Chapter 93
Chapter 93
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 93
Chapter Title: Birthday Present - 2
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Salernitana’s small home stadium, packed with over 30,000 spectators, began to stir around the 10th minute of the second half.
“He’s loosening up.”
“Ah, damn it. Why?”
“That bald-headed coach is really something. Does he have to beat us that badly?”
“Wooohhh-!!”
The commotion was caused by a substitute player who had jumped off the Fiorentina bench and was now jogging along the touchline to warm up.
Most fans had expected this match against Fiorentina to be tough.
It was only natural. They were objectively outmatched in terms of strength.
Fiorentina was on a crazy winning streak, sitting in third place in the league, while Salernitana was in 17th, a team whose only goal was to avoid relegation.
That’s why many fans had cheered when they saw the starting lineup for today’s match.
Lee Jee-an, the core of Fiorentina’s insane rise, was not on the starting list.
Of course, Fiorentina without Jee-an wasn’t a team to be taken lightly, but it was true that without him, there was at least a sliver of hope.
In fact, the game had been going fairly well.
They had conceded the first goal in the first half, but other than that, they had defended quite well, and they had just scored the equalizer.
Thanks to that, the fans were fired up, raising their hopes for a comeback.
They had just finished a terrible run of five games with one draw and four losses, and they were finally starting to taste a little hope.
But the moment they equalized, Jee-an started preparing to enter the field. It was a cruel turn of events.
That, that wicked bald-headed bastard.
We’re not a top-tier team, not even a mid-tier team, we’re a relegation-zone team.
And he’s sending out his young ace just to beat us?
“Tch, he’s so greedy!”
“You old octopus, chewing up a kid!”
“Are those three points really that important?!”
“Yeah! Swap them! Swap the three points for the kid’s knee cartilage!”
All sorts of curses and insults were hurled at Coach Vincenzo.
The fact that such a violent reaction could be caused by a single substitution showed just how much everyone knew about Jee-an’s destructive power.
The ability to decide a game all by himself.
And the ability to raise the team’s quality by a whole level just by being there.
Both of those belonged to that 16-year-old boy, and now there wasn’t a Serie A fan who didn’t know it.
That boy finally stepped onto the field in the 25th minute of the second half.
“Focus! Focus!”
“We have to drop back! Cover each other!”
Salernitana’s players, tense, shouted at each other.
They had been focused until now, but after Jee-an came in, they entered a state of extreme tension.
“Emil! Back!”
“Match the line, Federico!”
Since soccer is a team sport played by eleven people, communication between teammates is crucial, so calling each other’s names during the game is common.
But right now, it felt a little different from the usual play calls.
It was hard to describe.
It felt like confirming each other’s existence by calling their names, like the will to survive that makes you look for something to rely on when an uncontrollable disaster strikes.
In other words, it felt like hikers who suddenly encounter a bear on a mountain path, banding together to survive.
But goddammit, that bear was starving.
Whoosh-!
Whoosh-!
The moment he was subbed in, Fiorentina’s ball started revolving around Jee-an.
At the center of it, Jee-an moved lightly, without force, just tapping simple passes to his teammates and moving.
It was nothing special.
He was in a low position, not in a dangerous area, just tapping easy passes to nearby teammates and moving.
It even looked like he was just warming up or doing passing drills with his teammates.
But that alone was enough for the Salernitana players to feel the atmosphere change.
It felt like things were softening up smoothly.
Until now, Fiorentina had felt a bit stiff, with what you’d call thick, bold lines.
Thanks to that, defending against them wasn’t complicated. If they came in strong, you just met them with even stronger force, and if they came in fast, you just chased them down faster.
Of course, that wasn’t easy either, but at least the method itself was simple.
However, once Jee-an came in, Fiorentina’s ball circulation began to flow organically.
Like water flowing.
Whoosh-!
No matter how tightly you hold water, you can’t keep it trapped in your hand.
Salernitana’s midfielders pressed hard from all sides, but Jee-an just lightly gave the ball away and slipped out.
Whoosh-!
And then, as if by magic, he had the ball again.
A little to the side of where he was originally.
“Get him!”
If he moved at an impossible speed or was at a distance where you couldn’t even think of catching him, it would be one thing...
“Get him, I said!”
Jee-an was in a position where you could reach out and grab him if you tried, and he wasn’t moving that fast, just receiving and giving up the ball.
Salernitana’s players clung to him, their eyes burning as they tried to catch him.
Whoosh-!
But Jee-an was like a ghost, always just out of reach.
When they stretched their arms out with all their might, he would take just one step back to evade the hand.
He wasn’t running far away.
He had escaped to a position where he could be caught if they just took one more step, so the Salernitana players, as if bewitched, would take that one more step.
But they could never catch Jee-an.
“What are they doing?!”
The spectators complained of frustration.
From a distance, it might not be understandable.
It’s only natural, since three or four burly players couldn’t catch one slender boy.
And the boy was just moving slowly, not dazzling the defense with any incredible individual skills.
He just received the ball, gave it away, and moved.
Received the ball again, gave it away, and moved again.
He was just playing around so lightly that no special description was even needed.
However, despite this, the parallel lines between Jee-an and the defense showed no sign of narrowing.
The reason this was possible, even though the Salernitana players were moving faster, was that Jee-an was moving with his feet first.
It was as if he could see five seconds into the future all by himself.
