The knock came before sunrise.
Takeshi jerked awake, heart already racing before his eyes opened. For a second, he was thirty-four again, drunk and alone. Then the Ajax dormitory walls came into focus.
The knock repeated. Harder.
"Erik wants to see you." A staff member's voice through the door, tight with tension. "Now. His office."
Takeshi's stomach dropped through the floor.
He knows.
Getting dressed felt like moving through water. His hands shook while tying his shoes. The card sat in his desk drawer, where he'd hidden it after showing it to Elsa, but he could feel it anyway. Burning. Accusing.
The walk to Erik's office stretched forever. Dawn light barely touched the windows. The other kids were still sleeping, completely unaware that Takeshi's world was about to collapse.
Each step is heavier than the last.
What do I tell him? How much does he know?
His adult mind raced through scenarios, excuses, half-truths. But against Erik's cold intelligence, lies felt useless.
The office door was already open. Erik sat behind his desk, backlit by the rising sun, face cast in shadow.
Takeshi stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Silence.
Erik just watched him, patient as stone, letting the tension coil tighter and tighter until Takeshi wanted to scream.
"I know about the card."
Simple. Direct. A blade between the ribs.
Takeshi froze. "I don't know what you..."
"Don't." Erik's voice could cut glass. "Don't lie to me, Takeshi. I've been doing this too long."
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "Efteling. The gift shop. A man approached you while you were alone."
How does he know everything?
"Show me the card."
Not a request. A command that made Takeshi's eight-year-old body want to obey automatically.
His hands trembled reaching into his pocket. He'd brought it without thinking, like it was fused to him now. The card felt too heavy, too real as he placed it on Erik's desk.
Erik picked it up. Studied it. And his face... changed.
Went dark. Hard. Something ancient and wounded flickered in his eyes.
The silence stretched until Takeshi couldn't breathe.
Then, quiet as death, "Them."
Voice like gravel under tyres. "Of course it's them."
He turned the card so Takeshi could see it properly.
That iconic crest. The crown gleaming gold above elegant script. The pristine white background with subtle embossed edges.
Real Madrid CF.
The most powerful club in football. The giants who shaped history. The white shirts that legends wore.
"You... you know them?" Takeshi whispered.
Erik's laugh was bitter, broken. "Know them? I used to work for them."
"Ten years ago," Erik began, leaning back, suddenly looking older than Takeshi had ever seen him, "I was their scout. Youth division. Traveled the world finding the next Galáctico."
The morning light grew stronger, painting Erik's face in harsh lines.
"I was good at it. The best. Found three kids who made their first team. That's almost unheard of."
Pause. The weight of memory.
"Then I saw what they really did."
Takeshi barely breathed.
"They don't recruit players, Takeshi. They collect them." Erik's voice went flat, reciting facts that still hurt. "Like rare cards. Expensive art. Beautiful talents displayed in their academy, polished and perfect."
He stood, walked to the window, hands clasped behind his back.
"But if you don't become Ronaldo? Benzema? Modrić? If you're just excellent instead of transcendent?"
He turned back. His eyes were dark holes.
"You're nothing. Discarded."
"I watched them destroy families. Parents relocated to Madrid, jobs promised that never materialized. Kids isolated from everyone they knew, everyone who grounded them. Pressure so intense some broke mentally before fifteen."
Erik's fist clenched white against the windowsill. "By sixteen, seventeen, most were done. Careers over before they started. Sent home or sold cheaply to lower leagues. Broken."
"One kid I recruited..." His voice caught. First time Takeshi had ever heard Erik's composure crack. "A Brazilian boy named Lucas. Nine years old. Could do things with a ball that seemed impossible. Pure magic."
"Real Madrid took him. Promised him the world. His family moved... mother, father, two sisters. They quit their jobs in São Paulo, pulled the girls from school, burned every bridge."
Erik was staring at nothing now, seeing the past.
"Three years later, Lucas wasn't developing fast enough. Growth spurt came late, lost half a step in pace. They cut him. Just like that. Contract terminated."
The silence was suffocating.
"Family had nothing to go back to. No home. No jobs. No connections. Two sisters whose education had been interrupted. Parents who'd gambled everything on a dream Real Madrid sold them."
Erik's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Last I heard, Lucas never touched a football again. Works in a warehouse in São Paulo. Twenty-two years old."
Takeshi felt sick.
"That's when I understood," Erik continued, turning back to face him. "They don't want players. They want to own souls. Complete control. Your life, your family, your future... all for the chance to wear that white shirt."
"Most never do."
He sat on the edge of his desk, closer now, intense.
"That's why I left. That's why I do things my way now. I find talent, yes. But I try to protect them from becoming... products."
"They want you," Erik said, picking up the card again, "because you're different. That performance against the U16S? The chemistry with your teammates? The way you see the game?"
"That's not normal for years eight-year-old. Hell, it's not normal for eighteen."
"They've evaluated hundreds of thousands of kids globally. You're one in a million. Maybe rarer."
"And they collect rare things."
Erik reached into his desk drawer. Pulled out a manila folder. Opened it.
Photographs spilled across the desk like accusations.
Takeshi's heart stopped.
Elsa. Training at Ajax, unaware of the camera.
Oliver. With his family at their home in England, laughing at dinner.
Marcus is in Germany, walking with his father.
His own parents are in Tokyo. At work. Walking to the subway. At a restaurant. His mother smiled, so happy, so unaware.
And Akari. Eight years old in this timeline, at her school in Japan, completely innocent.
"How do you have these?" Takeshi's voice came out strangled.
"I don't." Erik tapped the photos. "They do. They sent them to me. Yesterday."
The room spun.
"This is a warning. To me. To you." Erik's voice went cold with fury. "They're saying, we know everyone connected to him. We've been watching everyone."
Takeshi stared at the photo of his mother. She looked so happy. So unaware that predators were circling her son.
"They've been watching your parents for weeks," Erik continued. "Elsa, since Day 2 here. Oliver's family got a mysterious job offer in Madrid last week... corporate headhunter, excellent salary, all expenses paid."
"This is how they work. They don't just recruit you. They recruit everyone around you."
Erik spread the photos like tarot cards of doom.
"Your parents get dream jobs in Madrid. Your friends get academy spots. Your first love gets scholarship opportunities. They build a golden cage so beautiful, so perfect, that everyone you love walks in willingly."
"And by the time you're fifteen, everyone's already inside. So you follow. Not because you want to. Because leaving would mean abandoning everyone."
Takeshi couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Eight years old and staring at photos of his loved ones marked like targets.
"That's Real Madrid," Erik said quietly. "Patient. Thorough. Inevitable."