?


    Despite being on a two-week break, Devon woke up pretty early the next morning, it wasn''t really his choice his body was just following the pattern now like a programmed bot.


    Emma was still fast asleep beside him with her arm on his body, and after slowly removing her hand from his body, he changed into one of his sports outfits, slid his legs into his running boots, and quickly made his way downstairs.


    Since he couldn''t go outside now because of the crazy fans now, runningps around his house was now the norm for him.


    During normal days, he did it just ten times before jumping straight into the other things he had to do, but today he decided that he was going to triple it.


    He was doing pretty fine afterpleting the tenthp, but after that, his breathing got a rapid speed up and he began to get slower, but despite that, he kept pushing himself.


    [ 25% stamina remaining ]


    [ 56/157 Energy ]


    He didn''t bother to look at those as he kept pushing himself until he finally got to the thirtieth one, and just as hepleted it, he crashed down right beside his training pitch.


    [ 2% stamina remaining ]


    [ 7/157 Energy ]


    His breathing was very loud and fast now, and he could feel the sweat rolling into different parts of his body.


    ''I really can''t remember thest time I saw my stamina that low.''


    <Are you sure? I still remember those miserable days as if they were yesterday>


    ''I should have seen thating.''


    [ +2 stat points added to endurance ]


    ''Well, that makes sense, this took a lot of endurance toplete.''


    After catching his breath for a while, he slowly sat up on the floor and raised his gaze to look up into the sky.


    "The day sure feels nice when you know you don''t have anything important to do." He muttered before taking in a deep breath.


    He just sat there and took in the warmth and vitamin from the early sun for a while.


    He sat there as still as a tree for a couple of minutes before he slowly got up from the floor because he still had a few other things to do toplete his daily exercise.


    He was stretching himself out now unaware of the front door that the back door just opened for Emma to walk out through it.


    "Hey, good morning" She greeted


    As soon as Devon heard her voice, he slowly turned his gaze toward the area to see her standing there.


    Her hair was still messed up, her eyes were sunken in a bit, and she was still in the red robe she wore to bed.


    "Oh, hey good morning, honey." He replied as soon as he spotted her. "I didn''t expect you toe out here this early."


    "I just wanted to show you something." She said before raising her phone with the screen pointing toward him. "Have you seen this?"


    The moment she said that first part, he already knew what it was but it wasn''t exactly it.


    It was still the same headline, but this time it was on another social media tform, and the person who posted it wrote a whole article about it.


    _______ _______


    Just by getting close to the door to Mateo''s house, anyone could hear the sound of rustling pans and sizzling ingredients on the pan, and then there was also the aroma to back it all up.


    It was obvious that Unique FC''s wonder kid was cooking up something nice for breakfast but he wasn''t doing it all alone.


    He had a partner in the kitchen in the person of Amber.


    If it was up to her, she wouldn''t be here but Mateo was the one who invited her for breakfast that morning and made sure that she was there.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    She wanted to make the breakfast alone while he went to take care of other things but he insisted on joining him and there was nothing she could do about that.


    If this was the Amber before the incident happened, then there would surely be a lot of talking in the kitchen as they prepared the breakfast.


    She was busy making the pancakes while Mateo was taking care of the maple syrup.


    The table was already set, so after taking care of everything they poured the maple syrup on the pancakes and brought them over to the table.


    After that, they washed their hands and sat down to eat.


    Mateo was smiling the entire time while eating the meal but Amber still looked like she was forced to be there and while that wasn''t entirely false, she wasn''t unhappy to be there, if anything, she was d that he was able to let her into his house again.


    "Hey, our effort sure tastes great don''t you think?"


    "Yeah." She replied with an indifferent voice before taking a bite from the pancake on her fork.


    "Hey, what''s the matter?"


    "Nothing." She replied before shaking her head.


    "You said you wanted us to go back to the way we used to be but you''re sure not acting like it." He expressed. "You''re a lot more energetic than this."


    "Yeah, but…"


    "But what?"


    "You know what? Let''s just talk about something else?"


    "Okay, what do you want to talk about?"


    "Thest time we spoke, you told me you were still deciding on where you were going to spend the holiday."


    "Yeah."


    "So, have you made up your mind now?"


    Mateo couldn''t help but smile after seeing how genuinely interested she was in this topic.


    "Yeah, I''m going to Spain."


    "Oh, where in Spain?" She inquired.


    "Well, this is mostly for football reasons, transfer, and stuff but I have to be in Madrid, I may spend a few days there before going to Barcelona." He exined.


    "Oh, and what are you going to do in Barcelona?"


    "What am I going to do? To see Sofia of course and if you''re also there, cool."


    "Oh."


    That was the only reaction she could give before turning her gaze back to her te of pancakes, Mateo was not oblivious to what was going on and now he wished he hadn''t said thatst part.


    _____ ______


    Back at the Richards'' home, Dave was now inside because Emma had to make him read the long-ass article someone wrote because of what he said in his interviewst night.


    It wasn''t really that long but it still felt like one given how he had to leave what he was doing, but the further he read, the more he realized why she had to make him read it.


    Compared to what he sawst night which was just a tweet with no personal hate, he understood that the person who posted was just chasing clout but this article right here was something else.


    The more he read it, the more he felt the hatred and strong desire to create a bad image that the writer had for him, almost every paragraph talked about how he knew that Dave was just an arrogant and ungrateful goalkeeper who had his father push him into professional football, he even went as far as bringing up the case with the fans with the statement that his fans meant nothing to him.


    <Well, this dude does have something against you and it''s sort of creepy>