My Ultimate Gacha System

"And the 2023 Kopa Trophy goes to..."

"Jude Bellingham."

Demien’s fingers stayed around Sophia’s hand a second longer than they needed to.

His jaw tightened once.

Then he exhaled through his nose and started applauding.

He’d wanted it.

There was no point pretending otherwise, not to himself, not sitting there with his hand still half-closed around Sophia’s.

She noticed but didn’t say anything yet, letting him have it for a few seconds without softening it for him.

Bellingham stood, and when he passed their section on his way to the stage, Demien rose enough to meet him.

Jude gripped his hand and pulled him briefly shoulder to shoulder.

"Unlucky, bro," Bellingham said.

"Go get it," Demien said.

Bellingham grinned and kept moving toward the stage.

Demien sat back down and watched him receive it, applauding properly now, the moment belonging to Jude and nobody else for these few minutes.

The screen eventually displayed the full result.

TROPHÉE KOPA 2023

1 — Jude Bellingham

2 — Demien Walter

3 — Jamal Musiala

Demien’s eyes stayed on the number.

Second among the best under-21 players in world football.

He understood exactly what that meant.

It just wasn’t the number he’d wanted.

Sophia leaned toward him. "Second."

He kept watching Bellingham up on the stage. "Yeah."

"That’s still ridiculous," she said.

"Still second," he said.

That was as far as either of them took it.

Bellingham’s highlight package played across the broadcast — Dortmund’s Bundesliga title challenge, his season as Bundesliga Player of the Season, the captain’s armband worn at nineteen, Champions League nights, the run to the World Cup with England the winter before.

A complete case, built on a stage Demien hadn’t been standing on.

Nobody in the building knew exactly why twenty-five former Ballon d’Or winners had voted the way they had, and Demien didn’t pretend to either.

He settled back into his seat once the moment passed, watching the ceremony properly now rather than turning inward.

Sophia let go of his hand naturally.

Isabella leaned toward him. "I’m proud of you," she said quietly, and left it there.

His phone stayed in his pocket.

The awards moved through their sequence — Aitana Bonmatí collecting the Women’s Ballon d’Or, Emiliano Martínez the Yashin Trophy, Vinícius Júnior the Sócrates Award, Manchester City named Men’s Club of the Year, Barcelona the Women’s.

When City’s name came up, Demien found familiar faces a few rows away, still dressed for a very different night than the one he’d spent with them yesterday.

Foden caught his eye and gave him a small nod.

Bernardo’s glance carried the faint memory of ninety minutes spent trying to press him.

Nothing more than that — they’d already said everything that mattered with their feet.

When the Yashin Trophy nominees appeared on screen, Onana’s face flashed among them for a moment before Martínez was announced the winner.

Demien watched it without any sense of injustice, filing it away to mention to Onana later.

Then the Gerd Müller Trophy came up, and he sat a little straighter.

Gary Lineker presented it, City’s treble season laid out across the screen — fifty-two goals in fifty-three matches, Premier League strikes, Champions League strikes, Haaland arriving inside the box at exactly the right instant, over and over, an absurd repetition of the same devastating movement.

Demien had spent an entire derby watching that quality from the wrong end of it.

The footage meant more to him now than it would have a week ago.

Haaland collected the trophy, and Demien applauded properly — no jealousy in it, the season had earned every bit of the recognition.

But his eyes lingered on the trophy a beat longer than they had on the others.

Sophia noticed. "Thinking?"

He kept watching the stage. "Unfortunately."

She smiled and left it there.

Yesterday the scoreboard had read two goals and an assist each.

Tonight Haaland was collecting a trophy for one of the great goalscoring seasons in modern football, still waiting to hear if he’d finish first or second for the Ballon d’Or itself.

Demien was seventeenth in that same ranking, and had just finished runner-up for Kopa.

The gap didn’t need narrating.

Watching Haaland walk back to his seat with the trophy did the work by itself.

The Women’s Ballon d’Or went to Aitana Bonmatí, exactly as expected, and Demien applauded without needing anything more from the moment.

Then the men’s rankings began climbing toward their conclusion.

Demien already knew where he sat — seventeenth, settled the night before, unmoved by anything that had happened since.

As the top five arrived, he leaned forward slightly.

5 — Rodri.

He’d spent ninety minutes yesterday trying to manipulate exactly that man’s positioning.

4 — Kevin De Bruyne.

3 — Kylian Mbappé.

Two names left.

Messi.

Haaland.

Sophia leaned in quietly. "Who do you think?"

