The rest of the afternoon dissolved like ink in water.
After that conversation in the park, Maria didn't touch on anything deep anymore. They walked back slowly, exchanging spaced-out comments, shy giggles, and a comfortable silence....
When they finally arrived at the school and went up to the Student Council room, they completed the delivery of the documents, chatted a bit with the president, and finally, he bid farewell to both of them. Maria took the opportunity to give him her contact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
From there, everything became automatic. He grabbed his things, made his way back home, climbed the stairs, opened the bedroom door, as if he were in a trance.
Only when he pushed open the door to his own room did reality truly hit him.
The backpack slipped from his shoulder.
Thump.
He threw the backpack onto the bed, and then threw himself down too, falling on his back with a long, heavy, tired sigh... and confused as hell.
Isagi lay there, sunk into the mattress, staring at the ceiling as if expecting it to offer some answer. But, of course, nothing came. Just the echo of his own thoughts, the same ones he'd been trying to bury since the park.
"I don't want to think about my predecessor's obsession... seriously, screw that..." He murmured, running his hands over his face, as if he could rub the worry away.
He sat up slowly, taking a deep breath, before pulling the backpack back toward him. The zipper opened, and there they were.
Hundreds of letters.
Colorful, perfumed, carefully folded, others crooked, others exaggerated, others with heart stickers. A festival of love confessions that seemed more like something from a manga than real life.
"Okay. Let's see the disaster," he grumbled with a slight smile, pulling the first one from the top.
He opened it.
Round handwriting, light pink paper.
"'Isagi-kun, I've always admired you from afar. If you don't mind, I'd like to start as friends. My number is-' Wow, fast...." He commented, laughing through his nose. "She barely knows me and is already ready to add me to the family group."
He grabbed another. Blue paper. Strong perfume smell.
"'Since the first year, I've been watching you... and after the last game, when you shone brighter than any other player by scoring seven goals...' Hm... creepy, but okay, worth the effort."
Another.
Then another.
And yet another.
Each letter had its own charm: some were shy, others direct, others completely dramatic, as if confessing to a prince ready to go to war. Three of them included photos. Two had glitter (he mentally decided never to open glitter again in his life). Five had phone numbers highlighted with fluorescent marker, extremely fluorescent.
He started laughing alone, shaking his head, tossing the opened letters beside him as if analyzing RPG character sheets.
But as he read, between one laugh and another, a persistent discomfort nagged at the back of his neck. It wasn't bad. Just... strange.
There were things written there about girls who had already had a crush on him, long before he shone by scoring seven goals against Minamida High. Maybe they exaggerated a bit; no one wants to admit they only started paying attention after someone became popular, but still, there was a hint of truth hidden between the lines. In the end... yeah, he knew he had a certain charm. Especially when playing soccer. In the original story, practically all the players wanted to "eat" or be "eaten" by Isagi, so it wasn't exactly surprising.
Moreover, a month of training had left his physique ridiculously better: taller, more defined, more muscular. It was almost unfair. He hadn't intended to attract so much attention, really. But his body, apparently, had other plans, and they involved becoming a magnet for stares, sighs, and problems....
He let out a long sigh, letting his body sink a little deeper into the mattress. An ironic smile tugged at the corner of his mouth....
"Even without all that... the predecessor was so charismatic that he ended up conquering a bunch of beauties, huh?" He murmured, twirling one of the letters between his fingers. "In the end, I think I just inherited the mess."
Thinking about it... among all the interactions he inherited, strange conversations, insistent stares, sudden declarations, and an endless trail of hormonal problems, only one person had emerged naturally. Without exaggerations, without competition, without fuss.
Marin.
"She was the only one I started talking to casually... and approached on my own..."
He sighed again, but this time the sound came out lighter. A resigned sigh, almost amused. He tossed another letter aside, brushing away the treacherous glitter with the expression of someone who had already accepted his fate because there was no escape. He had many more to read.
After a few more letters full of little hearts, dubious perfumes, and declarations so intense they seemed written by someone on the verge of starring in a tragic opera, Isagi finally reached the end of the pile.
The last letter rested between his fingers as if it weighed more than all the others combined. It wasn't colorful, had no perfume, no shine... and precisely because of that, it seemed even more dangerous.
He tossed the last one onto the bed with a light snap.
"Done. Finished. Survived. I've officially read more confessions today than in my entire life combined."
He ran a hand over his face, exhausted, but in an almost amused way. It was impossible to take it all completely seriously. At the very least, it was funny. At most... concerning.
He picked up some letters again, now paying attention to the underlined parts, folded ones, or those written in red. And then he noticed an uncomfortable pattern:
Many asked him to go to the back of the school before classes started, tomorrow.
