The Wager

Morning. The vast Skate Park stood empty, not a soul in sight.

Yang Yang, carrying his backpack, dribbled a ball with practiced ease as he entered from the residential area on the east side, following a winding path straight toward the park's center.

After two weeks of grueling, monotonous basic training, his dribbling had improved noticeably. Even while juggling the ball, it didn't slow his pace, and he soon reached the park's core.

As the name suggested, the Skate Park's core featured a skateboarding zone. Word had it that in the past, crowds of young skateboarders gathered there every night, lively and bustling. But after that skateboarding craze faded, the park gradually declined, leaving only the abandoned skate ramps as reminders of its heyday.

Yang Yang's dribbling drills could finally take a temporary break, but the next phase of training Old Bing had set required a wall.

Almere was a big city, but finding a wall suitable for training wasn't easy. In the end, Yang Yang barely managed to locate a long-abandoned, graffiti-covered wall in the Skate Park.

The Skate Park was well-positioned. To the north lay Yang Yang's school, Baken Academy. To the east, not far off, was the residential complex where his uncle Shen Ming lived. To the west was a river, and to the south stood the famous Dominican Garden Villa District, the most upscale residential area in Almere, completed just last year.

Beyond the villa district to the south was Almere Auto City, the largest and most professional auto sales and repair center in southern Amsterdam. Uncle Shen Ming's Chinese restaurant sat just north of Auto City.

The Skate Park was huge, and the skateboarding zone had been abandoned for so long that even early-morning joggers rarely passed by. So Yang Yang could train there without worrying about bothering anyone or being disturbed.

Setting down his backpack, Yang Yang dribbled the ball up to the wall and stopped about three meters away.

His first drill was right there: kick the ball at the wall, let it rebound, then kick it back. The requirement was one-touch contact every time, with each touch's force controlled to stay as consistent as possible.

Five hundred kicks with his right foot, then another five hundred with his left.

Amid the monotonous wall drills, Yang Yang listened to the thud-thud-thud of the ball, while his body felt the differences in each strike and the feedback from every rebound off the wall.

The system, Old Bing, kept correcting his movements in his ear and offering suggestions for improvement.

After the dribbling warm-up and a thousand passes, Yang Yang was panting and sweating, but this was just the beginning.

Stepping back to five meters from the wall, Yang Yang started his second drill: juggling against the wall.

Four spots—inside and top of both feet—five minutes each, totaling twenty minutes.

Though Yang Yang had been juggling for two weeks, juggling against a wall was a different beast. The wall's rebound force demanded much higher first-touch control.

Old Bing's standard remained the same: for each of the four spots, five hundred consecutive juggles counted as passing.

Despite being basic drills, Old Bing set the bar extremely high. Any tiny mistake, and he'd immediately call it out and demand correction. Plus, the drills themselves required intense focus and were no small effort. Before he knew it, Yang Yang was drenched in sweat.

Lost in his training, he didn't notice that, at some point, a middle-aged couple out for a morning jog had stopped on the park path not far behind him, watching him with curiosity.

"What's wrong?" Trus asked her boyfriend curiously.

"Nothing. Just curious." The middle-aged Dutchman replied flatly, his face serious.

Trus followed his gaze to the teenager juggling against the wall in the skate zone. "Is that strange?"

"Hmm?" The Dutchman clearly hadn't caught her meaning.

"I mean, is training against a wall strange?" Trus repeated.

"No, not at all. Lots of people do it. Bergkamp, for example."

Given her boyfriend's profession, Trus knew a fair bit about football. With friends and family all tied to the professional game, she could rattle off star names easily, especially Bergkamp, who was red-hot at Arsenal.

"Is he like Bergkamp?" Trus ventured.

Given her boyfriend's sharp eye, that had to be why he'd stopped to watch during their morning run.

But the Dutchman seemed taken aback.

"Him?" He shook his head. "He's nowhere near Bergkamp."

"That bad?"

"He's about ten meters from the wall now. That's the most common passing distance in professional leagues, something every pro must master—and it has to be one-touch."

"But look..." The Dutchman pointed at Yang Yang in the skate zone. "He's using two touches, and his first touch often isn't clean. That shows his fundamentals are terrible. If he trains like this alone, on the pitch he'd be even worse. At his current level, he couldn't even play in an amateur league."

Trus rolled her eyes skyward in exasperation. Her boyfriend was always strict and blunt about football, but his eye was razor-sharp. If he said so, it had to be true.

"He looks sixteen or seventeen. Is it really that serious?"

