The Scoreboard That Shouldn't Exist
“WAAAAAAAH—!!!”
The French fans, silent for the entire first half, erupted all at once. The reason for the roar was singular: Kylian Mbappé, suited up and beginning his warm-up for a second-half substitution.
The moment the stadium jumbotron caught him changing into his kit and stretching loose, the French faithful forgot all about the first half's lopsided color and sent up a deafening wave of cheers.
The cries carried all the way back to the locker room, and the expressions of the South Korean players—who just moments ago had been giddy with the promise of victory—began to harden, little by little.
They were already starting to feel the crushing weight of a superstar named Mbappé.
The first to sense the shift in the air was the team's captain, Cha Kangmin. Clap! Clap! He clapped loudly, snapping everyone's attention toward him.
“Hey! You bastards! This is actually a good thing! Today's gonna be legendary!”
Kangmin swept his gaze across the players and shouted.
“From now on, you can go anywhere you want and brag, ‘I've played footie with Mbappé!’ The way I see it, this is a lifetime supply of drinking material! Honestly, if not now, when are you ever gonna get an experience like this?”
He jabbed a finger toward Kim Hanbin, who was sitting off to one side, and raised his voice.
“And a round of applause for the man who made this happen—our greatest striker, Kim Hanbin!! The way I see it, even that Mbappé bastard can't touch Hanbin when he's in peak form like today!”
When Kangmin forced a grin and coaxed the applause out of them, the players—awkward at first—started laughing and clapping one by one.
The deflated atmosphere slowly came back to life.
“That's right, damn it! Hanbin's the best, and so are we!”
“If we blow a 2-0 lead, I'll be too angry to sleep tonight!”
“Mbappé, come on out! Messi, come on out! Ronaldo, come on out!”
“Kim Hanbin! Kim Hanbin! Kim Hanbin!”
“BIUUUUUUUUUUU!!”
Satisfied that the mood had caught fire amid the players' cheers, Cha Kangmin bellowed once more.
“If we win here today, it's not just ‘I kicked a ball with Mbappé’—it's ‘I BEAT Mbappé.’ And I swear to god, I can't pass that up!”
“OOOOOH!!!”
“LET'S GO!!!”
And so, everyone riding the crest of the rising energy, they left the locker room.
Just before the second half kicked off, both teams' substitution lists were officially announced.
When head coach Baek Seungnam received the French list and read it over, he let out a horrified gasp despite himself.
These bastards... they're really going all out?
Just how deeply it had wounded France's pride to be down 2-0 at home, in the opening match, by halftime—was plain to see from the substitutions alone.
Every spot on the pitch was filled by the very best players France could muster, Kylian Mbappé included.
Up front, Jean-Philippe Mateta was brought on alongside Mbappé. Mateta—the Crystal Palace monster who had terrorized the English Premier League, bagging sixteen league goals in the previous season alone.
These were monsters on a completely different plane from the French attack that had played the first half.
Can our back line hold...?
As if in answer to Coach Baek's worry, the referee's whistle sounded, announcing the start of the second half.
Two-nil. For South Korea, a scoreline beyond all hope of improvement.
On top of that, with the start of the half, wildcard addition Choi Sangwon had come on as well—and there was no longer any need to drop the line and play pure defense the way they had all first half.
The best defense is a good offense, as they say, and South Korea began pushing the ball forward, looking like a different side entirely from the first half.
The second half unfolded surprisingly fiercely. Whether it was the pressure of trailing by two goals, or the momentum of the first half still burning within them, for the opening ten minutes it was actually South Korea who repeatedly knocked on France's door, looking genuinely threatening.
With Choi Sangwon's arrival restoring stability in midfield, they effectively slipped France's press, while Kim Hanbin and Lim Hyungyu harassed the opposing back line from the front.
But.
That was where it ended.
As if to prove that the French Olympic squad—built with the gold medal in mind on home soil—was no team to crumble so easily, the match flipped in the space of an instant.
And the start of it, of course, was Kylian Mbappé.
