Dayo remembered Shun Li the way you remember a name that once saved you from embarrassment.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
Just suddenly, like a light switching on inside your head.
It happened while he was still in Korea, while Jang Wook was drowning in schedules and confirmations and Min Jae was making impossible things look normal. Dayo sat alone for a moment, phone in his hand, thinking about Shanghai.
Thinking about how China was not Korea.
China was scale. China was speed. China was a country where you could get swallowed if you arrived unprepared.
And the last time Dayo faced something that big, something that fragile, something that needed to look perfect under pressure, Shun Li had been there.
The memory came clean.
World Cup night.
