One Million
Discovering my absurd recovery ability became the spark that pushed my training to a whole new level.
A thousand shots with my right foot, harder and more precise than before. I added drills that targeted the corners of the goal.
I pushed the intensity of my weight training to far more aggressive heights.
The pain of muscles tearing, the fear of injury — none of it scared me anymore.
After all, this was a cheat-like space where every wound healed overnight. With injury off the table, I could load the bar with weight without a second thought.
A thousand shots with my left foot. It was still a struggle working with my non-dominant leg, but threatening shots were finally starting to fly off it.
I deliberately increased how often I used my left foot in daily life, sharpening the feel for it little by little.
At some point, counting how many days had passed became meaningless.
Time flowed on, and the numbers on the scoreboard climbed steeply.
10,000. 20,000. 30,000... Once the count crossed into the hundred-thousands, the changes in my body became unmistakable.
My shot power had grown to the point where it couldn't even be compared to my middle school football club days.
Especially my left foot — the weakness that had once earned me the nickname "one-footed" — could now unleash shots every bit as lethal as my right.
And it wasn't just muscle piling on. My overall balance improved, and I could feel my quickness and agility rising along with it.
"Is this... really my body?"
The growth rate was unbelievable.
A time-frozen space, a miraculous recovery ability, and a insane regimen of endless repetition. When those three factors collided, the synergy was explosive.
Best of all was the fact that while my body was growing, the concept of aging simply didn't apply to it.
My hair, my nails — no matter how much time passed, they stayed exactly the same as day one.
Muscle stacking onto a body that never aged was strange to think about, but it worked out just fine for me.
I stood in front of the gym mirror. My body was now covered in respectable, solid muscle.
It hadn't yet reached the threshold of a professional athlete's physique, but at the very least, I looked like someone who actually trained.
It was hard to believe this was the same body of a part-timer who'd been scraping by on discarded convenience-store food until just recently.
The scoreboard had quietly crept past [ 200,000 / 100,000,000 ].
[ 999,999 / 100,000,000 ]
I stood before the goal, quietly staring down at the ball.
The nervous tremble I'd felt unleashing my very first shot had long since faded into distant memory.
I steadied my breathing, set my stance the way I always did, and drove my foot into my final shot of the day.
THWACK—!
The ball rocketed off my foot and slammed hard into the net.
The dull crack of impact echoed through the empty stadium. By now, I could tell from the sound of ball meeting foot alone whether I'd caught it clean.
I slowly lifted my head and checked the scoreboard.
[ 1,000,000 / 100,000,000 ]
One million. I had finally completed my millionth shot.
Compared to the final goal of 100 million, it was a mere one percent. And yet, the feeling of the moment hit differently.
"How much time... has actually passed?"
The thought struck me out of nowhere. Two thousand shots a day, both feet combined.
Simple math said it would take five hundred days to reach a million. Over a year and a half.
Granted, the days I experienced here didn't match the days of the outside world, but the time I'd spent kicking balls in this place was absolutely that long.
"A year and a half... and I've been doing nothing but this, here?"
A hollow laugh escaped me. It had been a long, brutal stretch of time. Still, I had no regrets.
The saving grace was that this abnormal environment hadn't gnawed away at my mind.
No — if anything, I felt sharper than before?
The time I'd spent here already far exceeded a year and a half by even the simplest calculation.
For an ordinary person, such a long stretch — especially one spent trapped in this monotonous loop of kicking a ball, sleeping, waking, and kicking again — would naturally blur the memory.
But me? Everything remained vivid to an almost eerie degree.
Come to think of it, what did I eat for lunch the day before I entered this pitch?
Kimchi stew. The taste of that neighborhood joint serving full rice plates for 7,000 won.
It came back to me with perfect clarity, as if it had happened yesterday.
This place wasn't just preventing my body from aging — it was preserving my mind from wearing down, too.
Memory decay? Fading concentration? None of that existed here.
If anything, my head felt clearer than ever.
Which meant one lingering anxiety that had lived in the corner of my mind was now completely gone.
The fear of losing my marbles after kicking nothing but a ball for far too long.
The dread of letting so much time slip by that I'd forget the faces of my parents and everyone I knew.
Thankfully, none of that seemed likely to happen.
And that alone was a huge comfort.
I made my way slowly to the gym.
Standing before the full-length mirror, I pulled my shirt off with practiced ease.
Then I studied the reflection staring back at me, piece by piece.
The old me was gone.
The scrawny, slight frame of the past was now filled out seamlessly with dense, solid muscle.
Broadened shoulders, a thickened chest, arms carved with definition — the fruits of grueling weight training.
A sharp six-pack marked my abdomen, and my thighs were as hard as tree trunks.
And it wasn't simply a matter of more muscle.
Every trace of flab had melted away, leaving a lean, athletic physique that read as "trained" at a single glance.
