The screen went dark at 2:47 AM.
Elsa sat on the edge of her bed in the silence of her Oslo bedroom, phone still warm in her hands, staring at where his status had been seconds ago. Online.
Now... nothing. Just the ghost of a conversation that had lasted four hours and felt both like forever and like no time at all.
"Thank you. For everything. For not giving up on me."
His words were still there in the chat thread. She could scroll up and read them again. She wouldn't, but she could. Some things hurt more when you look at them twice.
"Never. Get some sleep, okay? Find that 8-year-old tomorrow."
Her response felt small now. A text message trying to hold together a boy broken on the other side of the world. It wasn't enough. It was never enough. But it was all she had.
"I will. Goodnight, Elsa."
She'd watched those three words appear, disappear as he typed and retyped, then finally settle. Simple. Final. The period at the end of a sentence, she wanted to keep open.
The darkness of her room pressed in. Two in the morning. Everyone else in the house asleep, her parents upstairs, her little brother Soren across the hall, the city of Oslo quiet beyond her window.
Just her and the weight of what she'd done, what she'd said, what she'd felt over four hours of pouring herself through a phone screen for someone who would never pour back the same way.
He was going to be okay. That was good. That was everything.
But he was going to be okay with someone else.
Elsa set her phone on her nightstand and reached for the shelf above her desk. Her fingers found the bear automatically—muscle memory from eight years of reaching for it when the world felt too heavy. Brown, soft from endless touching, one ear slightly torn at the seam where she'd accidentally pulled too hard during a particularly bad night in her first year at Ajax.
She pulled it against her chest and crawled back under the duvet, curling around it like it could protect her from the thing that was breaking her.
Not crying. She'd learned that trick years ago—crying required you to feel one emotion at a time, and she had too many stacked on top of each other. The relief that he'd talked to her. The guilt that she'd let him talk to her. The love that wouldn't die, no matter how much she wished it would. The acceptance that he was never going to love her like that.
His voice from the call kept playing in her head, exhausted, wrecked, grateful.
"You always know what to say," he'd told her around the 3 AM mark (Tokyo time). "Even when I don't."
She'd wanted to tell him that she didn't know anything, that she was just a girl 1,500 kilometres away saying whatever might help because the alternative—him hurting alone—was impossible to accept. But she'd said something smarter instead. She always did with him.
The bear's head smelled like old fabric and the faint ghost of his cologne from when he'd held it that day at the carnival, grinning like he'd won the World Cup instead of a cheap ring toss prize.
"I got it! I actually got it!"
She'd been so annoyed at him for wasting his money. Now she would keep this bear for the rest of her life.
The clock on her phone read 3:12 AM. Sleep felt impossible. She lay in the dark, holding something he'd given her when they were eight, and whispered a question to the empty room.
"Why do I love you?"
The bear didn't answer. It never did. But she knew anyway. Because he'd seen her at Ajax when everyone else saw "the girl midfielder." Because they understood something about pressure that other people didn't.
Because even broken, he kept trying. Because distance doesn't make hearts stop. Because eight years of knowing someone doesn't just disappear when they find someone else.
Because he was Takeshi, and she had decided a long time ago to love him quietly, without asking for anything back.
Eventually, around 3:47 AM, exhaustion finally won. She fell asleep holding the bear, her phone dark on the nightstand, the conversation archived but not forgotten.
The alarm was too loud. 7:00 AM felt like a personal attack.
Elsa opened one eye and reached for her phone before she was even awake. No new messages.
She wasn't expecting any. He was sleeping now, probably, in the afternoon sun of Tokyo. She'd helped him toward sleep like that was her job, like it was normal for a girl to spend four hours on the phone with a boy who was in love with someone else.
The teddy bear was still in her arms.
She got up anyway, moving through the routine that had kept her sane for the last three years: shower, hair, clothes, shoes. By the time she made it downstairs, she'd assembled the mask. Good skin. Bright eyes. Normal girl going about her normal day.
Her mother was making breakfast, rømmegrøt, the creamy Norwegian porridge that filled the kitchen with warm, sweet comfort that Elsa couldn't quite feel. The sun was the weak winter kind that barely made it above the buildings, and frost decorated the windows in intricate patterns.
"You look tired," her mother said, not looking up from the pot. Her mother's superpower was noticing things without making them a thing.
"Late studying," Elsa lied smoothly. It came easily now.
