Chapter One: The Last Shot Before the Window Closed

Zhao cleared off the line in the twenty-third. In the forty-first, Southport scored with a header. Nil-one. Wind and boos poured across the pitch. At halftime, the dressing room was so quiet that Shen could hear athletic tape being torn. Coach Han asked, “Put Gu on?” Shen saw dim words in the air: [Progress: 0/12.] “No.” Gu looked up. “You promised me twenty minutes,” Shen told him. “I need twenty minutes that can kill, not forty-five that attend our funeral.” By the sixty-second minute, it remained nil-one. Southport's press began to slow. Shen stepped to the technical area and drew a circle in the air. Zhao received the ball. One. Right back. Two. The holding midfielder dropped. Three.