Eyes That See Three Seconds Ahead
Beeeep!
The whistle shrilled, signaling the start of the second half.
They were still down by a goal. Yet the eyes of the Haeseong Elementary players were nothing like they had been in the first half. The wild, almost manic certainty Ma Gang-cheol had planted in the locker room now filled their pupils.
"Don't watch the ball! Watch the space!"
At Gang-cheol's shout, the Haeseong players moved as one.
The movement was uncanny. Normally a player looking to receive a pass locks eyes with the man on the ball. But neither Park Min-su nor Lee Dong-hyeok so much as glanced at Gang-cheol. As if the ball's location meant nothing to them, they simply exploded into empty grass at full sprint.
"What the hell? Where are they going?"
The Daedong Elementary defenders froze in confusion.
When your mark sprints off without even looking at the ball, a defender has no idea whether to chase or stay and block the pass. A hairline crack split open in Daedong's once-perfect defensive block.
Gang-cheol collected the ball near the halfway line.
Song Min-jae reacted instantly.
"Shut him down! Cut the passing lanes!"
On Min-jae's order two Daedong midfielders stepped in front of Gang-cheol while the defenders pre-empted the expected routes of the Haeseong attackers. Textbook defending. Logically, there was nowhere left for a pass to go.
A thin, crooked smile tugged at Gang-cheol's lips.
Yeah. From where you're standing, those lanes look closed. In the present, anyway.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
In that instant the world's color drained away and the entire pitch was overlaid with a luminous blue grid.
Brain capacity overload risk
<Manager-Class Vision (S)> Unlocked
Effect: Simulates the pitch three seconds into the future.
Time seemed to stretch and slow.
In Gang-cheol's vision, faint after-images trailed behind every defender's movement.
That fullback will shift his weight left in one second.
That midfielder will lunge for my ankle in two.
And three seconds from now, in the empty space Lee Dong-hyeok is racing toward, two opposing defenders' paths will collide and leave a gap.
I see it.
Without a flicker of hesitation Gang-cheol swung his foot.
It was neither a shot nor an ordinary pass. A soft lofted ball, clipped into empty air behind the defenders' backs.
"What is that? A garbage ball!"
Laughter erupted from the Daedong bench. No Haeseong player was anywhere near the landing zone. The ball seemed destined to drop, ownerless, into open space in the opposing half.
The Daedong defender thought the same and eased off the gas.
Two seconds later, everything changed.
"Huh...?"
Lee Dong-hyeok, who had simply been sprinting forward, suddenly accelerated. His trajectory and the ball's drop point locked together with surgical precision.
The Daedong defender belatedly yelped "Wait—wait!" and tried to recover, but Dong-hyeok already had a full head of steam. There was no catching him.
Thump.
The ball settled onto Dong-hyeok's instep as gently as if drawn by a magnet.
Empty grass had become a killing chance in the blink of an eye.
"Is that even... possible?"
Song Min-jae's eyes stretched wide enough to tear. That had not been a pass. It had been prophecy. At the moment of the kick there had been no offside, no receiver. Yet in the exact future instant the ball arrived, a player had materialized to meet it.
"Dong-hyeok! Hit it!"
At Gang-cheol's roar Dong-hyeok struck without delay.
The Daedong keeper got a hand to it and forced a corner.
No goal—but the atmosphere on the pitch had flipped completely.
"Whoa! What was that? How did he even see that?"
"Ma Gang-cheol! Ma Gang-cheol!"
The stands ignited. Certainty began to kindle in the Haeseong players' eyes as well.
It's real? I just run and the ball shows up?
Fear vanished; trust flooded in to take its place. The kids stopped looking back. They simply ran the way Gang-cheol told them to.
Corner kick.
Gang-cheol stepped up as taker and raised a hand.
The Daedong defenders swarmed the tall targets—Park Min-su and Kim Cheol-su. The six-yard box became a war of bodies.
Gang-cheol's gaze found the shortest player on the team, the wing-back Young-sik, standing quietly near the edge of the penalty arc. No one was marking him.
A three-second film reel flickered across Gang-cheol's vision.
The clearance will bounce right there.
Instead of aiming at the goalmouth he floated a low, almost lazy cross that barely cleared the defenders' heads.
"Mistake! Too short!"
A Daedong defender grinned in triumph and headed the ball clear.
Thud.
It didn't travel far. It dropped straight onto the arc.
Exactly where Young-sik was standing, unmarked.
"Huh?"
Even Young-sik looked startled. He'd only been told to stand there—and now the ball was rolling gently onto his foot.
"Shoot!!!"
