The stadium smelled like rain and old jerseys, the kind of smell that sat heavy in the stands on nervy match days. Ravenna's supporters filled the main stand in neat black and red waves, singing with practiced menace. Virtus Lombardia's faithful gathered behind the goal, smaller but no less loud, blue scarves snapping in the wind. Cameras blinked along the touchline like a row of watchful eyes.
Riccardo Vieri padded down the tunnel with the studied swagger of a man who'd been told he was destined for more than the division he already dominated. He had the league's golden boot to prove it and the smile of someone used to being believed. When the teams emerged, the chants rose, the air tightened, and twenty-thousand small expectations seemed to hinge on a whistle.
Ravenna struck first before anyone could find a rhythm. The play began with a threaded pass between midfield lines, a patient switch that found Vieri in the channel. He timed his run perfectly—one shoulder shimmy, one slide-step to wrong-foot the center-back, and a low drive that skimmed past Virtus' keeper into the corner. For a heartbeat the Virtus bench froze. The away fans roared. Cameras drifted to Jaeven and lingered.
The commentators' tone shifted to a clipped deliberation.
"Riccardo Vieri opens it up—clinical as ever. Ravenna draw first blood," the main commentator said, voice tight with the thrill of the big moment. "That's the mark of a title contender."
"Virtus need to regain composure," added the analyst. "They can't let momentum carry Ravenna like this. Vieri's strike is a warning."
On the pitch, the dressing room's calm writ a quiet script all morning that now had to be enacted under lights. Coach Rossi didn't shout; his steely eyes did the talking. He gathered the players briefly at the sideline, tapping the board once, twice. "We knew they'd hit hard. Stay patient. Play your game. Han—stay alive on the ball. Draw them, then punish the space they surrender."
Han—number 11—felt the weight of the name when it came out of Rossi's mouth but not the tremor. He'd slept little the previous two weeks and thought less about headlines than he'd thought about timing. The "Han Effect" had a sound now, a cadence in fans' mouths and social feeds, but when the whistle blew he was just a player with a job: find space, make choices, change a game.
Ravenna's early goal had the desired effect for their fans: nerves. The first ten minutes saw Ravenna keeping possession tightly, probing the wings, pressing triggers to pull Virtus out of their shape. Vieri prowled like a predatory silhouette in the box, an always-present danger.
Then, in the 18th minute, the smallest seam opened.
A cut pass from midfield deflected off a Ravenna midfielder and sat up like a question at the edge of the center circle. Matteo—always the quiet, hard-working core—nipped it, checking his shoulders and threading the ball into Jaeven's path with surgical precision. Jaeven's first touch was a promise. He took it into his hip, shielding instinctively as Vieri readied himself to close the lane. The right-back of Ravenna drifted up—the old instinct to pressure the dangerous winger—because you pressured the flashy player, you took away his magic.
Vieri saw his chance too and sprinted to intercept. The cameras cut live to his face: smirk, confidence, the kind of gaze that said, I told you so.
They were looking at each other now. Two players, two narratives. One had the headlines; the other had the chiseled reputation of a striker who scored because he wanted to be the story, not the side character.
Jaeven didn't flinch. He watched for a heartbeat, reading the line of Vieri's run, the defender's weight across the hip. He felt the ball as if it were alive—part of him, responsive. The moment slid into his memory like a slow drumroll: a slight lean, a flicked heel, and the ball rocketed up along his calf in a tight arc.
The stadium inhaled.
He'd practiced it the way some kids practiced breathing—trying it in empty alleys, on wet pitches, when sleep was late and the moon was thin. Nobody in this world had done it—not the moves he'd been shown in memory, not the tricks of the modern game as their histories read it. Here, it was new. He'd called it a Rainbow Flick once in a half-drunken locker-room anecdote and the name had stuck for humor. Tonight it would be something more.
The flick carried the ball over Vieri's reaching leg and landed perfectly on the other side. For a beat the world stalled—the defender's face an open question—and then Jaeven rolled the ball forward, dropped a step-over that glanced off the turf like a deceptive nod, and the right-back lunged only to miss air. The move blended spectacle and practical geometry: lift, foot-over, body disguise, acceleration.
Commentary exploded with disbelief.
"My God! What did he just do? Is that… a Rainbow? That's insane!" the lead voice gasped. "Han with the flick! He's pulled a piece of magic out of thin air!"
The crowd went wild. For Virtus, it was a cathartic scream—a release of tension that felt like an exhale after a held breath. Fans pointed, phones recorded, old men clapped like they'd seen something divine.