Or, more specifically... those who wanted to make a Kokuhaku....
Even though he wasn't exactly an expert in manga or anime—after all, his soccer career was entering its peak and consumed practically all his time—he still knew certain "concepts." He had watched one or two romance animes in the past, influenced by some girl who liked that kind of thing.
In the end... well, what wouldn't a man do for pussy, huh?
He sighed.
"Kokuhaku, seriously...?"
Kokuhaku, despite the cute-sounding name, was basically the traditional school confession ritual. The local version of "we meet behind the school and you say if you like me," but with all the dramatic pomp that Japanese teenagers could put on anything hormonal.
It usually went something like this:
The girl would call the guy to a more secluded place, almost always behind the school, near the trees, where no one would interrupt. She'd clutch her bag tightly, make a nervous bow, take a deep breath, and... confess. It was direct, sincere, and full of that cute nervousness that left any romance protagonist stumbling over their own words.....
He, however, wasn't exactly a romance protagonist.
"I have to go... right?" he murmured, letting his head fall back onto the pillow. "If I ignore it, it'll seem like I'm treating them like trash. And I'm not going to do that."
He covered his eyes with his arm.
Isagi remained there for a few moments, with his forearm covering his eyes, breathing deeply as he dove into various thoughts about his future.
After a few minutes, he removed his arm from his face, looked at the bed covered in letters, and murmured:
"Okay. Enough of this."
He gathered them all—the ones with stickers, the ones with fluorescent highlighter, the ones folded with care, and the ones folded with desperation—and stacked them into a single block, holding it with both hands as if it were a package of luggage he needed to dispatch and never see again.
He walked to the trash can in the room.
And let it all fall at once.
Shhhffft.
The letters slid and settled at the bottom, forming a heap of rejected loves that would make any shoujo protagonist have a moral collapse.
Isagi just wiped his hands as if wrapping up a heavy shift.
"Done. Resolved. Tomorrow's problem."
He walked to the small table beside the headboard and let his body slump into the chair. His hand moved on pure reflex, pulling open the bottom drawer. Inside, covered by a generous layer of dust, almost a premature burial, rested his notebook. A war veteran forgotten.
Silent witness to weeks of abandonment. Or months... depending on how one chose to measure time between exhausting trainings, decisive matches, and the inevitable school dramas that seemed to sprout from nowhere, like stubborn pests.
He ran his finger over the surface.
The dust cleared a clean path, exposing the metal underneath.
"Damn... I really abandoned this."
He quickly pulled out the notebook and placed it on his small table, then pressed the button.
The machine took five seconds longer than it should.
But it turned on.
The screen lit up, illuminating the room in a bluish tone. The internal fan made a sound like someone waking up after hibernation.
Isagi leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms, and stared at the desktop like reuniting with an old friend.
"Alright... priorities."
He opened the browser.
And the long-empty history gave the impression that he had never used it for anything beyond searching for trivela kicks and European athletes' workouts.
But now his fingers started typing something else. He wanted to open an account at some bank and finally put into practice his plans to get rich, plans that had been hammering in his head for weeks. That was exactly why he was home so early. Later, he still had to help his mother finish Marin's cosplay uniform, so this was, technically, his day off after a long time.
Despite that, he didn't intend to waste the afternoon. Between one bank form and another, he would open some match videos, compilations, and analyses of players from this world. He wanted to study every movement, every detail. Later, when he was alone, he would replicate everything through his [Perfect Copy].
His current interest? Copying the style of all the New Gen, the New Generation World Selection. A group of young international players considered the next wave of soccer superstars, selected by PIFA based purely on individual merit. Each of them had their own shine, a skill so sharp it almost seemed like cheating. Dribbles, game vision, timing, physique, intuition... they were monsters he wanted to copy....
Anyway, getting rich was the best way to leave home earlier, and he knew that better than anyone. That year, in particular, was a well of opportunities. He didn't remember every detail clearly, but he had enough awareness of what was about to happen in the market, on the internet, and in the financial world to realize it was the ideal time to act.
He wasn't exactly a master of investments... but he wasn't ignorant either. In his other life, hanging out with famous players, eccentric businessmen, and influencers who became billionaires practically overnight, he ended up learning more than he admitted. Loose tips, locker room talks, strategies revealed after a few beers, tricks that, added up, became an entire arsenal in his head.
And now, with a second chance in hand, he intended to use every one of them.
Despite this world being an absurd mix of various animes, in the end, the structure was still the same as the real world from his past life. The same timeline. The same historical waves. The same big corporations, even if some had slightly different names, or if families like the Shinomiya and other millionaire clans in Japan existed here as a natural part of the global economy.
But all that was irrelevant.
