Chapter 819: Diego’s Visit

The knock came at an unusual hour.

Hiro looked up from his notebook, surprised. Visiting hours had ended an hour ago, and the nurses usually left him alone after eight.

When the door opened, it became clear to him why no one had stopped the visitor in the corridor.

Diego stood in the doorway.

He wasn’t wearing the club tracksuit or carrying the tactical board that always seemed to be tucked under his arm. He had on a plain grey sweater, and without the badge on his chest, he looked older than Hiro remembered, with tired lines around his eyes.

"Coach."

"Hiro."

Diego crossed the room and lowered himself into the chair beside the bed.

Shun had sat there weeks ago, and so had Hiro’s mother, and Lee had perched on the edge of it as though he expected to be asked to leave.

Diego settled into it differently. He sat like a man who knew what it was to spend long hours in a room like this, watching the light change on the wall.

"You look well," Diego said.

"You’re lying."

"I am." A faint smile touched his mouth. "But it’s the polite thing to say."

Hiro set his notebook aside. "Why are you here?"

Diego took a moment before answering, and when he did, he kept his eyes on the blanket rather than on Hiro. "I’ve been where you are."

Hiro stared at him.

"Not exactly, but close enough. I was twenty-eight when I hurt my knee. The doctors told me I would recover but that I’d never be the same player again, and I didn’t believe them. I spent the next two years trying to prove them wrong." He let out a slow breath. "I wasted those two years."

Hiro said nothing.

"I kept chasing the player I used to be, the one who could run for ninety minutes and turn on a coin and leave defenders standing behind him. That player was gone, and the harder I tried to drag him back, the more I broke myself."

He paused, his gaze lowered. "I retired at thirty, and it wasn’t my body that made me stop. My mind couldn’t carry it anymore. I had spent so long trying to become who I used to be that I never asked who I could become instead."

The silence settled between them. Somewhere down the corridor, a trolley rattled past and faded.

"You’re not telling me this to make me feel better," Hiro said quietly.

"No." Diego shook his head. "I’m telling you because I can see the same stubbornness in you, the same refusal to let things change."

He nodded toward the notebook lying on the bed. "But you’re already further along than I was. You’re thinking about how to adapt, and that matters more than you know."

Hiro glanced down at the pages, at the crowded diagrams and the arrows that crossed each other and the circles he had gone over twice. "It’s only ideas," he said. "I don’t know if any of it will work."

"I didn’t either," Diego said. "But ideas are where it starts. Believing they can become real comes after that."

He rose from the chair and stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets.

"I didn’t come to coach you, Hiro, and I’m not here to tell you what to do. I came so you’d know you aren’t alone in this. Whatever kind of player you turn out to be after this, I intend to be there when you get there."

Hiro’s throat tightened. "Thank you, Coach."

Diego nodded and walked to the door, then stopped with his hand on the frame. "One more thing. The team misses you, and I don’t only mean the goals and assists. They miss having you around. When you come back, and you will, don’t come back as a ghost of the player you were. Come back as yourself."

He slipped out, and the door closed softly behind him.

For a long while, Hiro sat alone in the quiet room. Then he reached for his notebook, opened it to a clean page, and began to write again.

The next morning, Hiro woke up earlier than he ever did.

The sun was only beginning to rise over Madrid, and the sky outside his window had turned the soft gold and pink of a page held up to a lamp.

He had slept better than he had in weeks, without the nightmares that usually pulled him awake or the restless turning that left the sheets tangled around his legs. For once, his body felt like it had actually rested.

He reached out to the system.

[Passive Skill: Adaptive Recovery – Active.]

[Recovery rate: 31%. Mental clarity: High. Emotional stability: Elevated.]

[Progress: Accelerating.]

Thirty-one percent.

Only a few days ago the number had been twenty-six.

The conversation with Diego had changed something in him, and not just in his mind. The system seemed to respond to how he felt, to his clarity and his willingness to accept where he was, and last night he had let go of something he hadn’t realized he was gripping so tightly.

He picked up his notebook and turned through the pages. The diagrams were still messy and the ideas still raw, but they were on the page in front of him, and they belonged to him.

Then he reached for his phone and opened the video of Atlético’s last match, the 1-0 win over Chelsea.

He watched Lee Kang-In’s goal once, then again, then a third time.

He had watched it as a fan when it happened, jumping out of his hospital bed with a grin he couldn’t hold back, but now he watched it the way a student watches a lesson.

The buildup began with Barco pressing high.

Julian held the ball and waited for the right moment; Giuliano made his run, and Lee slipped into the pocket of space that had opened up. Hiro paused the video and sketched the sequence in his notebook, the pencil moving quickly across the page.

What if I had been there? Where would I have stood? Which pass would I have played?

He drew the arrows and circles, then added the lines that connected them, and as the shape of the move took form, he felt a question forming with it.

What if I don’t need to run? What if I only need to see?

His pencil stopped moving.