Pain Is Another Name for Growth, and the Birth of a Monster
About a week had passed since winter break began.
In the dead of night, low groans of pain leaked from Gang-cheol’s room.
“Ugh… uuugh…”
Gang-cheol lay on his bed, drenched in cold sweat, clutching his knees. It was a dull, deep ache—as if someone were hammering his shinbones with a mallet. He had known growth pains in his previous life, but this time the intensity was on another level entirely.
“Gang-cheol! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
His mother burst through the door, face pale with alarm. Gang-cheol clenched his teeth and forced a reassuring look.
“I’m fine… Just… my legs are aching a bit.”
“Is this growing pains? Good heavens, how much taller are you trying to get, sweating like this?”
She brought a warm wet towel and gently massaged his knees. The pain eased a little under her hands, yet the strange sensation of his bones lengthening remained.
Through hazy vision, Gang-cheol checked the system message floating in the air.
Status: Entering secondary sexual characteristics and rapid growth phase.
Trait Activated:Storm Growth (S)
Effect: Growth hormone secretion increased by 300%. Bone and muscle density rise dramatically.
Caution: Accompanied by extreme calorie consumption and growth pains. Nutritional supply is essential.
Figures… The system wasn’t just going to make me taller.
Even through the pain, Gang-cheol smiled. In his previous life his technique had been excellent, but his physique had been ordinary. The memory of being shoved aside by massive European defenders still burned in his bones. This life would be different. The system was deliberately rebuilding his body.
This is an opportunity. The software is already complete. If the hardware can keep up… I’ll be perfect.
The next morning, a massive box truck rolled into the yard of Gang-cheol’s house. The side of the vehicle bore the clear logo of LK Food.
Team Leader Choi Hyeon-seok climbed down, followed by unfamiliar men in white coats.
“Gang-cheol! Still alive?”
Choi laughed heartily as he strode in. Gang-cheol sat on the edge of the porch, eyes still half-closed with sleep.
“Team Leader, what’s with the moving truck first thing in the morning?”
“Not moving—supplies. Special order from the Chairman. ‘Our ace is growing bones, and you expect him to do it without enough meat?’ So he sent top-grade Hanwoo beef and specialized supplements.”
At Choi’s signal the staff began unloading boxes. 1++ grade Hanwoo sets, eel extract, protein supplements used by pros, plus calcium and magnesium tablets. In moments the porch of the country house looked like a health-food store.
“And this is Dr. Park from the LK Sports Science Center. He’ll be designing your winter-break diet and training schedule.”
The white-coated Dr. Park scanned Gang-cheol from head to toe with sharp eyes.
“Confirmed… the growth plates are open. This is the golden window. Ma Gang-cheol, this winter is going to be rough. Eating and sleeping might be harder than soccer training.”
Dr. Park’s prediction proved accurate.
From that day on, Gang-cheol’s life became something close to livestock rearing.
Wake at 7 a.m., stretch.
Breakfast: 300 g beef, multigrain rice, salad, 500 ml milk.
Morning training (weights-focused).
Lunch: chicken breast, pasta, fruit.
Two-hour nap (forced sleep to maximize growth-hormone release).
Afternoon training (core balance). Snack: protein shake, nuts.
Dinner: eel rice bowl or duck meat.
Late-night snack: casein protein (200 ml milk) and a handful of almonds (30 g).
Pre-bed stretch and massage.
Five meals a day. Eating itself was training. Even when full he had to force the food down. The system’s Storm Growth trait sucked calories like a black hole.
“Ugh… I think I’m gonna throw up.”
Kim Cheol-su and Park Min-ho dropped by and nearly fainted at the sight of Gang-cheol’s tray.
“Dude, you trying out for a food-fighting contest? You’re actually finishing all that?”
“If I don’t eat, it feels like my bones are dissolving. You guys better pack it in too. Once we hit middle school, the seniors’ power games won’t be a joke.”
Gang-cheol chewed and swallowed the meat with grim determination.
Time flew like an arrow. December gave way to January, then February.
While snow fell and melted again and again, astonishing changes took place in Gang-cheol’s body.
When the nightly growth pains finally began to subside, every glance in the mirror revealed a stranger.
Once narrow shoulders had broadened; baggy training pants now rode high above his ankles. His thigh muscles split into hard ridges like a horse’s hind legs.
He checked the system status window.