Because, even with these deviations, the major economic events remained intact. The world followed the same invisible track he had already seen before... and he knew very well how each curve would end.
He opened a new tab in the browser.
And, as if it were a natural reflex, he typed the name of his own channel: FutebolGoat...
The page loaded.
And there it was.
The dark banner, minimalist, with the white title in aggressive contrast. No face, no introduction, no personality. Just a dry, direct name, the kind you clicked without thinking twice because it seemed too professional to be amateur.
The subscriber counter shone in the corner of the screen.
502,817 subscribers.
Isagi let out a low whistle.
"Damn... half a million already."
A month ago, when he had the idea to create a YouTube channel, he followed through with it. He had asked someone to record him playing, thinking of posting later and seeing what would happen. But in the middle of the night, while editing, he realized something else:
His own footage wasn't as interesting as the potential he saw in reviewing other famous plays.
The internet loved cuts. Loved compilations. Loved quick videos, with intense music and absurd plays from famous players around the world. And he knew exactly which plays were the most addictive, the ones that hooked the audience, that exploded in shares, and that became perfect fuel for the algorithm.
And so, the channel "FutebolGoat" was born.
No face. No voice. Just impeccable cuts, music synchronization, and plays, minimalist titles, in the style of "video forbidden for those who love soccer."
And, even after sometimes posting his own trainings—short videos where he never showed his face, just the leg hitting the ball—what exploded the most were the compilations of others.
Japanese players, Europeans, Koreans... anyone shining at that moment got a video. And the numbers were ridiculous; videos hitting 3 million, others hitting 5 million, and some, with hyper-popular plays in the soccer scene, easily reaching 10 million views.
The algorithm loved it.
The fans loved it.
The soccer pages loved it.
And now... he loved it too.
Because, for the first time... the AdSense was about to drop.
He opened the monetization dashboard.
Monthly estimate: ¥1,980,000
An absolutely absurd amount for someone who just compiled soccer videos with music and posted almost every day.
"Yeah... definitely worth it."
It was even more realistic when he remembered that: Long compilations (over 8-10 minutes) generated multiple ads. The soccer niche had a relatively high CPM. Half the videos had international traffic. And those that exploded to 10 million views earned between ¥300,000 and ¥500,000 on their own.
In other words:
He had created, without a face, without appearing, without saying a single word... an automatic gold mine.
And all because he didn't want to post videos of himself playing for now.
He laughed alone, shaking his head.
"The shitty idea ended up being my best decision. Go figure..."
That was exactly why he needed to open the bank account soon.
The YouTube notification already said: the payment would be sent in five days.
And he wanted that money free.
Because he had plans.
Big plans.
He slid the chair back a bit, resting his feet on the floor as if preparing to structure his own empire.
"Fifty... sixty thousand reais at first... enough to start well."
He wanted to invest.
And it wasn't some teenager talk thinking he'd get rich buying random cryptocurrency.
He remembered the markets. Remembered the companies that exploded. The peaks, the drops, the opportunities. From backstage conversations in clubs and events that, at the time, he hadn't even valued.
Now everything made sense.
With that money, he planned to invest part in safe stocks, another part in companies he knew would explode in the coming years, and save a chunk to scale his own channel, maybe buying music licenses, programs, or even hiring editors in the future.
He took a deep breath, typing his data into the bank form.
He was finally taking the first step.
Isagi clicked on the last field of the form, checked the account number three times, and only then pressed "Confirm."
The screen loaded.
Spun.
Froze for a second that felt like ten.
And then:
"Account created successfully."
"Finally."
He let his body sink into the chair, letting out a sigh so deep it seemed to have been stored in his lungs since morning. Doing this on his phone had been easy. But doing it on the notebook, especially that dinosaur he had woken from a coma... was slow torture.
But, in the end, it was done.
And now, with the account open, AdSense configured, and the future about to spit money straight into his hands, all that was left was the part he curiously liked the most.
Editing.
"Alright... time to work."
He pulled a USB cable and connected his phone to the notebook, hearing the soft click that confirmed the connection. The screen blinked, opened the file explorer, and, with the familiar slowness of a forgotten machine, loaded the folder of recently downloaded videos—small treasures accumulated in rare moments of downtime. Full matches. Raw compilations with no editing. Loose clips, captured at the exact moment the impossible happened at the feet of ball geniuses.
He opened the main folder, where names shone like sacred weapons, lined up before a war, each one a style, a world, a different peak of talent that he intended to dissect and absorb with his [Perfect Copy].
Bunny Iglesias. Itoshi Sae. Noel Noah. Chris Prince. Lavinho. Snuffy. Michael Kaiser.
And many others.
All there, waiting to be imitated, broken down, rebuilt inside the body that now carried the raw talent of the "Mahoraga of Soccer."