Her little brother Soren was being insufferable, which was his natural state. He kicked her under the table and grinned when she glared at him. Ten years old and already perfecting the art of annoying his older sister.
"You're always on your phone," he said, mouth half-full of porridge. "Is it a boy?"
Elsa's look could have frozen the fjord.
"Soren," her father said mildly, and that was enough. Her father didn't need to say much. He just read his newspaper, proud of his daughter in that quiet way that didn't ask questions.
Her mother's eyes caught hers for just a second. That knowing look. But she didn't push. That was the thing about her mother, she understood things without needing them explained.
Elsa ate the porridge. Discussed the meaningless things: how her week had been, Soren's football match on Saturday, and her father's work. And beneath all of it, she was still 3 AM, still holding a carnival bear, still wondering what she was going to do with a love that had nowhere to go.
But she was functional. She was good at that.
Videregården was the color of winter, grey walls, grey skies, grey hallways filled with teenagers who all seemed to have their lives figured out. The building was warm at least, radiators humming against the cold outside.
Elsa moved through the morning in a kind of autopilot that had become familiar. Math first period.
Mrs. Hansen was asking about derivatives, Elsa's hand going up because her brain was wired to answer even when her heart was somewhere else. English: reading Pride and Prejudice, which felt cruel today, a book about someone choosing the wrong person then realizing it too late. Norwegian: a test she'd studied for two weeks ago and now couldn't focus on.
She got an A anyway. The marks came automatic, something she didn't have to think about.
By lunch, Astrid found her the way she always did.
"Okay, what happened?"
Astrid had known her since they were five—football camps, school, now teammates on the club and friends in the way that only people who've known each other that long could be. There were no secrets with Astrid. Well, almost no secrets. The only one that mattered, Astrid knew.
"Nothing," Elsa said, but Astrid was already sitting down with that look.
"I've known you for eleven years. What. Happened."
So Elsa told her. About the four-hour call. About him being broken. About her helping. About him going to be okay.
About him being with someone else.
Astrid waited for the rest, which Elsa gave her, "He's been with her for weeks now. Since the big match."
"Elsa..."
"I know. I know it's stupid. I know it's been eight years. I know I should just—" The sentence didn't finish because finishing it would mean actually accepting something she wasn't ready to accept.
Astrid didn't give her pity. That was why they were friends. "You're going to see him again, right? The promise?"
"We promised to meet as professionals. If we make it."
"When," Astrid corrected, soft but firm. "When you make it."
Elsa managed something like a smile. "When."
"And maybe by then—"
"Maybe. But probably not."
It was honest in a way that hurt. They both knew it. But Astrid also knew that Elsa wasn't the kind of girl who deluded herself.
She loved Takeshi Yamamoto from 1,500 kilometres away while he was in love with someone else, and she'd somehow made peace with that. Not gotten over it. Not accepted it. Just... made peace with the shape of the pain and kept moving.
They talked about U18 camp instead, about the training schedule the coach had sent, about the defenders they'd face, about the plays they wanted to practice. Football was safer. Football was where Elsa lived when Takeshi wasn't taking up space in her head.
Her passion came back when they talked tactics. Astrid saw it—the way Elsa's eyes lit up, the way her voice took on a different quality when she was analyzing the game.
"You were born for this," Astrid said, meaning the national team, the professional path, all of it.
Elsa hoped it was true. She needed it to be true. Football was the only thing she could control right now.
The field was cold and damp, the kind of Norwegian winter afternoon that made you feel alive just by being outside in it. Elsa changed into her kit with practiced efficiency—club colors, number 7, boots laced tight enough that she could feel the connection between her feet and the earth.
This was her element. The moment she stepped onto the pitch, everything else fell away.
Warmups first, her body moving through the stretches automatically. Then drills—passing sequences, first touch work, the technical stuff that separated good players from great ones. She was focused in a way she couldn't be at school, her football brain activating with full clarity.
The practice match started, and she disappeared into it.
Midfielder. Her position. Reading the game three moves ahead, sliding into spaces that didn't exist yet, making the pass that turned defense into attack. Her coach was nodding when she distributed wide. Her teammates were moving faster because of her vision. The ball was alive in her feet.
There was a moment in the 23rd minute of the practice match when it all came together: she intercepted a loose pass near midfield, turned with one touch, and sent a perfect through ball to their forward. The striker buried it in the corner.
