The characters were written in white chalk.

On the blackboard, there were still the words “smart” that Lin Wanxing had written before, as well as the daily earnings ledger everyone had kept. These writings were messy, which is why Lin Wanxing didn’t immediately notice the two additional lines of characters.

But at the moment she turned off the lights, she discovered this and instinctively turned the lights back on.

Wanxing_lin@ychdfc.com

Yydsmx0716

These were the two lines of characters that had appeared on the blackboard.

At first, she thought they were chalk scribbles from the students. But the first line had a special structure, and she quickly realized it was an email address.

Wanxing_lin, Lin Wanxing?

Was this her email?

Under the incandescent light, Lin Wanxing stood in a daze.

She stared at the characters on the blackboard, having no recollection of registering this, though she couldn’t rule out the possibility that she might have accidentally signed up for it and forgotten.

But who had written this here?

Calming down, Lin Wanxing examined the two strings of characters twice. Her first task was to determine the registration website of the email itself.

The suffix “@ychdfc.com” should represent some email server.

Lin Wanxing chose the simplest method—she took out her phone, opened Baidu, and entered this email suffix.

Various entries appeared on the webpage, with “Yongchuan Hengda Football Club” highlighted in red in the search results.

Lin Wanxing looked back at the email account on the blackboard, even more incredulous.

This was an email registered on the Yongchuan Hengda Football Club website.

Using her name?

Her initial feeling of “peculiarity” transformed into “shock,” and Lin Wanxing’s back grew damp with sweat.

She looked at the second line of chalk writing on the blackboard.

“Yydsmx0716” looked like a meaningful jumble of characters. Lin Wanxing silently repeated the first few letters, noting the deliberate capitalization, the combination of numbers and letters—it very much resembled a password.

Had Wang Fa written this?

Lin Wanxing looked up at the ceiling. If Wang Fa had registered an email in her name and secretly left it on the blackboard, it would make sense for her to discover it after he’d left. Had Wang Fa already gone?

Lin Wanxing immediately called Wang Fa on WeChat.

It took some time before the call connected.

“Where are you? Have you left?” Lin Wanxing asked.

“I’m upstairs washing dishes,” Wang Fa’s tone had a rare hint of reluctance, “I’ll leave soon.”

“Wait for me then,” Lin Wanxing held her phone, “Is there a drink you’d like? I’ll bring it up.”

“No need, there’s still some in the fridge. I’m leaving right away,” Wang Fa said in a very businesslike tone.

“Just have one last drink with me. If there’s something you want, let me know on WeChat,” Lin Wanxing said, hanging up, pretending not to hear Wang Fa’s final words, “It’s not necessary.”

Wang Fa’s voice sounded completely normal, and he was still upstairs, which meant the possibility that he had left this email was very small.

Lin Wanxing squinted at the blackboard, and an idea emerged.

Once, Chen Jianghe had received a “free ball borrowing card for one hundred times,” directing him to the sports equipment room.

Later, someone had slipped a box of cigarettes to Qin Ao, containing many motivational quotes, and Qin Ao had come to her with the problem.

So they solved the puzzle in the cigarette box together and found Fu Xinshu.

After that, Fu Xinshu also received a map, leading the players of Hongjing Eighth Middle School to start the “Yuan Yuan Tutoring Class.”

And now, on the blackboard of the tutoring classroom, before her eyes, an email name had appeared.

Could it have been left by the person the students referred to as the “mysterious person”?

Lin Wanxing felt herself caught in some strange puzzle, with the milky white light around her like an illusory spider web.

Normally, you wouldn’t sense any problem, but occasionally a sticky thread would descend, gently landing on your cheek or arm. Not frightening, much like a mischievous prank, but it always made one’s heart itch with curiosity.

Thinking this, Lin Wanxing used her phone to open the Yongchuan Hengda Football Club website.

The official homepage featured news congratulating the club on winning the championship of the xth Chinese Football Super League. The image section switched automatically, and Lin Wanxing saw the different team players of Yongchuan Hengda participating in various competitions flash by one by one.

She looked through the webpage and found “Email” in the upper right corner, then clicked on it.

