The Utrecht Public Library breathed like an old, contented cat: half‑asleep, half‑dust, perfectly indifferent to the handful of early patrons drifting through its oak‑framed silence. Amani slipped inside, shoes squeaking on the polished parquet, and threaded his way past sagging encyclopedias and sun‑bleached travel guides until he found the terminal graveyard in the back corner.
The computer he chose looked as if it might still remember Y2K beige tower, wheezing fan, CRT monitor bowed from age, keys shiny with someone else's history. These computers were slow and bulky compared to the ones he saw in the cyber cafes in his last life.
He wiggled the stiff mouse, coaxing Windows XP awake, and opened Internet Explorer with a click that sounded far too loud, and opened Twitter. His fingertips hovered over the username field. If someone already took it, I'll end up with underscores like a fake, he thought, and typed @amani.
Username available.
He let himself grin just a quick flash before claiming the handle. Ten minutes later, the same miracle repeated on Facebook and Instagram. Somehow, the bare, five‑letter name had waited for him across every platform, as though the world had known he was coming and saved him a seat.
But those pristine timelines glared back, empty and accusing: Tell us who you are.
Social media, he realised, was another training ground, only this one pummeled the mind instead of the lungs. Posting is work, he thought, massaging the sting from his knuckles after hammering at the stiff library keys.
With this prehistoric keyboard, every letter felt like lifting weights. He slipped a battered USB stick, its plastic cracked, its label rubbed blank, into the yellowed port and waited while a hundred grainy Nokia images flickered across the tired monitor, blooming like old memories caught in morning light.
1. The Arrival - The thumbnail expanded into a shivering snapshot of a rail platform at Schiphol Airport: a skinny, wide‑eyed thirteen‑year‑old buried inside a frayed puffer jacket two sizes too big. Frost curled off the train tracks behind him; a duffel stitched with tiny Kenyan flags drooped from his fist. His breath ghosted the air, half‑steam, half‑doubt. Overhead, a departure board glowed in Dutch he couldn't yet read. Caption:"First day. Cold. Everything smelled like jet fuel and possibilities."
2. The Boot‑Room Birthday - Next blinked to life a chaotic freeze‑frame from the academy's mud‑stained boot room, 6 February 2012. A traffic‑cone "cake stand" wobbled beneath a lopsided cupcake; fifteen mismatched candles spat wax like tiny fireworks. Malik, cheeks ballooned in laughter, smeared streaks of blue icing across his own nose while teammates howled, boots thumping benches in an off‑beat percussive chorus. Gloves dangled from hooks like party streamers. Caption:"First real birthday party. Even the icing was offside."
3. Signing Day - Fluorescent office lights reflected off a too‑polished conference table. Amani drowned in an oversized navy blazer, stiffly shaking the academy director's hand. A mountain of paperwork sat between them like a passport to the future. Behind the handshake, a Utrecht crest gleamed on a glass wall, catching the light like a silent witness. Caption:"still clueless about the world, but signing anyway."
4. The Anderlecht Free-Kick - Stadium floodlights splintered the night. The photograph caught the ball mid‑orbit, arcing impossibly over a purple‑and‑white wall frozen in collective disbelief. Amani's follow‑through looked almost casual, left arm out for balance, body tilted as if sketching geometry on the air. In the background, a keeper's glove stretched but never reached. Caption:"Where physics quit. (Thanks, coaches.)"
5. Bayern Demolition - The scoreboard glowed 4-0 in bold red digits, casting an eerie halo on the frost‑laden roof of the stand. Amani, fists clenched, roared a silent thunder, veins and joy etched across his neck. Caption:(No words. The numbers shouted louder.)
6. Trophy evening in Amsterdam - Sportcomplex De Toekomst Stadium lights carved silver edges along the cup's surface as Amani hoisted it skyward. Ajax shirts slumped in the distance, their outlines smudged by motion and heartbreak. Behind him, the night sky looked ink‑black, the trophy's reflection catching stars that weren't really there. Caption:"For everyone who said Utrecht doesn't belong."
He reviewed the gallery six flashes of a journey that had carried him from salt‑sprayed Malindi pitches to Dutch frost and floodlights. More than highlights, they were mile‑markers of grit, luck, and relentless motion, proof that the boy in the puffer jacket had carved out space in a world that never expected him.
He uploaded each one to Twitter, then mirrored them onto Instagram, and then let Facebook have them, too. With every click, his shoulders tightened another notch; curating felt like dragging heavy furniture across his own memories. By the time the library bell chimed closing hour, his follower count had crawled from fourteen soulless bots to twenty‑one real people, and his back throbbed like he'd run sprints without leaving the chair.
Back at the academy cafeteria, the lunch queue wriggled like a restless snake, trays clattering, steam fogging the tall windows. Amani hunched over a notebook, diagramming pressing triggers, when Tijmen nearly choked on a broodje kroket.