The team celebrated. The coach nodded. And for thirty seconds, Elsa wasn't a girl carrying unrequited love across an ocean. She was just a player doing what she was born to do.
This is what you love too, isn't it? she thought, and for a moment it felt like she was speaking to him across the distance. This feeling. This freedom.
It was how she understood him. Not through words, but through the shared language of the game. Both of them obsessed with something bigger than themselves, both of them willing to break themselves trying to be perfect at it.
After training, cooling down while her muscles burned pleasantly, Astrid was beside her.
"You were on fire today."
"Felt good," Elsa said, and meant it.
Another girl from the team asked about U18 camp, and Elsa found herself engaging naturally, pulling on the normal mask with ease. Talking about opponents, sharing observations about the training schedule, discussing which midfielders they'd be up against.
She was present. Functional. Good.
Dinner was quieter than breakfast. Her parents talked about the weekend, Soren complained about his math homework, the kitchen was warm and ordinary and safe. Elsa contributed enough to seem normal.
After, she went to her room and found her U18 camp bag already half-packed from the previous days. Coach's checklist, kit, boots, toiletries, the uniform with the Norway crest on it. That uniform meant something. It represented years of training, of sacrifice, of every cold morning at five AM working toward national team selection.
She was really doing it. At sixteen, she was part of the U18 national team setup. On paper, everything was on track.
She found herself scrolling through sports news around 8 PM, which she knew was a mistake before she did it. Tokyo FC results. Match analysis. And there it was: the article about Takeshi's match.
Yamamoto's Heroic Defeat: 2G+2A Not Enough Against Yokohama's Perfection
She read his stats like they were poetry. Two goals. Two assists. Still not enough.
A small smile touched her lips: You're fighting. Good.
Her phone was next to her, the conversation thread still there if she wanted to look. She wanted to say something—anything. Good luck with training tomorrow. Rest well. Something that would keep the thread open, keep the connection active.
She typed it out: Good luck with training tomorrow.
Then deleted it.
He needed space. He had Akari. And Elsa had learned a long time ago that sometimes love meant not saying everything you felt. Sometimes it meant being the person on the other end of the line when they needed it, then letting them go when they didn't.
She put her phone away and went back to packing. The bear sat on her pillow, watching her methodically fold clothes and arrange them in her bag.
Her routine before sleep was the same as always. Pajamas, teeth brushed, face washed. These small acts of care grounded her, reminded her that she was still a person doing normal teenage things even while carrying something impossible.
She climbed into bed and just... sat there for a moment. The teddy bear was on her pillow, slightly deflated from years of being held, one ear still crooked.
She didn't pick it up tonight. Just looked at it.
1,500 kilometers.
Eight years.
One phone call that changed nothing and everything simultaneously.
The thing about loving someone from far away was that it didn't require them to do anything. It didn't demand reciprocation or timeline or logical conclusion. It just was. A constant thing, like gravity, like the cold outside her window, like the Norwegian blood in her veins that made her understand that some things endured regardless of circumstance.
Maybe I'll always love you from far away, she thought. And maybe that's okay.
Because she was going to make it. U18 camp next week, professional pathway opening in front of her like a door she was walking through. She was going to be good enough that someday, maybe, they'd stand on the same pitch. Different teams, different countries, but the same game, the same dream.
The promise they'd made at eight years old, when everything seemed possible.
I'll see you then, Takeshi. When we've both made it.
It wasn't a guarantee. He probably wouldn't love her back. He was probably going to be with Akari, or someone else, or married with kids while Elsa was still the girl who won a teddy bear ring toss prize and never let it go.
But someday they would be professional footballers. Someday they would meet not as childhood friends but as equals in the game. And maybe... maybe by then he would see her differently.
Or maybe he wouldn't. And Elsa had made peace with that too.
She closed her eyes. Teddy bear caught the edge of moonlight from her window, ancient and worn and precious.
Her last thought before sleep took her: You dummy. Why do I still love you?
Small smile despite everything.
Tomorrow: school, training, preparation for camp.
The day after: same.
Years from now: who knows?
But tonight, just a girl in Norway, loving a boy in Japan, across an ocean that felt impossible to cross but somehow, impossibly, didn't matter.
Because some people, once they've woven themselves into your heart, don't leave. They just become part of the distance you carry.
And Elsa Haugen had learned to carry it well.