In Another Life || neymar

2. the beginning

2. the beginning 

2008 (five years prior)

Neymar had a difficult childhood. From almost losing his life in a big car accident at four months old, to his family losing their house, even in one of the poorest slum towns of Brazil, when he was four and having to move in with his grandparents. Still, he had always been a happy child with aspirations of becoming a football star.

After years of developing his skills, he was scouted by Santos FC at eleven years old and offered a trial for Real Madrid at fourteen. Though it was his dream to play for one of the most important teams in Europe, the team hadn't offered him nearly enough money to play for them and simultaneously Santos had offered more money to keep him. By his current age of sixteen, he was already debuting on their first team.

It had been a real rags to riches story, one of the biggest success stories of all time.

Xenia Vidal was entirely opposite. She had been born to a wealthy family--a father who owned a string of mattress factories and a mother whose father had been a famous musician in the country. She had two sisters, yet it had always been clear to her parents that Xenia was the one destined for bigger and better things. From a young age, she had demonstrated her vast intelligence and her keen interest in sports.

She had always gone to the best private schools in the country and had gone onto study sports journalism in university. Straight after high school, she had gotten a job at a hotel within the Santos FC training grounds, not because she needed the money, but because she needed to make connections and her her foot in the door. She worked at the hotel's front desk checking in football players for their concentration training before a home match for three years until she applied for an internship for the press building also on training grounds. She was there for one year as an intern, but was later offered a permanent position on the press team at twenty years old, fresh out of university with her sports journalism degree.

That year after she graduated, her boss had offered her a promotion, no less than on the first team's press team. She would be on their youtube channel, conducting interviews and participating in challenges with the players. Her boss at the press building thought she was pretty enough to be put in front of a camera, and that was a big part of being in journalism to a lot of people.

It was a warm day in June when they first started talking. He had been on the first team for a few weeks, and she had just gotten promoted to the first team press team just a month prior. He had seen her around a few times, and he thought she was beautiful, but he had never really talked to her.

Sure, they had a couple conversations here and there if they bumped into each other in the hallways, which seemed to be happening more often now that she had gotten promoted. But one had been about her asking him what his hobbies were for a youtube video she had been assigned, and their conversation had been very brief. She just got a couple sentences out of him in front of the camera and then scurried off to interview the other players. The other time was when she asked him if she could borrow his keys to cut through a pesky plastic wrapper around a cold brew coffee bottle she had just bought in the cafeteria.

This time she didn't even acknowledge him, she didn't have to. She was off the clock, on her meal break. She had walked into the training ground cafeteria with her meal and sat down at a small table next to Alizey Da Silva. She was two years younger than Xenia and she was popular around the training grounds because she was Neymar's older cousin. They had grown up together and were really close. So when his cousin reached out, looking for a job, Neymar pulled some strings at the training ground to get her a job at the hotel. She had currently been working at the hotel for about four years.