The alarm wasn't a sound. It was a presence that pulled Che from sleep like a fishhook in his chest. His eyes opened in the pre-dawn darkness of the apartment, when the only light was the faint suggestion of morning struggling against the window glass. Around him, everyone was still asleep. Diego's breathing was deep and rhythmic. Sofia was curled into the blanket they shared. The apartment was silent in the way it only was at this hour—before vendors set up, before traffic began, before the barrio woke up.
Training begins now, Che Hernandez.
I'm sleeping, Che thought back, already knowing it was futile.
Your potential does not sleep. Neither will you.
Che wanted to argue. Wanted to stay under the blanket, wanted to exist in the comfortable space between waking and dreaming. But there was something in the System's presence that didn't allow for negotiation. Not cruelly, but with absolute certainty. Like gravity. Like hunger. Like the knowledge that if he didn't get up now, this wouldn't happen.
He pulled himself out of bed, moving carefully to avoid waking Sofia. The apartment was cold at this hour. His bare feet on the concrete floor sent small shocks up his legs. He moved to the small kitchen area, where his mother had left the stove cleared and the counter space available.
Begin with the foundational sequence, the System instructed. Thirty bodyweight squats. Thirty push-ups. Thirty burpees. Three sets. Rest intervals: sixty seconds between sets.
Here? Che thought, looking around the small space.
Here.
Che positioned himself in the corner where he had the most room. He started squatting, his thighs burning almost immediately. The System had given him a rhythm—a tempo that felt steady but relentless. Down, up, down, up. His muscles were unused to this kind of systematic work. Yesterday's match had been different—that was movement with purpose, but not this. Not this deliberate, methodical punishment of his own body.
By the fifteenth squat, he was struggling. By the twentieth, his legs were shaking. The System offered no mercy, no encouragement, just the continuation of the count.
Twenty-five.
Twenty-eight.
Thirty.
He moved to push-ups, and his arms immediately registered their weakness. He'd done pushups before, casually, just a few when he was bored. Never thirty in a row. His face was nearly touching the concrete floor by the twentieth, his chest heaving, his shoulders screaming. But the System was relentless in its demand.
The burpees were the worst. Squat, drop to the floor, push-up, jump back to standing, reach high. Thirty times. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might break through his ribs. His breathing came in gasps that were threatening to wake someone.
He finished the first set at 5:47 in the morning, sweat running down his face despite the cool apartment air. The System gave him exactly sixty seconds rest. Che collapsed onto his haunches, trying to catch his breath, trying not to make any noise about how much his body hurt.
Set two begins.
I can't, Che thought.
You will.
And he did. Because there was something in the absolute certainty of the System's voice that made resistance seem impossible. Because somewhere beneath the pain, he understood that this was the cost of what he'd experienced yesterday. The feeling of knowing exactly where to be, exactly what to do. This was the price.
The second set was slower. His movements were sloppy, less controlled. His push-ups dropped lower, his squats didn't go as deep. But he finished. Again, sixty seconds rest. Again, the third set.
By the time he completed the final burpee of the third set, the apartment was beginning to lighten. The sky outside the window had moved from absolute black to deep gray. Che was soaked in sweat, his muscles trembling with a fatigue that felt like it had become part of his bones. He made his way to the small basin and washed quickly with cold water, then dressed in his school clothes, still damp with perspiration.
That was when his mother emerged from the bedroom.
She was moving in the automatic way of someone waking early to prepare for a shift. Her eyes were still half-closed. She moved toward the stove to start heating water for coffee, and that was when she saw him—fully dressed, hair wet, face flushed, clearly having been awake and active.
"¿Qué haces?" she asked, her voice rough with sleep. "Why are you up?"
Che's mind raced. The truth was impossible. The complete lie was equally impossible because his mother could read him like a book. He needed something in the middle, something rooted enough in truth that she wouldn't sense the deception.
"I wanted to prepare breakfast," he said. "And make the lunches before school. I thought I'd get a head start."
His mother studied him for a long moment. Her eyes were sharper now, moving from his face to his wet hair to his posture. She could see the exertion in him, the way his breathing hadn't quite returned to normal.
"Why are you sweating?" she asked.
"I was doing some exercises," Che admitted. "To be stronger. For football."
She made a small sound that was neither approval nor disapproval, just acknowledgment. There was a moment where she could have pushed further, could have demanded more information, could have forbidden it. Instead, she moved to the stove and began heating water.
"Football won't get you into university," she said, her voice the familiar combination of concern and resignation that had become the soundtrack to his life. "But I suppose being strong won't hurt your studies either."
She didn't tell him to stop. She just left the statement hanging, a small weight of expectation that he'd have to carry along with everything else.
Che prepared breakfast and packed lunches for himself and his cousins. His mother left for the hospital. By the time his cousins woke up and got ready for school, the morning had fully arrived, and Che's body was moving through the motions of routine even though he was running on a foundation of exhaustion that he'd never experienced before.
You have completed the first foundational session, the System told him as he sat at school, trying to focus on mathematics. Forty-eight hours until the next protocol. But now comes the ball work. You must complete five specific accomplishments before tonight.
What accomplishments? Che thought, in the moments between problems.
Fifteen consecutive first touches with precision. Twenty-one through-balls completed in match play. Seven successful dribbles past defensive pressure. Twelve accurate shots on target. Eight headers completed.
I need a ball, Che thought. I don't have one.
Then you must acquire one.
The school day passed in a blur. Che moved through classes and hallways, through lunch and the afternoon's instruction, all while carrying the knowledge that he had a task that extended beyond studying. When school ended and he'd collected Sofia and Diego and gotten them home, when he'd done his homework with the mechanical efficiency of someone who understood the problems but felt no connection to them, he left again.
