Zayan sat down on the damp curb like every afternoon. And while he was waiting for the match to start, he was inspired and began to draw in his old notebook. Although the pencil was already too short, due to so much use, and it was hard for him to hold it, Zayan did not stop.
   Stroke by stroke, little by little, with a striking innate skill, a very defined face began to appear on the paper. Then Zayan looked up from his notebook for the first time when he heard that the match was starting.
   From where he was, the screen looked very far away. He could barely make out the path of the ball, but Zayan preferred to look from there rather than get closer to the bar window and end up in a rough escape, as had already happened to him, when the owner of the bar chased him out with brooms and insults.
   Zayan, while running and clinging to his notebook, managed to hear some of the shouts in French:
"...marginals, criminals, filthy blacks, go back to your country...!"
   Zayan shook his head at that memory and looked back at the giant TV screen in the bar. That face that was now shown in the foreground had the exact same smile as the face Zayan had just sketched on paper.
   So, afternoon after afternoon, Zayan sat on that cold sidewalk with his ten-year-old body that, due to hunger, was sometimes mistaken for a six-year-old and watched, while drawing, any news or any play that was broadcast about his idol.
   Kylian Mbappé was the only thing Zayan talked about to his parents, his brothers, at school or on the clay court where he used to play with his Bondy teammates.
   But it wasn't until a couple of weeks later that Zayan began to realize an extraordinary coincidence. The afternoon he finished his drawing of Mbappé, a Mbappé winking and giving a thumbs-up gesture, Zayan raised his gaze from the notebook straight to the screen upon hearing the name of his idol. And he stood there for a few seconds petrified as he watched the player wink at the camera and raise his thumb.
   Zayan couldn't see much more after that because a sudden cold rain forced him to run outside. There was no way he would let his notebook get wet. But he couldn't sleep all night thinking about that extraordinary coincidence.
   Zayan didn't dare mention it to anyone. Deep down, he didn't want anyone to make fun of him or tell him it was just a coincidence. So at the same time as always, he sat down on the damp curb in front of the bar and started drawing. Normally, Zayan didn't plan too much about what he put on paper. He just went with the flow. But this time, he thought carefully. He thought of a drawing that was special, that wasn't ordinary, something that Kylian Mbappé wasn't likely to do with his face, his hands, or the ball.
   Zayan thought for a moment and with a mischievous smile, he started drawing. When he finished, he contemplated his work for a few seconds: a young Kylian, holding the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in his hands and looking down at it intensely as if he were a God contemplating his creation.
   Zayan laughed at himself.
   "Do you really expect this to happen?" he said mockingly as he began to crumple the paper between his fingers.
    He was embarrassed at the thought that someone might see that drawing and make fun of him.
   But he had barely made a ball out of the drawing when he looked up at the television on the opposite sidewalk and was stunned.
   An extremely smiling Kylian Mbappé entered the press conference with a scale model of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium. With the white model in his hands, he smiled at the cameras and the flashes.
  You can easily imagine that Zayan was not able to sleep that night either!
   Problems at home, a sudden cough and fever and then a beating at school left Zayan lying on his cot for a couple of afternoons and prevented him from being able to sit in the corner of the bar to watch the screen from afar.
   Although the mocking words of his classmates about his foreign origin while they were beating him hurt him more than the blows on his hands and face.    Finally, the winter break arrived, so he was able to spend his first afternoon in front of the bar, with no wounds left to heal. He looked at his drawing. It had taken him two days to finish it. A Kylian Mbappé in a shirt of an extraordinary orange color looked down from the sheet of paper at the boy Zayan and drew a Z in the air with his index finger.
   Zayan smiled. That Z was his name. He bit his lip and stared at the bar screen.
   Anxiety made him tremble much more than the cold and hunger. But when the match started, anxiety turned into sadness. They were playing at home, so the shirt Kylian Mbappé was wearing was the traditional white one.
Zayan sighed. In the end, it had been a coincidence.
   "Where had I gotten that stupid idea that if I drew him on paper, it would happen in real life?"
He was about to tear up the drawing, although it was hard for him to do so because he was aware that it had turned out really well, when he heard the voice of the commentator shouting goal!
   He looked up and saw on the screen a euphoric Mbappé, running across the field, kissing his Madrid shirt and approaching one of the cameras that were broadcasting the game live. And before Zayan's stunned gaze, Kylian Mbappé looked straight at the camera and drew a Z in the air with his index finger, amid the shouting and celebrations of the entire Bernabéu that seemed to explode.
   Zayan was so shocked that even when the game was over he was unable to get up from the cordon. And while a press conference broadcast live began, Zayan sketched a new drawing, letting himself be carried away by an impulse that seemed to possess him from head to toe.
He finished the last strokes and looked at it: Kylian Mbappé's face with his hands forward in a winning attitude, dressed in black and behind him on a wall with school letters it read:
"Bondy...ville des possibles..."
Zayan blinked in confusion. During the outburst he hadn't even realized he had written something. He had never written anything on his drawings before.
   "Ville des possibles...", he repeated in a low voice while turning his gaze back to the screen.
   The press conference had started and a smiling Kylian Mbappé listened attentively to a journalist's question.
   "What does your hometown Bondy represent for you?"
   Kylian looked directly at one of the cameras that was focusing on him. Zayan felt with a shudder that those eyes of his idol were looking at him. Then Mbappé said:
   "Bondy...ville des possibles..."
   Zayan, following an impulse, looked for a new blank sheet of paper to start another drawing. Deep inside he was certain that whatever he drew would become reality. But he blinked at the emptiness.
   "Where to start? How far can I dream? What is the limit?" he thought.
   And then he heard the voice of his idol answering another question, always looking at the camera as if he were still looking at him.
   "For dreams..." said Kylian, "only the sky is the limit..."