A Forty-Year-Old Hiding His Age (2)
Whether you were forty or sixteen like I was now, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed meant you never quite sank into deep sleep.
"Krrr— krrrk— khhrrrr—"
“…….”
My eyes snapped open in the middle of that noise, and I rose from the bed without a moment's hesitation.
I picked up the water bottle I'd left on the desk and made my way to the window. Perhaps because morning was drawing near, the sunlight that had been hiding beneath the horizon was slowly beginning to show itself. I stared blankly at the scene while gulping down the water, and it helped shake off the last of my drowsiness.
Then I retrieved the phone charging at the head of the bed and opened a news site. Checking the news the moment I woke up had been my morning routine for as long as I could remember.
A routine carried over from my previous life, so I supposed it had been going on for roughly twenty years now.
The moment the news loaded — because apparently I was a real footballer now — the first thing to catch my eye was football-related coverage.
Tap—
I swiped the top of the phone screen and moved on to the financial news. Calling it financial news was generous, really — it was mostly about stocks, crypto, or real estate.
But hey, what can you do?
"Hmm…."
Anyway, the world economy was calm again today. Electric vehicle stocks fluctuated amid all the talk of sending humans to Mars, the price of some coin swung from paradise to rock bottom over a single meaningless word, and Seoul's land prices climbed yet again….
In short, the economy was churning along exactly as I remembered it. Having confirmed that my existence had once again had no effect whatsoever on the world economy, I turned the phone off.
"…Tch."
To be honest.
There were moments when my own existence frightened me.
I'm not saying there was a black flame dragon sealed in my right hand, or that I was some chosen child of the cyber monsters.
What frightened me was the butterfly effect of my regression.
I had traveled back a full twenty-five years, after all. I was already walking a path starkly different from the past I'd once lived through.
The thought that my existence could profoundly influence other people — or the world itself — sent a chill down my spine.
Call it delusions of grandeur if you like, but if it were, the term butterfly effect would never have been coined in the first place.
That was why I turned on the news every single morning. I already knew everything, since I'd lived through it once — I checked anyway, just in case something had changed.
And mercifully, today too, my existence had left the world entirely untouched.
Relieved by that fact, I was leisurely savoring the morning scenery beyond the window when—
"Khhrrr—! Kkk—! Kh, kk, khh—!"
“…….”
At the sound of my roommate's snoring filling every corner of our two-person dorm room, I pinched the bridge of my nose for a moment.
And a little while later.
Having finished the whole routine, I collapsed back onto the bed, gulped down more water, and gazed out at the view past the window.
“…….”
The hour just before sunrise, when the sun had only just begun to rise. The scarlet light filtering through the curtains. The fresh green grass emerging into that light.
And my roommate, somehow still asleep — with a crumpled wad of tissue stuffed up his nose, no less.
“…….”
It was spring.
For a foreign player living abroad, the most important thing is, above all else, adaptation.
This is a well-documented truth that appears even in Son Heung-min's autobiography, and it's what Korean players who tried their luck in Europe and failed always hammer home to young prospects.
Language, food, culture — fail to adapt to a new environment, and homesickness takes root, which soon leads to a drop in performance.
That's why adaptation is the single most crucial element of any overseas challenge. All the more so when the players in question are teenage boys at their most emotionally volatile.
For exactly those reasons, Real Madrid split its three Korean prospects across three separate teams.
Center-back Kim Woo-sung went to Juvenil C.
Midfielder Park Min-hyuk went to Juvenil B.
And I went to Juvenil A.
It was the club's way of keeping the Koreans from clustering together, and also an unspoken directive: now that you're in Spain, communicate in Spanish and blend into your team.
Then again, maybe Kim Woo-sung and Park Min-hyuk were assigned to the same room because they were, strictly speaking, not contracted players but guests invited over from Korea?
Well, whatever the truth was, it didn't matter.
What mattered was that I'd been separated from my fellow Koreans and placed in Juvenil A alone.
And that, for the past three days, as the only East Asian in the squad who could speak Spanish, I'd been soaking up a disproportionate share of the attention.
"Whoa! An actual Asian! What's your name?"
"What country are you from? China? Japan?"
"You idiot, Nico already told you it's Korea."
"I, I watched K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix! Oh, and Squid Game too!"
They swarmed me with fervent curiosity, as if they'd discovered a monkey that could talk.
To be fair, Spain was overflowing with Chinese laborers who'd come to make money, so seeing a Spanish-speaking Asian probably wasn't a first for them.
From my standpoint, though, the fact that I didn't need to be the one reaching out to build rapport with my teammates was deeply satisfying.
Whatever else they were, these were Real Madrid's budding talents. More than a few of them would be worth serious money someday, so getting close to them could only pay off.
"That's seriously messed up, man."
The person I was currently closest to on the team was Nicolás Becker — Nico, for short.
Having turned seventeen this year, he was the team captain, and as my roommate he seemed determined to look after me as best he could.
Otherwise he wouldn't have struck up a conversation even during the warm-up before training like this. Stretching out my whole body on the grass, I quietly asked back.
"What is?"
"The tissue up my nose this morning. That was you, wasn't it?"
Instead of answering, I clicked my tongue and kept stretching. Which was as good as a yes.
Hey, why deny it?
I couldn't argue that my response hadn't been a bit extreme — but then, the intensity of his snoring was every bit its match.
