Roberto Firmino is concentrating. Hard.
We are in the North Liverpool Academy, the impressive school a stone's throw from Anfield which turns itself into a giant car park on a matchday.
This is the day after a game though, and a gruelling game at that. The Reds had edged past Stoke City on penalties in the League Cup semi-final after losing the home second leg 1-0.
After playing the full 120 minutes on that January 2016 night, Firmino had been one of six home players to score from the spot, with Joe Allen slotting the winner to send Jurgen Klopp to Wembley just three months into his new job.
When asked if he was nervous when he had stepped up to his penalty, which he scored with aplomb, Firmino - who was at the school for a photoshoot and exclusive interview - listened to the question being relayed to him in Portuguese by his representative and interpreter, then shrugged, laughed and smiled that beaming smile that we'd all get used to. Nervous? We didn't know him very well back then.
Nobody did, in truth.
Firmino was the most curious of the signings made during what would prove to be Brendan Rodgers' final summer at Liverpool, and suspicion always seemed to surround his arrival.
A now infamous article attacking the work of "laptop guru" Michael Edwards and the club's transfer committee in making some of those 2015 signings, and inferring that they had been against Rodgers' wishes, now has a place in Liverpool folklore.
Apparently Edwards and his team were "yet to explain" why they forked out £29million to sign Firmino from Hoffenheim, with the £10million Divock Origi also listed among the apparently "countless other errors" which played a part in Rodgers' dismissal.
Firmino had played seven times under the Northern Irishman, winning just twice, doing a stint at left-wing back in a defeat at Old Trafford and going off injured in a League Cup win over Carlisle, a scraped victory on penalties, in what would prove to be his final game under Rodgers' tutelage.
When he returned a month later Klopp was in place, so was he pleased that a manager who knew him from the Bundesliga - where he'd scored 49 goals in four-and-a-half years with Hoffenheim - was now in charge of him in England?
We weren't allowed to find out. That question was the only one blocked by his representatives in that January 2016 interview, probably out of respect for Rodgers instead of anything sinister. It was soon clear to see the change though.
With Klopp establishing a position for Firmino - who wore No.11 back then - as a floating False 9, it was now obvious to see why Edwards and co had signed him.
After a fine display in a 3-1 win at Chelsea, he scored his first Liverpool goal in the 4-1 success at Manchester City - just his fourth start under Klopp - that announced just what this team could be capable of under their new boss. There was no turning back from here.
Firmino managed 11 goals in his first Reds season, which isn't bad considering he only scored once in his first 24 appearances of it, and after playing a key role in the era-shifting 2016-17 campaign - April winning goals at Stoke and West Brom proving vital for Champions League qualification - it was the summer of 2017 when Mohamed Salah was added to the attacking ranks which already included 2016 signing Sadio Mane. Now the fun could really begin.
Indeed, Firmino's 2017-18 might well go down as one of the great underrated seasons in Liverpool history.
His haul of 27 goals in 54 appearances is comfortably a career-best, but - perhaps because he's been there the longest - he was already seen more as the foil to Salah and Mane than anything else.
He would take up a role of facilitating for the deadly pair on the wings, dropping deep and making space for them to shine even if that meant his own performances would be lauded much less.
This selflessness was made all the more remarkable by the uncovering of the goal bonus clauses in his contract, one of the heavily incentivised deals introduced under Edwards that many credit as the reason for the Reds' recent successes.
Firmino famously passed up a £45,000 goal bonus - part of a structured bonus system in his contract - as he simply stood and watched a Mane effort against Stoke trickle over the line when he could have scored himself, and while that was the most marked of these instances there were several more when he put the team, and above all his fellow forwards, above himself.
That's not to say there haven't been his moments in front of goal though.
He was genuinely prolific in that 2017-18 campaign, scoring 11 in 15 games en route to the Champions League final, while he developed a habit of torturing Arsenal over the years, scored big goals in the Premier League winning season and settled the semi-final and final of the Club World Cup, the latter a raucous Doha winner against Flamengo in a competition that means so much to South Americans.
There has been a drop-off in recent years of course, and it is extremely likely that Firmino wouldn't have started Saturday's 9-0 drubbing of Bournemouth had either Darwin Nunez or Diogo Jota been available, but his importance to Liverpool goes on, and as he brought up his 100th strike for the club in front of the Kop there was that grin again, and the delight of a crowd who treasure him.
At 31 in October and out of contract at the end of this season it seems likely that Firmino will be allowed to move on soon.
His place in Liverpool legend is secured though, with an impact as beaming and bright as that smile.
