Open Play: Ladies, Goals, The Everything System in-between

Chapter 69: [69] "Same Chair, Different King"

The studio was exactly the same as Luc remembered

Same scenes as August. Same overhead lights, same producer with a headset tapping his shoulder like nothing had changed since the first time.

But everything outside the studio had changed.

Luc sat in the makeup chair and waved off the powder brush a second time. Like deja vu.

"Five minutes, Mr. Beaumont." The producer didn’t look up from his clipboard. "Antoine wants to open immediately tonight. No highlight reel intro."

"Fine by me."

He stood. Black suit. Again.

No tie. Again. The same uniform he’d worn into this building in August, except now the tailoring fit different. Not the cut. The man inside it.

[System Notification]

[Objective: Survive the interview without giving TES a reason to dock your speed again]

[Reward: +2 Composure stat (permanent)]

[Penalty: Reduced sprint speed for the AC Nord match. 10%]

"I learned my lesson the first time," Luc said under his breath. "Mostly."

[’Mostly’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence]

---

Antoine Giroux was already seated, his fake tan a shade darker than it was in August, his smile obviously rehearsed in the mirror an hour before air.

The screens behind him weren’t playing Fontaine’s highlights this time.

They were playing Luc’s.

The chip in the trial. The nutmeg against Rive in the rain. The trivela against Saez. The hat-trick at Tensé. The crossbar chip at Parc des Royals that had rattled the whole stadium without going in.

A full season distilled into ninety seconds of footage, the same man who’d called him a footnote in August was now using to open the show.

"The producer said no highlight reel." Luc thought, watching on.

"Tonight!" Antoine said to the camera, his voice carrying none of the contempt it had in his first words to Luc, "we sit down with the man who has turned this league inside out. Thirteen league goals. SC Valois forward, Luc Beaumont."

Luc walked out.

No wave. No smile. Same predator’s look as the first time, except now the studio audience didn’t boo.

They stood.

He sat in the leather chair, ankle over knee, exactly as before. The chair hadn’t changed. He had.

"Last time you sat in that chair," Antoine said, "you challenged the biggest name in French football to a wager live on air. Cursed at him. Set a deadline. Most people in this building thought you’d be back in America before October."

"Those people were delusional."

Antoine laughed. It came out lighter than his August laugh had. Less performance, more genuine.

"Thirteen to fourteen," he said. "One goal. One match. AC Nord, bottom of the table, at Stade Valois on Saturday. Do you feel the deadline pressure, Mr Beaumont?"

"That question should be directed at Fontaine," Luc said. "It just happens to be a regular Saturday where I score and the season changes."

"Confident."

The audience laughed this time, not at him.

Antoine leaned forward, the way he had in August when he was hunting for a slip up to embarrass a rookie.

This time he was hunting for something else.

"Olivier Fontaine gave an interview earlier this week. He called this season the hardest of his career. He said, and I quote, ’the American made me better, whether I wanted him to or not.’"

[System Notification]

[Observation: Fontaine said something true about you in public. First time for everything]

[No objective assigned]

"Did that surprise you?" Antoine asked.

"I honestly didn’t watch the interview."

"Seriously?"

What Luc considered instead, was the chair where Fontaine had sat, weeks ago, in this exact building, giving an interview about a youth academy kid pocketing Luc for sixty minutes.

Luc couldn’t forget the name, Amadou.

"You don’t hate him anymore?" Antoine asked.

"I still fucking hate him." Luc shifted, elbows finding his knees, the same posture from August. "The hate was and is still as useful as it was in August. Whether I’m growing on him is none of my concern. We can’t both run this league."

Antoine flipped a page on his lap.

"Some pundits are saying that even if you lose the wager Saturday, you’ve already won something bigger. The respect of the league. A team that’s gone from bottom half fodder to giant-killers."

"Shitty pundits love a good story."

"You don’t?"

"I like goals," Luc said. "Saturday I need one. Whatever story gets written after that is somebody else’s job."

The crowd murmured, half amused, half waiting for the cruelty that used to live in every sentence Luc gave.

It didn’t come as they’d expected.

Antoine seemed to notice the absence too. He sat back. For a second the practiced host gave way to someone genuinely curious about an answer.

"Last time, you looked into that camera," Antoine said, pointing to the red light above the main lens, "and you challenged a king. What do you say to him tonight, before the final match of the deadline on Saturday?"

Luc turned his head.

Found the lens.

Found the red light.

He didn’t lift his wrist this time. No tick-tock. No theater. He’d already spent all that energy in August, and doing it twice would have made it cheap.

"Olivier," Luc said, his voice level, no performance underneath it. "Saturday I’m not playing for you. I’m not playing for the press feeding of the popularity of the wager. I’m playing because the numbers say I’m one goal behind and I don’t like being behind in anything."

Luc paused.

"Whatever happens after the whistle, you’ll know it was earned."

The studio went quiet, the audience understood it had just watched something completely different from August’s spectacle. No outrage. No viral chaos.

Luc and Fontaine. Two men settling into something that finally resembled respect.

Antoine cleared his throat, breaking the moment before it stretched too long for television.

"Final question," he said. "AC Nord. Bottom of the table. Zero wins on the road all season. Most would call this a easy win."

"You called me a footnote in August. Remember?"

"Touché."

"You’ll never know till it’s all over."

Luc rose from the chair before Antoine could close the segment, same as he had the first time, except this time he extended a hand across.

Antoine looked at it for half a second, the way a man looks at something he didn’t expect, then shook he it.

"Good luck Saturday," Antoine said.

"Don’t need luck." Luc straightened his jacket. "I am, Luck."

He walked off the stage without waiting for the outro music, the same as before, except no producer scrambled this time, no PR disaster unfolding backstage.

Just a studio audience clapping into the cut to commercial.

---

The car waited outside, engine running.

Valérie leaned against the door, cigarette unlit between two fingers, the same posture from the gala months back, watching him approach. She had hit gold with his rookie signing.

"No fireworks tonight," she said.

"Didn’t need any."

"I almost miss the chaos." She finally lit the cigarette, exhaled slow into the night. "Almost."

"Saturday’s the only firework that matter now."

"One goal," she said. "AC Nord won’t give it to you easily, regardless of the table. Last place teams play their best football against the team that’s supposed to beat them comfortably. They have nothing to protect."

"I think I know how this league works by now."

"I know you do." She dropped the cigarette, pressed it out with the toe of her shoe.

Luc got into the car.

[System Notification]

[Objective complete: Survive the interview without giving TES a reason to dock your speed again]

[Reward applied: +2 Composure stat (permanent)]

[The clock runs out this weekend regardless of the result]

He read it in the back seat, the city sliding past the window in streaks of orange light.

Three months of war condensed into ninety minutes.