This was exactly why I hated sharing a room with anyone.
Still, I couldn't exactly claim innocence either, so I decided to quietly steer the conversation elsewhere.
Namely, toward pointing out the mood of the teammates around us, who hadn't done a lick of stretching and had been gossiping away this whole time.
"By the way, everyone seems on edge. Did something happen?"
"Deflecting, are we…? You didn't see it yesterday?"
"See what?"
"El Clásico. It was chaos yesterday, man."
At that, this morning's news surfaced in my mind.
"They said we were up 2–0 and let it slip to a comeback loss?"
"Yeah, and at the Santiago Bernabéu, no less. Word is the home fans went ballistic after the final whistle."
"Not exactly surprising. They blew a game they had won."
"Right, that's probably why they're all worked up over there. Everyone here joined because they love Real Madrid."
"And yet you look completely unbothered."
"Me?"
He chuckled as he massaged his calf as part of his stretching. There was half a sneer mixed into it, maybe.
"Obviously. I didn't even play, so why would I be upset? The ones who lost were the first-team players, not me."
“…….”
"Besides, I barely have time to worry about my own life. We've got a match in three days — who's got room to care about anyone else?"
I couldn't stand the snoring, but I did like that his values aligned with mine.
That went for his last remark too. I asked, keeping my tone flat.
"We have a match in three days?"
"Oh, right, you've only just joined, so you wouldn't know. We play a league match every weekend. This time it's Real Valladolid."
"You think I'll get to play?"
"Hard to say? That's up to the manager, once he's seen how you train."
Hm. Fair enough.
"Doni, feeling confident, are you?"
"Huh? About what?"
"What do you think? You've had this unsettling grin on your face this whole time."
Apparently my face had given me away.
A little embarrassed, I smoothed my expression over and wrapped up the situation.
Well.
Yes. I was confident.
"Joel looks sharp today, doesn't he?"
"He squandered chance after chance these last three matches. Speaking as the man himself, I'd say he's desperate to make amends."
"Javi's form has come up a lot too."
"He was never a bad player to begin with. He just stumbled for a while because of the ankle injury. Though his movement still looks a touch sluggish, which worries me."
Ismael, manager of Real Madrid's Juvenil A side, stood at the edge of the pitch exchanging observations with his head coach, evaluating the two forwards.
Charged with the weighty mission of nurturing Real Madrid's future, Ismael's primary job was the management of youth players.
Those already capable of competing at the senior level he recommended straight to the club for promotion, while those who still needed development he matched with training methods suited to their growth.
The players' development mattered as much as the team's results. His role was fundamentally different in nature from that of first-team managers who staked their lives on every single point.
That said, so long as they wore the name Real Madrid, the youth side was duty-bound to hold the top spot at all times as well.
And that was precisely why Ismael, watching the eight-on-eight scrimmage unfold, was agonizing over the still-unfinished lineup for the weekend's match.
Ismael let out a long sigh.
"Javi has one glaring weakness, Joel has another… both of them leave me uneasy, and that's what's eating at me…."
Ismael's Real Madrid Juvenil A lined up in a 4-2-3-1.
The attacking midfield slot in that system belonged to Nicolás, currently rated the finest prospect in the squad.
The goalkeeper, the defenders, the midfield, and the wide attacking positions all had their established owners too. The only seat still vacant was central striker.
The striker position remained unfilled because the form of the two players who had been competing for it had both plummeted into the abyss.
One mired in a slump, the other struck down by injury.
With no obvious alternative on hand, the situation was bound to give their manager a headache.
"Coach, what about Doni instead?"
"Doni?"
At his head coach's suggestion, Ismael's gaze shifted to the field — to Kang Doin, playing in the scrimmage.
"That boy only moved into the dorms the day before yesterday. It'd be a bit much to throw him straight into a match, no?"
"Even so, what he's shown in training has been the best on the team. And you were quite taken with him yourself, Coach, when you watched his footage last winter."
"Hmm."
It was an argument impossible to refute, so Ismael studied Kang Doin closely.
The Korean boy, not yet a full week into his time with the team, looked noticeably different from the one in the footage the club's football director had passed along.
"He seems to have grown quite a bit since I watched that video last winter."
"He really is tall in person. According to Antonio on the scouting team, he was 168 centimeters when first scouted, but measured 176 at his medical just before signing. Word is he's still growing."
"That height would hold up fine in the center, at least…."
Still, dragging a kid who'd only joined team training three days ago straight into a match was a bit—
The words had barely formed in his mind when—
"Stop Doni!"
"He's cutting through everyone, damn it!"
Collecting the ball at a slightly deeper position, Kang Doin shed the first pressing player with a body feint, then threaded the ball between the legs of the second who charged in.
The player chasing in late tried to grab a handful of shirt to keep him from being pressed carelessly, while an incoming tackle from the front — one Doin had clearly anticipated well in advance — was evaded with a soft chip of the ball over the outstretched leg.
Once he'd slipped past every last defender, all that remained was the goalkeeper.
Rushing off his line to narrow the shooting angle, the keeper's intent mattered not one bit: the shot Doin curled lightly with his right foot sailed straight between the keeper's legs and ripped into the net.
That entire sequence had flowed together smoothly, all in less than thirty seconds. Ismael's eyebrows rose in a peculiar arc.
Hm.
"…Should we at least put him on the roster?"