My Ultimate Gacha System-Chapter 321 - 308: Before the Summer

Bergamo City Center 2:38 PM

The Coppa Italia win was everywhere in the city by Thursday afternoon — shop windows with handwritten blue-and-black signs, a photograph in the window of the sports goods store on Via XX Settembre showing De Roon lifting the trophy, two men outside a bar gesturing while one held his phone up showing a replay.

Demien and Sophia walked through the center without a particular destination because she had a couple of hours before her driver arrived for the afternoon run to Orio al Serio, and the day was warm enough and the streets familiar enough that walking without a plan was fine.

The recognition started within the first ten minutes — a man coming the other way who looked twice and then stopped and said something in Italian that came out fast and enthusiastic, and Demien slowed to a stop while the man pulled out his phone. He took the photo, thanked him, shook his hand, and they kept walking.

It happened again outside the pasticceria on Via Tasso — a woman in her fifties who said "bravo" and covered her mouth with both hands when she saw him, and her husband beside her wanted to shake hands and took a moment to find the words in a mix of Italian and very earnest English, and Demien answered in Italian and they shook hands twice and the couple walked away satisfied while Sophia watched from two steps to the side with an expression that said she was finding this genuinely charming.

"You’re going to need a route that doesn’t go through the main streets," she said when they were walking again.

"I’ve been fine until now," Demien said.

"Until last night," she said.

They turned off Via Pignolo down a narrower street that ran away from the main shopping area and the traffic thinned quickly, and on this street there were fewer people and the buildings closed in slightly on both sides so the afternoon sun came down in a narrow band between the rooflines while the stone under their feet was uneven from age.

Sophia’s hand found his and they walked that way without discussing it.

They found the café about a hundred meters in — a small place with four tables outside and a handwritten chalk menu on a board beside the door and the smell of espresso strong enough to reach the street — and the inside was dim and cool and held maybe six tables total with two of them occupied, one by an elderly man reading a paper and one by a woman working on a laptop who didn’t look up when they came in.

The owner appeared from behind the counter when they sat down and he was a man in his late sixties with a white apron and no particular urgency about him, and when he saw Demien his expression did the thing where recognition arrived a moment after initial neutrality, but he recovered it smoothly and came to the table with no theatrics.

"Cosa prende?" he asked.

Demien ordered two espressos and Sophia added a glass of water, and the owner nodded once and went back behind the counter, and the sound of the machine starting up was the only significant noise in the room.

Sophia’s hand was still on the table and his was next to it and their fingers overlapped where they’d been walking, and she looked around the small room with the particular appreciation of someone who spent most of their time in places that were trying very hard to be impressive.

"This is nice," she said.

"It’s quiet," he said.

"That too." She turned back to him. "Do you come here often?"

"Never been," he said. "We just found it."

She smiled. "Good. It can be ours." 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The espressos arrived in small white cups with a square of dark chocolate on each saucer, and the owner set them down without ceremony and returned to his position behind the counter where he stood with his arms folded and looked at something on the wall.

Sophia picked up her cup and the chocolate in one motion, broke the chocolate cleanly against the edge of the saucer with her thumbnail, and ate half of it before tasting the coffee.

"When do you think you’ll know?" she said.

He looked at her. "About what?"

"About what comes next," she said, and her eyes were clear and direct because she wasn’t trying to make the question mean more than it did. "The summer. Whether you stay or something else."

He drank his espresso before answering and the coffee was good — thick and dark and not too hot. "I genuinely don’t know," he said. "Marco hasn’t said anything concrete yet. The club hasn’t said anything. The season isn’t even finished."

"But people are talking," she said.

"People are always talking," he said.

"I know," she said. "I’m not asking what people are saying. I’m asking what you want."

He held the cup between two fingers and looked at the grain of the wooden table for a moment. "I want to finish the season properly first," he said. "Two matches left, Champions League not confirmed — I’m not thinking past that right now."

"That’s a very disciplined answer," she said.

"It’s the honest one," he said, and he looked up at her. "I genuinely haven’t let myself think past May." He paused. "Ask me in June."

Sophia considered this and then nodded in the way that meant she accepted the answer rather than just tolerating it, and she leaned back in her chair slightly while the afternoon stayed quiet around them.

"June," she said.

Outside the narrow street a couple walked past with a child between them, each holding one hand, and the child’s feet left the ground for a moment as they swung her forward and she laughed and the sound reached the café briefly before fading.

Atalanta Headquarters — Gewiss Offices Bergamo 4:15 PM

The boardroom on the third floor had a long table that seated twelve and a screen mounted on the far wall that currently showed a financial projection document in landscape format, though nobody at the table was looking at it because the conversation had moved past numbers and into the part where numbers meant something.

Antonio Percassi sat at the head of the table with his jacket still on and his hands folded in front of him, while Tony D’Amico was to his left with a folder open in front of him that he’d already been through twice and a pen he kept clicking without writing anything. The club’s chief financial officer, Riccardo Marini, sat to Percassi’s right with a printed spreadsheet in front of him and the patient expression of someone who’d done this before and understood that financial conversations in football rarely stayed financial for long.