Primavera
Oh, right. This wasn't the way.
Yohan had instinctively taken the familiar path before catching himself and turning around.
The Primavera training ground he had just been promoted to sat in the same facility as the first team's grounds.
The club had offered to send a bus or a car, but the distance between Roma's training complex and the convent was short enough that Yohan had said he would simply walk — it would double as exercise.
And so he made his way toward the training ground with a fluttering heart, savoring the leisure of taking in the beautiful countryside scenery along the quiet road.
In truth, he hadn't been able to enjoy that leisure fully.
In the previous season's cup competition, he had tasted the bitter defeat of a semi-final exit.
Yohan didn't indulge in comparisons — that guy on the other team went on to win, though... — about the opponents who had concerned him. He knew full well that kind of thinking would only poison him.
It was the defeat itself that irritated him enough to keep surfacing in his mind.
Analyzing where he or his teammates had fallen short, fixing those weaknesses so the same mistakes would never be repeated — that was all he could do, and he entertained no other thoughts beyond it.
It feels a little lonely...
Walking the path, Yohan suddenly felt how alone he was. From Primavera onward, the training facilities were in a different place, and Bianchi — who had always been promoted alongside him — wasn't there either.
Once he joined the team he would grow close with his new teammates, so it wasn't something to worry about. But right now, he felt a touch of loneliness.
At the same time, a fierce competitive spirit swelled inside him.
Primavera. The final threshold on the road to the first team.
Clear this, and he could achieve the debut he thought about nearly every night before falling asleep.
Of course, even reaching the first team would mean nothing without the talent and skill to win out against Roma's players. But Yohan did not lose heart. His first-team debut was still far off. If he steadily stacked up everything he needed to do, he believed without a shred of doubt that the day would come when he could show himself before a crowd.
With these thoughts and resolutions turning over in his mind, his feet never stopped moving, and before long the broad expanse of Roma's training ground came into view in the distance.
The facility's official name was quite long. But among Roma fans, it was simply known as Trigoria. With little else of note in the area, it had come to be recognized as something of a local landmark, and people just called it by the district name.
At the entrance to this training ground, fans hoping to take photos with first-team players or get their autographs would wait for them to come and go. But Yohan couldn't see them — the Primavera training ground had its own separate entrance.
"Hello? Starting today, I'll be coming here for training."
When he handed the club-issued access pass to the burly security guard at the gate, the man checked it, then opened the door with an uncle-like smile.
"Heard you were walking over. Welcome."
"Thank you. I'm Yohan Lee. You can call me Gio."
"Nice to meet you. Just call me Flavio."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Flavio. What were you up to?"
"Huh...? Just holding down the post..."
"I see. Nice weather today, isn't it?"
"Well... yeah, seems pretty good."
"But they say it'll rain from the afternoon. The Mother Superior at our convent told me, so it's reliable information."
"I-is that so...?"
"Yes. Will you still be here when training ends later?"
"Probably...?"
"Then I'll see you later."
Yohan bowed his head. Flavio found himself nodding along in a daze, slightly flustered by the unfamiliar East Asian greeting and by how this boy, on their very first meeting, was acting like a friend — or a nephew.
"R-right."
"By the way, could you tell me where to go to pick up my kit?"
"Head inside, follow the path, and go into the first building you see. There'll be signs directing you inside."
"Thank you. I'll be off, then."
Watching Yohan's retreating figure, Flavio let out a short laugh. Plenty of players were friendly with him. But he couldn't think of a single one who had shown such bright, open courtesy from the very first meeting. Usually it was a nod of the eyes, a fist bump, or a brief greeting at most — so this was both amusing and genuinely pleasant.
Do well out there.
Flavio checked whether there was an umbrella in the small guard booth, then wished Yohan luck.
Primavera was the under-19 team.
In Serie football, with only this one reserve side sitting directly below the first team, player development often struggled — so recently the association had been talking about raising the age limit to twenty. Clubs with deeper pockets were even moving to establish separate U-23 sides to compete in Serie C.
In any case, Primavera also allowed limited participation by older players under the over-age regulations. Players not yet ready for the first team, or those returning from injury and looking to regain match fitness, would join the roster.
And at the time Yohan arrived, Sebastiano Ricci was back from an ankle injury, undergoing rehabilitation.
Huh...?
After going through the now-familiar process of receiving and changing into his kit, Yohan stepped out to find Ricci — the first team's vice-captain — doing upper-body stretches.
A first-team player he had truly loved as a child, and one he still admired nearly as much as Lorenzo Lucca. Seeing him in the flesh, Yohan's eyes widened of their own accord.
Had Ricci felt that gaze — the kind that seemed to track his every move? Midway through twisting his torso side to side, Ricci looked in Yohan's direction. His eyes narrowed, then, as if something had clicked, he spoke.
"You the kid who just got promoted?"
The tone could easily have been taken as irritable. And in truth, he was a player with that kind of temperament. There was the time he'd slapped an opposing player across the face during a corner-kick tussle when the man kept shoving him; the times he'd kicked the ankles of tightly marking defenders... and so on. He had quite a history of collecting unnecessary red cards for that sort of thing.
After becoming vice-captain, those tendencies had lessened — but every so often, when you'd almost forgotten, he'd still snap and lose his head, adding another card to the collection. Day to day, though, he was solid enough — his speech just a bit macho. As a fixture in Roma's starting lineup and a key player, he trained hard too.
"Hello. I'm Yohan Lee. You can call me Gio."
At the somewhat stiff greeting, Ricci laughed, snorting hard enough to make his mustache quiver.
"Right. Just call me Basti."
"Understood. But why are you here?"
"Rehabbing an injury. Was doing individual training, then heard Primavera sessions start early, so I came over."
