"I spent three hours today memorizing the insertion points of every muscle in the forearm," she signed one night as she also talked, rubbing her tired eyes. "If I see another diagram of a flexor carpi ulnaris, I might scream."

Mateo laughed, a genuine, unforced laugh. "I spent my afternoon learning about the Treaty of Versailles," he signed back. "I think your forearm muscles sound more interesting."

Their bond deepened with every call. They talked about everything and nothing. They shared their dreams, their fears, their frustrations. He told her about the stalker, Baum, and she listened with a fierce, protective anger.

She told him about a difficult patient she was working with in her practical training, and he listened with a quiet, supportive empathy. Their relationship was being forged in the crucible of their separate, demanding lives, an emotional connection that transcended the thousands of miles and the flickering pixels of a screen.

This relentless grind carried him into the weekend, and into an away match against a struggling Hamburger SV.

The game itself was a testament to Dortmund's quality. They were dominant from the start, their passing and movement too much for the home side to handle. They secured a comfortable 3-1 victory, a professional, efficient performance.

Mateo was, as always, instrumental. He didn't score, but he provided a sublime assist for the second goal, a perfectly weighted through-ball that split the Hamburg defense. He controlled the tempo of the game, his footballing intelligence shining through.

But to the trained eye, the signs of fatigue were there. The usual explosive burst of acceleration was a fraction slower.

The relentless pressing was a half-step less intense. He was running on fumes, his immense talent and the System's analytical prowess compensating for his physical and mental exhaustion.

After the match, in the locker room, his teammates were celebrating a routine win. But Mateo felt no elation. He just felt a profound, bone-deep tiredness. He had survived another week of the grind.

He had performed, he had delivered. But as he sat on the bench, the noise of the celebration fading into a dull hum, he couldn't help but wonder how long he could keep it up. How long could he live in the eye of the hurricane before the storm finally tore him apart? The crown was heavy, and with every passing day, the grind was making it heavier. making it heavier.

The sheer monotony was a physical weight. Mateo had once dreamed of a life dedicated to football, but he had imagined it as a joyous pursuit, not a relentless, soul-crushing job.

The System, his silent companion, could optimize his physical recovery and tactical understanding, but it couldn't alleviate the profound mental fatigue. It could analyze the spin of a football, but it couldn't quantify the ache of loneliness or the leaden weight of exhaustion that settled on him each night.

His sessions with Frau Schmidt became a particular kind of torture. He respected her, and he knew the education was vital, a promise he had made to Don Carlo and to himself. But the cognitive dissonance was jarring.

One hour, he was on the training pitch, his body a finely tuned instrument of athletic genius, his mind processing geometric angles and physics in a way that felt like breathing.

The next, he was sitting at a desk, a clumsy, tired teenager, his brain refusing to cooperate as he tried to conjugate German verbs or understand the nuances of the Napoleonic Wars. It felt like being two different people, and the strain of switching between them was immense.

Felix Baum, the paparazzo, was a constant, unnerving presence in this exhausting routine. He was a professional parasite, skilled in the art of being unobtrusive. He never got too close, never shouted, but his presence was a violation.

Mateo would be walking from the training pitch to the academy building, his mind still processing Klopp's instructions, and he would see a flicker of movement in a parked car a hundred meters away, the glint of a long lens.

It was a constant reminder that he was being watched, that his life was no longer his own. He started taking different routes, varying his schedule by a few minutes, but Baum was always there, a patient predator waiting for a moment of weakness.

The paranoia began to seep into his dreams. He would dream of being watched, of cameras flashing in the dark, of his most private moments being broadcast to the world.

His free-kick practice became his only true form of rebellion. It was the one part of his day that was not on the schedule, the one thing he did purely for himself. It was a painful, obsessive ritual.

He would strike the ball, and the System would feed him a stream of data. Impact point 2mm too high. Follow-through angle 3 degrees off. Result: 4% loss of velocity, 8cm deviation from optimal trajectory.

He would adjust, again and again, a thousand tiny calibrations in pursuit of perfection. It was a form of meditation, a way of channeling his frustration and his sense of powerlessness into a single, controllable action. He wasn't just trying to master a skill; he was trying to master the chaos of his own life, one perfectly struck football at a time.

His calls with Isabella were the only time he felt truly human. She was the one person who saw past the phenomenon to the boy underneath. She didn't care about his goals or his assists.

She cared about whether he was sleeping, whether he was happy. She would tell him about her own struggles, the pressure of her exams, the emotional toll of working with patients in pain. Their shared experience of the "grind," albeit in different worlds, created a bond of deep, empathetic understanding.

"It feels like I'm running a race with no finish line," he signed to her one night, his hands moving with a weary slowness.

"I know the feeling," she signed back, a sad smile on her face. "But the finish line isn't the point, is it? It's about how you run the race. And you, Mateo, are running it with more grace than anyone I have ever seen."

Her words were a balm to his weary soul, a reminder that he was not alone in his struggle. They were two young people, both chasing their dreams, both paying the price of ambition. Their connection was a quiet, steady light in the overwhelming darkness of his new reality.

The Hamburg match was a microcosm of his life. He performed his duties with a flawless, almost robotic, precision.

The assist was a moment of pure, unthinking genius, a brief flash of the artist amidst the relentless work of the artisan. But the joy was fleeting, quickly replaced by the familiar, crushing weight of exhaustion.

The victory was not a cause for celebration; it was simply the end of another task, another box ticked on an endless to-do list.

As he sat in the locker room, the cheers of his teammates washing over him, he felt a profound sense of detachment. He was in the room, but he was not of it. He was a ghost in his own life, a silent, tired observer of the spectacular show that was being built around him.

***

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