ground, tucked between a row of tall maple trees and the school's athletics track. Its paint had long since begun to peel beneath years of sun and rain, the faded green door hanging slightly crooked on rusted hinges that complained every time someone opened it.
Michael nudged it open with his shoulder. The familiar scent of old leather, damp grass and dust greeted him immediately. He had always liked this place.
It felt strangely comforting, untouched by the noise that usually filled the rest of the campus.
He crouched and lowered the footballs into the large wire basket one by one instead of dropping them in all at once. The last ball rocked gently against the others before settling into place. Beside him, Kylian leaned the stack of orange cones neatly against the wall, making sure they stood straight instead of toppling over onto the floor.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Michael reached for the pile of blue training bibs abandoned on a nearby bench. They had been crumpled into an untidy heap, still damp with sweat from the afternoon's session. Without thinking, he shook each one loose before folding them carefully into neat squares.
He had almost finished when he became aware of Kylian watching him.
Michael looked up, suddenly a bit self conscious. "What?"
Kylian's gaze flickered briefly toward the folded bibs before returning to him. "You always keep things that tidy?"
Michael blinked, glancing down at the pile in his hands as though seeing it for the first time. "I suppose." A faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. "My dad says if you're borrowing something, you should leave it better than you found it."
Kylian nodded slowly. "Sounds like something my mum would say."
The corners of Michael's smile lifted just a little more. They stepped back outside together. The evening had settled quietly over the school.
The pitch, so loud only half an hour earlier, had emptied almost completely. The white goalposts stood motionless against a sky beginning to soften into shades of gold and pale blue, while the breeze carried the distant sounds of traffic from beyond the school gates.
Neither of them seemed in any hurry to leave. They stood for a while looking across the field. The silence between them felt different now, more comfortable and simple.
Kylian was the first to break it. "Midfielder?"
Michael turned. "Yeah?"
The edges of Kylian’s lips twitch slightly, making Michael’s ears turn red. The elder turns to him, tilting his head, "You've always played there?"
Michael's eyes drifted instinctively toward the centre of the pitch. "Always." A certain memory pokes him then, making him giggle slightly. "My dad tried making me a striker once."
Kylian raised an eyebrow. "How long did that last?"
Michael thought about it. "About twenty minutes?"
Kylian laughed. It wasn't loud, but it was enough to make Michael laugh too.
"I think he realised pretty quickly that I spent more time trying to pass the ball than shoot it."
"I can believe that."
The conversation settled again before Michael found the courage to ask his own question.
"What about you?"
Kylian looked over, giving him full attention. It made something inside Michael jump, maybe his liver or his stomach—maybe his heart.
He looked away from Kylian’s face and continued, "You've always been a striker?"
"Mostly." From his peripheries, he watched Kylian shrug. "I hated defending."
Michael smiled at that. He understands. "I think everyone hates defending."
Kylian hums, "Not defenders."
And it made Michael laugh again, this time a little louder than before. The sound surprised even him. For the first time all afternoon, speaking to Kylian no longer felt impossible. It simply felt... easy.
Another quiet settled between them. The kind that no longer demanded to be filled.
Kylian shifted the strap of his bag higher onto his shoulder, his eyes wandering absentmindedly across the pitch before settling somewhere near the centre circle. "You really do come here early."
Michael frowned slightly. "What?"
"I've seen you." The words were spoken with such simplicity that they hardly seemed important.
Michael looked at him, a bit shocked. Kylian noticed him?
"You have?"
The elder nodded, biting the inside of his cheek. "Most mornings, I see you in the corner doing passes to the wall."
Burning, Michael stared at the empty field stretching out before them. "I thought I was the only one."
"I thought you wanted to be."
For reasons he couldn't explain, those six words settled somewhere deep inside Michael. He had never considered that someone might have mistaken his solitude for preference.
After a long moment, he shook his head. "I don't." He searched for the right words. "I just..." His eyes followed the evening wind as it rippled gently through the grass. "I like the quiet."
Kylian looked back across the pitch. "Me too."
The answer was so immediate that it almost made Michael smile before he realised he was smiling.
Kylian adjusted his bag once more and took a step backwards toward the path leading to the locker rooms. "I'm usually here around six." He paused, before continuing, "If you don't mind company."
Michael forgot, for the briefest moment, how to answer. His heart gave one sharp, unexpected thud against his ribs. "I don't."
Kylian nodded once and then, he smiled. "Good." Before tuning around, and walking toward the school building, lifting one hand in an absent-minded wave without looking back.
Michael remained where he was. The evening breeze drifted lazily across the empty field. Tomorrow morning would look exactly the same. The grass would still be heavy with dew. The birds would still wake before the sun. The football would still leave his foot the way it always had.
Only one thing would be different.
For the first time in two years—he wouldn't be passing to the wall.