Leaving Finch Farm training ground, Dalglish flagged down a taxi passing along the street.
The car pulled away from Everton’s academy grounds, heading toward the old streets of West Derby.
Dalglish had already sorted everything out.
“I’ve got the hospital situation handled.
There’s a full-time carer looking after Mason around the clock, so you two don’t need to split your attention worrying about staying by her bed.
Go back to school as normal tomorrow.
Your schoolwork can’t slip.”
He turned his head toward Dean beside him, his tone growing a shade more serious.
“You’re different.
The most important thing for you now is structured training—getting yourself up to match speed as fast as you can.
Your basics are far too weak.
You need to make that up within a year.
Understood?”
“No need to rush the contract.
I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow.”
Dean murmured his agreement.
After a short time, the car came to a smooth stop outside their front door.
The two of them pushed the doors open and got out.
Dean stood under the streetlight, and bowed deeply toward Dalglish through the car window.
“Thank you.”
Ethan, right behind him, raised his voice.
“Thank you, Mr.
Kenny!”
Dalglish shrugged through the window, the corner of his mouth were lifting.
“Take care of yourselves.
Liverpool kids never get knocked down by hardship.”
Before the taxi pulled away, Dean thought he heard the driver calling out, “King!
Any chance of an autograph?
God, I’m a diehard Kopite…”
But soon enough, the car had vanished at the end of the street.
The two brothers pushed the door open and went inside.
The empty house sat quiet and cold, missing Grandma’s bustling presence; a stillness settled into every corner.
Dean sat down on the sofa, trying to sort through his tangled thoughts.
Playing football was, for now, the single fastest way to make money—a way to break out of an impossible situation.
But professional football carried too many variables—injuries, being cut, dips in form, every corner of it held some unknown risk.
He couldn’t treat it as his only safety net.
He needed to leave himself, leave this family, some kind of backup plan as well.
He turned to Ethan beside him and said, seriously, “You just focus on your studies, work hard at school.
That’s all I need from you.
I’ll figure out the money, figure out everything with the family.”
Ethan looked at his brother and didn’t argue, only nodded quietly.
When they were younger, and they used to squabble, he’d always resented it—why did Dean get to be the older brother, why couldn’t he be the one?
In this moment, he understood he could never be the older brother.
The night deepened, and the lights in the house went out.
From the bed beside his, Ethan’s breathing came slow and even—all the tension of the day was fully released, sunk deep into sleep.
Dean had no sleep in him at all.
Outside the window, the night sat pitch black.
The streetlight cast down a dim yellow glow.
Wind slipped past the window’s edge.
The room was quiet enough that he could hear his own heartbeat.
The whole day’s upheaval churned over and over in his mind.
Grandma in hospital, the savings wiped out, the trial match, Dalglish stepping in to help, Liverpool’s promise of a contract—each scene surfaced clearly, one after another…
He turned his head toward the shoe rack by the door.
As of today, there was a pair of football boots there that belonged to him.
He could already picture it—if Grandma recovered and came home and saw this, how furious she would be.
She would absolutely throw them straight into the bin outside.
Before this time, football had had no place in his life.
He’d avoided it, hated everything it had brought with it.
But in the space of half a day, he’d been shoved onto this path.
The road ahead was murky.
No one knew where it would end.
Suddenly, a thought stirred in him.
The three suspended, transparent beads appeared at once before his eyes.
The bead on the far left had taken on a faint wash of blue.
After the afternoon’s touches on the ball, the running, the physical duels, the blue had spread further—now taking up roughly a twentieth of the bead.
Still a small amount, but genuinely more than before.
Every touch of the ball was quietly feeding this bead.
The red bead held steady at its three-quarters mark, the one he’d built up over these years of training.
As for the bead on the far right, it remained entirely clear and unchanged.
He still couldn’t work out exactly what the three beads did, had no idea which ability each one corresponded to.
But he understood this much: these beads, visible to him and no one else, were his foundation.
They were the one thing he could rely on, out on this unknown road football had put him on.
The night sat deep and heavy, and at some point, without noticing, Dean fell into a deep sleep.
In the hazy edges of a dream, he stood on soft turf, running, cutting back, holding his position, intercepting, again and again, his movements were both smooth and wild.