He took a deep breath as he scrolled through the list.
Isagi smiled.
"You guys won't get away..."
He dragged the files into the notebook's editor, a program he barely remembered installing, let alone knowing how to use. Strange interface, confusing buttons, shortcuts he only discovered by accidentally pressing. Still... it worked. And when he started assembling the first video, it was as if a switch had been flipped inside him. Clean cuts, zoom at the right time, slow-motion replay at the exact fraction where the play exploded in genius, quick but elegant transitions—the kind of editing that made any soccer fan stop scrolling without thinking. Maybe it was the steady hand of an athlete accustomed to observing details. Maybe it was just natural talent for things requiring precision. Or maybe it was the competitive instinct saying: "If you're going to post, post something worthy."
Time melted away.
It could have been ten minutes.
It could have been three hours.
He wouldn't know.
When he finally blinked and leaned back in the chair, almost startled by the slight pain in his shoulders, he realized four videos were perfectly ready.
Exported and rendered. Subtitles and tags configured. Descriptions written with that mix of humor and technical arrogance that went viral easily in soccer groups.
Four pieces ready to publish throughout the week.
The FutebolGoat channel would get another spike.
But Isagi still wasn't satisfied; since his first idea was a success, new ideas started emerging in his mind. Taking advantage of having time, he decided to bring some of them to life....
"What else can I do...?"
The chair spun slightly as he thought.
Then, without hesitation, he opened a new tab.
Typed:
Create channel.
And the second project was born: Unknown Facts.
The idea was simple.
Videos with AI narration about mythology, ancient history, urban legends, scientific facts, curiosities about countries, bizarre cases, real mysteries, and much more....
"I can automate almost everything... perfect."
He created the logo, chose a minimalist black and blue design. Prepared the banner in five minutes. Turned on AI narration on a site he already knew. And wrote the script for the first video:
"The Japanese myth of the Slit-Mouthed Woman."
In twenty minutes, the video was ready, and he ended up posting it on the channel.
"Too easy."
But, of course, his mind never stopped.
Another tab.
Another channel he called Legends.
This one would have a different focus: edits of movies, animes, and series. Just cinematic cuts, intense music, epic moments.
"This is going to be fun... and it'll force me to watch some things, so it's worth it."
After sorting out the last details of the channel, he opened the editor again. He rummaged through saved scenes from series he only vaguely remembered from his other life and started working. He made a quick edit of John Wick—shots, falls, close-ups on the eyes, cuts synchronized with the beat—and then assembled another video gathering various anime scenes with a philosophical reflection in the background. When he finished each one and posted them, he leaned back in the chair and let out, finally, a long sigh of tired relief.
Isagi finally looked away from the screen and realized, for the first time since sitting there, that the window reflected only pitch black. The darkness betrayed something obvious: he had worked so much that the day had simply disappeared. The room, taken over by bluish shadows from the monitor, gave the feeling that he had been swallowed by his own focus. He stood up slowly, his back cracking, and turned on the light, blinking a few times until his eyes adjusted.
It was strange to think that, two hours ago, he was reading perfumed and glittered confessions, and now he was immersed in editing, monetization, investment calculations, and digital empire planning. He sat back down and stretched his arms over the table, taking a deep breath before releasing the air in a slow, almost satisfied breath.
But he still wasn't done.
The tiredness was hitting, of course—that warm tiredness that doesn't knock you down but spreads through your muscles like a reminder that you're doing something big. And he was. He opened another tab, this time not to create another channel, but to start something he'd been thinking about for weeks: his own digital product. Nothing too ambitious, at least not at first—just something extremely useful, sellable, and, most importantly, scalable without effort. A quick e-book, perhaps, about soccer fundamentals for beginners, dribbling techniques, game vision, physical conditioning, and a bonus module on sports mentality. Even if no one knew he was the author, it would still be something of value. And, if everything went right, later would come the premium version, with videos, exercises, and even online classes. The big dream always came after the first step.
He opened the text editor and started typing, letting the real experience—from his other life and this one—flow onto the digital paper. He blended practical tips with direct language, avoided frills, focused on what really mattered. He didn't want a product full of embellishments; he wanted something that worked. Between one sentence and another, he saved the file, switched windows to upload another video to the Legends channel, adjust tags on Unknown Facts, respond to accumulated comments, and review thumbnails. His room, illuminated only by the white ceiling light and the glow of the screens, now seemed like a small improvised office, an operations center where he controlled channels, projects, and possible futures all at once.
And, in the midst of that productive night, one thing became clear: although he had taken a break from insane trainings, he hadn't rested at all.
He just swapped physical training for work.
But his future would thank him....
__________________
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