"Bro! You're on Twitter?" he wheezed, waving his phone.
Malik snatched it, brows vaulting. The grainy Anderlecht clip ripped from someone's VOB was ricocheting across timelines. Mentions poured in:
He's bending physics!
Ajax can't stand him.
Abigail, the academy's perpetually caffeinated journalist, slid into the seat before her latte finished steaming. "Finally," she muttered, fingers sprinting across her keyboard. Within the hour, her article "@Amani: Captain of Tomorrow, Historian of Yesterday" landed on VoetbalPrimeur, stitched with every photo he'd posted.
By late afternoon, his cracked Samsung Galaxy S2 vibrated like a trapped cricket. Two hundred followers. Eight hundred. Two thousand. Trolls from Amsterdam jeered, PSV fans bargained, and Utrecht supporters he barely remembered sent proud emojis. Scouts slipped into his DMs with clinical brevity: Keep an eye on you, lad.
Each ping tugged a thread of his focus, each like felt like an IOU. Dazzling, yes but draining. It was a fame that demanded constant feeding, like a bright pet that would scratch the door at 4 AM if you forgot to top up the bowl.
Night sealed the dormitory in hush. Amani lay on his bunk, the blue phone‑glow painting hollows under his eyes: 2,420 followers, something he didn't think he would achieve even in two lifetimes. Pride rose fast, intense, then cooled into heavier stuff: expectation. At the edge of vision, the System stirred, a pale apparition:
***
<< SOCIAL METRICS: IRRELEVANT >>
<< RETURN TO PHASE‑2 DRILLS >>
***
The screen went face down on the mattress. Fame was confetti: colourful, weightless, and gone on the next breeze. The grass beneath his boots mattered. The strobe lenses waiting on his desk mattered.
And yet he didn't regret pressing upload. Those images were waypoints: train‑station chill, cupcake warmth, silver‑cup vindication. They marked mileage on a road that began on dusty Malindi soil and now ran under Dutch floodlights. He closed his eyes and replayed that boot‑room birthday off‑key singing, squeaky floor, the shock of being celebrated at all, and let the memory anchor him.
Somewhere in coastal Kenya, a kid might scroll that feed, see a boy in a puffer jacket, and believe a long-shot road existed for him, too. That made the mental ache worth it.
Tomorrow the whistle would drag him back into blackout drills; the phone could wait. He pulled the duvet up to his chin, the digital echoes fading into the deeper rhythm of dreams and an oncoming dawn eager for more than hashtags.
He woke before his alarm, mind already buzzing with training schedules: 06:15 gym, 07:30 nutrition check, 09:00 strobe‑glass session. His thumb hovered over the Twitter icon just to peek, but he forced it away. Breakfast should feed muscles, not vanity.
Still, curiosity itched. In the locker‑room corridor, he unlocked the phone. 2,657. Overnight growth. He shut the screen fast, like slamming a door on a persistent salesman. Enough.
On the pitch, frost bit ankles; the strobe lenses flickered darkness‑light‑darkness every half‑second. Rob van Dijk barked instructions, and cones flashed by in peripheral blur. Posting photos was tiring, but nothing compared to sprinting blind between colourless shapes, mapping space with sound. Every blackout reminded him: followers can't bail you out when the ball zooms in at forty kilometres per hour.
By noon, the lenses came off; sweat steamed in the cold. That mental fog from social media? Gone burned away by lactic acid and thin Dutch sunlight. The balance returned.
Afternoon found him back in the cafeteria, this time phone on silent, notebook open. Malik plopped down opposite, tray stacked absurdly high.
"You know you hit three thousand, right?" Malik mumbled through a mouthful of stamppot.
"Does three thousand stop AZ pressing our full‑backs?" Amani shot back, but he grinned despite himself.
Abigail drifted over. "I've got requests from Voetbal International and a Utrecht radio station. They want interviews."
"Maybe later," Amani said. "Need to train."
She nodded, surprisingly sympathetic. "Stories can wait. Games can't."
Evening settled, and fatigue, the good kind, cradled his bones. He scrolled one last time: another hundred followers, journalists, coaches, strangers. He typed a single tweet and then deleted it. Too self‑conscious. Tried again:
Grinding in the dark so the field looks brighter.
Delete. Too cryptic.
Finally, he tapped:
Training > trending.
Hit send. Pocketed the phone.
Moments later, Malik shouted from the common room, "Bro, that line's going viral!" Amani laughed, sank onto his bed, and let the phone buzz unseen.
Somewhere, the System hummed its approval: he was still obeying the bigger rhythm, the one measured in sweat, passes, and inches. Social numbers were passing clouds; the senior team was the sky.
And across that vast, blue expanse, his story was only just beginning its long, looping flight.
***
Any Kind of engagement is appreciated.