Hiro didn't answer for a long while. He just sat there staring at the screen.
He thought of the matches he had watched from this same bed, the goals and the celebrations and the joy on his teammates' faces as they piled onto one another by the corner flag. Do they really miss me? Or have they already learned how to be happy without me?
"They don't need me," he wrote at last.
Diego's reply came almost at once. "That's not true."
"It's okay if it is. I want them to succeed, even without me."
The pause that followed was even longer than before, and Hiro pictured Diego somewhere in the quiet of his own evening, phone in hand, a man who knew from his own playing days what it was to be shut out of the game.
When the message finally came, it arrived in one long block.
"Hiro, listen to me. The team is winning. They're good because they fight, and because they believe in one another. But they are not the same without you. They are not complete."
"You're just saying that."
