The days between the Community Shield and the Premier League opener passed in a comfortable rhythm. Training in the mornings, homework and English study in the afternoons, and the occasional wander through the parts of London he hadn't yet seen.
Wenger had put a ban on alcohol, which suited David well enough — he had never been particularly drawn to it. But he found himself gravitating toward pubs anyway, for the simple pleasure of sitting in a corner, nursing a lemonade, and watching his own highlights play on the television while the regulars talked about him without knowing he was there. There was something quietly satisfying about that.
One afternoon he made his way to the pub near Easton tube station that Ian Wright had mentioned in passing — a place where Arsenal players from the old First Division days used to gather, back when the club still played at Highbury and the whole operation had a rougher, more intimate feel. David pushed through the door wearing his cap pulled low and found, almost immediately, two men in the middle of what appeared to be a long-running argument.
"Bertrand, I'm telling you, when I was young I could do exactly what David Qin does. The step-overs, the turns — all of it."
David Holton had tidied his usually chaotic beard for the occasion, though the effect was undermined somewhat by the beer gut that wobbled as he balanced a football on his foot and attempted to demonstrate his point with a series of shoulder and forehead juggles.
Bertrand Carlson watched his friend's stomach bounce with each touch and thought about the player currently dominating the highlights reel on the screen above the bar.
"You know what you are?" he said, with the affectionate cruelty of someone who has known a person for thirty years. "If Qin is a tiger, you are a very fat house cat."
"Look at yourself before you talk about me! At least I'm juggling. When did you last actually touch a football?"
The rest of the pub observed this exchange with the detached familiarity of people who had seen it many times before. David found a table in the corner and settled in, taking in the room. Red and white everywhere — framed shirts along the walls, aged posters curling at the edges, photographs spanning decades. Ian Wright's shirt. Dennis Bergkamp's. David Seaman's. All signed, all mounted, all somehow still there.
Don't they ever worry about theft?
The argument between the two men ended abruptly when Bertrand's beach shorts were yanked halfway down, revealing red boxer shorts printed with the Arsenal cannon. General laughter followed.
An older man with white hair and the kind of upright posture that suggests a lifetime of early mornings watched all of this from his stool near the end of the bar and shook his head slowly.
"Bertrand," he said, with the patience of someone who has given this speech before and given up expecting it to land. "Football has taken over your entire life. Family harmony matters more than football. Love matters more. Friendship. Football is just a game."
"Stephen, you've lost the passion," Bertrand said. "We still have it."
The old man shook his head again and said nothing further. He had learned that there were certain people who would rather maintain the fire and lose everything around it than admit the fire had become the problem. They would probably regret it eventually. He hoped not.
David turned the words over quietly. Is football everything to me? He sat with the question for a moment and found he couldn't answer it cleanly.
A sound from the bar pulled him back. Soft, unmistakable crying. A young woman — pretty, clearly still in school, Arsenal badge on her backpack — had her face in her hands at the counter.
David Holton was on his feet immediately, the argument forgotten, his expression shifting to something protective and concerned.
"Hannah, what happened? Was it that Mac again? Say the word and we'll sort him out."
The girl lifted her head. Her name was Hannah, and from the way the regulars spoke about her, she had been coming to this pub with her parents and their friends since she was small enough to stand on a bar stool and shout at the television. She was very much considered one of their own.
"We won the Community Shield," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand, "and I told him this could be our year. That we had a real chance at the title." She took a shaky breath. "And he said the Community Shield means nothing, and Chelsea were going to do the same thing to everyone again, and we should be realistic. And we argued. And then—" She looked down. "We broke up."
"I told you from day one," Holton said, with the certainty of a man who has been waiting to say this for some time, "Mac was never right for you. You know what his favourite player is? John Terry. That tells you everything you need to know about a person's character."
"Louis is a good lad," Bertrand said, with the elaborate casualness of someone steering a conversation somewhere specific. "His favourite player is Ian Wright. A man who will always be in your corner."
Holton gave his friend the widest, most transparent wink in the history of social subtlety, and several nearby regulars worked very hard not to laugh. Louis was Bertrand's son.
"Come on, Hannah, don't cry," someone else said. "He was just jealous. And this season — this is our year."
The singing started without anyone quite deciding to start it, the way it always did in places like this, the Arsenal anthem rising from a few voices and gathering the rest of the room as it went.
Started out the season, nothing stopped us — everything was going King, King, King...
David smiled into his glass. Of all the Arsenal songs he had heard in his short time at the club, this one had claimed him most thoroughly, for the simple reason that it had his name in it. His nickname, at least. And hearing it sung by people who genuinely meant it produced a warmth in him that he hadn't entirely anticipated.
He finished his lemonade, left a five-pound note on the table, and stood. On his way to the door he passed Hannah, still hunched over the bar with her distress only partially resolved, and stopped.
He tapped her on the shoulder.
She looked up with the unfocused expression of someone in the middle of feeling sorry for themselves, and David lifted his cap just enough. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the pen Wenger had given him — the one with the Arsenal crest on the barrel — and signed the back of a cardboard beer mat in the unhurried hand of someone who has done this enough times to make it look natural.
King.
"Hannah," he said, keeping his voice low, "I want to make you a promise. Next time we play Chelsea, I'll score extra. Just for this."
He was out the door before she had fully processed what had happened.
A moment of silence.
Then: "That — that was — he was — David Qin!"
Hannah pointed at the door. The word came out in pieces.
