The lobby was too big to be called a room and too polite to be called a hall.

  It stretched the full width of the building, all glass on one side and pale wood on the other, broken up by islands of furniture that didn’t even look like they were made to be sat on. The low couches were in neutral colours, and the standing tables had metal legs thin enough to look structural rather than useful. Even the plants looked curated, yikes. They were placed in concrete planters, just far enough apart that no one could actually hide behind them.

  There were already maybe eighty people inside. Name badges everywhere; first names big and job titles smaller, but still doing the real work.

  Maisie leaned in the moment I stopped walking. “Rule one: this isn’t one event. It’s five happening at the same time.” She gestured with her coffee cup. “Over there by the windows? Agents and intermediaries. That’s where people stand when they want to be seen but not cornered. Near the bar are sponsors and commercial partners. Don’t go there unless you’re trapped.” She nodded toward a set of glass doors further in. “Panels are through there. Once those start, half the room migrates.”

  She saw me stay silent and steered me a step to the side so we weren’t blocking traffic. “You’re my invite, which means I’m not letting you look lost. That reflects badly on both of us.” I didn’t even ask why she was trying to help, and she was conjuring excuses anyway.

  “I don’t look—”

  She gave me a look. “Jamie. You stopped walking in the middle of the floor. So . . . panels start in ten. Until then, this bit”—she made a small circle in the air with her finger—“is posturing.”

  People clustered in loose triangles, drifting apart and reforming without ever fully breaking. A lot of nodding. A lot of smiles that never reached the eyes. Phones came out just often enough to signal importance, then disappeared again. It felt like a sixth-form common room if everyone had LinkedIn and a mortgage.

  She pointed again, subtler this time. “That corner: club executives. Mostly League One and Two. They talk shop, but they remember names. Safe, but boring. Over there, by the pillar? Scouts. They won’t talk much, but they’re always listening.”

  “And me? Where do I go?”

  “You float,” she said finally. “You don’t have the status to anchor anywhere yet, which is actually a blessing. You’re here to absorb and hear how people talk about players when they think no one important is listening.”

  That sounded . . . doable.

  She said, “I am supposed to introduce you to my cousin, Tom Harding. He runs youth recruitment—mostly under-18s—feeds into League Two academies. He thinks everyone’s development model is wrong except his, though, so if I march you straight over, it looks like I’m placing you. One more thing. If someone asks what you do, don’t say ‘assistant’ like you’re apologizing for it. Say ‘first-team analysis’ or ‘training design.’ People here respect specificity.”

  “You know a lot about this for someone who isn’t ‘in’ football.”

  “Marketing. Also, I’ve always had a thing for athletes. Comes with the territory.”

  I snorted before I could stop myself. She was definitely trying to make me feel something on purpose.

  She finished her coffee, crushed the cup in one hand, and glanced past me toward the glass doors. “I’ve got to go earn my keep. If someone asks you a question, answer it cleanly and stop talking first. That alone puts you ahead of half this room.”

  “I’ll try not to embarrass the brand,” I said.

  She smiled. “See? Learning already.” And then she was gone, absorbed into a knot of people near the bar.

  So I floated.

  I drifted toward the pillar she’d pointed out, close enough to hear without committing. Conversations slid past in fragments: raw but coachable, numbers are lying to you, good engine, bad habits, League Two is eating itself.

  Stella did advise me to trigger environment clues so I’d get a quest, so this should be what I needed to focus on while floating.

  Don’t chase information, I thought. Put yourself where it trips over you.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Two men stood a few feet away, both with the posture of people who didn’t enjoy standing still. One older, with thinning hair and a voice worn down to the essentials. The other younger, notebook tucked under his arm.

  “. . . I’m telling you, he’s stagnating,” the older one said. “Same mistakes, same cues. Needs a different environment.”

  The younger man sighed. “Chairman won’t hear it. Says we don’t have the staff to rebuild anything mid-season.”

  “Staff’s the least of it,” the older one replied. “We don’t even have someone running proper session design. It’s all fitness and vibes.”

  Oh? What’s this ‘we’? Is there a local team looking for a session architect?

  Loose Threads. Of course.

  This quest gave me a massive boost for listening in on information I’d already had the intention to extract, so why not.

  I leaned a fraction closer, pretending to read a name badge that wasn’t there. The older man dropped his voice. “They’re miles off where they should be,” he said. “Five years ago, you’d never have this conversation.”

  “So is it one of those classic cases then? Budget got cut to the bone,” the younger one replied. “Lost a bunch of senior pros. Never replaced the brains.”

  The older man snorted. “Yeah. Recruitment lost its nerve. Coaching lost its spine. Now it’s just effort and hope.”

  “Same division still?” the younger asked.

  “Technically,” the older man said. “But not really. The football’s gone backwards. Centre-backs who can’t break a line, midfielders hiding from the ball. Everything’s direct because no one trusts the middle.”

  Hold on, what? Bad centre-halves? Nervy central midfield? Training that defaulted to fitness? That couldn’t be . . .

  I remembered my last Dunsvale save. It was exactly the same.

  I hadn’t heard a name. They never said one. Of course they didn’t. Trade craft. You didn’t say the quiet parts in public, even in a room this polite. But the shape of it was wrong in a way I knew too well. A club that used to be better. A fall that wasn’t sudden, just cumulative. Dropped a division, then another. Lancashire football, heavy pitches, heavier expectations.

  That had to be Dunsvale. The only professional club I’d ever played for.

  They drifted apart then, and the conversation dissolved back into the noise. I stayed where I was, annoyed and oddly energized all at once.

  I pictured Dunsvale’s training ground without trying to. Tuesdays there meant the same routine every time: five-minute 4v2 rondos, square marked with faded Mitre cones, someone miscontrolling under pressure, and then Robson clapping his hands once and saying, ‘Right. Leave it. Fitness.’ The toilets that smelled like the portable loos at Glanford Park when the wind turned.

  Then I almost laughed into my sleeve. Don’t be an idiot. I’d only been at Hungerford for two bloody weeks. Whatever Dunsvale was now, it wasn’t mine anymore.

  So I took the partial reward.

  Booster Shop? What did that mean?

  I didn’t have time to check it out, since Maisie had already reappeared like she’d been slotted back into the room by design. She had a man with her this time—mid-forties, square shoulders, weathered face that had seen too many touchlines in the rain.

  “Jamie,” Maisie said. “This is my cousin. Tom Harding. Tom, Jamie.”

  This was it, then. The hinge moment.

  Foundation node and exponential gain. All I had to do was not say something stupid.

  Maisie checked her phone. “I’m going to grab someone before the panels start. You two have a chat.” Then she was gone again.

  Harding looked at me for a second longer than comfortable. “So,” he said in thick Lancashire vowels. “Maise’s told me about you.”

  “Yeah, I—”

  He lifted a hand immediately. “Look, you’re not the guy I’m looking for.”