#3 - Commitment. Or a lack thereof.

Have you ever met someone who woke up and simply chose not to go to school? Probably.

Do you perhaps know someone who plays sports but at the same time can be extremely lazy when it comes to practicing their craft? Not common, but not rare.

What about a person who has the potential to make a name for herself but chooses to fool around at every opportunity given? Who would waste such a golden chance to fly in that limitless sky? You would think such people are rare to find but in this story, we have-

"-Meili."

The short girl glanced up at Cheng Hou who stared down at her. A disapproving look at his schoolmate who was busy texting her friends on her phone. Her wolfcut getting in her face as the sudden wind blew. Plastic bags at the back flew a bit as strands of her hair got onto her frame.

"Can you  please get up and do something?" A desperate tone was emphasized on the word 'please' as Cheng Hou started tapping her knee with his foot. The girl who was already decked out in her bright pink Nike Mercurial with a football kit over her lean torso proceeded to ignore him as she continued to laugh at what her friends replied with.

"Darren," Cheng Hou eyed his best friend who was also staring down at her. 

"Got it." Instantaneously, Darren replied as he turned around to retrieve one of the footballs that laid nearby. He rolled it over with the studs of his boots and rested his foot on it. "Meili, if you don't get up right now I will whack this ball at you."

Meili scoffed. Darren pushed the ball slightly in front of him and lined up for a direct hit and Meili screamed, "Eh! Okay, okay!" Darren faked his hit as his striking foot rolled onto the top of the ball rather than hitting it with power. He snickered a bit along with Cheng Hou who laughed at the girl's sudden freakout. 

"You guys are so tryhard with this stuff," Meili put her phone aside as she dusted the black bits off her shorts. "Try not to be so hardcore about this, can?" Meili whined. "I mean, cones? This isn't the Premier League," she ended it with a laugh. Cheng Hou huffed an annoyed sigh.

"If we want to talk about tryharding, can you at least try a bit?" Cheng Hou snapped back playfully. "Skipping school with ManaDr on the second week? What are you skipping out on? Fifteen minutes of paperwork?" The goalkeeper laughed at her only for the appropriate response of Meili ramming the football at him answered back.

"Hey, then what about your club training? Don't you have LCS training later?" Darren inquired. Though it feels as if that question didn't have to be asked because both he and Cheng Hou knew what answer was coming.

"Lazy. So I told coach I had flu."

"Standard, ah," Cheng Hou replied in an instant as he juggled the ball. 

It didn't come as a surprise to the two boys that their female friend would much rather do anything than the tasks she were actually required to do. Ever since they met her at the start of their first year during orientation, she has shown at several occasions her initiative to skip out on plans, training, and a deep love for procrastination. Sometimes it had gotten so bad that she was even at risk of being kicked out of the school's female football CCA because of it. And yet, she wasn't a bum in the sport. She was good.

Wang Meili. Well first of all, I'd like to apologize for the misinformation. She isn't short. She's just slightly below average height which she utilizes as much as possible. Her favorite position being at the right side of the field, she loves hugging her right flank as her tekky footwork and dribbles make her a difficult player to contain. Her speed and agility massively boosted by her low center of gravity alongside her knack for a sweet pass or cross helps her get through the ranks in the youth categories of Singapore. 

Unfortunately, while she has the talent... she lacks the discipline that every top level player has. A poor sleep schedule was the reason she overslept for school and her laziness was why she decided to not turn up at all. She has a great personality and gets along with her peers, her inability to stick to plans has made her a mixed topic around the cohort.

After what was a painful thirty minutes of trying to convince Meili to play and train properly, the three of them decided to pack up their stuff and hang out at a nearby mall with a football outlet. It was a breath of fresh air for Cheng Hou who didn't know how much longer he could bear losing his voice over a girl who seems to listen through one ear and forget everything from the other. While these three individuals have very conflicting views on how they performed their training, they all shared the same interest in window shopping at sporting outlets.

"Hey!" An excited Meili exclaimed as she brisked towards the wall of football boots. A glimmer in her eye as she grabbed a pair she fancied and turned around. "I've been wanting these since they came out!"

"Yeah they look quite good," Darren imputed. "But didn't you just buy a new pair last month?"

"I don't get it. What's the hype?" Cheng Hou said with one of the blankest expressions on his face.

Nobody knows how Darren Zhang and Ng Cheng Hou managed to surpass the barrier of just friends and became super close with each other when the way they perceive things contrast harder than black and white. Playing at both club and international level, Darren is far more matured than the rest of his batchmates at his age. Calm and rational, he's an intelligent center-back at the heart of the defense who loves playing with the ball at his feet. With a fairly intimidating height, he uses his physicality to out-muscle and outwit opposing attackers on his path.

Despite being at a good level of football for his age, Darren is fairly humble and has a good balanced routine. That cannot be said the same for Ng Cheng Hou however, who forces himself to tirelessly train until his stamina runs out. Unlike Darren, Cheng Hou has no social life. Partially due to his willing isolation after that fateful final and partially due to his obsession with football as a whole. When he's not training with the ball, he's training without it. When he's not on the pitch, he's at the gym. If he's not working physically at all, it's studying both academically and football. Watching countless clips to replicate what those at the top level do.

Boasting bravery and good agility and reflexes, Cheng Hou fancies himself in between the posts. Stopping goals rather than creating them.

"Who invited you?" Meili barked. "All you buy are black boots, of course you know nothing about the hype."

"That's a very unfair perspective. I buy different colored gloves, too."

"You buy them once every six months. And in those six months you manage to completely disassemble the gloves. And despite that you choose to keep using them until there's a giant hole at the area of the palm," Darren poked at him.

"Look. It's all about the efficiency and how you use your tools. It's like they say, the user makes the tools. Not the tools make the user."

"No one has ever said that," Meili, unimpressed, replied.

"Shut up and turn up to school for once," Cheng Hou barked back.

"That's not very nice," said Meili.

Darren stoned while the two bicker. At one point in time he decided to give up on trying whenever the both of them started to pointlessly attack one another. He walked to the section full of football jerseys and skimmed through them. There was a wide range of jerseys to choose from. From outfits of clubs at the top level of the Premier League, to regional outfits in Southeast Asia. If you're not the type to don the colors of a club, you can always put on the colors of an international team. Ranging from those in the suburbs of Europe, to the exotic designs of Africa, to the clean looking patterns of Asia.

He bought none of them. He was on a school allowance.