I Have Unlimited Potential

Chapter 41: Calculations

The bus journey back from Sunderland took just over an hour.

Will sat in the window seat near the back, the same spot he always took, and watched the motorway unreel behind the glass. The landscape between Sunderland and Middlesbrough was a succession of things that didn’t quite commit to being anything in particular, retail parks giving way to stretches of scrub and then industrial estates and then more retail parks, the occasional church or pub appearing briefly before the motorway swallowed the view again. He had made this journey enough times that he no longer really looked at it, just let it pass in the peripheral way of something familiar, the shapes registering without being processed.

Marcus was asleep within fifteen minutes of the bus pulling out of the car park. He fell asleep the way some people managed it, not gradually but all at once, his head tipping slightly and his breathing changing in the space of about thirty seconds. There was a particular economy to it that Will had always found faintly impressive, the ability to simply decide the day was finished and execute on that decision without resistance. Will shifted subtly so Marcus’s head found the seat headrest rather than his shoulder.

On his other side Daniel Pryce had headphones in, not watching anything, just looking forward with the steady expression of someone replaying a match they hadn’t played in. His jaw was set and his eyes were focused on nothing visible. Will understood the expression. He had worn it himself enough times. It was the expression of going back through it all, possession by possession, touch by touch, looking for the precise moment where the version of the game that existed in your head had diverged from the version that had actually happened.

He thought about saying something and then didn’t. There was nothing to say that wasn’t either patronising or hollow. The situation was what it was and they both understood it clearly without it needing to be spoken between them. He left Daniel with his thoughts and turned back to the window.

He had checked the system on his phone earlier while the team was still gathering at the bus.

[POTENTIAL CAP EXPANSION - TIER 2]

[Current Potential Cap: 75]

[Expansion: +4 to potential cap]

[Price: 900 Credits]

Nine hundred. He had one hundred and ten. The gap was large but it was calculable. The maths was straightforward: fifty credits per match at an eight-point rating, plus twenty-five or thirty from daily missions on the days he completed them, plus bonus credits from goals and assists when they came. If he maintained his current form and kept the daily work consistent, nine hundred was achievable in roughly six to eight weeks. It was a long horizon but it was a visible one. He had found that the difference between a long horizon and a discouraging one was almost entirely a matter of whether you could see the path between where you were and where you needed to be. He could see it clearly enough.

Underneath the credit calculations he was thinking about something larger. His current overall rating was sixty-two. The cap sat at seventy-five after the first expansion. Thirteen points of room. In theory he could grow from sixty-two to seventy-five through proper training and match play without needing the second expansion at all. But he was already aware that growth would slow as he approached the ceiling. He had read enough about development curves to understand that the last few points before a cap were always harder than the first few points after a low base. Progress compressed at the top end. The attributes that were easiest to train were the ones that were already there in some form, waiting to be sharpened, and the ones that weren’t there yet were the ones that required the most from you and gave back the least in the short term. He needed the second expansion not for where he was now but for where the growth curve would take him in three or four months, when he pressed against the ceiling and felt it.

And then the third. And the fourth. He needed the ceiling to keep moving.

The bus carried on and the sky outside went fully dark somewhere around the forty-minute mark. The overhead lights inside the bus were low and most of the squad were either asleep or had headphones in and nobody was talking much. The engine was a constant low hum underneath everything. Someone three rows ahead shifted in their seat and went still again. freewebnovel.cσ๓

His phone buzzed. Chloe.

Chloe: Saw the score. 2-0 away. Were you good?

He thought about how to answer that for a moment. It was a harder question than it looked. He had scored and they had won and neither of those things fully captured what he felt about how he had played.

Will: I was alright.

Will: The goal was ugly.

Chloe: Every goal counts the same regardless of aesthetics.

Will: That’s very philosophical for half ten at night.

Chloe: I’m a journalist. We’re philosophical at inconvenient times. It’s in the job description.

Chloe: Get some rest. Come find me this weekend if you have time.

He put the phone in his jacket pocket and went back to the window. Outside, the glow of Middlesbrough was beginning to appear on the horizon, that familiar orange smear against the underside of the clouds that he had been looking at from pitches and back seats and bedroom windows his entire life. It looked the same as it always had. He didn’t know whether that was a comfort or just a fact. Probably both, depending on the night. Tonight it felt like something close to the former. Small and close and completely his. freewebnovel.cσ๓

The bus pulled into Rockliffe just before midnight. Will collected his kit bag from the overhead storage and walked out into the cool air of the car park where his mum was waiting with the engine running and the heater on. The warmth hit him when he opened the door, that particular sealed-in warmth of a car that had been sitting with the heater running for ten minutes.

She didn’t ask much on the way home. She asked if he was hungry. He said he was fine. She asked about his foot because she had seen him favouring it slightly in the final ten minutes of the stream they had been watching at home, and he explained about the deflected shot and the slightly wrong contact and told her it would be fine by morning. She didn’t push it further. She had never been someone who pushed things once she had received a sufficient answer.

When they got home the house was quiet and dark. Janet had left a plate on the kitchen counter covered in cling film with a post-it note on top. He peeled the note off in the dark.

Two-nil. Not bad for a bum.

He stood at the kitchen counter and ate whatever was on the plate without turning on the light or bothering to sit down. He didn’t taste it particularly. It was warm and there was enough of it and that was what he needed. The plate was empty in six minutes.

He left Janet’s note on the counter and went to bed.