Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Stadio Olimpico, Rome
10:47 PM
The whistle's echo faded into the Olimpico's fractured noise, and Demien bent forward with his hands pressing down on his knees while his lungs pulled air in deep cycles that burned slightly at the edges, and around him the stadium carried two opposing truths at once because Atalanta's section was bouncing in waves of blue and black while Roma's curva had gone quiet except for scattered pockets still trying to generate something that resembled support.
His legs felt heavy in the way they do after extra time when every muscle has given everything it had, and sweat dripped from his hair down onto the grass while his chest continued heaving, but beneath the fatigue something else settled—satisfaction that came not from celebration but from having finished what he'd started when Gasperini called his name at seventy-two minutes.
