The foundational work became routine. Every morning before dawn, Che's body moved through the protocol—squats, push-ups, burpees, then variations. His legs grew stronger. His core tightened. His conditioning improved to the point where the initial pain dulled into something almost familiar. The System tracked every repetition, every small improvement in tempo or form.
The afternoon ball work evolved. The plastic ball gave way to a real football—found at a recycling yard, worn but functional—that Mateo had somehow acquired. With it, Che's technical development accelerated. First Touch improved from C to C+, then to B-. His Vision expanded from B to B+. He played with the older boys three times a week now, and they'd started calling him when they organized matches with other neighborhoods.
His mother stopped asking where he was going. The tension in the house had calcified into something like acceptance—not approval, but the kind of resigned acknowledgment that came when a parent realized their child had already made a choice they couldn't unmake. She still worked ten-hour hospital shifts. She still checked his homework. She still talked about university like it was an inevitability. But she no longer forbade the football.
At school, Che moved through his classes in a state of divided attention. Mathematics still came easily—too easily, in a way that felt like wasted potential. Señora Márquez continued to encourage him to join the academic competition. He continued to nod and do nothing. His grades remained high enough that his mother couldn't complain, but not so high that they demanded anything beyond what he was already doing.
Months passed. Che turned thirteen in the spring, marking the anniversary of the collision, the System, the transformation. His body had changed. He was still small—smaller than his peers, actually—but the smallness had become defined. Lean muscle replaced the fragile-looking frame. His movements had precision now. The barrio noticed. The older boys started treating him differently, not as someone to be mentored but as someone approaching their level.
Then one morning, the System's voice carried different weight.
You have reached the limit of individual progression, Che Hernandez. Your foundational attributes are developed. Your technical skills are advanced. Your physical conditioning is appropriate.
What does that mean? Che thought, already knowing the answer.
It means you cannot improve further without competitive team play. Individual training can only develop mechanics. Team play develops understanding—reading defenders, timing runs, operating within a system. This is where you must go now.
Che sat in the pre-dawn darkness of his apartment, understanding the truth of it. He'd plateaued. The plastic ball had become insufficient. Playing casually with neighborhood kids, even good ones, wasn't enough anymore. He needed structure. He needed opposition that required tactical adaptation. He needed a team.
The problem was immediate and apparent: there was no local youth team in Barrio Pérez. His school—the primary school he still attended—had no football program. The semi-professional clubs that existed in Montevideo were hours away by bus, and his family had no money for travel or registration fees. The high school team was real and accessible, but it was a year away. He wouldn't be eligible until next year.
Unless he asked anyway.
The idea crystallized during a quiet afternoon, while he was watching his cousins play in the corner of the apartment. If he could convince the high school coach to let him train with the team now, he could skip this year. Could start immediately.
Three days later, after school had ended and he'd collected Sofia and Diego from preschool, after he'd walked them home and left them with his mother—who was off shift today and standing in the kitchen in a way that suggested she already knew something was about to happen—Che made his way to the high school.
It was across the city from Barrio Pérez, forty minutes by walking through neighborhoods that became progressively wealthier as you moved away from his own. The high school was a concrete structure, four stories, with a football pitch at the back that was infinitely better than the cancha he'd grown up playing on. Real grass, marked lines, actual goals. A few players were doing drills as Che arrived, moving through cone patterns, working on their first touch.
He found the coach in the office attached to the gymnasium—a man named Ramón, maybe fifty, with the build of someone who'd played seriously once and had let it go to comfortable softness. He was reviewing something on a laptop when Che knocked.
"I want to train with your team," Che said. No preamble. No explanation.
Ramón looked up, taking in the small figure standing in his doorway, the worn clothes, the bare feet pressed into soccer boots that were clearly not expensive.
"How old are you?" Ramón asked.
"Thirteen."
"Then you come back in a year," Ramón said, already turning back to his laptop. "We don't take players until high school."
"I'm ready now," Che said.
"Everyone's ready," Ramón said. "But we have development standards. Age is one of them."
Che stood there, understanding the closing door, when a voice came from down the hallway.
"Che?"
It was Matías. One of the older boys from the neighborhood—one of the ones who'd bullied him twice before they'd started playing together. Matías was seventeen now, had made it onto the high school team in his first year, and was developing into a decent midfielder.
"That's Che?" Ramón asked, recognizing the shift in the room's energy.
"He's good," Matías said, already moving into the office. "Like actually good. Not just for his age. For any age. I'm telling you, coach, let him train."
