The Filipino Wonderkid: Road to the World Cup

Volume 3: The National Stage

The airport was louder than Kai expected.

Announcements overhead. Rolling suitcases everywhere. A line that didn't seem to move at all.

"This is a lot of people," Rafael said, gripping his bag like it might get stolen from three feet away.

"It's an airport."

"I know what it is. I'm observing."

Marco stood a step behind them, craning his neck at the departure board overhead, names of cities scrolling past that none of them had ever visited.

"There's so many places," he said.

"That's usually how airports work," Miguel said.

"I know. I'm just saying it out loud."

Nico, closest to the window, watched a plane take off in the distance, engines roaring loud enough to feel through the glass.

"That's us in an hour," he said.

Nobody responded to that. Nobody really wanted to think about it yet.

---

Coach Ramirez herded them toward check-in with the same flat efficiency he used on the field.

"Passports out. Boarding passes ready. Don't wander."

Rafael immediately wandered, distracted by a vending machine selling drinks he'd never seen before.

"Rafael."

"I'm looking, not touching."

"You're touching the machine."

"That's different."

---

Salcedo stood near the back of the group, quiet, watching the whole process with the same careful attention he brought to a football pitch.

"First time?" Kai asked, falling into step beside him.

"Second, actually. Went to Manila once for a training camp."

"Oh."

"Don't sound disappointed. I'm still nervous."

"I wasn't disappointed."

"You looked disappointed."

---

Check-in took longer than anyone wanted, mostly because half the team had never handled a boarding pass before and treated it like something fragile.

"Don't fold it," Leo said, for the fourth time.

"I didn't fold it."

"You're folding it right now."

Marco looked down at his hands, guilty.

Coach Ramirez counted heads again while they waited, muttering numbers under his breath the way he always did before a bus ride. This time the counting took longer, the group spread thinner across a larger space than any bus had ever allowed.

"Everyone's here," Leo confirmed eventually.

"I know. I was still counting."

"You said everyone's here before you finished counting."

"I trust my count."

---

Security came next. Belts off. Shoes off. Bags through the scanner.

Rafael set off the metal detector twice before anyone figured out it was his belt buckle, shaped like a small football, that his mother had bought him for exactly this trip.

"Take it off," the guard said, not unkindly.

"It's lucky."

"Take it off anyway."

Rafael took it off, muttering the whole time about lucky charms being discriminated against.

Salcedo passed through without incident, watching Rafael's ordeal with quiet amusement he mostly kept off his face.

"You're enjoying this," Rafael accused, gathering his things.

"A little."

"Traitor."

"I didn't even do anything."

"Exactly. You just watched."

---

By the time they reached the gate, most of the nervous energy had settled into something quieter. Rafael sat pressed against the window, watching planes taxi outside like they might do something unexpected.

"That one's huge," he said.

"They're all huge."

"That one's huger."

Miguel didn't correct the grammar. He looked a little pale himself, though he'd never admit it out loud.

---

The wait at the gate stretched long enough that Tomas pulled a deck of cards out of his bag, like he'd packed it for exactly this purpose. He dealt a round on the floor between four chairs, waving Nico and Jared over without needing to ask twice.

"Deal me in," Rafael said, abandoning the window immediately.

"You'll lose."

"I'll lose gracefully."

He did not lose gracefully. Within three hands he'd accused Jared of cheating, been proven wrong by Leo checking the discard pile, and folded so aggressively he nearly knocked over Marco's water bottle.

Salcedo watched from a few seats away, not quite part of the circle, until Tomas glanced up and nodded toward the empty spot on the floor.

"You play?"

"Not really."

"Perfect. Easiest money I'll make all week."

Salcedo sat. He lost the first hand almost immediately, badly enough that even Rafael laughed, and something about being laughed at alongside everyone else instead of separately from them seemed to loosen something in his shoulders that hadn't been loose before.

"Again," Salcedo said, and this time he won.

Rafael groaned. "Beginner's luck."

"Twice isn't beginner's luck."

"It's still early."

---

Boarding started an hour later, the gate agent calling rows in an order nobody fully understood. Coach Ramirez counted heads as they filed through, the same habit he'd carried through every bus ride all tournament.

"Eleven starters," he muttered. "Twelve with Salcedo. Everyone's here."

"You say that every time," Leo said.

"Because it's true every time."

