Back From The Dead

North of the Border

Second Chance

That cold, dark October night in München haunts me to this day.

We didn’t just lose. We were annihilated. And I found myself out of a job.

What were we going to do? Could we simply uproot our entire family again and move? Would anybody hire me in the football world after my embarrasing defeat?

And that’s when Charlotte’s nose twitched.

I can’t explain what happened next. It makes no earthly sense, that’s for sure.

All I wanted was a way to restart, a way to make things right again. I must have told her a hundred times during that losing streak that I felt that I was set up to fail, that there was no way to succeed with this squad, that I was about to lose my mind trying to meet the board’s expectations while working with a bunch of injured and uninspired players.

And, well, I got my chance.

When Charlotte’s nose twitched, a huge shaft of light eminated from somewhere behind her. I didn’t have a chance to see anything clearly. Pure whiteness covered me — whiteness and light that you could touch, a warm and satisfying energy that you could feel.

I guess I fell asleep.

Dream

I had a very strange dream as I slumbered.

I stood in front of a large stone archway, done in the classical Chinese style. There was a couplet written on either side of the archway, sort of like what you’ll see around the door of a traditional Chinese home during the Chinese New Year.

The right side read “假作真時真亦假.” The complementing left side read “無為有處有還無.”

I must have looked at that poem for hours in that dream. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. I guess it means something like “When lies are true, the truth becomes false; when nothing turns into something, something becomes nothing.” But what sense does that make?

And why do I feel like I’ve read that somewhere before?

Besides, who in the world would write such a cryptic poem in such a place? Usually the poems written on both doorposts have some sort of wish for propserity, for good fortune or good luck.

Anyway, since it was a dream, I finally gave up on solving the puzzle and just walked through the archway.

Next thing I knew, I was awake.

The Office

I could smell the leathery cigar before I even opened my eyes. It smelled like the crowd at one of the baseball games I had attended as a child. It stank — a foul, musty, humid aroma that I felt I could touch just as much as that ray of light that attacked me.

When I opened my eyes I had a headache, a hangover that surprised me. The lights above my head paled in comparison to that light I had just seen. I wanted to go back to sleep, to close my eyes again, to reenter that strange world with the strange doorway.

“Did you have a nice nap?” asked a thick, deep male voice — in Chinese, no less.

And then I saw the owner of the cigar.

I nodded meekly, wondering what truck had hit me, and looked casually around the office. The office was huge, immaculately clean, and seemed to be coated in gold. Football jerseys hung in picture frames along the wall.

In front of me, behind a wooden desk that seemed impossibly large, sat the man with the cigar. He looked unimposing and kind, perhaps 20 years my senior, with a light greying beard and a thinning, receding hairline. A shiny golden nametag on the front of the desk read “GUO KANG, CHAIRMAN,” with the equivalent in Chinese and Korean underneath.

Behind him was a huge red and gold club emblem. The word “YANBIAN” lept out of the center, followed underneath by “연변” in Korean.

Truth and Illusion

I knew it couldn’t be true. It had to be a dream.

I knew about this team. I’d always been fascinated by it. Yanbian FC were the representatives of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in the Chinese footballing world. Their rise to the top of Chinese football without spending insane money on famous European players was the stuff of legend.

And their fall in 2019 due to tax issues was an absolute tragedy.

“I thought… I thought the club was dissolved,” I managed to say in Chinese, my head aching.

Mr. Guo just laughed.

“Your wife is very pretty,” he said, “and is quite convincing. We’re happy to have you on board.”

Now I was more confused than ever.