"Hannah, love, it's a replay," Holton said, already turning back toward the television where a highlight of David's second goal was playing. "You don't need to—"
"No! He was here! Just now! He signed something for me, look—"
She held up the beer mat. The handwriting was real. The pen mark was fresh.
The pub exploded.
Half the room ran to the door and looked up and down the street in both directions. The pavement was empty. He was already gone.
They came back in slowly, slightly deflated, gathering around the beer mat with the reverence of people examining a relic. Hannah clutched it with both hands and watched it pass around the room with the expression of someone convinced it was going to be destroyed.
It wasn't. The cardboard was sturdier than it looked.
The pub was cheerful for the rest of the day. More than cheerful, actually — the kind of lifted that comes from an unexpected small miracle, the sense that the world had briefly expanded to include something it didn't usually contain.
"The new Arsenal players all go to those flashy bars," someone said, "and forget about the places that were here for them through all the lean years. But David''s different."
David took the tube back to Hadley Wood that evening, showered, and lay on his bed looking at the ceiling. He spoke to Barnett briefly about a few commercial matters, then spent an hour watching West Ham footage.
The schedule had been released: Arsenal's first Premier League match was against the Hammers at home. West Ham had finished twelfth the previous season but topped the Premier League's fair play table, which had earned them a Europa League place under UEFA's Fair Play allocation rules — though they would need to win three qualifying rounds before reaching the group stage proper. Better than nothing. Better than Southampton, Swansea, or Everton, who had missed out entirely.
David worked through their defensive shape, their pressing triggers, their set-piece organisation. Bilic had set them up in a 4-4-2, compact and physical, with Winston Reid — a player David remembered from an international friendly — leading the backline alongside the imposing Tomkins.
Before he slept, he opened the system interface.
The familiar display resolved in front of him.
Host: David Qin
Height: 183cm / Weight: 76kg
Template: Ronaldinho Gaucho(92% Integration)
The Magician Touch: 91%.
Dribbling Artistry: 89%.
3D Spatial Awareness: 90%.
Devilish Finesse Shot: 89%.
Precision Power Strike: 86%.
Overhead Kick: 83.
Injury Detection: Mild right hamstring strain. Minor cruciate ligament inflammation. Multiple contusion bruising. Treatment cost: 7 points.
Remaining points: 92.
The points were accumulating faster than he could spend them. The match volume was higher than it had ever been and the consumption wasn't keeping pace. He suspected the system would find new ways to use them eventually.
He authorised the treatment, felt the familiar deep warmth move through his legs and torso, and switched to the task log.
Task: 2015 Community Shield — Complete.
Task Rating: A.
Reward: Select one of the following.
1. Template fusion increased by 1%.
2. Any skill proficiency increased by 3%.
He looked at it for a moment. The system was being conservative, which made sense — one match, played before the competitive season had technically begun, against a Chelsea side missing their first-choice striker. Had Diego Costa been available, the reward might have been more generous. The pre-season trophies hadn't even triggered a task notification.
He selected option one without deliberation, watched the fusion counter tick to ninety-three percent, and let himself slide toward sleep.
August 8th.
Manchester United beat Spurs one-nil at Old Trafford, Kyle Walker turning a cross into his own net and then staring at the scoreboard with the expression of a man revisiting a trauma. David had watched the Wolfsburg highlights from the previous season with Walker in them often enough to understand the feeling. The step-overs, the inside-of-the-boot stops, the V-drag. Walker's personal social media had apparently been flooded with the GIF of it for months. And now, his first act of the new Premier League season had been to hand United three points.
The nightmare has followed him from Germany to England, David thought, not without sympathy.
Leicester beat Sunderland four-two, with Mahrez, Vardy and Albrighton all on the scoresheet. A team worth watching.
Chelsea drew two-all with Swansea. Mourinho's three-year cycle, as people were beginning to call it, was already showing signs of movement — the squad ageing in certain positions, tensions in the dressing room not fully resolved, Hazard making comments about wanting more tactical freedom that had a very specific audience.
On the morning of August 9th — eight in the evening by Chinese time, which was not a coincidence, the Premier League having quietly adjusted Arsenal's schedule with one eye on broadcast figures from the world's largest football market — David ate breakfast, drove to the Emirates with a lift from Bellerín, and walked into the home dressing room at London Colney.
The stadium was at near capacity. The official figure would come in just under fifty thousand. Some of the faces in the crowd were new — people who had come specifically because of him, wearing shirts that didn't belong to either club, or wearing the number ten without the certainty of old supporters.
In the online broadcasts, the comments were moving fast.
@ArsenalfanBJ: Arsenal sixteen unbeaten against West Ham. Ten straight wins. This is a good day to start.
@TacticalGnome_GZ: No Giroud in the starting eleven. Three up front with pace. Wenger is going for the throat.
@NorthBankNoodles: Walcott, Sánchez, Qin across the front line. If West Ham's defenders have insurance, today would be a good day to check the policy.
@RealistCN_AFC: Payet is the one to watch. Wenger was genuinely interested in signing him. He'll want to make a statement today.
@RyanGooner88: Arsenal: Beautiful Football → Lightning Football. The evolution is real.
Emirates Stadium.
David stood in his position on the left, looked up at the mass of red and white filling every tier, and felt his heart rate lift in a way that had nothing to do with anxiety. It was the opposite of anxiety. It was the feeling of a door opening.
He had come a long way in twelve months. And this, standing here, was only the beginning.
The referee's whistle split the afternoon air.
The 2015-16 Premier League season began.
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