The page redirected, and sure enough, it was the email login entry page.

Lin Wanxing looked at the two strings of characters on the blackboard and entered the email account on her phone.

Then came the password field.

Lin Wanxing looked back at the blackboard, and although it seemed incredible, she took a deep breath and typed in the second line of letters from the blackboard.

She pressed enter on her phone keypad to confirm.

Lin Wanxing’s palms were sweating. As the page loaded, she felt as if she were sinking to the bottom of the sea, despite standing in a classroom as bright as day.

Clicking into the inbox, there was an unopened email—the most recent one—sent on September 30th, which was today. The logo was tightly closed as if waiting for her to open it.

The email was titled “Yongchuan Hengda Football Club Chairman’s Office – Board of Directors – Appointment Notice”

Click, open.

All around was silent darkness, with only her heart beating.

Thump, thump…

The page gradually unfolded.

A red-headed document appeared on her phone screen, with the following content:

To all internal staff of Yongchuan Hengda Club:

This is to notify you that Coach Liu Chuanguang has been appointed as the head coach of Yongchuan Hengda Club’s first team.

Yongchuan Hengda Football Club

September 30, 201x

Confusion surged like a tide, overwhelming her.

Lin Wanxing rose from the deep sea, only to be slapped in the face by the white waves rushing toward the shore.

The classroom without a fan was somewhat stuffy, sweat emerged from Lin Wanxing’s hairline and flowed down her temples.

She read the email again.

The content of the email was simple, but the official seal at the signature reminded her that this was an extremely formal club appointment notice.

Lin Wanxing remembered the name “Liu Chuanguang”—he was one of the middle-aged men who came to Hongjing to “recruit talent” from Wang Fa. According to the students, he had once served as the national team’s head coach.

In this appointment notice, Liu Chuanguang was the next head coach of Yongchuan Hengda Club, but wasn’t Wang Fa about to report for duty in Yongchuan?

Could this be an email confirming the matter beforehand?

Lin Wanxing checked the email time again.

But it was indeed sent one hour ago, at 7:00 PM on September 30th—an internal email.

Unable to make sense of it, Lin Wanxing simply sat down at a desk and searched online for “Liu Chuanguang.”

The news said that Coach Liu had been serving as the “Technical Director” at Hengda Club. There was no official news online about Coach Liu becoming the coach of Yongchuan Hengda.

But there was indeed a record that half a month ago, due to poor team performance, the then head coach Terrin had been dismissed. The team had been seeking a new head coach, and around the same time, Coach Liu came to Hongjing to find Wang Fa.

But why had the next head coach in this appointment notice changed from Wang Fa to Liu Chuanguang?

There were only two possibilities:

First, this appointment email was fake.

But Lin Wanxing wondered, why would someone specifically register such an email in her name, secretly write the email name and password on the tutoring classroom blackboard, and finally send her a fake email?

This seemed completely unnecessary.

So the second and most likely possibility was that the email content was genuine.

And this also meant that Wang Fa had lied to them.

Lin Wanxing found it hard to describe her current feelings.

She felt as if she had returned to the day they defeated Green View International.

At the dining table in front of the stove on the rooftop, with the hotpot bubbling with steam, Wang Fa told her he was going to take a position at Yongchuan Hengda because they had offered an irresistible sky-high price.

A thin mist swirled around, and across that mist, Wang Fa’s face was calm.

He said, “Yes.” “There won’t be a better choice.”

Were all those words false?

Lin Wanxing didn’t understand—was it that Yongchuan Hengda hadn’t hired Wang Fa, or that Wang Fa had politely declined the head coach position at Yongchuan Hengda?

But Coach Liu had indeed come to Hongjing, and the figure of 15 million euros was too specific. Lin Wanxing thought perhaps it was indeed a real and enormous temptation.

But just as she and the students couldn’t sway Wang Fa, the huge sum of money equally couldn’t move him.

He had rejected all of this and decided to leave.

Why?

Despite sitting in a stuffy classroom, her sweat gradually turned cold.

Lin Wanxing couldn’t sort out her thoughts. Just then, an email notification lit up—she had received a new email.