---

Kai found his seat by the window, Rafael beside him, already gripping both armrests before the plane had even pushed back from the gate.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

"You're holding the armrests very tight."

"I'm securing them. In case."

"In case of what?"

"I don't know yet. I'll know when it happens."

---

The engines started, a low building roar that made several players around the cabin sit up straighter. Marco, a few rows back, gripped his own seat with both hands, eyes wide.

"Is it supposed to sound like that," he called forward.

"Probably," Kai called back, not entirely certain himself.

---

The plane began to move, taxiing slowly toward the runway, the ground crawling past the window at a pace that felt almost ordinary. Then it stopped. Waited. And without much warning, surged forward.

Rafael's grip on the armrest turned white-knuckled.

"Here we go," he whispered, to nobody, to himself.

The nose lifted. The ground fell away beneath them, buildings shrinking, roads turning into thin grey lines, the whole familiar shape of home flattening into something small enough to hold in one hand.

Rafael made a sound that wasn't quite a scream and wasn't quite a laugh.

"We're flying," he said, unnecessarily.

"That's generally how planes work."

"I know how planes work. I'm just saying it."

---

Kai pressed his forehead lightly against the window, watching Nueva Vizcaya disappear beneath the clouds, the mountains he'd grown up under reduced to soft green shapes and then nothing at all.

He thought about the old field behind the school. The rusted goalpost. The boots his father had carried through years before handing them over.

None of it looked like much from up here. It didn't need to. It was still where everything had started.

---

Somewhere across the aisle, Salcedo sat quietly, watching his own window with an expression Kai couldn't quite read.

"You okay?" Kai asked, leaning slightly across.

"Fine. Just thinking."

"About?"

Salcedo considered the question. "This is a strange way to end up on the same team as someone."

"Strange doesn't mean bad."

"Didn't say it was bad."

---

Right before the flight attendants made their rounds asking for phones to go into airplane mode, a last few messages came through. Kai's screen lit up twice in a row.

*Sofia: bring me something with a keychain again. non negotiable*

*Sofia: also don't die on the plane*

He typed back a short reply to both, something halfway reassuring, and put the phone away before he could think too hard about the second message.

Across the aisle, Salcedo was doing the same thing, thumb moving quickly over his screen before tucking it into his pocket. He didn't say who it was from. Kai didn't ask.

---

The flight leveled out eventually, the seatbelt sign clicking off, a low murmur of conversation filling the cabin as everyone slowly relaxed into the reality that they hadn't, in fact, fallen out of the sky.

Rafael finally released the armrests, flexing his fingers like they'd cramped.

"That was terrifying," he announced.

"You said we're flying like it was the best thing that ever happened to you."

"Both things can be true."

Miguel, a few rows up, turned around just enough to add his own verdict. "It's just a bus with wings."

"It is NOT just a bus with wings."

"It kind of is."

---

Belle, seated near the back with the rest of the media-adjacent staff, spent most of the flight with her camera pointed out the window, capturing the clouds from an angle she'd never had access to before.

She caught Kai's eye once through the gap in the seats and held up the camera slightly, a silent question.

He nodded. She took the shot.

Whatever it turned out to be, it would end up in the folder eventually, filed somewhere between the send-off and whatever waited for them in Davao.

---

Somewhere over the middle of the flight, Coach Ramirez made his way down the aisle with a folder tucked under one arm, stopping at every row to repeat the same short briefing.

"Billeting's a school gym," he told Kai and Rafael. "Cots, not beds. Don't complain about it."

"I wasn't going to complain."

"You were about to."

Rafael closed his mouth, which was answer enough.

By the time Coach reached the back of the plane, he'd said the same four sentences a dozen times, and Leo had started mouthing along with him from two rows back, just quietly enough that Coach pretended not to notice.

---

Hours passed in a blur of turbulence-free cruising, small snacks distributed by flight attendants who seemed endlessly patient with a plane full of overexcited teenagers, and the occasional announcement about descent times that nobody quite understood.

Then the seatbelt sign lit up again, and the plane began its slow, steady drop toward somewhere none of them had ever seen before.

Rafael gripped the armrests again, out of habit more than fear this time.

"Round two," he said.

"You survived round one."

"Statistically that doesn't guarantee round two."

Kai didn't have a response to that logic. He just looked out the window instead, watching land reappear beneath the clouds — different land, different color, different shape entirely from the mountains they'd left behind.

Davao was waiting.

End of Chapter 5