Reincarnated As A Wonderkid-Chapter 586: The End

"It looks like a depressed concrete block," Hassan shivered. He pulled his duct-tape headband down over his ears. "And it's wet. Why is the air wet?"

"It's called drizzle, Hassan," Karim said, pulling up the collar of his thin jacket.

"IT IS TERRIBLE FOR RETAIL!" Mo shouted. He was dragging a suitcase made entirely of woven plastic shopping bags.

"I TRIED TO SELL A MAN THE FOG! I CALLED IT 'LONDON CLOUD EXTRACT'! HE TOLD ME TO PISS OFF! THESE PEOPLE HAVE NO BUSINESS ACUMEN!"

"Keep your voice down, Milo," a new voice echoed through the rain.

Karim froze. He turned around.

Standing under a broken bus shelter were two boys. One was incredibly wide, holding a completely soaked cardboard box. The other was leaning against the glass, casually tuning a ukulele that was missing two strings.

"Mark!" Karim yelled, a genuine smile breaking across his face. "Rico!" 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Professor!" Mark dropped the soggy box. "I brought you a Neapolitan Margherita! But the English sky ruined the cheese structural integrity!"

"It's basically soup now, bro," Rico laughed, tossing the ukulele into a nearby trash can. "Good to see you, man. Italy was getting boring anyway. Too much sunshine. Not enough misery."

Karim ran over and hugged them. For a brief second, the freezing rain didn't matter. They were here. The reincarnated squad. The anomaly in the universe.

"How did you even get here?" Karim asked, stepping back. "You were at the Napoli academy yesterday!"

"I TOLD THEM I HAD A MAFIA CONNECTION!" Mark puffed out his chest. "I SAID MY UNCLE WAS LUIGI! THEY PUT ME ON A PLANE TO GET RID OF ME!"

"He just cried until they terminated his youth contract," Rico deadpanned. "And I smuggled myself in his checked luggage. It was tight. I smell like garlic."

"ENOUGH REUNION!" Mo clapped his hands. "THE SCOUT IS WAITING! TIME IS MONEY! AND CURRENTLY, WE HAVE NO MONEY AND I AM FREEZING MY ASSETS OFF!"

Chadwell Heath Training Ground.

The grass was impossibly green. It was cut so perfectly it looked like a billiard table. The white lines were crisp, blindingly bright against the dark, muddy earth.

Mr. Smith stood on the sidelines, holding a stopwatch and an umbrella. He looked just as miserable in London as he had in Egypt.

"Right," Mr. Smith barked as the five boys walked onto the pitch. "You made it. Barely. You're late, you're soaking wet, and you brought..." He pointed at Mark and Rico. "...a bouncer and a street musician?"

"I AM A DEFENSIVE WALL!" Mark shouted. "I EAT STRIKERS FOR BREAKFAST!"

"He really does," Hassan whispered. "I saw him eat a plastic trophy once."

"Whatever," Mr. Smith rubbed his temples. "We are doing a scrimmage. Academy A-Team versus the trialists. You'll mix in with the B-Team. Show me something, Egyptian kid. Show me that the volley wasn't a fluke."

Karim stepped onto the grass.

His boots sank slightly into the wet turf. It felt perfect. It felt like home. This was what he had been waiting for through four lifetimes. The real deal.

On the other side of the pitch stood the West Ham Academy A-Team. They were huge. They were built like brick outhouses. They all looked like they were named Liam, Brad, or Gaz.

"They look mean," Hassan gulped.

"Let them be mean," Karim said softly. His eyes narrowed. He felt the familiar click in his brain. The geometry. The physics. The lines of probability drawing themselves across the green pitch. "We control the space. Mark, anchor the back. Rico, transition. Hassan, you just run."

"TURBO MODE ENGAGED!" Hassan screamed, slapping his own face.

The referee blew the whistle.

The ball rolled.

It was a beautiful pass from Rico. Crisp, right to Karim's feet.

Karim trapped it. The leather felt perfect against his boot. A massive English defender named Gaz was already charging at him, sliding through the mud, studs up, ready to snap Karim in half.

Karim didn't panic. He saw the angle. He just needed to shift his weight 15 degrees to the left, chip it over Gaz's sliding leg, and send a through-ball to Hassan, who was already blowing past the defensive line.

It was an easy calculation.

It was a guaranteed goal.

It was... perfectly predictable.

Karim's foot hovered over the ball.

Suddenly, a massive migraine spiked behind his eyes. The world slowed down to a crawl. The raindrops hung suspended in the air like tiny glass beads. Gaz's roaring face was frozen in a grotesque mask of aggression.

Why am I doing this? The thought echoed in Karim's mind. It wasn't just a passing doubt. It was a heavy, crushing realization.

He looked at the ball. He looked at the grass.

Life One, Karim remembered. I was a prodigy. I blew my knee out at twenty. I cried for a decade.

