Chapter 13: Titan Keeper

While Sakamoto san was speaking, head coach Miura interrupted him;

“Sorry if I sound rude, but with all due respect to Sakamoto san, I can’t believe the exaggerated words of Sakamoto san. His words sounded extremely ridiculous to me when he mentioned about Hiro’s skill previously. So if it’s all right with you, can we test his skills?”

Head coach Miura turned his head towards the principal as if he was asking for his approval. Noticing his intention, principal Miyamoto Takumi agreed to his request.

“If it’s not a problem with you Takahashi san, can we examine Hiro’s skill?”

The principal asked his father.

His father hesitated a bit. This wasn’t what he had been expecting. He glanced at Sakamoto san but he remained completely silent.

“But he hasn’t brought his cleats right now!”

“That’s all right we’ll ask one of our players to lend him the boot for a while.”

The coach replied.

Listening to the words of head coach, he could no longer deny them and thus, he hesitantly took a peak at Hiro. Without saying any words, Hiro nodded his head.

“Well I guess we can do that since it looks like Hiro doesn’t have any problem with it.”

“Sorry for this unreasonable request but our reputation is at stake, so we couldn’t just take him in without analysing his skills firsthand.”

The principal apologetically placed his hands on top of Takashi’s shoulder, as they stood in the sidelines waiting for Hiro to make his appearance.

“I’ll be blunt with you. We’re still a newly formed school, so to raise our reputation our school committee had decided to invest in football. So it’s really crucial for us to gather a good team that could perform well in tournaments. And thus, if Hiro can’t perform well in this trial, I’m afraid that we can’t provide him with scholarship. I hope you can understand what I mean.”

The principal exclaimed bluntly without holding back.

Upon listening to the words of principal, Takashi looked at his wife. But it seemed like, she didn’t hear anything at all as she was staring intently at the storeroom beside the pitch.

“Go to class 4B and tell Mark to come to the pitch. Also tell him to put on his gears.”

Coach Miura ordered the student who had lent his boots to Hiro.

The school was open and the classes were running as usual. It was 11:45 AM right now and there were still 15 minutes left for the lunch break. The ground was open for everybody during school hours and only after the end of the school it was reserved for football teams on normal days.

After getting dressed in the teams locker room, Hiro made his way towards the pitch. As he made his way towards the pitch, he intently stared at the pitch infront of him. The ground was much bigger than his expectation. He could tell that the pitch was almost 130 yards long and 100 yards wide. It had almost the same measurements as those of the professional football grounds.

There were also few posts lying in the ground. The permanent goalposts was designed for professional players rather than for kids. And thus there were two more pairs of goalposts. The size of one pair of the goalposts was the same as that of the futsal. And the other pair was a mini post.

Not only had they provided him with the cleats but they had also provided him with the team’s jersey. The jersey of Ookami elementary school’s football team was plain black with golden stripes around neck and cuff. The logo resembled the shape of a wolf’s head which was silver white.

“Who’s that? Had I seen him before somewhere?”

He was confused by the appearance of a new person in the pitch.

Aside from the four people in principal’s office, there was a new face in the ground. A man who looked like he was still in his twenties was arranging the training equipments in the ground. And somehow he was getting a feeling of nostalgia from that person.

“Come over here quick Hiro”

While he was wondering about the identity of the new face, he heard the voice of coach Miura. Hearing his voice, he ran towards coach Miura.

“Look I want you to dribble past those cones zigzag as fast as you can. But there’s a catch, as you go left you can only use your left foot and as you go right, you can only use your right foot. Also you can’t touch the cone and neither can you kick the ball far away from the cone. Did you understand?”

“Yes sir!!”

As he stood infront of the cones, he noticed that the gap between the cones was barely enough to fit two balls. The gaps were extremely tight and if he slipped even a bit he’d have touched the cone. The drill was extremely difficult. Without perfect ball control, the drill was near to impossible.

[Ding!!]

[Side mission unlocked]

[Complete the drills set up by coach with astonishing result and impress the coach.]

