Rain fell like nails on the skeletal remains of Haicheng Stadium. Lin Xia limped past the collapsed ticket booth, his prosthetic knee brace whining with each step. Seven years since his last match, yet the scent of wet grass still triggered phantom pains where the surgeons had hammered a titanium rod into his femur.
The "training session" unfolding in the quagmire stopped him cold.
Twenty-three men—no, ghosts in frayed jerseys—chased a waterlogged ball between tractor tires serving as goals. Their shouts dissolved into the thunder, boots sucking at mud thickened by construction debris from the half-demolished stadium. A teenage boy with a buzzcut hurled himself into a slide tackle, emerging with concrete rebar jutting from his thigh like some grotesque trophy.
"Welcome to Starfire FC," said a voice.
Lin turned to face a woman holding an umbrella patched with duct tape. Rain sluiced off her high-collared tracksuit, but couldn't wash away the crimson birthmark creeping up her neck like wildfire. Her eyes lingered on the scar bisecting his left eyebrow—the one that still ached when typhoons approached.
"Dr. Su Qing," she extended a hand gloved in medical tape, "we've been expecting our savior."
A roar split the air. Across the field, a hulking striker in a #9 jersey lay sprawled in the mud, empty Er Guo Tou liquor bottle glinting at his feet. The ball trembled in the skeletal branches of a persimmon tree thirty feet above, lodged like a forgotten Christmas ornament.
"Zhang Ye!" Su Qing hissed, "I told you—"
"*Qīng tiān dà lǎo yé*!" The striker lurched upright, his custom-made cleat—thick-soled to compensate for the missing Achilles tendon—sending a spray of mud across Lin's suit. "If the Football God wanted me sober, he shouldn't have made losing so *fascinating*."
Lin's fingers found the shard of leather in his pocket—a relic from the cursed 2015 World Cup qualifier. Same stitching pattern as the ball in that damn tree.
"Practice ends now," he said.
Laughter rippled through the team. The buzzcut boy coughed blood into his sleeve.
"With respect, *Coach*," Zhang sneered, "we've got a derby against Bluewave tomorrow. Unless your masterplan involves forfeiting..."
Lin yanked off his Armani tie. The numbers came unbidden—wind speed 14m/s, angle of elevation 38 degrees, rotational force required to dislodge a FIFA-standard ball from *Diospyros kaki* foliage. Seven years of obsessively studying physics to forget that night in Kunming.
"Give me your boots," he told Zhang.
The locker room exploded in jeers. Su Qing gripped his arm. "His right foot's a ruin. Even sober, he can't—"
Lin pulled on the liquor-stained cleats. The world tilted as his prosthetic knee adjusted. He strode to the penalty spot, mud oozing over handmade Oxfords. Forty-two eyes followed his every hitch-step.
The ball hung like a dare. Lin's ruined ligaments screamed.
But physics never lied.
His strike sent persimmons raining down in syrupy explosions. The ball tore through rotting netting, embedding itself in the stadium's crumbling concrete wall.
Silence, save for the buzzcut boy scribbling calculations on his cast.
"New rule," Lin tossed Zhang the ruined cleats, "we play *through* the pain, not around it."
As the team trudged toward barracks that doubled as dormitories, Su Qing fell into step beside him. "That kick...you've still got the demon in you."
He watched Zhang pocket the empty liquor bottle. "Demons are expensive. How much did they pay you to sabotage this team?"
Her laughter tasted like rain and secrets. "Oh Coach Lin, in this town, we don't burn bridges." She nodded at floodlights flickering to life across the river, where Haicheng FC's new 50,000-seat stadium gleamed like a spaceship. "We drown them."