This World Is a Little Different

When the cheerful music started playing, cheers erupted in the classroom. "School's out!"

Some students stretched with their arms raised high from their seats, while others eagerly grabbed their backpacks and rushed for the classroom door. Still others remained at their desks, writing furiously as if they did not want their studies to end.

Hu Lai sat at his desk without moving.

Song Fatty beside him had already yanked out his backpack and hugged it to his chest. As he got up, he glanced curiously at Hu Lai and saw that he was still spacing out.

His deskmate had been dazed through the entire self-study period.

Or rather, his deskmate had been absent-minded all day.

During class, he had been called on by the teacher after zoning out. Naturally, he could not answer the question, so he had stood beside the podium under the gaze of the entire class, becoming the target of everyone's laughter once again...

Yet Song Fatty noticed that even while being punished beside the podium, Hu Lai had not seemed to take it to heart at all. He still looked utterly lost, completely indifferent to the teasing looks around him.

So Song Fatty, who had already stood up, sat back down. A fierce struggle seemed to be raging within him—his constantly changing expression made it clear just how intense it was.

Hu Lai had spent the entire day secretly observing and had discovered a fact he had no choice but to accept—this world was probably not the world he knew. Or rather, it was a little different from the world he knew...

The history was the same, the geography was the same, the politics were the same... Everything was the same, except football.

For example, the head of state of the United Kingdom was still Queen Elizabeth II, and the capital was still London. But London's powerhouse clubs were no longer called Arsenal or Chelsea. And it was not as simple as merely changing their names while keeping everything else the same.

At first, Hu Lai tried to match things here with what he knew from the football world, only to find that nothing lined up. It was not as simple as Chelsea and Arsenal having different names. Everything was completely different—the clubs' histories, strengths, traditions, current situations... everything.

The clubs were different, so naturally the players were different too.

That was why Luo Kai and Song Fatty had no idea who Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were. In this world, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo simply did not exist.

Just like the clubs, it was not merely a matter of different names. If he searched using Messi's life story and technical characteristics, he would find nothing—there was no one in this world like the Messi Hu Lai knew.

At first, Hu Lai had thought the "Caesar" Luo Kai and the others mentioned was Cristiano Ronaldo. But after discreetly asking around about Caesar, Hu Lai realized he was not that "CR7" either.

Caesar had a habit of turning up his collar, much like the former Manchester United legendary star Eric Cantona Hu Lai knew. But Caesar was not Cantona under another name. Apart from that habit, they had nothing in common.

So this world had no Messi, no Cristiano Ronaldo, no Diego Maradona, no Pelé... It all felt very unfamiliar to Hu Lai.

Yet some things felt very familiar. For instance, the World Cup was still called the World Cup. It remained the greatest national-team football tournament in the world, with enormous influence, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Olympic Games as a single-sport event. The organization governing global football was still called FIFA, with the same English abbreviation. And Chinese football was still weak in this world...

It was precisely this mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity that left Hu Lai feeling torn apart, as though none of this was real. He did not know whether he was dreaming and had yet to wake up. He secretly pinched himself several times, sometimes lightly and sometimes hard. But no matter how much it hurt, the pain never woke him up to find himself still lying in bed, drenched in cold sweat...

Then he fell into another confusion—had he traveled into another world, or had those clubs and players traveled into his?

If it was the latter, could those players accept it? Wouldn't they all go crazy?

If it was the former, then would he be the one going crazy?

After a long and fierce internal struggle, Song Fatty finally seemed to have made up his mind. He pulled ten yuan from his school uniform pocket and slapped it onto Hu Lai's desk.

Hu Lai lowered his head and stared at the ten yuan without saying anything. His mind had not caught up yet, and he had no idea what was happening.

"Isn't it just fifty yuan? Do you have to act like this? You've been like a soulless ghost all day... Take it. Consider it your brother sponsoring you!"

Hu Lai turned to glance at Song Fatty. "Really?"

"You think I'm like you? You only send one yuan when you give out red packets..."

Before Song Fatty could finish, Hu Lai snatched up the ten yuan, clenched it in his hand, and stuffed it into his pocket.

