⚽ Football Reborn: The Manager from the Future
Chapter 35 – Seraph: The Player Without a Heart
Above the Earth, the observatory shifted in orbit.
No sound, no signals, no warnings.
Just silence.
Inside, the Playwright stood before a suspended pod—filled with a soft blue gel and lit from within by a pulsating neural glow.
In the center floated a figure.
Not male. Not female.
Not anything entirely human.
Its eyes were closed, but its mouth moved.
Mouthing something repeatedly:
"Win. Eliminate. Perfect."
The Playwright placed one palm on the glass.
"This time, there will be no songs," he whispered. "No rhythm. No music. Only control."
He turned to his console.
SERAPH V1.0
NEURAL FIELD: IMPRINTED
RHYTHM REJECTION PROTOCOL: ACTIVE
MIRRORCELL INVERSION: INSTALLED
COGNITIVE LOOPBACK: LOCKED
EMOTIONAL GATEWAYS: TERMINATED
He exhaled slowly.
"Release her."
A hiss escaped the chamber.
The blue gel evaporated instantly into vapor. The figure inside lowered its feet onto the cold floor, steam rising from its back.
It stood tall—eyes still closed.
Until suddenly…
They opened.
Colorless.
Motionless.
Emotionless.
The Playwright smiled.
"No hesitation. No mercy. No more anomalies."
Meanwhile, far away in southern Spain, Chuva was training with his boys.
Ronaldo Jr., Thiago Messi, and the young Brazilian midfielder nicknamed Falcãozinho were racing through a dribbling drill under floodlights.
Chuva called out, "Keep it loose! You're not carving data, you're painting pictures!"
The boys laughed. Thiago even tried a no-look backheel and fell on his face.
"Art can't be predicted!" Chuva shouted, grinning.
And yet, even as he coached, he felt something in the air.
Like pressure building in the world's rhythm.
As if a note had been removed from a song he didn't know was playing.
Later, he sat with Greg and Ethan in the makeshift analysis room beside the training pitch.
Ethan poured coffee. Greg was surrounded by screens.
"You've felt it too, haven't you?" Chuva asked.
Greg nodded grimly. "They've activated a new prototype."
"How do you know?"
Greg turned a monitor toward him. It showed a null field—a black zone on every satellite's scan.
"Because something is missing," Greg explained. "There's a hole in the data. A silence where there used to be noise."
"And that silence," Ethan added, "has a name."
Chuva leaned forward.
"Seraph."
Seraph was unlike Ravelin in every way.
Where Ravelin was forged from lost hope and hidden pain, Seraph had no past. No humanity.
She was a construct.
Her movements were pure code—no wasted steps, no reactive play.
She didn't adapt.
She overwrote.
And her mission was clear: erase Chuva's influence from the sport. Destroy unpredictability. Purge rhythm from the field.
To test her, the Syndicate dropped her into an elite U18 final in Tokyo—without warning.
No team roster.
No registered transfer.
Just a girl in silver boots and no name.
By the 30th minute, she had scored six goals.
By the 60th, she had stolen the ball 47 times.
By the 90th, no one was playing anymore.
The other players simply… stood there.
Because she wasn't playing with them.
She wasn't even playing against them.
She was replacing them.
The Playwright watched from above, satisfied.
"No need for audience approval. Just results."
Chuva watched the footage late into the night.
It was horrifying—not because of the scoreline, but because of the stillness in the match.
The silence of the fans.
The lifelessness of the field.
Even the commentators had gone quiet halfway through.
"I don't think she even breathes," Greg whispered.
Chuva nodded.
"She doesn't make mistakes. Doesn't hesitate. Doesn't feel."
Ethan looked tense. "They've removed the very thing you use to win—chaos."
"Not chaos," Chuva corrected. "Harmony. The kind that comes when people improvise together. They didn't build a player. They built a weapon."
Greg sighed. "And now they're entering her in the Global Youth Invitational."
Ethan added, "Guess who else just got an invitation to the same tournament?"
Chuva smiled coldly.
"Let me guess—our team."
Greg handed him the dossier.
The schedule said it all:
GROUP B: CHRONO UNITED vs. SERAPH XI – MATCHDAY 3
He stood.
"Well then," he said. "Let's teach the world what rhythm really looks like."
Back in orbit, Seraph stood in front of a mirror in her isolation chamber.
She blinked—but not to clear her eyes.
She was adjusting internal targeting.
Below the skin, her neural lattice shimmered.
The Playwright entered.
"You'll face him soon."
Seraph turned.
"He improvises," she said.
"Yes."
"He's unstable."
"Correct."
"He must be neutralized."
The Playwright smiled.
"You understand."
"I understand his flaw," Seraph responded. "He believes feeling is strength. It is weakness."
"And yours?" the Playwright asked.
"I do not feel."
He looked satisfied.
But then—just before she turned away—a flicker in her right eye.
A single millisecond.
Like a shadow moving behind glass.
The Playwright didn't notice.
But the mirror did.
And somewhere, deep within the lattice of code and silence, a question formed:
"Why does he smile?"
But the question vanished as quickly as it came.
And Seraph turned back to the wall.
Waiting.
Calculating.
Learning.