Height:168 cm (+13 cm growth)
Weight:62 kg (+10 kg gain)
Strength Grade:C → B+ (sharp rise)
Notes:Top-tier skeletal muscle mass. Balance fully maintained.
From 155 cm to 168 cm in a mere three months. For an eleven-year-old (now twelve) it was an outrageous physique. Not merely taller—his bones themselves had thickened, packed with dense “compressed muscle.”
“Now… I finally look like a soccer player.”
Gang-cheol clenched and unclenched his fists. Power surged through him. Body-to-body battles he once had to dodge with technique now felt like something he could savor.
March 2nd. Entrance ceremony day.
In front of the Haeseong Middle School gate.
New students in fresh uniforms filed in with tense faces. Among them strode a boy whose uniform looked ready to burst at the seams—his physique simply too good for the clothes.
“Hey, look at that guy. Is he a third-year? He’s huge.”
“I think he’s a freshman. Name-tag color matches ours.”
Ignoring the whispers, Gang-cheol passed through the gate. Then a familiar voice barked from behind.
“Hey, student! Fix that necktie properly!”
A third-year wearing a student-patrol armband grabbed Gang-cheol’s shoulder. Gang-cheol turned slowly.
“Excuse me? I did tie it.”
He answered flatly, looking down at the senior.
The patrol senior flinched. Height-wise they were roughly equal—maybe Gang-cheol was even a shade shorter—but the aura blazing from those eyes was anything but ordinary. And the pectoral lines visible beneath the dress shirt did not belong to a middle-schooler.
“Uh… yeah. Looks fine. Go on in.”
The senior waved him through in a daze.
Watching from a distance, Kim Cheol-su and Park Min-ho came running.
“Whoa! Ma Gang-cheol! What the hell happened to you? How’d you get so big?”
“What did you eat over break? Did you get height surgery or something?”
They poked his forearms in open shock.
“Just ate well and slept well. More importantly—when’s soccer club assembly?”
“After school, three o’clock. On the field. Word is they’re going hard on the hierarchy stuff.”
Haeseong Middle School Soccer Club.
The atmosphere here was nothing like Haeseong Elementary. Head Coach Choi Mu-yeong, a former K-League legend defender, preached “autonomous soccer” yet was famous for ruthlessly cutting any player without skill.
Three p.m. Dust swirled across the dirt field.
Ten new members stood in a line. Opposite them, twenty second- and third-years stood with arms crossed.
“Freshmen. Aren’t you going to greet us?”
Third-year center-back Jang Dae-ho, wearing the captain’s armband, barked in a deep voice. One hundred seventy-five centimeters of pure bulk—the so-called “Wailing Wall” of Haeseong Middle.
“Good afternoon, sirs!”
The freshmen bowed, cowed. Gang-cheol alone kept his chin high and met Jang Dae-ho’s gaze straight on.
“Hey, you. Think you’re big enough to skip the eye-lowering?”
Jang Dae-ho strode toward him. The air turned ugly.
Then a man in a tracksuit shuffled out from the main stand, slippers scuffing the ground. Coach Choi Mu-yeong.
“Enough, Dae-ho. You’re scaring the kids.”
“Coach! We have to set the hierarchy. Kids these days have rotten eyes—”
“Shut it. A soccer club shows hierarchy with soccer, not with mouths.”
Choi yawned and scanned the freshmen. His gaze stopped on Gang-cheol.
“Ohh… so you’re that Ma Gang-cheol? The one LK won’t stop drooling over?”
“Yes. That’s me.”
Gang-cheol answered shortly. Choi looked him up and down, then snorted a laugh.
“The goods are the goods. That body doesn’t belong to a first-year. Fine. No training today. Straight into a practice match. Freshmen versus second- and third-years. Eleven on eleven.”
“What? Us against the seniors?”
Kim Cheol-su asked in panic. The size gap was massive. This would be a slaughter.
Choi tossed a ball over with casual indifference.
“If it bothers you, flip it with skill. Age doesn’t matter on a soccer field. The better player is the senior. Gang-cheol—you’re captain.”
Gang-cheol chest-trapped the flying ball, then flicked it onto the top of his foot.
“Understood. Coach, but I have a condition.”
“Condition?”
Gang-cheol swept his eyes over Jang Dae-ho and the other seniors, then grinned.
“If we win, starting today we drop the honorifics. And starting spots get re-selected purely by skill.”
“What, this little shit—?”
“Is he crazy? Does he want to die?”
The seniors surged forward, furious. Choi, however, clapped with genuine amusement.
