The Filipino Wonderkid: Road to the World Cup

Volume 2: The Regional Stage

Coach Ramirez gave them the day off before anyone had to ask.

"No training," he said at breakfast, not looking up from his own plate. "Rest. Eat. Whatever you want, as long as it doesn't involve a ball."

Rafael nearly dropped his spoon. "Say that again."

"No."

"Just once more."

"Eat your food."

Rafael ate his food, grinning the whole time.

---

The result from the other semifinal reached them before lunch, passed along the way most tournament news traveled secondhand, through someone's phone, in the middle of an unrelated conversation.

Leo scrolled through a group chat at the breakfast table and read it out loud without much ceremony. "Tuguegarao East beat Aparri. Three-one."

Miguel looked up. "Three?"

"Salcedo scored twice."

Nobody said anything for a second. Rafael broke the silence first.

"Of course he did."

Kai didn't say much. He filed the number away somewhere and kept eating.

---

Coach Ramirez didn't dwell on it either. He folded the printout Leo had pulled up and slid it into his bag like it was any other piece of paper.

"We'll talk tactics tomorrow," he said. "Today, you rest."

"Define rest," Rafael said.

"Not football."

"That's not a definition."

"It's the only one you're getting."

---

The billeting school felt different with nowhere to be. Some of the team wandered off toward the covered court to watch a volleyball match from the delegation's other sports. A few slept through most of the morning. Marco spent an hour teaching Tomas a card game neither of them fully understood the rules to, which mostly meant they invented new ones as they went.

Kai sat near the window of their room, legs stretched out, doing nothing in particular. It felt strange. Good-strange, but strange.

His phone buzzed.

Sofia: did you win???

Kai: yeah

Sofia: OBVIOUSLY. i told mom

Kai: told her what

Sofia: that you'd win. i'm always right

Kai smiled at the screen. Another message came before he could reply.

*Sofia: bring me something good this time. not small.*

Kai: you already have a bag full of stuff from SM City

*Sofia: that was before. this is different. this is FINALS pasalubong.*

He laughed under his breath and didn't answer that one yet.

---

Rafael found him twenty minutes later, flopping down on the floor beside him with the particular energy of someone who'd been bored for exactly as long as he could stand it.

"I'm going stir crazy."

"It's been three hours."

"Three very long hours."

Kai glanced at him. "You wanted a day off."

"I wanted a day off from training. Not a day off from existing." Rafael sat up. "Let's go somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Anywhere. Walk around. Find food that isn't from the cafeteria."

Kai considered it for exactly as long as it took to stand up.

---

On their way out, they passed Enzo sitting alone near the stairwell, gloves draped over one knee, still looking at them like he expected a ball to appear any second.

"You coming?" Rafael asked.

Enzo shook his head. "I'm resting."

"You're sitting on concrete."

"Resting on concrete."

Rafael shrugged and kept walking. Kai glanced back once. Enzo hadn't moved.

---

They ended up at a small carinderia two streets from the school, plastic chairs, a hand-written menu taped to the wall, a ceiling fan doing more noise than cooling. Miguel and Marco tagged along somewhere in the walk over, though nobody remembered exactly when that happened.

"This is better," Rafael announced, three bites into a plate of sisig.

"You say that about every meal," Miguel said.

"Because it's true every time."

Marco pointed his fork at him. "You said the cafeteria breakfast was good too."

"It was fine."

"You had two servings."

"I was hungry."

Kai laughed, not really following the argument anymore, just enjoying the sound of it.

The owner of the carinderia, an older woman with a towel over one shoulder, came by twice to refill their rice without being asked. The second time, she paused at their table a beat longer than necessary.

"You're the football boys," she said. It wasn't a question.

Rafael straightened immediately. "Yes, ma'am."

"Win on Saturday."

"We'll try, ma'am."

She gave him a look that suggested trying wasn't the answer she wanted, then walked off toward the kitchen without waiting for a better one.

Marco snorted. "She scares me more than Coach."