Then he reached out and patted Song Fatty on the shoulder, saying solemnly, "Song Jiajia, I knew you were my true friend. Even though you betrayed me this morning, I forgive you!"

Hu Lai's deskmate, Song Fatty, who had finally been given a name after appearing for so long, froze for a moment before snapping, "What? You still remember what happened this morning? Why are you so petty? Give me my money back! I must have been blind to pity you!"

He reached out to grab Hu Lai, but before he could, Hu Lai had already leaped up from his seat with his backpack and dashed toward the classroom door.

How could Song Jiajia, round as a ball, possibly catch skinny-as-a-monkey Hu Lai?

He clutched his head in both hands, collapsed onto the desk, and wailed, "My allowance! Damn you, Hu Lai! If I ever pity you again, I'm a dog!"

Hu Lai was pedaling his battered bicycle with all his might, weaving through traffic.

The wind blew head-on and poured into his unzipped school uniform. His clothes billowed behind him like sails filled with wind.

His backpack sat in the basket at the front of the bike, its straps dangling down. Whenever they brushed against the wheel, they fluttered backward, making it look as though they might get tangled in the spokes at any moment.

But Hu Lai did not care at all. He slammed on the brakes at a hidden intersection ahead, nearly throwing himself off the bike, then turned into a narrow alley on the right.

High walls stood on both sides of the alley. It was so narrow that only people could pass through; vehicles could not. After riding another dozen meters or so through the alley, Hu Lai suddenly found the view opening up before him.

A fairly large square appeared before him.

Calling it a square was generous. It was really just a vacant lot. In one corner lay a pile of discarded fitness equipment—the sort of free equipment installed in community exercise areas. It was now stacked haphazardly together, covered in rust.

Weeds sprouted eagerly from every crack, nearly swallowing the scrap metal whole.

A thick ring of weeds also surrounded the edge of the clearing, leaving only a circle of bare earth visible in the middle.

Aside from the entrance, the vacant lot was bordered on three sides by raised platforms made of bluish stone. Several old brick-and-tile houses stood atop them. Parts of their gray-blue brick walls had worn away, revealing red bricks beneath, and their tiled eaves were uneven. It was obvious that these houses had been around for many years.

Hu Lai knew no one lived in them, because he had been playing football here for a month. Whenever the ball struck the walls with loud thuds, no one ever poked their head out from the tightly shut windows to curse him for making noise.

Hu Lai had stumbled upon this place a month ago. At the time, the entire clearing had been almost completely covered by weeds, leaving nowhere to set foot.

He had spent two half-hours after school pulling weeds from part of the clearing, creating a patch of ground where he could play football.

And so, this became the place for his secret training.

Three days a week, his father worked the night shift. He left for work early in the afternoon and did not return until the middle of the night. Even if Hu Lai came home half an hour late, he did not need to worry about his father discovering that he had gone to play football. As for his mother, she knew what he was doing but did not stop him.

So he came here to train, fantasizing that one day he would change his classmates' old impression of him and leave them all dumbfounded on the football pitch.

Whenever he imagined that day truly arriving—him proudly accepting his classmates' admiring gazes, leaving people like Li Zhiqun too shocked to speak, and making even Luo Kai bow before him—he felt unbelievably thrilled.

When the time came, he would say to them in a cool, indifferent tone, "Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river. Never mock a poor young man!"

Hu Lai tossed his bicycle into the weeds at the side and ran toward his destination. Since his father forbade anything related to football from appearing in the house, Hu Lai could not bring home the football he had secretly bought with his allowance. He could only hide it in the grass after every training session.

Afraid it might be stolen, Hu Lai hid his football in a different place every time.

Now, he rushed straight toward the spot where he had hidden it last time.

He wanted to confirm something—was this world unfamiliar to him, or was it familiar?

Just like the spinning top in the movie Inception—would it keep spinning forever, or would it eventually stop? Would the football he had hidden still be in the same place?

Hu Lai ran toward a dense clump of weeds on the right side of the clearing.

From the outside, it looked no different from the surrounding grass.

He rushed over and parted the grass to either side. Like discovering a hidden bird's nest in the weeds, he found a round object lying quietly within.

It was the football he had hidden after his last training session.

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