GEM TALENT

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The morning of the funeral arrived with a heavy, leaden sky that seemed to reflect the suffocating grief trapped inside William's chest, and as he stood before the mirror in his childhood bedroom, the sight of himself in a black suit felt like a cruel masquerade.

This was the very first time in his life that he had encountered a tragedy of this monumental scale, and because he was so young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, he felt completely paralyzed by the realization that he no longer had a single person to confide in.

The house, which used to be filled with the comforting sounds of his father's humming or the clatter of his cleaning equipment, was now a hollow shell of silence that made William's ears ring with a painful loneliness.

He looked at his hands and realized they were shaking, and a terrifying thought began to take root in his mind: his dream of becoming a legendary footballer like Zinedine Zidane—a dream his father had nurtured with every ounce of his strength—was surely coming to an end.

Without Mr. Gill acting as the backbone of his existence, the path toward greatness looked like a crumbling bridge over an infinite abyss, and he didn't know if he had the strength to take another step.

The burial ceremony was held at a quiet cemetery on the outskirts of town, and as the cars began to pull up to the gates, a large crowd of people emerged to show that William was not as alone as he felt in his heart.

Coach Lincoln was one of the first to arrive, his face etched with a somber respect that showed he wasn't just there as a manager, but as a man who truly cared for the boy he had coached into a hero.

He walked straight to William and pulled him into a firm, silent embrace that lasted for a long time, and even though no words were spoken, the message was clear: the team was his family for now.

Many of the Blackpool players were also there, standing in a line of black ties and somber coats, and their presence served as a powerful reminder that while the town was celebrating a promotion, they were mourning the man who had helped get them there. Every teammate, including Kyle who always oppose him, walked past him offered a firm handshake or a gentle pat on the shoulder, trying their best to transfer some of their own strength into his broken spirit.

A few staff members from Chelsea had also made the long journey from London to pay their respects, and their presence added a layer of professional gravity to the occasion that William hadn't expected.

It was a sign that the club still valued him and recognized the immense loss he had suffered, yet William could barely look them in the eye because he felt like a shadow of the confident player they had sent on loan.

Standing closest to him throughout the entire ordeal were his two dearest friends, Adams and Stone, who had been with him through the grueling years of the youth academy and knew exactly what Mr. Gill had sacrificed to keep William's boots clean and his belly full.

They stood on either side of him like twin pillars of resilience, holding his arms and doing their absolute best to be there for him whenever his knees began to buckle under the weight of the priest's words. They whispered quiet words of encouragement, reminding him of his strength, but William felt as though he were underwater and the world was moving in slow motion.

However, as William's eyes scanned the crowd of mourners, he felt a sharp, bitter sting of resentment when he realized that not a single member of his mother's family had shown up to honor his father's memory.

His mother's family, who were known to be wealthy and influential, had remained completely silent, showing no concern or sympathy toward the boy who shared their blood but chose to live a humble life.

He remembered the stories his father had told him about how they had cut ties with his mother the moment she chose to marry a "lowly cleaner" like Mr. Gill, and their absence today felt like a final, cold insult to the life his father had lived.

They had looked down on the name "Gill" for decades, treating it like a stain on their polished reputation, and the realization of their arrogance filled William with a sudden, burning fire that momentarily scorched away his sorrow.

He looked at the empty spaces where his relatives should have been and felt a cold resolve hardening in his chest, making him realize that he didn't need their approval to be someone important.

He stood by the open grave as the coffin was slowly lowered into the earth, and he felt a strange, powerful shift in his motivation that he hadn't felt during the promotion race or the cup matches.

He didn't just want to be a legend for the fame or the trophies anymore; he wanted to prove every single one of those arrogant relatives wrong by ensuring that the name "Gill" was respected and whispered with awe in the halls of history. He wanted to make sure that the world knew his father wasn't just a simple cleaner, but the man who had raised a giant of the game, and he felt a desperate need to reclaim his father's honor from the shadows of their judgment.

He looked down at the dark soil and made a silent vow that he would not let his father's struggle be in vain, even if it meant he had to carry the entire weight of his legacy on his own shoulders from this day forward. The pain was still there, but it was being forged into a weapon of determination that he intended to use on every pitch he stepped onto.

He stood there for a long time after the ceremony ended, watching the breeze pick up the petals of the flowers his teammates had laid on the grave, and his mind kept returning to the faces of the family members who never came.

He imagined them sitting in their big houses, looking down on the memory of the man who had died in a cleaning accident, and the thought made him clench his fists until his knuckles turned white. He wanted to achieve a level of success that would force them to acknowledge him, to make them regret the day they turned their backs on his mother and his father.

He wanted the name "Gill" to be printed on the back of millions of jerseys, to be shouted by commentators in every language, and to be engraved on the most prestigious trophies in the world so that his relatives could never escape his shadow.

"Can I actually achieve that through football?" he asked himself in the quietest corner of his mind as the first handful of dirt hit the wood of the casket with a hollow, final thud.

He wondered if scoring goals and winning matches was enough to rebuild a family's reputation or if he was simply chasing a dream that would never be satisfied. The pressure of the Premier League was already immense, but now he had added the burden of ancestral redemption to his load, and he feared that the beautiful game might not be a strong enough tool to fix the broken branches of his family tree.

Yet, as he looked at the determined faces of Lincoln and his teammates who were waiting for him by the cars, he realized that football was not the only weapon he had, and if he was going to make the name "Gill" legendary, he would have to decide if he wants to chase the ball to succeed or try to further more with the little money he has and be a great scientist.

He knew that the road ahead would be the most difficult one he had ever traveled, because the decision he will make will decide if he will be a great man, or later end up poor like his father.

The silence of the cemetery was no longer a silence of defeat, but a silence of preparation, and as he prepared to leave, he felt a strange confusion, this was when he started missing his father because his father help him to settle confusion.

The path was long, the climb was steep, and the doubters were many, but the fire inside him was burning brighter than ever before. He took one last look at the grave, whispered a final promise to his father, and turned his back on the quiet earth to face the noisy, challenging world that was waiting for him.

He left the cemetery, and went to meet his friends, Adams and Stones, where they were waiting. They boarded a taxi back to William apartment to be with him, so he won't be lonely, when they got home, Adam started a conversation that bring William together again