This, too, was the result of 500 days of pounding iron.
A transformation that would have been utterly impossible without that miraculous recovery ability that erased a day's damage overnight.
"At this level... I won't be outshone even standing among pros."
Of course, physical ability alone doesn't decide everything, but for a footballer, an elite physique is a devastating weapon.
Still, I couldn't afford to get drunk on satisfaction.
Smack! I slapped my own cheek hard.
A million shots.
It was undeniably a monumental achievement — but at the same time, it had handed me a question about the way I'd been training.
"Shooting and weights... this alone isn't enough."
Football is a sport about kicking the ball into the net, yes — but that's not all it is.
The touch to control the ball, the vision to read the flow of a match, the dribbling to slip past defenders, the link-up play with teammates...
Until now, I'd poured everything into shooting ability and physical conditioning.
I need balance. If I really want to become a footballer.
Filling the number 100 million might be the ultimate goal, but if I spent all that time doing nothing but shooting and lifting?
I might end up nothing more than a half-baked player who can only shoot and shove.
Within this frozen time, the skills I needed to hone went far beyond shooting.
I drew up a new training plan. Keep the shooting and weights as my base, and build in a heavier share of technical work.
The first thing I started with was dribbling.
I set up a row of cones at even intervals and began with the basics: weaving through them with the ball.
It was awkward at first. The ball wouldn't stick to my feet, kept bouncing away, and I knocked over cones constantly.
"Huh. Guess my body's stiffer than I thought?"
My physique had improved, but my sense of delicate ball control was still lacking.
But time was the one thing I had in abundance. Without rushing, I repeated the fundamentals over and over, step by careful step.
Inside touches, outside touches, sole-of-the-foot dribbles... I worked every surface of my foot, trying to make the ball feel like an extension of my body.
Tens, then hundreds of trips back and forth through the cones. Sweat poured off me like rain, my ankles and knees ached with fatigue — but I didn't stop.
"All I've got is time. Let's keep grinding that dribbling feel higher and higher."
Then, as I caught my breath after finishing the dribbling drills, a thought surfaced.
A real match is different. In a real match, the ball comes at you from the most unpredictable places imaginable.
You can't always strike balls sitting neatly on the grass as if every one were a free kick.
The ability to deal with a moving ball.
More specifically — volleys, the kind that answer aerial crosses and long-range passes.
Volley practice was necessary too. But how was I supposed to train it alone? A rebound board would've been perfect, but this pitch had no rebound board.
As I was racking my brain for a substitute, my eyes snagged on the concrete wall beneath the stands.
That's it.
I decided to make use of the stadium's solid wall. I blasted the ball hard against it.
Thud!
With a heavy thump, the ball struck the wall and ricocheted back at speed. Timing my run to meet it, I steadied my balance and attempted a volley.
Whoosh—!
My first attempt was a mess. The ball never caught my instep properly and sliced through empty air.
"...Yeah, this isn't easy."
Back in my middle school football days, the volley had always been the hardest shot for me.
Even in real professional matches, a fair number of volleys sail off into the sky.
I gathered up a pile of balls and stood before the wall. One more try. I hammered the ball at the wall with everything I had.
BANG!
The ball came flying back at terrifying speed. It was past me before my body could even react.
Another whiff. The key was controlling the power and angle of my strike against the wall.
Again — this time a little more carefully. Angle it slightly lower.
BANG!
The ball rebounded back low along the ground. I swung my leg to meet the timing.
Pock!
Mishit. The ball sailed off in some random direction.
"Ngh."
Irritation flickered up, and I swallowed it down. Repetition. Repetition alone was the answer. But the more I failed, the more stubborn I became.
Slowly, within that repetition, a feel began to take shape.
It felt like the muscles in my legs — and my core — were about to burst. Every strike demanded my whole body twisting to hold its balance.
But the results were undeniable. My sense for handling a ball hanging in the air was sharpening with every attempt.
Muscles and nerves of a completely different kind were being forged, ones I'd never trained before.
Strike the wall again, launch my body at the rebound.
Hundreds of attempts stacked up one after another. Whiffed swings, balls flying off in absurd directions. But with each repetition, the feel crept closer.
Predict the speed and angle of the rebound, move early, and claim the best position before the ball arrives.
Drop my center of gravity, lock my eyes on the ball, and at the exact right moment, firm up my ankle and strike through impact.
And then, after hundreds of failures —
KWAANG—!
With a crisp, cracking report, the ball caught flush on my instep and tore away like a bullet, hammering the net at the far end of the pitch.
"...There it is!"
This was no longer just mindless shooting.
How could I hit a volley harder, cleaner, truer? I ran the simulation over and over in my head before every attempt.
And this was only the beginning. Dribbling, volleys, passing, defending... the list of skills I needed to train went on and on.
Time is the one thing I have in spades... so I might as well work myself to death.