The moment Mbappé collected the ball in midfield and set off dribbling, flicking it lightly forward with each touch, every eye in the stadium turned to him.
South Korea's defenders, trying to stand in his way, were peeled off one after another by his footwork.
Cha Kangmin was no exception.
Kangmin approached with care, narrowing the angle to cut off the run. But Mbappé's dribbling touch and speed far outpaced his predictions.
With nothing more than a fleeting feint, Mbappé brushed past Kangmin and carved out his shooting lane.
Perhaps even the experience and skill of South Korea's starting fullback fell short in the face of the game's biggest star. All Cha Kangmin could do was stare helplessly at the space behind him and the man winding up a shot.
Mbappé struck from distance. The ball knuckled toward goal—no spin, pure velocity.
The keeper dove for it, but—
Smack-!
The ball punctured the top corner of the net, ripping through the mesh.
“WAAAAAAAH—!!!”
The French home crowd roared loud enough to lift the roof off the stadium. Mbappé, seemingly begrudging even the seconds a celebration would take, scooped the ball out of the net himself and sprinted for the halfway line, whipping the French players into a frenzy.
2-1. France's full-scale chase had begun.
There was no denying it: with every starter on the pitch, France was a completely different team. The South Korean defenders, drained by a full half of nonstop defending, were now visibly struggling against fresh, rested French forwards.
If this keeps up, it's only a matter of time before the equalizer—no, a comeback.
Watching from the bench, Coach Baek Seungnam felt the danger closing in. He turned to the coaches beside him.
“Hanbin needs to think about the next match, so let's take him off now and start preparing defensive substitutions to shore up the back line.”
“But... the only reason they can't push their line up right now is because Hanbin's out there. Are you sure about this?”
“This isn't the only match. We've still got five more games until the gold medal. Hanbin has to start every one of them, so we can't burn any more of his legs here.”
“He does say his stamina is fine, though...”
The coach's words were met with a firm shake of the head.
“Of course I know Hanbin's stamina is exceptional. But let's not forget—he's a kid who's only just become an adult. How many players have we all seen at that age, insisting they're fine, only to end up on the injury list in the end?”
At Coach Baek's words, the surrounding staff nodded in agreement. A young player pushing himself past his limits, straining a hamstring or picking up some other knock—that was an all-too-common story in this business. And Hanbin's presence mattered more to this team right now than anything else in the world.
“Yes, understood, Coach.”
On Coach Baek's orders, the bench began preparing a mass injection of defenders—all outgoing subs except for a single forward to press high when needed.
Up 2-1 with time running out, they committed to shutting the game down, doing whatever it took to protect that one-goal lead for whatever minutes remained.
The moment South Korea showed signs of pulling its attackers and sending on defenders, the stadium filled with the jeers of the French fans.
“Booooooo—!”
The crowd made their disgust at Korea's blatantly defensive football known. But none of it mattered to the result.
Hanbin, too, couldn't hide his disappointment when his number flashed up on the substitution board, but he understood the manager's tactical choice and left the pitch.
It's not like I can explain the recovery ability I got from the time-stop field to Coach...
As he walked to the bench, teammates and staff came up to encourage him.
“Hanbin, great work out there today.”
“You were the best player on the pitch, Hanbin.”
“Thank you.”
And so Hanbin took his seat on the bench and watched the field with restless eyes.
South Korea, just as in the first half, dropped completely deep, lining up every last player in front of their goal—the fabled ten-back defense.
Even France, with all its dazzling firepower, seemed to struggle anew against Korea's dense wall of bodies, every attacker pulled back until only defenders remained.
Throwing their bodies desperately into every block, holding and holding again, the ninety minutes of regulation finally drained away.
Four added minutes of stoppage time, announced by the fourth official.
The instant that number went up, joy and despair crossed starkly between the two benches.
Hold on for those minutes, and South Korea would pull off an underdog uprising that nobody—not a single soul—had predicted. And France, gold-medal favorites, would be sent to the brink of a shocking defeat on their home soil, in the opening match, against a team no one had counted.