Ramón studied Che again, as if the recommendation had changed something about what he was seeing. "You play in the neighborhood?"
"Every day," Che said.
"Show me," Ramón said.
They moved to the pitch. Ramón gathered a few players from the drills—three of them, including one who played as a defender. He set up a simple scenario: Che against the three in a thirty-meter box, with limited time and possession.
Che had trained for this without knowing it. The System had prepared him for exactly this kind of evaluation. When the ball came to him, his first touch was clean, the kind of touch that killed the ball's momentum completely. He moved into space, and instead of trying to beat the defenders directly, he played them. A pass that drew one defender out of position, then immediately demanded it back. Movement that created angles. By the time fifteen minutes had passed, he'd created three clear chances for himself—one he'd buried in the corner of the goal.
When it ended, Ramón was nodding slowly.
"You're small," Ramón said.
"I know," Che said.
"You'll get fouled constantly at this level. Defenders will come at you harder."
"I'm ready," Che said.
"Alright," Ramón said. "You can train with us. But you need football boots. Proper ones. I won't put you on the pitch without them."
"I'll get them," Che said, even though he had no idea how.
The walk home took forty-five minutes. The neighborhoods changed gradually as he moved back toward Barrio Pérez, the buildings becoming more crowded, the streets becoming more familiar. By the time he reached his building, the sun was setting, and his mother was already home—waiting at the table, her expression suggesting that his absence and his arrival at a specific time had already been calculated.
"Where were you?" she asked.
"High school," Che said.
There was a silence. His uncle was on the couch, watching television. His cousins were in the bedroom. His grandmother was asleep.
"Why?" his mother asked.
"I want to join their football team. To train with them."
His mother's face shifted through several expressions—surprise, frustration, confusion, resignation. She stood up and moved to the kitchen, beginning to prepare dinner with movements that carried tension.
"You're thirteen," she said. "You're still in primary school."
"I'm ready," Che said. "The coach said I can train."
"And the homework? And your cousins? And—"
She stopped, realizing the futility of listing all the reasons why this was impossible.
"I'll manage everything," Che said. "I'll still do my homework. I'll still pick up Sofia and Diego."
She didn't respond. Just continued preparing dinner. When his uncle emerged from watching the television, he didn't say anything either. But there was an understanding in the room—this was happening whether or not anyone approved.
That night, after everyone had eaten and his cousins were in bed, Che approached his mother again.
"I need football boots," he said.
She was sitting at the table, counting money from her day's tips—small bills and coins that she arranged into piles. The piles were small. Smaller than usual.
"No," she said immediately.
"Boots are expensive," she continued, not looking at him. "We don't have money for that. And even if we did, I'm not spending it on football when you could be buying books for school, or medicine for your grandmother, or—"
She gestured vaguely at the apartment, at all the ways money was insufficient.
"I need them to play," Che said.
"Then you don't play," she said. The finality in her voice was absolute.
The television was playing in the living room—a rerun of an old match, the commentators excited about plays from years ago. The sound of it filled the apartment. His uncle emerged from the bedroom, already laughing at something.
"Che wants to be a footballer!" he called to the others, loud enough for it to be a joke. "Can you imagine? This one?" He gestured at Che's frame. "He's going to play professional? He looks like a sparrow."
His older cousins emerged, already picking up the thread of the mockery. Sofia and Diego, still partially asleep, watched from the bedroom doorway, confused.
"He doesn't even have boots," Matías said, and everyone laughed because it was such a perfect detail. A boy wanting to play football, and the very first obstacle was footwear. Such a fundamental thing, and so completely beyond reach.
"Maybe he can play barefoot," another cousin suggested. "Like the old days."
"He'd break something," someone else said. "Look at him. He'd snap like a branch."
Che stood there, listening to them, feeling the weight of their certainty. They weren't trying to be cruel, not really. They were just stating what seemed obvious to them—that someone as small, as fragile, from a background like this, shouldn't have ambitions that extended beyond the barrio. The television continued playing behind them, indifferent to any of it.
His mother didn't defend him. She just turned back to her money, counting coins, calculating how to make insufficient funds stretch across another week.
Che went to bed without saying anything else. In the darkness, he accessed the System, searching for some kind of answer.
This is the first real test, Che Hernandez. Not the physical work. Not the training. This is the moment where you understand that your desire must exceed the obstacles. The boots are a symbol. The money is a symbol. The family's doubt is a symbol. What will you do?
I don't know, Che thought. I don't have money. I can't make money. I can't ask my mother again.
Then you will find another path.