Become A Football Legend-Chapter 20: Joanna

The ride back to Darmstadt was quiet.

Javi was focused on the road as it was getting late.

They were stuck in the evening traffic due to workers who worked in Frankfurt but lived elsewhere.

Lukas was on his phone, he was chatting with João on WhatsApp.

"First day of tryouts, how did it go, Luke?"

"Bro, it went even better than I thought. I scored and assisted a goal each in the practice match."

"Ohhhh, Mr. Superstar is now starting to shine huh?"

"Bro, I haven’t played an official match in forever. This was just practice with the U17s."

"You know you’re 15 right? If someone heard you, they’d think you were 20-something."

"Thirty-something would be more accurate." Lukas thought.

"When’s the next session?"

"It’s on Friday. I can’t wait for real."

"Did you talk to Coach Pat? He asked about you today too.... It wasn’t easy to deceive him again."

"I will come by tomorrow to talk tho, Marco says he will call him tonight to talk though. So it should all be sorted by tomorrow."

"Hopefully. Because I don’t know how much I can keep avoiding his questions about you."

"I salute your sacrifice bro. By the way, how is she?"

"How is who?"

"Who else? Joanna?"

"Bro! C’mon! You’re still going on with this sh*t huh?"

"What’s wrong? I just asked a simple question."

"You see her in school, why don’t you speak to her there? Then you come here and you’re disturbing me about my sister."

"Bro, you won’t understand, it’s weird."

"Yeah I understand! Because it’s weirder when you’re asking me about her!"

"Alright. Alright. My bad. Extend my regards to her."

"I ain’t extending sh*t. Greet her when you see her."

"Alright bro. Later."

Lukas smiled as he shut his phone off and turned to look outside the window as he thought about Joanna — João’s twin sister. freēwēbηovel.c૦m

For as long as he could remember, he has had a crush on her.

With the way he lived his previous life, though, he couldn’t even muster up the courage to speak to her before she graduated high school.

She attended the same school as Lukas and João, but was a couple years ahead of them.

When João and Joanna came to enrol in a school after they first came to Germany, a preliminary evaluation saw João pushed a couple years back—this brought him to Lukas’ class.

After high school, she travelled to Madrid to study Biochemistry.

The last time Lukas heard about her, she was getting married. It was a huge deal as she was the twin sister of one of the best defenders in the world at the time.

Lukas could only watch from his phone as he left congratulatory comments on the Instagram posts.

Since coming back though, he had been in a weird spot.

He wanted to speak to her, but he also wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.

She was 17, and although he looked 15, he felt like he was 36.

Since returning, he’d completely stopped going to João’s house—something he used to do quite often just to see her.

"What am I even thinking about? She is gonna meet someone and fall in love, and get married. I can’t get in the middle of that." Lukas thought as he stared out the car. The scenery gradually changing from skyscrapers to a more quieter, less developed surrounding.

[*I know I am a robot and all that, and I don’t really get human’s complicated emotions. But you know you were single all through your previous life right?*]

"Wait, how do you even know that?"

[*I got all your memories when we merged.*]

"All of them? That’s creepy."

[*Whatever. Like I was saying, you were single all your life. So unless you plan on repeating that life, you can’t really stop yourself from disrupting the path of any person you end up with.

Even taking it a step further, just the fact that you have me, and you’re getting this good at football, is going to have a massive butterfly effect.

There will be people who won’t get chances at teams, because of your presence in that team.

Managers might be sacked because of your performance against them.

Teams might get relegated, and staff will lose their jobs because they lost to you.

A lot of things—good and bad—will happen to people because of the new path you’re taking in this life.

So does that mean you should live your life exactly as you did previously just for fear of changing the lives of others for the worse?

We both know the answer to that question.*]

"Wow! You really are wise. What kind of OpenAI text generation software are you?" Lukas was stunned at T.

[*Don’t compare me to that trash. You’re gonna piss me off.*]

"Oh you sound really mad."