Riccardo's face flickered between anger and surprise. The smirk dropped for a fraction, replaced by concentration, and then the defender noticed the space left by the step-over. Another Ravenna center-half came sliding over to cover, but Jaeven was already working ahead of it. He drew the defender and, with the ball kept close as if glued to the instep, shifted direction and delivered an outside-of-the-foot pass that curved with the kind of arc few local players could dream of: a Trivela, outside-boot bend that bent the ball away from the keeper's reach and into Russo's run.
Russo met it with a single touch and turned toward goal. The net was briefly visible, the keepers' stance wrong-footed by the curve. He squared the ball toward the near post, and Russo's finish tickled the inside of the post and slid over the line. The stadium erupted.
"Assist to Russo—and what a pass! The Trivela! Did he just…? Han with the outside-foot flick! That's artistry," the commentator screamed. "Han with the assist! He's changed the script!"
Fans chanted—half in shock, half in adoration. "Han! Han! Han!" filtered from the terraces, a sound small and enormous all at once. Even the Ravenna fans, professional in their hatred, fell into an embarrassed, grudging clap for that sequence. It was one of those rare moments when football's beauty overcame rivalries.
Riccardo, for his part, had been bested in his one-on-one. The camera returned to his face—flush with blood, eyes narrow—but it wasn't the childish roar of someone who'd been humiliated. It was focus. Vieri knew he'd been beaten by something unexpected and now his mission would be to retaliate.
Rossi didn't cheer so loudly as to be unprofessional, but pride flared. He clapped, short and precise, the kind of applause reserved for coaches who love efficiency. "Play your game," he barked. "Hold that space. Stretch them."
The rest of the match dissolved into a chessboard of pressure. Ravenna, seething from the equalizer, ramped up intensity, trying all the old tricks: doubles on the flanks, early crosses, and frantic pressing. Virtus curled into counterattacks, compact and quick, relying on the kind of patience that lets a single moment of brilliance kill a game.
About twenty minutes later, it was Jaeven's turn again to conjure something. The ball threaded to him on the touchline. The right-back came forward aggressively; his body spoke the language of overcommitment. Jaeven's foot whispered a step-over—clean, a little theatrical, but rooted in geometry. The defender reacted to the step-over, shifting weight to his outside; Jaeven cut inside, and with the defender falling for the feint, he side-stepped, the ball snuggled to his in-step—and he lashed a low-driven left-footed shot that threaded between two defenders and grazed the far post. The keeper was beaten by placement and pace.
Goal.
The lead changed. Virtus were ahead.
The commentators went wild, the words tumbling like a stampede.
"Han! Han! Han! He's put Virtus in front! After the Rainbow and the Trivela, now the step-over sizzles through! That's a goal of precision, not just flair."
"Three chances, three moments of magic. Han's not just a one-trick act. He's the engine."
Riccardo glowered. The match had turned personal. He moved more like a man who needed to prove a point than a striker with a plan.
Ravenna rallied. They pushed bodies forward and, for a while, the pressure was relentless. But Virtus had matured. Their midfield shut lanes and closed early. When the ball came to Jaeven, it was always as if time ticked differently around him—he had that rare ability to see three options where others saw one.
In the 68th minute the play found him in the box. He shrugged off a stray shoulder, executed a controlled nutmeg that drew an outraged "oooh" from the stands, and redirected a low cross into the path of Matteo. Instead of shooting, he adjusted with a featherlight touch and the ball rolled on to the net via deflection—an assist that counted as a creative exit from a crowded box.
"An assist! Han's contributed play after play," said the commentator, breathless.
By the 80th minute, Ravenna's structured press began to show cracks—legs tired, confidence frayed. Virtus smelled the moment and pounced. Jaeven received the ball near the top of the box, angled his body, and slotted two defenders with a quick one-two that looked improvised and ancient at the same time. He spun, found a seam, and unleashed a curling left-footed strike that kissed the inside of the post and slid home. The stadium turned into an earthquake of sound.
Hat-trick. Three goals and an assist. Four for Virtus.
The final minutes were a blur of emotion: Ravenna's supporters stunned into silence, Virtus' fans singing until their throats were rough, players collapsing to the turf in exhausted, happy disbelief.
As the referee blew the final whistle and the scoreboard read 4–1, a commentator's voice cracked under the weight of history.
"Unbelievable. Virtus Lombardia 4, Ravenna FC 1. Jaeven Han—three goals, one assist. A performance that might rewrite this league's expectations. The Han Effect? It's more than a phrase. It's real."
In the mix zone after the match, cameras swarmed like bees. Jaeven, breathless and smiling, answered with quiet composure. Reporters shouted questions about whether the Rainbow Flick was planned, whether the Trivela had been practiced, whether the step-over was a mere deception. He shrugged and said in a level voice that belied adrenaline, "I practiced. But in the game, it's just trying to do what feels right."
