Chapter 2 - Adapting

I stood up in the middle of the field and thought "Don't bother me now! Go away! Close!" all while swatting my hands like a moron. People thought that it was my celebration dance and a couple of children actually copied me. For fuck sake how stupid you need to be?

After the blue window closed, I can finally reach my mom and hugged her while crying. She cleaned my tears with her usual daily handkerchief while saying "Are you hurt somewhere?! Tell me quickly David!"

I shacked my head while she continued to clean my tears. After a while, she hit my head and said "You had me worried over there! Don't cry without a reason! You should have been boasting about the game like all the kids on your team! Why can't you be like all of them?"

I nodded and said "Sorry Mom, I'm just excited about my first official win! This is my first stepping stone to become the best football player I told you I would become!"

She helplessly smiled "I know I know! I hope you don't throw away your dream halfway because it gets too hard!"

I smiled and nodded to her. That's my mother, she has to be tough with me, she's a single parent. She has to switch between cool and bad parent all the time for that. I only understood it when I was older and she was gone. Sometimes parents make their decisions for their own reason but always thinking about your best interest. At least that was for my case.

I got congratulated by our coach, a part-timer that I didn't remember, probably a parent of one of my teammates. We said the respective byes and we went walking home. Why? We didn't have a car anymore, I constantly complained about that in the past and my mother would say that is a training for my football dream to make me shut up. But I never thought about her, she was working on a hospital as a nurse, she had a lot of shifts and she comes and goes walking home, even at night. Sometimes a collage of her would drop her home, but most of the time she would come walking all the 35 blocks. Why not public transport? I didn't ask her, but I guess that it was saving for my college that I throw away like a moron I was at the time. I guess that was the main reason I felt so bad after the accident.

There is no point remembering that now, I have a new mission at the moment. I thought "Help Commands" and a blue window opened. I thought "Close" and the window closed.

Cool, I finally know how to close this damn thing. I opened again and looked at the options:

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The choices and were grayed out. I clicked on and a smaller windows appeared.

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[Enable notificacions for increase/decrease of STATS Y/>N]

[Enable notificacions for increase/decrease of SKILLS Y/>N]

[Change position of windows FACE

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I enable both notifications and selected OTHER and thought about my wrist, like a watch. I think is better than staring at the sky like a moron. At least the people would think you are rude instead of dumb or crazy.

I checked and was empty, and my limit of missions was 1. I tried to think football related missions and nothing popped off. It seems autogenerated.

Finally, I checked , a small tiny rectangle appeared on my wrist. I checked it out and it looked something like this:

╔═══════════════════════════════╗

║Name: David Hunter░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║

║Age: 6 years old░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║

║Health condition: Healthy (100%)░░░░░░░║

║~~~~~~~~~~[BASIC STATS]~~~~~~~~~~~║

║[Pace → Current: 1 PC (-F)]░░░░░░░░░░░░║

║[Shooting → Current: 2 SHT (-F)]░░░░░░░░║

║[Passing → Current: 1 PS (-F)]░░░░░░░░░░║

║[Dribbling → Current: 1 DB (-F)]░░░░░░░░░║

║[Physical →Current: 2 PHC (-F)]░░░░░░░░░║

║[Defense → Current: 0 DF (-F)]░░░░░░░░░░║

╚════════════════════════════════╝

Oh CMON! My defense was not that weak! Well, whatever stupid window! I closed all of them and continued like nothing had happened.

We arrived at my home, today was Sunday and was the only free day for my mom. But she needed to keep all the house in order, I usually only helped the necessary and grumbling all the way. But now I did all the chores excited and cheerful, it was such a warming experience to feel this close to my mom. I really hope this not some sick dream for that voice, but if it was, it was a good dream and a good way to go.

After I finished all the chores of the house with my mom on record time I had 1 hour free because we did so quickly. It could be quicker but I didn't remember the places of plates and all other stuff around the house. So in my free time, I went upstairs and checked on a newspaper that my mom had borrowed from home a few days ago. We only had a small tv but it was so old that it wasted a lot of electricity, so we almost never used it. Only on special occasions.

Anyway, I continued to her bedroom and it was the familiar old red room when I was little I was scared of this room because of the color, thinking of blood. Later I found out that it was the color of the dress she was wearing the day my father died. I cried a lot knowing that, I gave those blankets away thinking that it was a bad memory.

I cleaned my eyes from all the dripping that the onion ninjas were causing and looked at the date.

15/02/2003 (I will this date format DD/MM/YYYY and the metric system).

I was at my summer vacations, I will commence 1st grade this March. I only played football on the weekends and usually spent my time at home, alone, playing football and making a mess of the house. Only to receive my mother tired from work and clean all the mess, usually only sleeping 2 or 3 hours to start again next day. She suffered every summer with me, not so much when I got older and I was never at home. I made her inadvertently suffer from worry because I didn't even tell her where I went.

Yes I know, I was a shitty son, I'm not a fucking angel. I will make things right this time, I promise!

Well, we were having dinner and she slowly asked: "Ok, spit it, what do you want for behaving so much?"

I was confused and asked "Nothing? I just wanted to help to have more free time for playing football!" I innocently said.

She bought it and smiled while saying "Finally some help around this house!"

I nodded and continued eating our chicken and rice. We ate a lot of these, cheap, filling and somewhat healthy. It was a good food for a grown man.

After dinner, I helped my mother do the dishes while I bathed myself. I insisted.

After that was nighttime, I was really tired, only for playing a 15-minute match and only an hour of hitting the wall of my old home from outside.

I slept like a log, thinking about how to raise my quickly enough to gain attention, money and a lot of connections. I realize that connections between players usually takes you far more up than skill. You could depend only on skill, but personal relationships are a great thing to develop.

Besides, who can tell no to a little kid with a pen and a photo of his favorite player?