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# Dad's Soccer — Chapter 2
## Return to the Past
"Ugh..."
His head hurt.
Perhaps because he had drunk far too much without a care, he had practically passed out when he went to sleep. When he
finally woke up, his head felt as though it were being torn apart.
He squeezed his parched throat and let out a groan in a voice rough with a metallic rasp before barely opening his eyes.
The light streaming in through the window seemed unusually bright, perhaps because of his headache.
Am I still alive?
I wish I had drunk enough that I could have died without even realizing it...
Jihoo thought that and bitterly smiled as he sat up. He was mocking himself for thinking such nonsense when he didn't
even have the courage to die.
He thought about finishing the alcohol left from the night before and going back to sleep, so he searched for the
bottle.
"Hm?"
But something was strange.
The bottles of alcohol that should have been scattered all over the room were nowhere to be seen.
No, the house itself seemed different.
No.
It was different.
Although he had lived from one day to the next, the home he had been living in was a twelve-pyeong studio apartment that
cost him 300,000 won a month.
It was relatively cheap because it was on the outskirts of Incheon, and the place itself was clean since it had not been
built that long ago.
Even if it had been somewhat beyond his means, he had searched for the best place he could afford because he wanted his
daughter to be comfortable whenever she was discharged from the hospital, and he wanted her to stay somewhere clean so
that her illness wouldn't worsen.
But...
The house he was looking at now was completely different.
It was a single-room dwelling with wallpaper covered in water stains from leaks that seemed to happen every time it
rained, bright blue mold spreading across the walls, and old wooden window frames that let drafts pour in so badly that
he could probably hear everything the neighbors said.
There wasn't even a bathroom.
It was the kind of place where he could barely wash his hair in the kitchen.
What on earth was going on...?
While he was standing there in a daze, thinking about it—
"Waah! Waah! Waah!"
The sound of a baby crying came from inside the house.
In that instant, Jihoo felt as though thunder and lightning had struck him directly in the head.
Something sent a tingling sensation down his spine.
His eyes widened as he frantically looked around.
Right beside him...
A baby wrapped in a swaddling cloth was lying there.
Trying desperately to calm his trembling heart, he hurriedly unwrapped the cloth.
"Mi... Min... Ji..."
The baby before his eyes was someone he could never have failed to recognize, no matter how many years had passed.
A child who, despite being so young, had inherited every one of her mother's features.
His daughter.
The daughter of the two of them.
Without even having time to wonder whether this was a dream or reality, Jihoo carefully picked the baby up into his
arms.
"Why are you like this? Am I dead, Minji?"
He tried speaking to the crying baby as he soothed her, but there was no way a baby could answer him.
In any case, his daughter was crying as though the world were ending, so he hurriedly tried to calm her down.
He checked her diaper in case she had soiled herself. When it seemed fine, he laid her down and went into the kitchen,
awkwardly searching for a kettle before bringing it over and boiling some water.
"...Is this really not a dream?"
As he waited for the water to boil, Jihoo began to realize that this situation wasn't a dream.
To dismiss it as a dream...
The warmth of his daughter in his arms had simply been too real.
And this was the house he had moved into after being kicked out of the place he had previously lived in when Minji had
only just passed her hundredth day since birth.
It had been the hardest period of his life, which was why he remembered it so vividly.
Following those vivid memories, he searched for a half-length mirror he had picked up and kept in one corner of the
kitchen to use when washing his face.
Just as he remembered, he spotted the mirror in its usual place, its frame covered with tiny cracks running in every
direction.
He hurried over and looked at his reflection.
The face that had aged terribly after years of hardship was gone.
Instead, a handsome young boy who had once been destined for a bright future was staring back at him from the other side
of the mirror.
Himself during his high school years.
"Ha..."
Wondering once again if this was a dream, Jihoo pinched his cheek.
Even with only a little force, it hurt enough to make his cheek sting.
It hurt so much...
Tears came to his eyes.
"It's not a dream..."
Yes.
It wasn't a dream.
He didn't know how it had happened, but...
He had returned.
He had returned to the past.
To a time when he could change everything.
---
After realizing that he had returned to the past, Jihoo searched through his memories. Though his actions were awkward,
there was also something familiar about holding the baby in his arms and feeding her with a bottle as he fell deep into
thought.
Returning to the past was one thing.
Having Minji in his arms again was wonderful.
But what troubled him was how he was supposed to make a living while taking care of this tiny child.
His previous life had been one in which he had worked and lived solely for his daughter, cutting down on sleep and
pushing himself to the limit.