"This is basic stuff. You should have it down by twelve. Spain puts way more emphasis on this kind of training than we do, especially..."

He trailed off mid-sentence, his expression darkening as if hitting a sore spot.

Trus noticed.

Ever since that incident six months ago, he'd been sinking into despair. Though everyone knew it wasn't his fault, he still couldn't move on.

Seeing him cooped up at home wasn't working. A friend had bought a place in Almere's Dominican Garden Villa District, near the largest golf course around Amsterdam. Since he loved golf almost as much as football, Trus suggested he take a break in Almere, away from the noise and trouble.

But two days into their stay, her boyfriend had been drawn to this strange kid this morning.

"If you think he's so bad, why are you curious?" Trus quickly changed the subject.

The Dutchman's mouth twitched slightly. Staring at the sweat-soaked Yang Yang in the distance, he murmured as if to himself, "I'm curious how long he'll keep up this boring, pointless effort."

"How do you know it's pointless?"

"At his age, doing basic drills like this—tedious to the extreme and half the results for twice the effort. He might stick with it at first out of novelty, but when he realizes it's all futile, he'll back off. Isn't that pointless?"

Trus caught the deeper meaning in his words. He was talking about the kid, but wasn't it a mirror of his own situation?

"I don't think so. I believe you have to try something to know if it's useful or not."

"You're too naive."

"You're just too pessimistic. How about we make a bet?" Trus looked at her boyfriend with a provocative glint, thinking he needed something to occupy his mind and stop him from overthinking.

"A bet?" The middle-aged Dutchman pointed at Yang Yang in the skateboarding area. "Him?"

"Yeah. I think he can stick with it."

"No, Trus Opameer, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you'll lose. He won't last a month." The middle-aged Dutchman said with unwavering confidence.

He had seen and experienced too many people and situations like this.

"Then let's bet." Trus spread her hands.

"Fine, it's a deal."

Yang Yang had no idea he had become the subject of someone's bet. He just focused on his training.

After finishing his practice of passing against the wall from ten meters, he moved back to fifteen meters, then twenty meters, and finally worked on other drills, all of which were the most basic.

Given his current fundamentals, he had to start from the very basics.

As Old Bing put it, juggling was the most fundamental skill, but it wasn't the goal. As his feel for the ball gradually improved, juggling drills would decrease, replaced by other, more practically useful exercises.

Yang Yang fully agreed with this.

After finishing his morning training, Yang Yang slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed north, juggling the ball as he walked. He soon left the Skate Park.

His juggling seemed casual, but if you paid close attention, you'd notice he tried to keep the rhythm and force of each touch consistent, and his steps were as evenly spaced as possible. This gave him an almost rhythmic quality.

Baken Academy was a private school in Almere that offered education from kindergarten through high school.

Ever since Yang Yang started juggling his way into school two weeks ago, it had become a running joke at Baken Academy, but more often than not, it was met with mockery and ridicule.

Everyone knew Yang Yang was a good student, but his football skills were a complete mess.

John Rep's repeated attempts to persuade Yang Yang to quit had already spread like wildfire among his teammates, and everyone knew about it.

Yet Yang Yang didn't respond to any of it. He continued doing his own thing.

There was only one way to change how others saw him: pass the semester assessment and stay at Almere.

"This bastard really won't give up, will he?"

At the school gate, Henk Dimer watched Yang Yang juggle the ball into the campus, a flash of anger in his eyes.

Over the past two weeks of training, Yang Yang's performance in the team had been steadily improving, especially in the circle-keep-away game. Although he was still the worst performer on the team, it was no longer as easy for others to toy with him as before.

But as he improved, Henk Dimer started to suffer. He found himself frequently stuck in the middle of the circle trying to win the ball, all because of Yang Yang. There were even a few times Dimer wanted to just punch him.

"I heard he's been doing well in training lately. The coaching staff is thinking of putting him on the roster for Saturday's match against Omnibus," said a nearby Almere Youth Training Player.

"What?" Henk Dimer was taken aback.

"Nick's injured. I heard the coach wanted him to play a defensive position."

Almere had been founded less than seven years ago, and both its youth academy and First Team were still far from complete. So the youth team partnered with the private school Baken Academy, and players in the sixteen and seventeen age groups represented Baken Academy in the Saturday inter-school league in southern Amsterdam.

Omnibus was also a team from Almere, partnering with a local fourth-division amateur club for youth development. They were no pushovers—a tough nut to crack.

Henk Dimer narrowed his eyes. He was the captain of the youth team and also the captain of the school team, but he hadn't received any notice yet.

"Then he should start praying for himself."

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