Just as both benches watched through gritted teeth, hearts in their throats—
Mbappé took the ball again and launched into another driving run.
His dribble, an almost lazy series of touches advancing up the pitch, began stripping Korea's defenders away one by one.
And then, all at once, only Cha Kangmin remained in front of him.
If I let this go on... he scores. No question.
Kangmin sensed it in his bones. Against any other player, he could somehow manage. But this was Mbappé. Giving him this much space meant conceding, plain and simple.
Judging he had no more time to hesitate, Kangmin threw everything he had into a sliding tackle.
But Mbappé was more seasoned than he was. Seeing Kangmin's foot come in recklessly at the ball, he got his own foot there first—and went down with a cunning grace.
Mbappé rolled grandly, several full rotations, inside the penalty box, and the stadium erupted with the French fans' deafening roar.
“Penalty!! PENALTY!!!”
Tweeeeeet—!
The referee's whistle pierced his ears. Cha Kangmin stood where he was and bowed his head.
He'd been played. This time, the fault was his—his rash, overeager tackle.
And Mbappé had exploited it with astonishing cleverness.
Without a moment's hesitation, the referee pointed to the spot.
The team bus rolling back to the athletes' village after the match was silent as the grave.
Before kickoff, they'd all thought that even a draw against France would be a gift. But perhaps because victory had glittered right in front of them until the dying seconds of stoppage time, the atmosphere inside the bus sat heavy—like a loss, despite the draw.
On any normal day, Cha Kangmin, the resident mood-maker, would have been the first to step up with a joke or a bit of horseplay to loosen things up. But right now, no one dared approach him.
“......”
“......”
Then, after a long stretch of silence, Cha Kangmin suddenly screamed, “GYAAAAAH!”
Every player on the bus jumped and whipped their heads toward him. Kangmin shot up from his seat and bellowed at the team.
“Everyone... I'm so sorry! Especially you, Hanbin—I'm so damn sorry! Today was all my fault! I guess... I guess Mbappé really is 280 Cha Kangmins after all! Go ahead—curse me out, all of you!!”
At his self-recriminating cry and the out-of-nowhere 280 Cha Kangmin bit, a ripple of stifled laughter broke out among the players.
And before long, they were grinning as they called back to him.
“Why would we curse you out, hyung?!”
“Without you, we'd have been torn apart 5-0 ages ago! We drew because of you, hyung!”
“That's right! Against Mbappé AND Mateta? Holding them like that was seriously impressive!”
The players' comfort and encouragement thawed the heavy air in the bus considerably.
The bus pulled into the athletes' village, and the squad dispersed toward their quarters.
Behind Hanbin, heading for his room, Kangmin's voice called out.
“Hanbin, you free?”
“Me? Yeah, of course.”
When Hanbin turned around, Cha Kangmin tipped his chin toward the outdoors.
“Let's walk a bit.”
The two of them started down the walking path that wound through the athletes' village, side by side.
Normally Kangmin would have dominated the conversation without pause, but now he said nothing, just walked with his eyes ahead.
Hanbin found his senior's silence strange, but he didn't pry.
After they'd walked for a while, Cha Kangmin finally broke the silence.
“Hanbin. I'm sorry.”
“Sorry?”
Hanbin gave him a puzzled look.
“It's just... you practically built that whole game by yourself, and we were almost there. And I went and threw it all away at the end. Really. I'm sorry.”
A deep self-blame ran beneath Kangmin's quiet apology. His voice, stripped of its usual brimming confidence, had sunk into something listless.
Faced with a side of Kangmin he'd never seen before, Hanbin answered with exaggerated theatrics instead.
“What are you even saying, hyung? Come on! We didn't get knocked out of the tournament—we drew against gold-medal favorites France in the group stage! There's still so much tournament left! And the first goal was YOUR assist, remember? What's there to be this sorry about?”
At Hanbin's over-the-top consolation, Cha Kangmin gave a wry smile.
“No... I know all that. I just—as your hyung, and as the captain, it doesn't sit right. Haaah...”
