The next few days were a special kind of hell. Kai was a ghost in the school hallways. His teammates avoided his eyes, their silence a constant, stinging rebuke. He buried himself in his books, the only world where he still felt in control, but it brought him no comfort. His mother acted as if nothing was wrong. She praised his dedication to his studies, blind to the misery in his eyes, convinced she had saved him from himself.
On Saturday afternoon, there was a knock on the apartment door. Kai opened it to find Coach Budi standing there, his kind, weathered face looking tired.
"Can I come in, son?" he asked gently.
Kai led him to the small living room. His mother was out grocery shopping.
Coach Budi didn't waste time. "The team misses you, Kai. The school misses you."
"My mother…" Kai began, but the coach held up a hand.
"I know. Bima told me. I'm not here to ask you to defy her." He leaned forward, his expression serious. "I knew your father, you know. Not well, but I played against him a couple of times, back in the day. Your mother only remembers the end. The injury, the disappointment. But I remember the beginning."
Kai looked up, intrigued.
"He was a magician with the ball," the coach said, a nostalgic smile on his face. "He played with so much joy, so much passion. He loved the game more than anything. The injury… that was bad luck. It could happen to anyone, anytime. But what truly broke him wasn't the injury, Kai. It was that he had nothing else. Football was his entire world. When it was gone, he was empty."
The coach's words painted a picture Kai had never considered.
"Your mother is afraid you'll end up the same way. But you're not your father, Kai. You have this," he said, tapping a stack of textbooks on the coffee table. "You have a brilliant mind. You don't have to choose one or the other. You think being smart and being an athlete are two different things? Look at the best players in the world. They are geniuses. They see the geometry of the pitch, they calculate the physics of a curving ball in an instant. They solve problems."
He leaned in, his eyes locking with Kai's. "Don't choose. Be both. Use your mind to be a better player, and use the discipline from the game to be a better student. Show your mother she's not losing a son to football. She's raising a son who can conquer two worlds."
For the first time in days, a flicker of light broke through Kai's despair. A new path, a terrifyingly difficult one, but a path nonetheless.