Life Two. The memory suddenly slammed into him, unlocking a vault he didn't know was there. I was a manager. I screamed on touchlines until my heart gave out at fifty. I missed my daughter's wedding for a League Cup semi-final.

Life Three. Another flood of memories. I wasn't even a player. I was a kit-man. Washing mud out of socks for thirty years, watching millionaires complain about the temperature of their bottled water.

Life Four. Life Five. Life Six. Dozens, maybe hundreds of lifetimes crashed into his consciousness at once. He hadn't just been reincarnated four times. He had been trapped in this loop for centuries. He had been a striker in Brazil. A goalkeeper in Russia. A referee in Spain. A corrupt FIFA official in Switzerland.

He had won the World Cup. He had been relegated to the fifth division. He had scored bicycle kicks and missed open nets.

He had done it all. Over, and over, and over again.

"Karim!" Rico's voice sounded muffled, distant. "Pass the ball! He's gonna kill you!"

Karim looked at the charging defender. He looked at the perfect green grass. He looked at the goalposts.

It was a cage. A beautiful, green, perfectly measured cage.

"This is nothing," Karim whispered.

The words tasted like ash.

He loved football. He loved the smell of the grass, the sound of the crowd, the perfect geometry of a through-pass. But he loved it like a prisoner loves his favorite corner of the cell.

"What am I chasing?" he asked the frozen universe. "A plastic trophy? A multi-million-pound contract? To be cheered by people who will curse my name when I miss a penalty?"

He looked over at Mark, shivering in the rain. He looked at Mo, hustling on the sidelines. He looked at Hassan, running his heart out for a dream that the universe had artificially planted in his head.

"I've built kingdoms on the pitch," Karim said, his voice growing louder. "I've been a king of the midfield. But it vanishes when the whistle blows. It's temporary. It's a waste of time."

The suspended raindrop nearest to Karim's face began to vibrate.

"KARIM! MOVE!" Hassan shrieked.

Time snapped back into normal speed. Gaz was inches away, cleats raised, a guaranteed ankle-breaker.

Karim didn't pass the ball. He didn't chip it.

He reached down with both hands and picked it up.

Tweet! The referee blew the whistle violently. "HANDBALL! Are you mental, kid?!"

Gaz went sliding past Karim, missing him completely, tearing up a massive chunk of turf and crashing into the advertising boards.

Mr. Smith dropped his umbrella. "What are you doing?! You had the pass! It was wide open!"

Hassan ran back, panting. "Professor? Did your brain lag? Was the drag coefficient wrong?"

Karim stood in the middle of the pitch, holding the muddy ball in his hands. He looked at it. It was just stitched leather filled with air.

"No," Karim said. His voice was shockingly calm. It didn't sound like an eleven-year-old boy. It sounded ancient. "The math was perfect. The game is just flawed."

"Flawed?" Mr. Smith stormed onto the pitch, his face turning purple. "You're off your rocker! Put the ball down! That's a foul!"

"I'm not putting it down," Karim said. He turned his back to the goal.

"Karim, what are you doing?" Mark asked, stepping forward, his bravado gone. "This is it. This is the dream. West Ham! The Premier League!"

"It's not my dream anymore, Mark," Karim said gently. "It's a hamster wheel. We keep running, we keep scoring, we keep dying, and they just put us back at the start line. I'm tired of running."

Mo stopped fiddling with his plastic suitcase. "Alex... buddy. You're scaring the investors. Put the ball down."

"No," Karim said. He looked up at the grey London sky. He didn't speak to his friends. He spoke to the sky. To the system. To whatever author was writing this miserable loop.

"I see the strings," Karim shouted, his voice echoing across the empty training ground. "I remember all of it! The broken legs, the golden boots, the empty stadiums, the fake glory! I'm done!"

The wind suddenly stopped. The rain halted in mid-air again.

Mr. Smith froze, his mouth open in mid-yell. Gaz was frozen on the ground. Only Karim, Hassan, Mark, Rico, and Mo were still moving.

"Professor?" Hassan whispered, terrified. "Why did the world stop?"

"Because we are leaving," Karim said. He squeezed the football in his hands. "I don't want to play a game anymore. I want to build something real. A real life. A real world. A real kingdom that doesn't disappear after ninety minutes."

"How?" Rico asked, his eyes wide.

"Like this," Karim said.

He stared directly into the grey sky, his eyes burning with centuries of accumulated willpower.

"End this!" Karim roared.

He threw the football straight up into the air.

It didn't arc. It didn't fall. It shot upward like a bullet, piercing the grey clouds. The sky shattered like a massive glass mirror. Cracks of blinding golden light spider-webbed across the London skyline.

The stadium dissolved into digital pixels. The grass beneath their feet turned into white ash.

"HOLY MOTHER OF BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES!" Mo screamed as reality collapsed around them. "WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"

"We're breaking the server," Karim smiled, feeling a weight lift off his soul that had been there for a thousand lifetimes.

"Hold on tight, boys. We're going somewhere where the pitch doesn't end."