“Deal. I like it. But if you lose, you run laps around the field for a week.”
“Deal.”
The match began.
The second- and third-year side came out rough from the whistle.
Captain Jang Dae-ho in particular charged with fire in his eyes, determined to bury Gang-cheol.
Cocky brat. Thinks middle-school soccer is elementary playground games? I’ll make him feel the wall of pure physique.
The moment Gang-cheol received the ball, Jang Dae-ho sprinted full tilt and drove his shoulder in. One hundred seventy-five centimeters, seventy kilograms of destructive body check—enough force to send most adults flying.
Elementary-school Gang-cheol would have slipped past with technique. The current Gang-cheol did not dodge.
Root of the Lower Body (A) + Rock Muscle (B)
Gang-cheol dropped his center of gravity and drove his upper body straight into the oncoming Jang Dae-ho. A head-on collision.
BOOM!
A heavy impact thundered across the field. Dust billowed.
Everyone expected Gang-cheol to go flying.
Instead—
“Huh…?”
It was Jang Dae-ho who went down.
The instant they collided he bounced off like a ball hitting a wall and tumbled across the dirt.
Gang-cheol, by contrast, did not budge an inch. He used the rebound to accelerate even faster forward.
“What—Dae-ho hyung got pushed back?”
“That’s first-year strength?”
Silence fell. The whistle dangling from Coach Choi Mu-yeong’s lips dropped to the ground.
Without so much as a glance at the fallen Jang Dae-ho, Gang-cheol bulldozed through the stunned defenders like a tank.
“Stop him! Block him!”
Two defenders grabbed his jersey and hung on.
It was useless. Gang-cheol kept sprinting with them still attached. Overwhelming power. Technique was unnecessary. He simply shoved forward and a path opened.
So this… is the taste of pure physique.
A thrill ran through him.
Even with perfect vision and technique, a weak body could never execute certain plays. Now everything was different.
Every idea his mind conceived, his body executed perfectly—no, beyond perfectly.
One-on-one with the keeper.
Gang-cheol gave the goalkeeper no time to come out; he unleashed a cannonball shot on the spot.
BANG!
The net bulged as if it would tear.
Opening goal three minutes into the match.
And that goal was the signal flare announcing that a giant man-eating shark had appeared in the small pond called Haeseong Middle School.
Gang-cheol turned to the dazed seniors and smiled.
“Hyungs. You said soccer is played with the body, right? But it looks like my body is better than yours. What should we do about that?”
That day, a new king ascended on the Haeseong Middle School field.
First-year freshman Ma Gang-cheol.
He no longer needed to rely on tricks or run away.
A true monster had awakened.
After the match, on the way home.
Gang-cheol spotted Han Se-hui waiting at the school gate. She stood in casual clothes, holding her bicycle.
“Hey, Ma Gang-cheol!”
Se-hui waved. When he approached she stared up at him with wide eyes.
“You… what the heck? Why are you so tall?”
“Long time no see, Team Leader Han. You got prettier over break.”
His shameless reply made her face flush.
“Sh-shut up! I was busy with academy. But you really… feel different. When did the little kid grow this much?”
“Little kid? I’m taller than you now.”
He rested a hand on top of her head to measure. Their eyes no longer met on the same level; he was looking down. Se-hui felt her heart pound. The classmate she had always felt she needed to look after had somehow become a solid, reliable young man.
“Hop on. I’ll take you home.”
Gang-cheol gripped the handlebars of her bike.
“You’re going to give me a ride? I’ll be heavy…”
“Hey, I just sent a third-year flying today. You’re nothing but a feather.”
He settled her on the rear seat and pushed the pedals. Heavy power drove the wheels hard.
Spring wind brushed both their cheeks.
“Gang-cheol.”
“Yeah?”
“The LK Cup… are you really confident?”
She asked from behind him.
“They say the best kids in the world are coming. Real Madrid, Dortmund… just hearing the names is scary.”
“It is scary.”
He pedaled harder as he answered.
“But they have no idea what kind of guy is waiting for them in Korea. I’m ready now. Body and mind.”
His eyes caught the evening glow and burned red.
The Hwarang Cup had been only a skirmish.
The real war was approaching. And Gang-cheol was perfectly prepared to enjoy it.
“Hold on tight. We’re going faster.”
The bicycle raced down the tree-lined street where cherry-blossom petals drifted.
The boy’s back had broadened; the girl’s trust had deepened.
And so their spring—and their challenge toward the world—began.