He let out a long sigh, then muttered almost to himself.
“That Mbappé bastard is genuinely something else. Just a couple little touches—shoop, shoop—and suddenly his body and the ball are way over there. There was no stopping him.”
“So, 280 Cha Kangmins?”
Kangmin stared at Hanbin for a moment, then snorted.
“Right... honestly... not 280. Hmm... more like 30 Cha Kangmins, maybe...”
“He was pretty good, yeah.”
Hanbin nodded along, agreeing matter-of-factly.
The two kept walking in silence for a stretch. Then—
“Hey. You got the energy?”
Kangmin asked abruptly.
“Want to get some practice in at the training pitch for a few minutes?”
“Huh? Me? I'm fine, but are YOU okay, hyung? You played the full ninety today.”
Hanbin looked at him with worried eyes.
“Nah, I'm fine. If I go lie down in my room right now, that last play's just gonna replay in my head all night and I'll never sleep. Better to sweat a little more first. Let's get some 1-on-1 work in. You're honestly still a bit weak on dribbling past people and shielding the ball, from what I've seen.”
“...That's fair.”
Hanbin readily admitted it. Kangmin was right.
1-on-1 training—the kind that requires a partner—was one drill that could never be attempted in that time-stopped stadium. The frozen pitch held nothing but empty goals and training cones.
It was only after joining Suwon that he'd finally started training against live defenders, but lacking sheer practice volume, he was still undeniably green at it.
“Sounds good. Let's go, then.”
“Okaaay~!”
As if his earlier gloom had never existed, Cha Kangmin bounced back to his usual cheerful self and shoved Hanbin forward by the shoulder.
The two headed for the small training pitch attached to the athletes' village. Fortunately, it was empty.
Grabbing a ball that was lying around, the two dove straight into 1-on-1 drills.
The results, however, were lopsided. Even when Hanbin tried to hold his ground with his physicality, Kangmin slyly extended a foot and plucked the ball clean away; whenever Hanbin attempted to drive past him, Kangmin had already read the movement and cut off his lane.
Of every ten attempts, seven ended with the ball stolen.
As expected... I've still got a long way to go.
Being dispossessed helplessly, over and over, Hanbin felt his shortcomings keenly once again.
“You little punk, I swear. Great at headers and shooting, but your ball control is a whole different story, huh?”
Kangmin teased him with a devilish grin. Hanbin snorted back.
“Hyung, go back and get some rest already. Any more of this and you're seriously going to collapse.”
At Hanbin's concern, Cha Kangmin finally stopped the drill and sank down onto the grass where he stood.
“Yeah... let's call it. Thanks to you, all the junk's been flushed out of my head. I think I can actually get a decent night's sleep now.”
He picked up his phone from where he'd left it on the ground.
“What time is it?”
The moment Kangmin lit up the screen to check, his brow furrowed.
“Huh? Why's my carrier logo not showing? Tch, roaming was a waste of money. Costs a fortune and it barely even connects...”
Kangmin grumbled as he fiddled with his phone this way and that.
An offhand remark. Nothing more.
But to Hanbin, those words landed like a hammer swung straight down onto his skull.
......?!
That familiar feeling—every hair on his body standing on end. Goosebumps bloomed across his skin before he could stop them.
And with trembling hands, he pulled his own phone from his pocket.
Please... please, tell me it's not...
Praying desperately, Hanbin unlocked the phone with shaking fingers.
And what met his eyes was the familiar X mark, displayed crisp and clear beside his carrier logo.
No... like Kangmin-hyung said, it could just be a roaming issue. We're in France, after all... Yes—the scoreboard!
Clutching at that last thread of hope, he spun his head toward the jumbotron installed at one end of the training pitch.
And on the scoreboard, in place of the time, numbers glowed.
“FUUUUUUUCK!!!!”
Cha Kangmin tilted his head, watching Hanbin curse at the scoreboard.
What's gotten into him all of a sudden? Is something on the scoreboard?
Kangmin turned to look at it himself—but he saw nothing there.
....?