The transparent panel vanished before Rafael could reach for it.
He remained beside the bed with his fingers resting against his unscarred knee, listening to his mother move across the floor downstairs.
His agent was here.
The contracts were waiting.
On the blanket lay a phone Rafael did not recognise at first. It was smaller and heavier than the one he had carried at thirty-four, with a scratched black case and thick borders surrounding the screen.
He picked it up and turned it over.
His thumb moved across the dark glass, expecting it to respond, but nothing happened. After several seconds, he noticed the narrow button along the side and pressed it.
The screen lit up.
Old application icons crowded the display in an arrangement he no longer remembered, while several unread academy messages sat beneath the date. Rafael stared at the device until his eyes settled on a pale crack in the bottom corner of the case.
Memory returned.
His mother had bought him this phone after his sixteenth birthday because his previous one stopped charging. He had damaged the case several months later when it slipped from his kit bag outside the academy gym.
This was his old phone.
His fingers entered the four-digit passcode before he consciously remembered it.
The home screen opened.
Rafael found the browser only after checking the wrong folder twice. His thumbs felt clumsy against the outdated keyboard as he searched for the League Two play-off final, Swindon’s defeat and the penalty he had missed at Wembley.
Nothing appeared.
He tried different combinations of words, adding Bradford City, Daniel Price and his own name at thirty-four. The results showed unrelated matches and old club pages, but there was no report of the final and no circulating footage of his knee folding beneath him.
Rafael searched his name alone.
The screen filled with academy statistics, an England youth squad announcement and a local article describing him as one of the most promising strikers in his age group.
Nothing mentioned the failed loans, his injuries or the seventeen years he remembered living.
He opened his contacts and typed his daughter’s name.
No results found.
Rafael searched his messages, photographs, cloud storage and email. He changed the spelling even though he knew he had entered it correctly.
She did not exist.
The phone slipped slightly in his damp hand.
Rafael lowered himself onto the edge of the bed as the strength left his legs. He remembered a small body beneath a hospital blanket, strawberry sweets hidden inside his coat pocket and her final laugh ending before the recording did.
He had his youth again.
His knee was healthy, his career had not yet collapsed and his mother was moving around downstairs.
But his daughter had not been born.
Rafael pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth. His shoulders shook once before he forced them still, although he could not stop the tears gathering in his eyes.
He had spent her final months wishing he could go back and repair every decision that left him without the money to help her.
Now he had been given exactly that.
She was still gone.
A transparent panel unfolded across his vision.
[Career-Defining Decision Detected.]
[Mission: Decide on Your Football Future.]
[Objective: Accept or reject the representation agreement that shaped your first life.]
[Your decision cannot be reversed.]
Rafael read the final line twice.
The System offered no advice, reward or explanation. It merely waited.
"Rafael!" his mother called from downstairs. "Are you planning to keep our guest waiting all morning?"
Her voice struck him harder than the date had.
Rafael stood so suddenly that his knee hit the desk. The impact barely registered before he dropped the phone onto the bed and ran from the room.
He took the first few stairs too quickly and almost missed the fourth. His hand closed around the wooden railing, stopping him from falling, but he released it immediately and continued down.
His mother stepped into the hallway as he reached the bottom.
"What is wrong with—"
Rafael crossed the remaining distance and wrapped both arms around her.
The force pushed her back half a step.
She stiffened in surprise before one hand rose and awkwardly patted his shoulder. Rafael buried his face against her hair, breathing in the familiar scent of coconut oil, laundry soap and the coffee she drank after every hospital shift.
She was warm.
Alive.
Her heart beat steadily against him.
"Rafael?" She tried to lean back far enough to see his face. "What happened? Did you break something expensive?"
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. It came out uneven and wet.
"I missed you."
His mother managed to free one arm and pushed him back. She was younger than the woman he remembered burying, although tiredness already darkened the skin beneath her brown eyes. Her black hair had been pulled into a loose knot, and a faded blue cardigan covered the pale uniform from her night shift.
She wiped one of his tears away with her thumb.
"You saw me last night," she said. "How much missing could you possibly do overnight?"
Rafael laughed again, but more tears followed it.
"I don’t know how to explain."
Her amusement faded as she studied his face. "Are you ill?"
"No."
"Did something happen upstairs?"
Rafael glanced toward the sitting room.
A brown leather briefcase rested beside the doorway.
His stomach tightened.
His mother followed his gaze, and her expression became guarded.
"He has been waiting for fifteen minutes," she said quietly. "But you should understand something before we go in there. You don’t have to sign merely because he arranged this meeting."
Rafael looked at her.
"Do you still want him representing you?" she asked.