Back in the locker room, players laughed and shoved him, cries of, "Man of the match!" echoing off tiles. Matteo hugged him like a brother. Coach Rossi patted his back like a proud father.
"Brilliant," Rossi said softly. "You didn't just play— you painted."
Somewhere between the post-match interviews and lingering chants, a small blue flicker appeared in Jaeven's mind—the system's interface humming like a tiny satellite dish aligned to something big.
> [System Notice]
New skills observed and catalogued:
• Rainbow Flick — Player Skill Unlocked
• Step-Over — Player Skill Unlocked
• Trivela Pass — Player Skill Unlocked
Note: Player-level skills recorded. Superstar-level skills remain threshold objectives. Player skills increase versatility and execution but are not the sole metric of progression.
He paused mid-conversation, felt his jaw unwind, and a realization clicked with the soft certainty of a closing lock. The system had catalogued the moves he'd used, but the tone—this casual annotation—told him something he'd suspected but hadn't yet confronted. The system did not have to grant him everything. It didn't owe him legendary skills as rewards in the same way. Player-level skills were useful and now he had three of them freshly registered, but the reward architecture in his head shifted. Superstar-level skills—the ones that changed narratives, the ones the system had hinted were exclusive and transformative—were rarer and not necessarily a product of quantity. They felt like a higher tier of being. They were the skills that would define careers, not just moments.
He pressed his fingers to his temple, letting the noise of the locker room press around him. The system message lost its blue glow, but the thought stayed: the system catalogued what happened because it could. It recorded, it judged, it offered. But it wasn't the gardener of his potential. He had to plant, water, and tend—carve his own path.
Outside, Luca—his teammate by ten years and friend by blood—shouted a toast to the fans. Lucia, somewhere in the stands in the company of friends and a thousand glowing phones, had recorded the sequence herself. She sent a frantic bubble of footage to his phone—"You legend!!!" followed by a barrage of heart emojis and a short, hysterical voice note that said, "You did it, bro!! Vieri's face was priceless!!"
He replayed the clip, watching himself lift his arm in a small salute to their corner after the hat-trick. He'd notched a mark not just on a scoreboard but on a season, on conversations, on the way kids would attempt the Rainbow Flick at every schoolyard in the region.
Back at his temporary apartment, the postgame media torrent had calmed to a manageable white noise: congratulatory messages from old coaches, offers to be on pundit shows, snippets of praise from regional sports journalists. The system's note about player skills sat in a corner of his mind like a new tool. It meant something practical—he'd gain mechanical advantages, repeatability, the capacity to integrate these moves under pressure.
But his deeper understanding—born from these two weeks of blue lights and training under floodlights—was clear. The system could record and award him with player-level mechanics, and perhaps it would eventually hand him superlative gifts. But the only skill that truly mattered, the kind that could change the arc of his life and the culture around him, would be his ability to invent not only moves but situations in which they mattered. That creative spark—his "Blueprint Mode" that the system had hinted at—was the real currency.
He slept later unable to feel fatigue as much as elation, the game running through his head like a slow film reel. He had done what he set out to do: create moments. He had answered the taunt from Riccardo Vieri in the only way that mattered—on the pitch, with substance and beauty.
Across the region, pundits debated whether the Han Effect was a flash of genius or the start of something seismic. Fans declared this the night they'd tell their kids about. Others, more practical, speculated on the transfer market and the price that would be placed on a player who delivered such a performance against a team like Ravenna.
In the quiet after, when the jerseys lay crumpled and the floodlights dimmed, Jaeven thought about the system's choices. He understood now: the system cataloged what was executed because it had to measure action, to quantify progress. But it rewarded greatness in tiers. Superstar-level recognition would be less about a catalog and more about impact—about sustained moments, about shaking the narrative of a league or pulling players into new possibilities.
If he wanted superstardom, the blueprint was not about accumulating player-level skills like trophies on a shelf. It was about currying a sequence—a way of moving and thinking that few would see coming and fewer still could counter. It was about innovation, reimagined in every touch and pass so that the label "Han Effect" would feel like a small, inadequate thing for what he intended to build.
He swallowed and smiled, palms sticky with the taste of the field that still clung to his skin. He'd be back on the pitch in a few days. There would be analysis, contracts whispers, fans and critics. There would be pressure. But there would also be the quiet, inevitable task he had begun to love: the designing of movement, the drafting of plays that were less rehearsed and more discovered.
Tomorrow the papers would scream. Tonight the stadium would sleep. In the morning he would lace his boots again, let the ball speak, and see what else he could make exist.