A boy from Zeeland and local pride

[Thunfish 72]

Guide:

Black bold lines are from Sunrise.

Green bold lines are from Sunrise's Spanish teacher and new friend, Luz.

 

Sunrise couldn't even finish settling himself back home when he saw a piece of paper that had apparently travelled through the ocean, arriving just in time. The paper was being held by Luz who, once again, found her way into his house without any proper safe justification besides security allowing her in. It was a piece of a newspaper... and it was in Dutch. Very Dutch, in fact. His eyes scanned the words on it before staring at the Mexican girl. "How did you get in here, again? And why were you looking at my mail?"

 

The reply he got to that question was a goofy smile from the girl, who merely handwaved the situation without much thought. "As your teacher, I have full rights to observe your letters, in order to properly figure out how to test your aptitude in the language of Spanish," dotting the answer with a tongue to the side, to which the Dutch one merely rolled his eyes, thinking on the best way to approach this situation. Obviously, the newspaper bit was from his homeland. He had observed the right side of the page, which featured a myriad of league tables - mostly soccer ones - that presented a picture of how things were at the time. The fact one of the tables there was of an amateur league with the Schubbekuteveen's local club performing as well as one would expect (10th out of 16), with their standing in a strong blue, made it obvious that the newspaper had to be the Zeelandia Turnip, the one that covered his little podunk of a hometown and a couple of others nearby.

 

His eyes then darted to the center of the page, a picture of him raising his hockey stick in celebration and the large words above it stating Local Boy, Hockey Prodigy which... wait, he had to do a double take there. He was a prodigy now? Surely for his folks, he was a prodigy, but that was a bit of a bold proclamation from the Zeeland press. The realization came once he checked who wrote that media piece - his old aunt Nene. "That's family propaganda," Sunrise sighed as his shame subsided, "A tabloid from my hometown saying that I'm good, apparently... Guess dad sent it," he noted as he took the piece of paper out of her hands, causing Luz to be a bit startled as she tried to peek over his shoulder once he blocked her view of the paper with his back. 

 

Sure enough, there were bits and pieces about his career on the league so far and how he was currently the team's best scorer, while also attributing him a lot of the honor from their victories - something he was pretty sure had to be an exaggeration from his relatives, likely his aunt had his father on her ears for this - and mentioning that games of the VHLM would be broadcasted on the local public channel to celebrate their performance somehow. "Well, I guess this came from my folks. They're pretty happy about my season, I guess," he noted as he folded the piece of paper. Luz let out a little giggle, which caused Sunrise to raise an eyebrow at her, "And don't check my inbox without telling me again, please."