Jee-an was the ‘first’ to move among the 22 players on the field.
And Jee-an was also the first to notice that Salernitana’s defensive line had collapsed.
Whooshhh-!
A pass shot out from a narrow space.
Salernitana, focused only on Jee-an in front of them, had neglected their overall line structure.
Thanks to that, their players became clustered, which meant a huge hole had opened up somewhere.
Whooshhhhhhh-
The pass heading straight for that hole made people marvel, as if Jee-an was looking down at the field from the sky.
“Drop back!”
“Here! Here!”
Sternitana’s defense wavered, unable to move evenly.
To fill the gaping hole, several more players rushed over urgently.
In that process, maintaining spacing or aligning the defensive line properly was impossible.
In trying to fill one hole, they ended up creating another one.
And Jee-an was the only one who already knew where that new hole would open.
Whoosh-!
The ball that had been heading for the right half-space was switched with a cross-field pass to the left half-space.
Tap-!
Jee-an smoothly received the ball.
Then, as he entered the final third, he finally met the eyes of the onlookers.
It meant he made a dribble breakthrough that was so convincing, even the spectators watching from afar could easily understand why the defense couldn’t stop him.
That was... something you just can’t stop.
Tat-tat-tat-!
Jee-an’s step-over, mixing in plenty of body feints, sent the defender’s hips crashing to the ground, and then, with the angle open, he followed through with a shot.
From start to finish.
There wasn’t a single awkward moment; every play flowed as smoothly as water.
Slap-!!
When the Salernitana net shook, the clock on the scoreboard pointed to the 73rd minute.
It had been just three minutes since Jee-an was subbed in.
“...Huh.”
“This is crazy.”
“This is ridiculous.”
Salernitana’s home fans let out hollow laughs.
It was frustrating to concede so easily right after equalizing.
But instead of expressing their anger, they were just dumbfounded.
This was on a different level.
It felt like a different dimension, so rather than getting angry, they just gave a hollow laugh.
Thanks to that, everyone looked at Jee-an with awe, as if he were an existence from another dimension.
However, Jee-an, with the shy face of a 16-year-old boy, just walked somewhere.
Jee-an was heading for the camera filming him next to the goalpost. Standing in front of the camera, he fiddled with his fingers...
and then, with his flushed face buried deep, he just turned back.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
—He scores just three minutes after being subbed in! The flow that started with Lee’s feet ends with Lee’s feet!
—He’s showing us a different class. This player moves on his own in a different dimension.
Jee-an’s image and the voices worshipping him flowed from a large television.
“Ugh...!”
And Kim Jiu was watching that, covering her mouth.
Normally, she would have been jumping for joy when Jee-an scored, but today she was trying her best to hold back, trying not to take her eyes off the screen.
Because Jee-an had made a promise.
He promised to do a celebration just for her after scoring.
“...”
Kim Jiu held her breath, her face full of anticipation as she stared at the screen.
Then, Jee-an’s face filled the screen.
“Why does he look like that?”
Lee Won-hoon, sitting next to her, tilted his head when he saw it.
For someone who just scored a goal, his expression looked strangely unappealing.
Jee-an, who had approached the camera with that strange face, fiddled with his fingers and then turned around and left.
“What did he do?”
Lee Won-hoon was still tilting his head.
It looked like he was making some shape with his fingers, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“...”
But Kim Jiu’s mouth, hidden by her hands, was stretched wide open to the sky the moment she saw it.
Because Kim Jiu could recognize it.
It made her even more satisfied that even Lee Won-hoon was tilting his head in confusion.
She felt that she was the only one who could guess the meaning of that celebration.
‘That guy is really...’
A smile that couldn’t be hidden seeped out from above her hands covering her mouth.
Amazingly, a memory from a few years ago, which she had completely forgotten, immediately came to mind.
···
“Hey. I found something amazing.”
“...?”
“I said I found something amazing.”
“What is it...”
Kim Jiu pulled on Jee-an’s shoulder as he was about to slump over his desk the moment class ended.
When Jee-an looked at her with a slightly scared expression, Kim Jiu sighed and spoke.
“You and I have the same letters in our names.”
“...Letters in our names?”
“Yeah. Look. Jiu. Jee-an. Both have the ‘J’ and the ‘Ng’.”
“...So?”
“Isn’t it amazing? Don’t you think it’s amazing?!”
When Jee-an responded lukewarmly, Kim Jiu shoved her scary face right up to him, and Jee-an flinched and nodded his head vigorously.
Jee-an had long since realized that the best strategy in these situations was to just agree with her unconditionally.
Only then did Kim Jiu nod her head in satisfaction and start fiddling with her fingers.
The class that had just ended was ethics class, and they had been learning sign language.
They had only learned how to express Korean vowels and consonants with their fingers, and Kim Jiu fiddled with her fingers as she had learned to make a ‘J’ and an ‘Ng’.
Then she showed Jee-an and said:
“This is for both you and me. Isn’t it amazing?”
“...It, it is amazing.”
Jee-an wanted to say, ‘So what?’, but he just nodded.
It was because Kim Jiu looked like she had made a huge discovery.
“Remember it well. Got it? We are ‘J’ and ‘Ng’.”
“...Okay.”
It seemed completely useless, but because it was Kim Jiu, Jee-an remembered it anyway.
He told himself that the letters ‘J’ and ‘Ng’ could become ‘Jiu’ or ‘Jee-an’.