The title was straightforward: “Something you need to know about Winfred”

Winfred, Wang Fa’s WeChat name, presumably also his English name.

Perhaps there was a receipt when she opened the previous email, so the sender had sent another one.

Her heart was racing, the surroundings silent. She opened the email, and a standard English broadcast voice with a faint clamor in the background came through before the image appeared.

The video was shot on a mobile phone. As the lens zoomed in, a field could be faintly seen.

On the field, players from both sides gathered together, the atmosphere tense. The next moment, the confrontation turned into a brawl. It was impossible to see who struck first; one could only hear the screams of the crowd in the stands transmitted through the phone’s speaker, the sound particularly shrill.

But it wasn’t fear—it was excitement. The phone lens kept shaking, making one dizzy and nauseated. The audience’s howls became the best soundtrack for the fight: fist against fist, roar against roar—the most primitive human violence and pleasure.

Finally, someone fell on the field, and the phone fell to the ground as well. The camera quietly pointed at the sky, with an infinitely magnified and distorted shoe sole treading across the screen.

It was like freshly melted ice water, dripping down onto the crown of her head.

The sudden chill flowed down from her forehead, seeping into her entire body. Lin Wanxing felt her fingers grow cold.

She couldn’t help but look up at the ceiling. The light was so cold it seemed tangible, drenching her.

In the previous footage, she was certain she had seen Wang Fa at the edge of the field.

It took a long time for Lin Wanxing to calm herself down.

She clicked on the video again and carefully listened to the news once more.

The content was roughly as follows:

Southampton Club experienced a serious incident of stadium violence during their match against Portsmouth in the English U21 League Group A. A Portsmouth player had died unexpectedly due to a sudden illness.

Southampton Club players were under police investigation, and the club’s official statement along with the Youth Training Deputy Director and Acting Head Coach Winfred announced that they had no comment on the matter.

Lin Wanxing knew she hadn’t been mistaken earlier.

There had been a violent incident on the field, the opposing player had died, and Wang Fa was the head coach at the time—he was right there on the field.

If this was the reason Wang Fa left Southampton and returned to China, then what about Yongchuan Hengda?

Lin Wanxing fell into deep thought. A behemoth like Yongchuan Hengda couldn’t possibly fail to conduct a background check, and couldn’t not know about this part of Wang Fa’s past. So there was only one possibility:

Wang Fa had rejected Yongchuan Hengda’s position and salary, using 15 million euros as an excuse to leave them.

The classroom seemed to exist in a peculiar space, both brightly lit and stuffy, yet as dark as night.

Lin Wanxing’s hand gently caressed the desk, where students had carved simple drawings over the years.

She suddenly recalled a night before—the day Coach Liu came to Hongjing to recruit Wang Fa.

She and Wang Fa walked home together, along a road near the residential complex, just the two of them. She chatted with Wang Fa, trying to move him with certain things, asking him to become the coach of this high school team.

At that time, Wang Fa asked her what a school soccer team could offer him.

Now, on this night, Lin Wanxing began to recall her answer.

She seemed to have said two words: “Dreams.”

What had Wang Fa said?

It was a cruel sentence—”I don’t have dreams.”

She closed her eyes, and what always first appeared before her was Wang Fa gazing toward the soccer field.

The magnificent stands, the solitary figure, the baseball cap pulled low, neither asleep nor awake.

She never knew why Wang Fa always sat in the stands, why he was always watching the field.

Just before they parted, she asked him for the first time, “What are you looking at?”

Where do you come from, where do you want to go?

What do you want to see, what are you looking at?

Countless times, Wang Fa’s gaze toward the field overlapped.

Calm, silent, puzzled, nostalgic… The image finally froze at that moment when he suddenly turned his head in the sunset.

Lin Wanxing finally understood what feeling she had been pondering all day without figuring out.

It wasn’t romantic love, nor was it the sentiment of parting—it was a profound regret.

Whether Wang Fa had deceived them or not was no longer important to Lin Wanxing.

The minute hand on the wall moved forward two more notches. She knew she was running out of time.