Now it seemed that his son was still confident. He felt relieved, and he agreed with his son’s words: if you truly want to be a hero, you can be one anywhere. No matter whether you keep playing soccer in the future or not, you must always have confidence in yourself.

“Come on, let’s go back to the hotel. Tomorrow I’ll take you to visit Red Square, the Kremlin... We’ve been out for a month, but haven’t visited a single tourist spot. I won’t be able to explain that to your mom when we get back...”

※※※

Ruslan Panchenko (Ruslan_Panchenko), who had been observing from the side, felt it was time for him to step in.

From the moment Ethan Brooks’s father had pleaded bitterly with the CSKA Moscow assistant coach Latish by the training field, to when Ethan Brooks faced the entire CSKA youth team defense alone, failing again and again but always getting back up, and finally scoring that beautiful goal—he had been a very attentive spectator throughout.

By the parking lot outside CSKA’s training base, he stopped Ethan Brooks and his father.

Ethan Brooks eyed the man in front of him warily—he took Panchenko for a CSKA Moscow lobbyist.

“Sorry, I’ve already said I won’t play for your team.” He expressed his opinion in English, sounding rather impatient.

Panchenko wasn’t angered by Ethan Brooks’s attitude. Instead, he smiled and asked, “May I ask, would you also be unwilling to play for Zenit St. Petersburg?”

Ethan Brooks was taken aback.

He had never heard of Zenit St. Petersburg.

“What team is that?” Owen Brooks asked on behalf of his son. He, too, was completely unfamiliar with the name.

“It’s a professional team in St. Petersburg, third place in last season’s Premier League,” Panchenko introduced. “You have excellent physical qualities. I think you have what it takes to become a professional player...”

Ethan Brooks suddenly asked, “You’re not charging any kind of referral fee, are you?”

Panchenko was momentarily stunned by Ethan Brooks’s out-of-the-blue question, while Owen Brooks explained a bit awkwardly from the side, “It’s like this, we were tricked by someone in Italy before—he also claimed to be a scout...”

Ruslan Panchenko shook his head and smiled, “Of course not! I won’t take a single cent from you. I work for the Zenit club, and the club pays my salary. I won’t ask you for a single ruble.”

Ethan Brooks still looked at him with suspicion.

Panchenko understood what they were worried about. In a foreign country, after being deceived before, it was only natural to be on guard—everyone looked like a bad guy.

He spread his hands, “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything on me right now to prove my identity. But here’s my phone number. You can think it over, and only decide after you’re sure. When the time comes, please don’t forget to call me.” As he spoke, he wrote down a phone number with a pen, added his name, and handed it to Ethan Brooks.

He formally introduced himself again: “My name is Ruslan Panchenko, scout for Zenit St. Petersburg. This is my phone number.” He pointed to the string of digits on the paper.

Then he spread his hands, “I’m just giving you a phone number. I’m not asking you for a single cent. I hope you can trust me.”

With that, he took his leave from the two of them.

Ethan Brooks and Owen Brooks stared blankly for a while at the back of this so-called Zenit St. Petersburg scout who had suddenly appeared. Then Ethan Brooks looked down at the phone number in his hand, staring at it for over ten seconds, and reached out his hand to Owen Brooks.

“What is it?” his father asked.

“Let’s call it and see if it’s a fake number!”

Chapter Five: The Seven-Colored Aurora

Moscow’s summer nights are extremely short. It’s only completely dark from eleven at night to four in the morning. So when Ethan Brooks lay in bed preparing to sleep, it was only eleven thirty, but the sky looked as if the sun had just set.

He looked out the window; there was still a glow in the western sky.

Most of the sky had already turned deep blue.

On the bed beside him, his father was already sound asleep and snoring—his dad’s habit. He always snored when he slept, and his snoring came in all sorts of styles: some with drawn-out endings, some that gradually built to a climax, some with unpredictable rises and falls, some like a sudden storm, and some like a gentle serenade...

In short, he would torment your nerves with endless variety. It’s said that before they got married, his mom didn’t know about this problem—back then, premarital cohabitation and sex weren’t common. As a result, on their wedding night, she couldn’t sleep at all because of the snoring. The next day, after some intense questioning, she found out about his dad’s habit. The thought of having to share a bed with such snoring for a lifetime made her so sad she almost wanted a divorce...

And now?

After decades together, his mom often jokes that she can’t sleep without his dad’s snoring.

Ethan Brooks had always known his dad’s snoring was impressive, but he’d rarely experienced it up close like this. He’d stopped sleeping with his parents when he was very young.

This trip to Europe was the most direct experience yet.