[Reward upon completion: One roulette ticket]

[Penalty: You’ll lose stats randomly]

‘Huh!! Are you kidding me?? Lose stat?? I freaking spent so much time to gain this stat and you’re saying that I’d have to lose it because of one simple quest??’

Hiro was extremely agitated by the words of the system. He had spent almost a year to raise his attributes but the system was threatening to decrease his stats if he failed. Seeing the audacity of the system, he felt mocked by the system.

Beep!!

As soon as the coach blew the whistle, Hiro started to dribble the ball. To complete the quest as fast as possible he performed elastico continuously with both his feets. He’d perform a elastico with his right foot and follow up with another elastico with his left foot. He performed elastico without a break for more than 18 times.

Beep!

“47 seconds!! I can’t believe it. He completed the whole drill in 47 seconds. It didn’t even take 1 minute for him to pass 18 cones. Plus the gap was ridiculously small.”

The coach’s jaw dropped and his eyes were wide open upon witnessing the unbelievable feat demonstrated by Hiro.

For a while the coach couldn’t speak anything, he was completely speechless. He stood like a stone statue while looking at his stopwatch.

His parents and the principal had the same expression similar to that of the coach. Even the person who was arranging the drills revealed the same expression as that of the coach. Nobody could believe their eyes.

“Coach?? Coach??”

He called out for coach who was staring blankly at his stopwatch with his jaws wide open.

“Ah- yes!! yes!! Now let’s test your speed.”

“Sprint as fast as you can towards the center of the pitch.”

“Yes sir!!”

Beep!!

To increase his speed, Hiro put all of his body weight in his toes and dashed forward with explosive strength.

Beep!!

“17 seconds!! How can a kid run this fast?? Wth!!”

The coach couldn’t believe that a kid who was barely 6 years old sprinted 75 yards in 17 seconds. However that wouldn’t be the last of the surprise he would be getting during that trial.

Hiro completely shattered every expectations of the coach.

“Mark is here, coach.”

As he was performing the individual drills, a 5 feet tall kid made his way towards the pitch. With a tanned skin and blond hair, he looked like a foreigner.

“Huh? He doesn’t look like Japanese.”

Hiro mumbled looking at him.

“Come here Hiro. Let me introduce you to him. This kid with blond hair is our team’s goalkeeper. He’s name is Mark Ueto aka ‘Titan’. And Mark he’s our new recruit Takahashi Hiro.”

“Japanese?? I thought that he’d be a foreigner.”

Hiro’s eyes were wide open in shock.

“Haha… Yes!! He’s Japanese. His mother is German and his father is Japanese, that’s why he looks like a foreigner. But rest assured he’s Japanese.”

The coach revealed that Mark was half german and half Japanese. And he could clearly see why he was called Titan. He was ridiculously tall for an elementary level school kid.

As they finished their introduction, the coach ordered Mark to head over towards the goalpost. However he didn’t place him in the post for kids, rather he placed him infront of the post for adults.

After that, the coach told him to score freekick against Mark from 30 yards away to test his shooting power and shooting technique. 𝘦𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝑙.

As he stood 30 yards away from the post, the person who was arranging the drills placed few mannequins to act as a wall infront of him. And he began to shoot the ball.

Chatter!! Chatter!!

A huge crowd of students gathered around the sidelines of the pitch.

“Oii what’s happening over there??”

One of the student asked another student while pointing his finger at the crowd ahead.

“I don’t know. But there’s a kid who’s barely 4 feet tall scoring goal against Mark”

“Huh Mark? You mean the school football team’s captain and the ‘Titan’ goalkeeper?”

“Yes!! He’s scoring goals effortlessly against that Mark”

“Hmph!! He must be scoring penalties.”

“But even scoring penalties against Mark is incredible. But he’s scoring against him from 30 yards freekick.”

“Are you for real??”

“If you don’t believe me then why don’t you go and see for yourself?”

As they finished their conversation both of them rushed towards the pitch.

There in the pitch Hiro stood infront of the ball, 30 yards away from the goalpost. Mark looked extremely tired. As he kicked the ball, the ball flew with a rapid velocity towards the upper right corner. Mark jumped towards the ball, but he couldn’t even touch the ball.

“Whoa!! Goal!!”