Opportunity

Du An stared blankly at the letter drawn with the club crest, lost in thought. Sarah emerged carrying two boxes of commemorative badges. She glanced at the envelope in his hand, entirely unsurprised. "We get a lot of letters like that. Some are written by kids, some by the elderly. No address, no stamp. The postmen have no idea where to deliver them, so they just bring them all to us. Everyone knows the HJC shop will keep them." She set the boxes on a shelf, then walked over and deftly began sorting through the mail. Pulling one out at random, she handed it to Du An. "Have a look at this one." Du An took it. The envelope had already been opened. The handwriting was neat and careful, though clearly written by someone quite young. [Dear Grandma, Grandad says you went to heaven. I don't understand why just going to watch a football match meant you had to go somewhere as far away as heaven. Last month the school had a match. I got to play, and I even scored a goal. I put the ball I scored with in my cupboard and didn't want to kick it anymore. If you can come back, I want to play for you. Your grandson, Tommy] Simple words, without complex grammar or fancy phrasing. The emotion even seemed understated. Yet Du An was deeply moved. Sarah shrugged. "That's football. It carries all of our longing." Du An looked down and turned the envelope over. There was no stamp, no postcode, and no specific address—only a single line written in the same hand: *To my grandma, she is in heaven.* The boy named Tommy hadn't known where to send the letter. He only knew there was a little shop in Liverpool with a red postbox everyone knew about. Dropping a letter into it was like tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean, hoping that one day it would drift all the way to heaven and find its way into his grandma's hands. Du An said nothing. He carefully folded the paper, slipped it back into the envelope, and gently laid it atop the stack of unaddressed letters. Neither of them spoke again. In silence, they sorted the remaining letters, bundled them by category with rubber bands, and stacked them neatly in the storage boxes behind the counter. "All right, you can head off," Sarah said, clapping the dust from her hands with a smile. "Thanks for your help today." Du An picked up his backpack, reached the doorway, and paused. He turned back to Sarah. "That boy, Tommy. He scored." The words came out of nowhere. Yet Sarah understood. She nodded and said softly, "Yes, he did." The brass bell chimed softly. The boy's silhouette disappeared down the street. Sarah looked at the stack of letters addressed to heaven and let out a gentle sigh. *** Back home that evening. As the two brothers sat at the dining table eating dinner, Du An suddenly spoke up. "Did you know some letters can be sent straight to heaven?" Ethan froze mid-bite into his toast, looked up, and shook his head blankly. Du An slowly told his brother about Tommy's letter—about how the little boy had tucked the ball away in a cupboard, waiting to show his grandma. When he finished, he added softly, "He did it." Ethan fell silent for a long time, pushing the baked beans around his plate without saying a word. He thought of their grandmother lying in the hospital, and of the grandfather, uncles, and older brother he had never even met. His nose prickled with tears. *** The days turned quickly. A new week began, and Du An stuck to his set routine: morning training, secondary school classes in the afternoon, and staying late at the academy base in the evening for extra training. Prolonged, rigorous training made his touch on the ball increasingly soft and natural. Whether controlling, receiving, or passing, there was no sign whatsoever that he had only recently taken up the sport. It prompted Connor to marvel again and again, "Those stars on TV feel a world away, but you're the first person who made me truly understand what a genius is. If you hadn't started training so late, I'd bet you could already be training with the first team." At the same time, Du An's defensive positioning grew sounder by the day. His command on the pitch became more natural, barking out clear instructions tailored to the flow of play. Most of the time, with him orchestrating the midfield, the rhythm became remarkably fluid in both attack and defense. Meanwhile, his blue bead's energy progress was nearing one-fifteenth. But during tactical theory classes, Du An had tried a few times without triggering that immersive state. That meant the bead hadn't gathered enough energy yet—he needed to keep training! He remembered that the last time he entered that state was when the progress reached roughly one-fifteenth, and it had drained almost immediately. Slow to gather, quick to burn. During every inter-squad scrimmage, Aslett stood on the touchline, his eyes lingering on Du An more and more often. The coach knew full well that in this U16 youth team, the player with the highest ceiling might well be this boy who had only taken up football two months ago. In just a few short weeks, he had grasped the essentials of the game, and his rate of improvement was astonishing. Two weeks flew by in the blink of an eye. November 24, Friday. After training wrapped up, Du An walked into Steve Heighway's office as usual to collect his weekly wage, already figuring out in his head what help Sarah would need at the shop tomorrow. Heighway handed him the envelope with his weekly wage, but instead of dismissing him as usual, he smiled and spoke up: "Don't head straight home today. I've already spoken with Kenny and the Andersons. You're staying in the dorms this weekend, and Kenny will be coming to Kirkby tomorrow as well." Du An looked up, his eyes filled with confusion. The smile on Heighway's lips broadened. "Because tomorrow, our U16s have an official match." Du An froze, his grip on the envelope tightening. He was no fool. He grasped the implication behind Heighway's words at once. Heighway wasn't merely mentioning the fixture in passing; he was telling Du An that he had a chance to make his official debut. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to bring it up to him. He pointed a finger at himself instinctively, caught between disbelief and nerves, terrified he might have misread the coach's meaning. What if he was just supposed to be a spectator? What if it was just to watch from the sidelines and soak up experience? "Do I... do I have a chance to play?" Seeing his mixture of hope and anxiety, Heighway burst into laughter. "Why wouldn't you? Everything you've shown over the past two months has been seen by the entire coaching staff. We're all itching for you to grow up faster so we can send you off to Melwood early, have you represent Liverpool at Anfield, and bring home trophy after trophy for us." Du An's face burned instantly, warmth creeping all the way to the tips of his ears. His mouth parted, but for several moments he could only force out a few strained words, his voice tight: "Can I... can I have Eth—" He was too nervous to finish the sentence. "I know what you mean," Heighway said with an easy wave of his hand. "I've already spoken with the Andersons. They'll bring Ethan along tomorrow. U16 academy fixtures are behind closed doors and closed to the general public, but families are allowed into the stands. Let your little brother get a good look at what his big brother looks like in his first official match."