[*How would you feel if I compared you to a centipede? It isn’t even similar because centipedes are living organisms like you. That thing you guys call AI, is not even the intelligent. It’s just artificial.*]

"Fine! Fine! I see you feel very strongly about ChatGPT. I won’t mention it again."

[*Don’t even dare.*]

"But on a more serious note though, even if you’re right about the butterfly effect my actions will undoubtedly cause, there’s a difference between not knowing who is being affected and seeing someone’s life change course—for maybe the worse because of my rebirth."

[*So it doesn’t matter if you don’t know whose life you’re changing? That’s just a horrible thing to say.*]

"That’s not what I meant! Imagine we get together and things don’t work out down the line. Then everyone’s hurt, and maybe she won’t meet the same guy she met the last time. And it’s just gonna be horrible for everyone. How would I live with myself knowing I caused all that?"

[*First of all, that’s very confident of you to assume she’d even spare you a glance. Secondly, are you planning to be such a horrible partner that she dating you would turn her life upside down?*]

"You’re making me sound like a terrible person TT. Of course I have no plans of treating her terribly. But you know how life is, sometimes things like these just don’t work out."

[*No I’m not making you sound anyhow. I’m just showing you how you sound to me. We need to call a spade, a spade.*]

"Ouch, okay. But even if that’s not a problem, she’s 17!"

[*And you’re 15? True that could be a problem for her. You’re a kid.*]

"You know that’s not what I mean. Isn’t it weird for me, who has lived for so long, to be with someone that age?"

[*Why? You want 30-something year olds? I doubt any woman that age would go to jail for you though?*]

"Well that makes sense. It’s not like I possessed someone’s body. She has always been older than me. So it’s not weird at all. Right?"

[*Look at this 40-year old grandpa trying to convince himself that he’s not weird.*]

"What are you chuckling at?" Javi interrupted Lukas’ conversation with TT as he heard Lukas quietly laughing at TT’s joke.

"Did you go crazy from having a wonderful first day at Eintracht?" He asked Lukas.

"Hahaha.. that would be understandable wouldn’t it?"

"Yeah. Honestly I would totally get it. Cause I feel like I’m going crazy too."

The father and son duo laughed before the car fell back silent as they approached their destination.

"Dad," Lukas called out as Javi pulled into the parking spot.

"It’s gonna get a lot better from this point. I promise." Lukas said as he looked at Javi with a serious expression.

"I trust you, Luke." Javi replied with a smile.

* * *

The next day. Lukas’ high school.

Lukas was leaning on the railing on the third floor of a 4-storey building.

The building was painted orange with stripes of yellow decorating parts of the wall.

Behind him was an open metal door, which led to a class with about 30 seats.

The class however, was half empty. Students were converged in groups chatting and laughing.

Some sat quietly on their own, eating, or using their phones, while others were hunched over on their desks—presumably taking short naps.

It was a 20-minute break after the second lesson of the day.

Lukas was staring down the horizon.

He hadn’t been the biggest fan of school in his previous life. Not from lack of trying, but more from lack of interest in trying too hard.

He had managed to pass enough to get his Abitur, but ultimately dropped out of college.

Unfortunately he didn’t follow the footsteps of his fellow dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs—he wasn’t even close.

But now, his mind just wandered.

Then he felt a soft tap on his shoulders.

"Hey Luke, where’s João?"

A soft voice passed through his ears. It was just a normal question, but the voice sounded so soothing.

He turned around.

And there she was.

Like a dark-skinned goddess that decided to grace humanity with her presence.

She had long black hair, neatly packed in a half ponytail with face-framing tendrils.

She had no makeup on and casual clothes—jeans with a white blouse with white sneakers—but to Lukas, she looked mesmerizing.

"Hey Jo. João is over there." Lukas responded, trying his best to keep his cool as he pointed to João who was sitting in one corner of the classroom scrolling through his phone.

"Thanks." She replied as she flashed a smile before walking towards João.

"Wow." Lukas was smitten.

A/N: Okay guys. This is gonna be quite a slow burn romance. Because I’m still learning how to write romance. So bear with me.

This content is taken from free web nov𝒆l.com