Chapter 28: The Cold Gets Serious

Right from a very young age, Axel was used to having someone else take care of the cooking and the chores in the house, and that gave him more time to put into his training without having to worry about anything else.

That was how he was able to go about everyday training effortlessly while wondering what his life as a professional football player was going to be like.

That was a thought that made him all warm and cozy inside whenever it popped up in his mind, he couldn't wait to start his wonderful journey as a footballer.

If only he had known that everything was going to be taken away from him the day he stepped on that pitch to kick-start his career.

The youngster stared at the empty darkness which was the living room for a while before slowly reaching for the switch to turn on the lights.

After that, he slowly closed the door before getting his backpack off his back.

"What am I going to do now?" He sighed as he dragged his feet to the staircase.

'I would feel more at ease coming back after a game if Sis was here, but there's no way she can be here now.' He said inwardly. 'She's going to be busy with school for a couple of years now and after that, she'll get a job and probably get married.'

He didn't know why but that last part sort of left him with a weird feeling.

"But it wouldn't be bad if I kept her from getting married, I'm sure she'll love to stay with me to cook and do every other…."

He had to suddenly pause when the realization of what he was implying hit him.

"That's something one of those psychopathic antagonists in one of those shows would say, that was definitely not my thought." He muttered with a nervous smile on his face.

On getting to his room, the young midfielder threw his bag on the bed before proceeding to crash down on it.

'But all the moping aside, today was quite fun, scoring goals is quite fun even though I'd rather have someone else do it while I take the assists. I can't help but feel like the gods of football are trying their best to smite me.'

The youngster just stared at the ceiling with a lot of thoughts regarding the match that had just been concluded running through his mind, this was something he liked to do to suppress certain feelings and thoughts and before he knew it, he began to doze off.

He was about to close his eyes when he suddenly shook his head before sitting up on the bed.

"I can't go to bed without taking a shower first." He muttered under his breath before quickly sitting up on the bed.

_________ ________

A couple of hours passed and it was a brand new day for young Axel David but things were a bit different today.

His body looked quite pale and his arms and feet were trembling along with his teeth.

He was freezing and that was absolutely his fault, people were required to go to bed with extra layers during this time of the year but he went to bed wearing a plain shirt with shorts.

On top of that, he didn't even bother to turn the heater up and that was because he was feeling a little warm before bed.

"Oh, God, when did it suddenly get so cold?" His teeth were chattering constantly as those words left his lips.

The first thing he did was pick up the remote to turn up the heater before proceeding to slip into one of his jackets along with his track pants, he was going out to exercise soon after all.

"Geez, it wasn't this cold yesterday." He let out a sigh as he stretched both of his arms before stretching both of his legs. "I need to see what it's like outside."

He quickly made his way to the window and opened it up to see that everywhere was quite foggy and just like he thought, it was freezing out there.

"At this rate, it's going to start snowing soon and the roads will have to take the brunt force of that and the stadiums too." He muttered before closing the window. "I'll also have to do some work if it snows too much in front of the house."

That right there was the main reason why Axel hated this season called winter, if it was possible for him he would just forget these specific parts of his life and forget about them, he never enjoyed the festivities that much anyway.

However, things were different this time around, he had matches to play during this month and that included his first Manchester derby, something he had been looking forward to.

If he was going to show the world that he was a player who was aiming to reach the top then that was the right match to do it in.

"I think I'll also ask Paul Wanner for a shirt swap after the game."

The youngster quickly did everything he needed to do for the day and even made some hot chocolate for himself before making his way to the garage for his daily training.

Walking from the house to there was quite the cold task for him and after experiencing something like that, his plan of sitting on the lawn every morning was suddenly canceled.

There wasn't a heater installed in the garage so warming himself up was something he had to do and since he was there for his morning workout, that wasn't any problem.

He had to stretch his body first to get the heat going and he started things off with squats.

After that, he did some lateral lunges before getting on one knee to do a lunge twist.

After doing all that, he put a mat on the floor and laid down on it to do a good number of sit-ups.

He did about forty sit-ups before he got up on his feet and made his way to the treadmill.

"My body is already starting to warm up, but this isn't enough." He said before turning up the treadmill's speed to ten miles per hour.

He began his jogging immediately to avoid being thrown off by the machine but just as he was about to get into the mood, he heard someone knock on the door.

"Huh?" He muttered before turning the treadmill off.

'The only person who knows that I come here to work out every morning is Ryan.' He said thought as he made his way to the door and opened it.

Just like he suspected, the person he found standing out there was Ryan who was wearing a black jacket but he wasn't alone.

"Hey, Axel." Ryan greeted as the visible cold breath escaped from his mouth.

"Hey, nice to see you, Ryan," Axel remarked but he didn't have the brightest expression on his face.

Whatever resentment he held, it was obviously aimed at the person in the pink jacket behind Ryan.

There was a beanie in the way of him seeing the face but he knew who it was.