The morning dawned soft and golden, spilling through the jacaranda trees of Pinheiros like liquid honey. Thiago sat at a wrought-iron café table, its surface cool beneath his fingertips, still groggy from last night's celebrations. A chilled bottle of water beaded with condensation in his grip, droplets tracing slow, meandering paths down the glass like tears of joy. The plastic wristband from the victory party clung stubbornly to his wrist, its edges frayed from nervous picking during the long, sleepless hours.
Every muscle in his body sang a chorus of exhaustion—his calves throbbed with the memory of relentless sprints, his lower back ached from carrying the weight of expectation, even his jaw felt sore from laughing too hard, too long, with the abandon of a champion. His eyelids, heavy as lead, burned with the grit of too little sleep, but this was the sweet fatigue of triumph, the kind that settled in your bones like warm embers after a roaring fire.
