The Fox in the Forbidden Zone

“Mr. Hu Lai, in today’s football world, strikers who only know how to score have less and less room to survive... and yet you have still achieved dazzling success. May I ask what your secret is?”

On a winter afternoon, Hu Lai was showing the world’s reporters the highest honor he had just won, when one of them asked him this question.

Faced with the journalists’ eager gazes, Hu Lai’s thoughts drifted back to that afternoon in middle school, when he stood alone beside the field watching his classmates play. They would not let him on the field, thinking he was there to cause trouble. He also remembered what the coach had said to him with a stern face: “Hu Lai, if you can’t put in ten times the effort of everyone else, then your talent is just a worthless stone.” And then there was a dismissive voice: “Modern football demands more and more from center forwards; it demands more and more all-around ability. What’s the use of only being able to shoot?”

Finally, his thoughts settled on that moment. Night had already begun to show faintly in the eastern sky. In the middle of an abandoned open lot overgrown with weeds, a girl said very seriously to him, “Hu Lai, you actually have talent, and very impressive talent at that! Because you know where the goal is!”

Hu Lai looked into the girl’s eyes and saw the sunset behind her.

The sunlight reflected in her pupils, flowing, burning, condensing into a halo, as if it would melt him into that light as well.

Pulling his thoughts back, Hu Lai returned to this warm winter afternoon. Facing the reporters full of excitement, he smiled slightly: “Because I know the goal is right there.”