Not on who would win, but on when the probability would shift. Diego discovered that the live probability number hesitated before goals. A corner kick would nudge it from 52% to 54%. A yellow card would drop it two points. But a penalty—a penalty made the number freeze, flicker, then leap like a wounded animal. He learned to read those tremors. He sold his car to fund a betting account. He told himself it was mathematics.

Diego didn’t ask how he knew.

Diego hadn’t watched a full football match in three years. Not because he’d fallen out of love with the game, but because he’d found something more addictive: the prediction of it.

One evening, a man sat across from him. Grey beard, no drink, eyes that had the stillness of someone who had also stared at probabilities until probabilities stared back.