Special Celebration #2
Thump!
"Yeeeeaaaaaahhh!!!"
Latching onto the loose rebound, Yohan buried it for the insurance goal and roared, fist clenched tight.
Then, all at once, he remembered the celebration he and Haley had settled on not long ago.
Oh. Right.
He sprinted toward the nearest camera, ready to perform the gesture she had taught him.
In the heat of the moment, though, his fingers slipped — instead of pinching thumb to index, he pressed thumb to middle finger and raised the rest. The shape came out slightly different.
It had become the head and ears of a wolf.
Huh…? That's not it.
And yet… he liked it. A lot.
Fold the ring finger down against the thumb and leave only the index and pinky standing, and you had an Italian insult. But with three fingers open, the silhouette simply read as a dog — or a wolf.
It was a matter of interpretation, of course, but if he made that sign, people would naturally think of a wolf.
Why? Because the wolf was the animal of Rome.
"Oh."
A bright idea struck him. He pressed the gesture to his chest — right over the Roma crest.
The symbol of the club, and his love for it, held in a single motion.
The fans lost their minds.
They crowed that Yohan was Giallorossi down to the bone, and the chant they had already been writing in his honor promptly gained a new verse about wolves.
Without meaning to, Yohan had set the Roma faithful ablaze instead of Haley. Sheepish as he felt about it, he decided then and there to make the celebration his signature.
A stroke of genius, he congratulated himself —
But not where Haley was concerned.
That weekend, when he went over to her place, her fury was waiting for him head-on.
"You're picking a fight with me right now, aren't you? That's what this is, right?"
"No. I genuinely mixed them up."
"How do you even mix up your index and middle finger?"
"It happens…"
"Hah… Do it right from now on. I'm letting it slide this once."
"No. I liked that celebration. There's a wolf on the Roma crest — it fits. I'm sticking with it."
"Do you want to die?"
"No."
"Wow… Come here."
Haley ground her teeth, lunged after the retreating Yohan, and vaulted onto his back. Her legs locked around his waist; her arms snaked around his throat in a mock chokehold.
It all happened in a blink.
Yohan's eyes went wide.
"What the… Did you take martial arts?"
"Shut up. Are you changing the celebration or not?"
Squeeze…!
Pressure clamped around his waist and neck — a strength you would never have expected from that slender frame.
"I'd rather not…"
He caught her wrists and eased them off a fraction. She huffed an irritated breath through her nose.
"So our promise is just scrap paper to you?"
"Of course not."
"Then why are you talking like that?"
"The one that happened by accident just… clicked for me. And it still carries the meaning we talked about. Cut me some slack."
"In what universe? What you did looked like a dog to anyone watching!"
"It's a wolf, not a dog."
"Haa… Fine. Let's just die. I can't do this."
"Wait—! Instead, if reporters ask what the celebration means, I'll tell them exactly what we said. Honestly."
"Honestly?"
"Yeah. I'll say I was trying to make a proper circle and messed it up, but when I saw the mistake I liked it so much I made it the celebration. And we'll invent a different one. You said you'd switch if you thought of something better, remember? So why don't we brainstorm together from here?"
"Hmmm…"
"All right. Calm down and sit for a second."
In that slow, steady voice of his, Yohan soothed her and carried her — still dangling off his back — over to the bed. He bent his knees carefully so she could settle onto the edge.
Even so, Haley showed no intention of climbing down.
"Go on, then. Pitch me something."
Yohan wasn't exactly eager for her to let go either, so he didn't bother asking her to free her hands. Locked in that invisible tug-of-war, he offered,
"Number one priority, no matter where I am… um. But you're saved as number six on my phone, so… what about holding up six fingers?"
"Are you trying to stress me out? I told you to think of me as number one—!!"
"Sorry. Then how about this — both hands making a big circle, arms stretched all the way out, then pulling them back in close?"
"Tacky."
"Honestly, I think it's more stylish than a magnifying glass."
At that, Haley suddenly burst out laughing.
Not because it was funny — because Yohan kept needling her, and the irritation had nowhere else to go. Empty irritation, really. The kind that spills out of sheer helplessness.