The barrio had certain resources if you knew how to look for them. Every business had waste. Every restaurant discarded plastic. Every vendor accumulated materials they'd eventually discard. Che spent two hours collecting used plastic bags, plastic bottles, anything that was lightweight and could hold air. He found an old plastic shopping bag with a hole in the corner that still had structural integrity. Carefully, he gathered his collection of plastic pieces and began stuffing them into the bag, packing it tightly until it formed something roughly spherical.
It wasn't a football. It barely resembled one. It was lightweight to the point of being unreliable, and the weight distribution was completely uneven. But it was something that could be kicked, and it was all he had.
He took it to the cancha, where the afternoon was beginning to shift toward evening. The field was empty at first—just Che and his plastic ball, kicking it against the wall and tracking its erratic bounces. The first touch was nearly impossible. The ball moved in unexpected directions, barely responding to the pressure of his foot.
This is not ideal, the System observed. But this will work.
Che continued practicing alone until voices told him that others had arrived. It was the older boys—the same group that had bullied him multiple times, the same group he'd now beaten in a match. They arrived with the casual ownership of teenagers in their neighborhood, moving toward the field like they were reclaiming something that belonged to them.
When they saw Che, they stopped.
"That's a ball?" one of them asked, pointing at the plastic monstrosity.
"It's what I have," Che said.
The shaved-head boy looked at it for a moment, then shrugged. "Let's play."
They began a loose match, and immediately, Che understood how much the System had improved his capability. Even with the terrible ball, even with its unpredictable movement, he could read the space. He could position himself correctly. When one of the older boys passed to him thirty meters from goal, he controlled it with one touch, felt the System's guidance showing him the open man at his left, and immediately played a through-ball that cut the defense completely open.
"Damn," one of them said. "Where did you learn to see the field like that?"
Che didn't answer. He just continued playing.
The through-balls were coming naturally now. The System was showing him not just where the space was, but how to use it—how to read the timing of runs, how to weight a pass so it arrived at the exact moment the receiver was ready to accelerate. By the time he'd completed the requirement of twenty-one through-balls, the older boys weren't trying to dominate anymore. They were trying to keep up.
The dribbling sequences appeared in different moments. When he was pressed in tight space, the System showed him exactly how to shift the ball, exactly when to push it forward. Past one defender. Past another. The plastic ball was difficult, but the difficulty almost helped—it forced precision because there was no room for error.
When it came to shooting, Che found spaces just outside the box and fired. The shots were accurate, guided by a System that understood angles and velocity and the exact center point of the goal. By the evening's light, he'd completed all the required accomplishments.
"You're serious," the shaved-head boy said, genuinely impressed. "Like actually serious. Where are you even from?"
"Barrio Pérez," Che said.
"No, I mean—where did you come from? You weren't like this last week."
Che didn't have an answer that made sense. "I just decided to get better."
The boy nodded slowly, like he understood something in that statement that Che hadn't quite meant. "Well, you did. You're actually good." He paused. "Want to come play with us tomorrow? Properly. We're playing against some kids from Nuevo París. We could use someone with your vision."
Che felt something settle in his chest. This was acceptance. Not grudging tolerance. Not being chased away. Actual invitation.
"Yeah," Che said. "I'll be here."
By the time he made his way home, it was fully dark. The barrio had transformed into its evening state—the streets quieter now but not empty, vendors closing down, people heading home, the smell of cooking filling the narrow streets.
His mother was already in the apartment when he arrived. She was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, and her face immediately shifted into something sharp when she saw him.
"Where are the plastics?" she asked.
Che's stomach dropped. "I used them."
"Used them? For what?"
"For a ball," Che said. "I made a ball out of them."
His mother's face tightened. She'd been collecting those plastics for weeks, had been planning to take them to the recycling center, where they paid a small amount per kilo. It wasn't much, but it was money, and money was never something to waste in their household.
"You destroyed them?" she asked, her voice rising. "Che, do you understand what you did? That money was going to help with your grandmother's medication. That money was something we needed."
She stood up, and Che braced himself for the familiar motion of anger becoming physical. But this time, she didn't hit him. She just looked at him with something that was somehow worse—disappointment so complete it felt like grief.
"You stress me constantly," she said quietly. "Do you understand that? Football is not a path. It is a dream that will leave you with nothing. And now you're destroying actual resources for it."
She turned away from him and moved to the kitchen, her shoulders tight with tension. Che wanted to explain. Wanted to tell her that the plastics were becoming a ball, and the ball was becoming something more. But the words wouldn't come.
DAILY SESSION COMPLETE
Foundational Training: Complete
First Touch: C | Vision: B | Press Resistance: C+ | Stamina: B+ | Finishing: C+ | Defensive Work Rate: B+
Ball Work Accomplishments: Complete (5/5)
Overall Grade: B (76%) – XP Gained: +210
PROGRESSION: XP 390/500 to Level 2
NEW TRAIT UNLOCKED: Ball Control (C+)
Ball Control represents your ability to receive the ball cleanly and maintain possession under pressure. This is the foundation upon which all other skills are built. Mastery of this trait will open new possibilities.
INSIGHT: Your mother's resistance is not rejection. It is fear. Fear that you will fail. Fear that sacrifice will be wasted. You must prove her wrong not through words, but through results. This is your real test.
Che lay in the darkness, feeling the exhaustion in his muscles, feeling the weight of his mother's disappointment, but also feeling something else. Progress. Momentum. The taste of something larger beginning to form.