"Everyone scares you moree than Coach," Miguel said.

"That's not true."

"Name one thing that doesn't."

Marco thought about it for a genuinely long time and didn't come up with anything.

---

Belle showed up an hour in, camera absent for once, just a phone and a bag slung over one shoulder.

"No camera today?" Kai asked.

"Day off."

"You? A day off from photos?"

"It happens." She pulled up a chair. "Rarely."

Rafael slid his plate toward the middle of the table without asking. "Eat. You look like you skipped breakfast."

"I did skip breakfast."

"Then eat."

Belle ate.

Miguel watched the exchange with mild interest. "Does he do that to everyone?"

"Only people he likes," Kai said.

Rafael pointed his fork at him without looking up. "I heard that."

"You were supposed to."

---

The conversation drifted the way conversations do when nobody's in a hurry school, home, a movie half of them had seen and disagreed about, whether Tomas's made-up card game rules counted as cheating or just creative interpretation. Nobody mentioned the Finals directly. It sat there anyway, somewhere under the noise, the way it had all week.

Kai noticed it once, in a pause between topics. Everyone at the table quiet for half a second longer than the silence needed. Then Rafael said something about the fan being louder than the actual restaurant, and the moment passed.

---

Later, walking back, Belle fell into step beside Kai while the others trailed ahead, still arguing about the card game.

"You're quiet," she said.

"Thinking."

"About Salcedo."

Kai didn't ask how she knew. "A little."

"Three goals in group stage. Two more today." She said it plainly, no weight added to it. "That's a lot of goals."

"I know."

"You're not going to pretend it doesn't matter."

"No." Kai kicked a small stone off the sidewalk without really meaning to. "I'd rather know than not know."

Belle nodded, like that answer satisfied something. They walked the rest of the block without saying much else, which was fine. Some of it didn't need saying.

---

Back at the school, the afternoon dissolved into smaller things. A nap that turned into two hours instead of one. A video call with Sofia that mostly consisted of her narrating her day in exhausting detail while Maria occasionally corrected her version of events in the background.

"She's exaggerating," Maria said at one point.

"I am NOT."

"You are."

"Kuya, tell her I'm not exaggerating."

Kai looked at the screen. "You're a little exaggerating."

"TRAITOR."

Daniel's voice came from somewhere off-camera. "Ask him about the Final."

Maria angled the phone. Kai could see his father now, sitting at the edge of the frame, not quite looking at the camera directly.

"Tuguegarao East," Daniel said. "Tough one."

"Yeah."

"You ready?"

Kai thought about the number Leo had read out that morning. Five goals across the semifinal alone, two of them Salcedo's.

"Getting there," he said, which was the most honest answer he had.

Daniel nodded once, the way he did when he'd decided something was enough. "That's fine too."

---

That evening, Coach Ramirez called a short meeting not tactics, just logistics. Bus times. Kickoff. A reminder that the Final would draw the biggest crowd any of them had played in front of, home crowd included.

"Tomorrow we train," he said. "Light. Sharp. Not tired."

Rafael raised a hand. "So the day off is over."

"It was one day."

"Felt shorter than one day."

"That's because you spent half of it eating."

Rafael opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.

Leo added one more detail before dismissing them. "Kickoff's earlier than usual. Delegation wants everyone seated before the opening remarks."

"Opening remarks for a semifinal winner?" Miguel asked.

"It's the Final," Leo said, like that explained everything. It mostly did.

---

Kai lay on his mattress that night, the room quiet around him, most of the team already asleep or close to it. He thought about the number again. Five goals. Two players who'd never met, circling toward the same match without either one choosing it.

He didn't reach for his phone. He just lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling fan turning slow circles above him, and let the thought sit without trying to finish it.

Across the room, someone's phone buzzed once, then went quiet. Rafael muttered something in his sleep that nobody would ever be able to confirm the meaning of.

Tomorrow, training would start again. After that, one match left.

He closed his eyes before he'd decided he was ready to.

End of Chapter 16