But the boundaries of the dream stayed blurred—the stands, the players, the crowd, all of it dissolved into vagueness.
He had never actually seen what a proper professional match looked like.
His mind couldn’t piece together a complete picture of the pitch.
All that remained was pure, running instinct.
The night passed without incident.
Liverpool mornings came wrapped, as always in a fine drizzle.
Seven in the morning.
A full two hours still before the public secondary school’s nine o’clock start.
The doorbell rang.
Dean’s eyes snapped open, most of his drowsiness was gone in an instant.
He got up, shoved his feet into his shoes, and went to the door to pull it open.
Beyond it, mist and rain drifted.
The cold air brought Dean fully awake at once.
Dalglish stood on the step, a paper takeaway box in hand, a thin film of rain-mist clinging to him.
“Morning.”
Dean stepped aside to let him in, then shut the door behind him, sealing out the rain.
“Wake Ethan up first.” Dalglish set the food down on the kitchen table.
Dean nodded and went into the bedroom to wake his sleeping brother.
Ethan rubbed his eyes as he got up, still half-asleep, but the instant he saw Dalglish, he came fully awake at once—he’d been waiting on news about his brother’s future too.
The night before, he’d seen Dean sitting on the sofa for a long, long while.
At the time, Ethan had felt something he couldn’t quite put into words.
The two of them washed up quickly, sat down to eat, and once the plates were cleared, all three of them headed out and got in the car.
The car pulled away from the old streets of West Derby, away from the residential area, heading out toward the northern outskirts.
On the way, Dalglish laid everything out clearly.
“We’re heading to the Kirkby training ground.
Liverpool’s first team uses Melwood, right here in West Derby, not far at all from these old streets.
Your grandfather, John, moved here on purpose, years ago, just to be closer to the club—he used to go watch the first team train at Melwood all the time.
But Kirkby’s different.
That’s the club’s dedicated academy ground, further out.
Every age group, every youth player, trains out there.”
He turned his head toward Dean.
“Today I’m taking you to sign the contract.
I’ve settled things with Heighway—what you’re getting is a formal scholar contract.
The standard weekly wage for a youth scholar is only seventy to eighty pounds.
But with me vouching for you, telling them your talent is something out of the ordinary, the club’s making an exception—giving you a hundred and ten pounds a week.”
Everton over there don’t see far enough ahead.
Liverpool’s not like that.
We’re willing to pay up front for a prospect worth the investment.
Starting next week, you’ll officially join the squad for training.
From there, the training schedule, working on your position, the age-group assessments—all of that goes through Heighway directly.
All you need to do is put in the work, honestly, steadily…”
Hearing this news, Ethan, beside them, could no longer hold back his excitement, his eyes were brimming with light.
“God…
Dean, you’re joining Liverpool!
You’re going to wear the red of the Reds, play for Liverpool!”
Ethan’s whole heart was caught up in the thrill of Dean playing for Liverpool.
And Dean, silent through all of it, felt something just as intense.
But not because of playing for Liverpool.
It was that number, echoing over and over in his mind—one hundred and ten pounds.
Every week.
He didn’t understand how brutal the competition within an academy could be, didn’t understand how rocky the road to a professional career really was, didn’t understand the full weight behind this contract.
All he knew was that this steady weekly wage could cover Grandma’s carer, could fill the gap in the family’s living expenses, could even be saved up to pay back what Marina had already covered for the medical bills.
It could hold up this family, completely collapsed as it was!
To some Premier League star, a hundred and ten pounds might be nothing more than a tip tossed down without a second thought, not even worth mentioning.
But for Dean, right now, for this family.
This was money that could save a life.
It was the one hand reaching out to him in this terrible situation, a single beam of light pressing back against the dark.
Dean’s throat tightened; a rawness was rising in it.
He clamped down hard on the emotion surging up in him, refusing to let the tears fall.
He couldn’t have said whether he loved football.
Couldn’t claim any real vision for the future either.
But after everything that had happened yesterday.
In this moment, he made a silent promise to himself deep down.
As long as Liverpool was willing to give him this chance, this wage that would keep his family alive, he would give everything he had, run himself into the ground for this club, hold nothing back at all.