Demien looked between them.

"Messi," he said.

"And your 2023 Ballon d’Or winner is... Lionel Messi."

The room rose, applause rolling through the theater.

Demien stood with everyone else.

This one didn’t sting the way the Kopa result had — he’d never seriously expected to be in this conversation, not this year.

He looked around instead, at the stage, at the trophy, at Messi crossing toward it, at Haaland seated in second, Mbappé in third, and at himself, sitting in a chair inside this building because his own name had finished seventeenth among all of them.

No panel opened.

Nothing needed to.

The formal broadcast wound down, and the room shifted from ceremony into something looser — guests rising, aisles filling, event staff directing different groups toward different doors, media teams setting up for the post-show interviews, players greeting each other with far less formality than they’d shown all evening.

Bellingham found him near the aisle, the Kopa Trophy still in his hands.

He noticed Demien looking at it. "Want to hold it?"

Demien gave him a flat look.

Bellingham laughed. "Congratulations, by the way," Demien said. "Properly."

"Made me work for it," Bellingham said.

"You didn’t do anything tonight."

"Exactly," Bellingham said. "Best kind of win."

Isabella got a quick photo with Demien inside the venue, Sophia after her, nothing more elaborate than that — no backstage access, no trophies passed around, just the space they’d legitimately been given for the night.

Marco reappeared almost the moment the applause settled, already thinking two steps ahead. "Short media stop before we go," he said. "They’ll ask about seventeenth, about Kopa, about Jude, about Atalanta, about United, and inevitably about yesterday. Don’t hand them tomorrow’s headline."

The post-ceremony media area held a handful of reporters rather than a crowd.

"How does seventeenth in the Ballon d’Or feel?"

"Proud," Demien said. "That season was everything — Atalanta, Gasperini, my teammates there, England. I wouldn’t be standing here tonight without any of that."

"How disappointed are you not to win the Kopa Trophy?"

"Of course I wanted to win it," Demien said. "But Jude had the season he had — the World Cup, Dortmund, the armband at nineteen. He deserves it."

"Do you think missing Champions League football with Atalanta cost you the trophy?"

"I don’t know," Demien said. "You’d have to ask the people who voted. Jude played Champions League, had the World Cup, had a massive year with Dortmund. I had the season I had. They voted."

"Yesterday you matched Haaland with two goals and an assist. Tonight he finishes second in the Ballon d’Or and wins the Gerd Müller Trophy. What do you make of the comparisons now?"

Demien glanced across the media area to where Haaland stood answering his own questions. "He scored fifty-two goals for a treble-winning team," he said. "I think he’s doing alright."

"Do you consider yourself at his level now?"

"No," Demien said. "Different jobs, different stage of our careers. Yesterday was one game."

Marco stepped in and steered him away before the question could be asked a third time in a different shape.

Outside the immediate media crush, Demien finally breathed properly.

Sophia was waiting.

Isabella stood nearby.

Marco already had his phone out, checking tomorrow’s schedule.

Demien loosened his tie once the cameras weren’t directly on him.

"Made it," Sophia said.

"Second," he said, glancing back toward the theater.

She gave him a look.

"And seventeenth," he added.

"That sounds slightly less miserable."

He laughed.

Isabella told him once more that she was proud of him, brief this time, nothing more needed — her son had sat inside the Ballon d’Or ceremony tonight, and that alone was enough for her.

He hugged her.

Coverage was already updating on every phone around them.

BELLINGHAM WINS KOPA

MESSI WINS EIGHTH BALLON D’OR

HAALAND SECOND AFTER TREBLE SEASON

WALTER FINISHES 17TH AND RUNNER-UP IN KOPA

ENGLAND’S YOUNG MIDFIELD FUTURE: BELLINGHAM 1ST, WALTER 2ND IN KOPA

One clip caught his attention, an analyst discussing his résumé — the numbers extraordinary, the case undeniable, but Atalanta’s absence from Europe leaving part of it untested against elite continental opposition.

"This season at United answers that question," the analyst said. "He’s playing Champions League football now. We’ll find out."

Demien watched it for a few seconds.

Then locked the phone.

No revenge mission. No system prompt demanding next year’s trophy.

Just his own decision that the next Champions League match would matter more than anything said about the last one he hadn’t played.

A final reporter called out from behind the barrier as they crossed toward the car.

"Demien! Seventeenth in the Ballon d’Or, second in the Kopa — what do you want next?"

He stopped.

Looked back at the theater for one beat.

Then at the reporter.

"First."

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