Gang-cheol's scream cut through the noise. Young-sik swung his right foot on pure reflex.
The ball left his laces like a clothesline. The keeper, screened, never moved.
BOOM!
A thunderous crack as the ball smashed the crossbar and ricocheted away.
"Aaaaargh!"
Groans filled the air, but the faces of the Daedong players had already gone white with terror.
Once could be luck. Twice in a row defied explanation.
"What the hell is that kid... a ghost?"
"He knows where every bounce is going."
Song Min-jae was sweating cold. His perfect data football, his probability football, was crumbling in front of the variable named Ma Gang-cheol. He screamed until his throat tore.
"Don't panic! It's just luck! Hold your shape! Stick to the system!"
But Daedong's machines were already glitching.
Gang-cheol did not miss the chaos.
Twenty-fifth minute of the second half.
Gang-cheol intercepted in midfield.
Daedong pressure closed in, but he never took a touch. He simply flicked the ball backward with his heel.
Park Min-su was already charging onto it.
"Min-su! Right side!"
Min-su obeyed the voice and sprayed a long ball into empty space on the right.
One second later a Haeseong winger ghosted through that exact corridor, and the ball dropped perfectly into his path.
"Stop him! We're open!"
The Daedong back line collapsed. The winger whipped in a cross.
From the far side Lee Dong-hyeok launched himself and met it with a volley.
CRACK!
The ball kissed the keeper's fingertips and buried itself in the far corner.
Ripple.
"Waaaaaah!"
The Haeseong bench and the stands exploded. Coach Kim Pan-seok bounced like a child. Han Se-hui clung to the fence, eyes shining with tears as she screamed.
"Did you see that?! Did you see it?! That's my player! That's Ma Gang-cheol!"
On the pitch, the scorer Lee Dong-hyeok sprinted straight into Gang-cheol's arms.
"Gang-cheol! It really came! Just like you said—the ball was right there!"
"Told you. Trust me and run."
Gang-cheol pushed sweat-soaked hair off his forehead and grinned. Then he looked at Song Min-jae, who stood frozen in place.
Min-jae's face was bloodless. The expression of a boy who simply could not comprehend what he had just witnessed.
"How... how can you see that? That pass was statistically impossible."
Gang-cheol walked up to him and spoke in a low, almost gentle voice.
"Probability? Data? Those are just records of the past. Football is a living thing, right now, in this second. You're staring at dead numbers, so of course you can't catch a living player."
"......"
"This is only the beginning. Let's see whose system wins—yours, or my eyes."
The score was level again.
But the momentum had swung entirely to Haeseong.
The Daedong players no longer knew where the ball would go next. Every time Gang-cheol's gaze settled on a spot they flinched; every time he so much as lifted a foot their defensive line rippled like water.
Master of the field.
Ma Gang-cheol now held all twenty-two players in the palm of his hand and moved them like pieces on a chessboard.
Thirty-fifth minute of the second half.
Five minutes left until full time.
Both teams were running on empty. Only the difference in will kept their legs moving.
Haeseong ran on the certainty that they could win. Daedong ran hunted by the terror that something had gone terribly wrong.
Gang-cheol stood near the center circle, steadying his breath.
His heart felt ready to burst. Maintaining God's Eye was crushing his brain under impossible load. His skull throbbed as if it might split. He half-expected blood to drip from his nose.
Mental limit reached. Skill duration remaining: 3 minutes.
Three minutes is enough.
Gang-cheol clenched his fists.
One final strike.
He needed the perfect checkmate that would cut the opponent's throat.
At that moment Song Min-jae seized the ball and drove forward in a last, desperate dribble.
The wounded pride of a genius making its final stand.
"Out of my way! I'll finish this myself!"
Min-jae beat two Haeseong defenders. The class was still there.
But Gang-cheol had already known he was coming. More than that—he had been waiting on the only path Min-jae could take, three full seconds in advance.
Thock.
Just as Min-jae committed to his breakthrough, Gang-cheol's leg stretched out long and clean and stole the ball alone.
"Ah..."
Song Min-jae dropped to his knees in empty despair.
The ball rested at Gang-cheol's feet.
Ahead of him lay a vast open field and only two exhausted Daedong defenders who had failed to recover.
Counterattack.
The last counterattack.
"RUN!!!!"
Gang-cheol's lion roar exploded across the pitch.
Every Haeseong player wrung the final drops of strength from their bodies and charged toward the enemy goal.
Time itself seemed to freeze inside Gyeongju Civic Stadium.
The silence that falls just before a legend is born.
Ma Gang-cheol drove the ball into that silence and sprinted.