"Ah, I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what? Follow me. The captain's around too — I'll introduce you to the team."
"Lorenzo's here?"
"No, you idiot. The captain here."
"Ah, right."
Following behind Ricci, Yohan felt something click into place. I'm somewhere the first-team players come down to now... — that kind of reality settled over him.
And strangely, looking at a player he once would have been beside himself to meet, he felt only a mild happiness — no overwhelming thrill. Was it because the awareness that they were fellow players had finally woken up? Probably so.
Still, he was a little nervous. If Ricci was rehabbing from injury, they would be training together for a while. He probably wouldn't play in actual matches, but just training alongside him was a huge gain for Yohan.
Do well.
If he got scared before anything even started, nothing would go right. Train like always, clash and collide, and hone himself in the process. With that resolve, Yohan kept pace behind Ricci's Viking-like bulk.
Here, Yohan was the youngest.
The gap between him and the next-youngest player was three and a half years. Adapting in a place where the technical and physical differences were so stark was on a difficulty level that couldn't even be compared to his previous teams.
At first, he put in performances so shabby he berated himself for them. In team games he made mistakes constantly, and he struggled just to keep up with the training of players built like full-grown adults.
But as time passed, he somehow adapted. Where he fell short, he gritted his teeth and improved. He got permission for individual training and stayed late at the convent pitch or the training ground, building his skills under the coaches' guidance. He also significantly increased the share of his weak-foot training — playing primarily with his dominant right foot the way he always had simply wasn't enough against the walls here.
The other coaches found this dogged side of Yohan a little worrying. His progress was genuinely fast, but he seemed to have no mental breathing room. Among the staff managing the youth sides, talk even circulated about whether he had been promoted too early.
They were somewhat reassured as Yohan adapted day by day and his own play gradually began to emerge — but they still held the thought that if he grew too impatient, they would drop him back a level.
Ricci, on the other hand, who had been playing alongside Yohan for a month or two, was delighted by what he saw. With his thoroughly old-school temperament, Ricci took a strong liking to a kid who paid no attention to social media, fashion, or girls, and focused solely on football.
So just before the season started, after finishing rehab and rejoining the first-team squad, the moment he met Lorenzo he launched into talk about Yohan.
"Enzo!"
"Basti, you been well?"
"Rehab was rough. But you know there's a weird little kid in Primavera?"
"What's with the random kid talk?"
"The one who just got promoted. Fourteen-year-old baby, but the talent's something else. At first he was a complete mess, but you should've seen how fast he adapted to team training."
"Really? A fourteen-year-old up there?"
"I'm telling you! And that's not even the important part — after training on the day we first met, I saw the kid on the phone. Talking to his aunt or something? Don't remember who, but I definitely remember the phone he was using. It was a flip phone, for sure."
"A flip phone? You mean the kind that folds open and shut?"
"Exactly. Isn't that wild? Kids these days all carry smartphones."
"These days everyone carries a smartphone, kid or adult. That is pretty interesting."
"I like the kid. Different from the ones who just care about looking cool. His play is fucking genius, and he never gets intimidated. Bold as hell. He's going to make it big."
It was the first time Ricci had ever praised a youth player until his mouth ran dry. Curious about the subject, Lorenzo was about to ask for the youth player's name when something suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"Wait... what's the kid's name?"
"Yohan Lee. We call him Gio."
Lorenzo's head nodded of its own accord. It was the exact name he had been thinking of.
"Ah, that kid."
"You know him?"
"Met him a few years back with the youth team. Had some time before a commercial shoot, so we kicked a ball around — he was good. The club must know about him too, right?"
"That's what I heard. Got a little curious and asked around — the expectations the club has for him are no joke. That's why he came straight to Primavera at fourteen."
Yohan Lee. In the Korean style, Lee Yohan. Lorenzo remembered when they first met — the boy who had boldly declared he wanted to play alongside him, eyes shining.
What a remarkable kid.
He had climbed all the way to Primavera at fourteen. Normally, at that age, he should have been playing in Giovanissimi above Esordienti — or, if exceptionally skilled, at the next level up, Allievi. That he had gone straight to Primavera meant his talent was extraordinary beyond imagination.
Lorenzo himself was thirty-three now. If his decline was slow enough that he could still hold his own in first-team matches, and if luck was very much on their side, there might come a day when they shared the same pitch.
The problem was that making the jump from Primavera to the first team was as hard as plucking stars from the sky. No matter how immense the talent, that was a place already occupied by players of that caliber. Of course Yohan's talent, having arrived at fourteen, was even greater — but polishing a raw gem took time. It was only common sense to think that a situation where he and a boy with such a large age gap would play together simply wouldn't come.
And yet, somehow, a sense of anticipation rose in Lorenzo.
He was a busy man. The words of a little kid he'd met briefly before a commercial shoot shouldn't have stayed so clearly in his memory. So why, hearing Ricci's story, had the youth player named Yohan come to mind immediately? Why did he still remember what the boy had said, and why was he looking forward to him? He couldn't understand it.
Perhaps it was because, after kicking a ball with him and talking about football that day, he had felt that the boy possessed a talent greater than any player he had ever seen.
"After training he reads books, too. Spanish books, German books, that sort of thing. Everything he does is exactly the kind of thing I like — but I only cheered him on in my head, afraid that if I praised him to his face he'd get full of himself."
At Ricci's continuing fuss, Lorenzo burst out laughing and gave him a light smack on the head.
"Just get ready for training, you bastard."
"Got it."
The season was about to begin. Ricci never went on like that, so Lorenzo was more curious about Yohan than ever — but right now, there was no room to spare for thinking about a prospect. Least of all given the situation Roma currently faced.