But looking back on that life, the one thing he felt most painfully was regret.
When he was young, he had been so desperate to make money that he had abandoned everything and thrown himself into the
workforce.
But he knew all too well now that there wasn't much work available to someone who was young and had dropped out of high
school.
Even after getting older, the only jobs he could find were at one factory after another. And because those jobs required
regular working hours, once his daughter became ill, even those places became impossible for him to consider.
Until he was nearly thirty, he had been forced to move from one part-time job to another.
Around that time, he decided he had to do something, so he saved every penny he could, even going hungry to save money,
until he finally obtained a driver's license and began working in the transportation business.
Really, even now that he thought about it, his life had been hopeless.
There was no guarantee that Minji would become sick again...
But as he looked around the house while feeding her from the bottle, he couldn't help thinking that there was no way a
baby could grow up in such a terrible environment without eventually becoming ill.
It seemed difficult to simply blame her poor health on inheriting her mother's frail constitution.
"What should I do...?"
As he sat there absentmindedly thinking, he noticed a Post-it note lying on the dining table, which he always kept
unfolded and used as a makeshift desk.
It had been so long ago that he couldn't remember something as trivial as this, so Jihoo reached out and picked up the
Post-it.
[Sejin's Dad 010-XXXX-XXXX]
"Ah..."
Sejin was...
His deceased wife's name.
Perhaps he had felt awkward calling him his father-in-law at such a young age, so he had written down the phone number
under the name "Sejin's Dad."
Only now did he remember what it was for.
"Right... My father-in-law wanted to help because he felt sorry for me and Minji."
His father-in-law had opposed their marriage.
He had even opposed them having a child.
But after Sejin died and he saw Jihoo struggling desperately to somehow survive while raising the child alone, he must
have felt sorry for him—or perhaps proud of how hard he was trying.
Whatever the reason, he had tracked down this house, come to see them, and left his contact information behind.
Jihoo remembered how, at the time, his pride had gotten the better of him.
He had coldly snapped at the father-in-law who had come looking for him, and not long afterward, he had torn up the
phone number and thrown it away.
"I was... young back then."
Jihoo let out a faint laugh.
He had truly been immature back then.
Even though he was young, he had been convinced that if he simply made up his mind to earn money somehow, he could
become hugely successful and live a life of luxury.
He had no idea how high the wall of society really was.
But things were different now.
Pride?
That belonged to the Jihoo of the past.
The Jihoo who had lived an entire life and returned was different.
He knew that twenty years from now, the daughter he had struggled so desperately to raise would die.
How could something as meaningless as pride matter anymore?
"Fine. Even if they tell me to crawl on the floor, I'll crawl."
With that thought, Jihoo carefully held the Post-it in his hand and searched for his phone.
[2010.8.24.]
He wasn't completely certain, but fortunately, he had not dropped out of school yet.
This was the period when he had simply stopped going to school without saying anything.
Around this time, the high school soccer team he belonged to was preparing for an important match.
FC Incheon U-18 vs. Daemyung High School.
Jihoo attended Daemyung High School and had been a youth soccer player affiliated with FC Incheon.
"I still have to graduate high school... But..."
Soccer...
Right.
At this point in his life, he was still a soccer player.
And not just an ordinary player.
He had been considered a promising prospect, talented enough that other teams had even tried to lure him away.
Of course, that was despite the fact that he loved fooling around and getting into fights, which had resulted in him
receiving numerous suspensions from matches.
"Who was it that said it? A devil's talent."
He gave a bitter smile.
After living up to that nickname by causing yet another serious incident and then quitting soccer as though running
away, he had never touched a soccer ball again.
He had simply been too busy.
Still, his interest in soccer had never disappeared.
The only things he could do were watch overseas soccer matches late at night while having soju and a simple snack for
dinner, and occasionally place a bet on Toto.
"Should I try soccer again?"
If he had to name the one thing he had been talented at...
He might have had absolutely no aptitude for studying, but when it came to athletics—especially soccer—he had been
different.
His talent had been overflowing.
Even though he had never properly trained his body, he had been surprisingly good at scoring goals.
"I should at least be able to make it into the K League..."
Jihoo thought deeply about it.
Yes.
Even if FC Incheon was a civic-owned club that wasn't exactly successful, as long as he remained on its youth team,
there was no way they wouldn't recruit him.
He was the most talented player among them, after all.
He would be able to make far more money than he had in the miserable future he had lived through.
"For now, I just need to do something..."
Thinking about the future that might actually have some hope in it, he turned on his smartphone and began dialing the
phone number.