She giggled like that for a while, almost unnervingly, then her face went stone-still. Her long nails traced lightly along the side of his neck.
"Want me to dig in?"
"…"
She had meant it as a playful threat. To Yohan, though, that ticklish brush of her nails felt a little… charged.
The way she had hopped onto his back a moment ago, and the way she was clinging to him now…
What was the word? She was just… foxlike.
She hadn't intended it that way, of course — but that was how she looked.
And once the word fox settled in his head beside Haley, something else clicked into place at once.
A wolf and a fox.
He ran with the pack of Roma players — a wolf. Haley lived on her own terms — a fox.
It didn't quite match, and yet somehow it suited them perfectly.
"Hey. You gonna answer or what?"
Haley's next threat snapped him back.
"Huh…? Oh — the celebration?"
"You're not even paying attention."
"I don't really know what would be good… Why don't you think of something too?"
"Beats me. I've got nothing either."
"It's a celebration we're making together. We should be thinking together."
While the lukewarm back-and-forth drifted on, both of them were thinking the same thing.
A heart. Simple, unmistakable, the shape that said I'm giving you my heart at a glance — and devastatingly effective.
But neither Yohan nor Haley could quite bring themselves to say it out loud.
In the end they never settled on a celebration at all. They just stayed like that, stuck together like any pair of lovesick kids.
Europa League round of sixteen, second leg.
Having lost the first leg 3–2, Roma welcomed Hoffenheim back to the Stadio Olimpico with a radically different approach — the line pushed high, the attack blazing in the mold of an Atalanta side — and hammered their visitors into submission.
The result: a 3–0 win.
Forwards and defenders alike did their jobs, and on aggregate, 5–3, Roma advanced to the quarterfinals.
In that match Yohan posted a goal and an assist, looking every bit the star. He treated the fans to another rapturous dose of the wolf celebration he had unveiled earlier, and of course walked away with Man of the Match.
Waiting in the Europa quarterfinals was a Portuguese powerhouse: Porto.
A classic selling club that raised talent and cashed in, Porto had produced so many household names that simply listing them would take all day. The reputation for developing players was well earned — which also meant the squad was stacked with quality.
A far tougher draw than Hoffenheim. They had even knocked out Chelsea on the way, and their momentum was dangerous.
The quarterfinals were a month away.
Around the same window sat the Coppa Italia final.
Wedged into the middle of the league calendar were fixtures against Milan and Juventus; immediately before and after the final, Atalanta and Inter.
For nearly two solid months, Roma was staring down a bloodbath.
And right in the middle of all that, the international break arrived.
Previously, the national team had planned to call Yohan up to the U-20s.
A player of his caliber could have debuted for the senior side on the spot — yet the best they had managed last window was a U-20 invitation, and the backlash had been ferocious.
Even the prodigy currently lighting up Barcelona in Spain had been capped at sixteen years and fifty days of age last year, and he was still being called up every single window. Jersey number ten, no less — treated as the outright ace.
To relegate Yohan, younger still and posting numbers that didn't lag behind that genius, to a U-20 call-up was a farce, even allowing for how dysfunctional the association had been.
Italy, by contrast, had already blooded Grasso and Vitale with the senior Azzurri.
Given the splash both were making, and given Italy's chronic shortage of strikers, it was only natural.
They had even sent people to Simone, trying to persuade him — and to pull Yohan over.
Even Italy, a nation overflowing with elite talent, was fighting tooth and nail to claim him. So what exactly was the Korean association doing? The criticism had been relentless — and then,
After a long, grinding overhaul, word came that the Korea Football Association had finished reorganizing itself.
Even amid the chaos, they praised the national team for reaching the Asian Cup semifinals, and they seeded fresh personnel throughout the association's ranks.
They also reached out to Yohan — the hottest name on every Korean football fan's lips — and publicly pledged to take a far more aggressive look at mixed-heritage call-ups, a subject they had long treated with caution.
And Yohan accepted the summons.
With the Asian Cup behind them and no major tournament on the near horizon, the message was unmistakable: lock Yohan in as a Korea international, and grow him from there.