A Forty-Year-Old Man Hides His Age (4)
Whether it was because he'd sweated everything out and slept like the dead, the cold that had been nagging at him the day before had vanished without a trace.
It was the day after the Round 23 match against Real Valladolid. Nicolas had just woken up, and he rose from his bed feeling thoroughly refreshed.
The sunlight pouring in through the window felt wonderful — a perfect mirror of the state his body was in.
No fever, no cough. No headache either. His body felt a little heavy, but that was just the fatigue from yesterday's match.
If anything, remembering that they'd won 3–1 in a come-from-behind victory — and that he'd personally recorded two assists in it — made him want to break out dancing. A complete resurrection.
In football game terms, he was at full condition. Twelve o'clock, no question.
“♫~~♪.”
…Humming?
Maybe it was because his body was back to normal, but he finally had the presence of mind to look around. His gaze drifted to his roommate, still lying in the neighboring bed.
The guy clearly hadn't noticed he was awake yet.
He was lying face-down on his bed, scrolling his phone and humming to himself. It was obvious, really — this was the same guy who hadn't shown a single playful streak, despite being the age he was.
Of course, it was possible he was simply still hiding his true nature in an unfamiliar environment… but hey, who cared?
The important thing was that this was the first time Nicolas had ever seen his roommate looking this excited.
Well, I suppose after yesterday's match, he's earned it.
The guy had come on in the second half and scored a hat trick in forty-five minutes. He'd single-handedly dragged the team to a comeback win.
Considering it had been his official competitive debut, the high spirits made sense. He'd only been with the team a week, after all.
So he was probably searching his own name on his phone and grinning like an idiot about it.
With that thought, Nicolas crept quietly toward his roommate. Just what could he be looking at that had him smiling like that—
“What are you doing back there?”
“WHOA—!!”
Kang Doin's head, glued to his phone, spun a full 180 degrees.
Nicolas, who had attempted a sneak attack only to be ambushed himself, yelped and fell flat on his rear, and at the sight of it, Kang Doin scrambled up from the bed and rushed over to him.
“Hey, Nico. You okay?”
“…….”
Nicolas, who regularly binged Japanese anime on Netflix, decided that this moment bore a striking resemblance to a scene from that anime reimagining Britain's King Arthur as a woman.
One small problem, however: Kang Doin was not a blue-eyed blonde beauty from Britain.
Which meant the words coming out of a black-haired, black-eyed Korean boy's mouth were decidedly not an invitation to a formal duel.
“Hey, Nico. I said, are you okay?”
“Ah.”
Snapping out of his reverie, Nicolas scratched the back of his head sheepishly and took the offered hand, hauling himself up.
“Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little startled… By the way, how long have you been awake?”
“…Since you woke up?”
In other words, he'd known the whole time. Nicolas grew even more sheepish, clicking his tongue, and Kang Doin looked at him with mild disdain.
“Honestly, you're not a kid anymore… What were you sneaking around for?”
“Nothing, you were just smiling at your phone, and I wondered what was so funny…”
“Oh, if that's all, you could've just said so. Here.”
Chuckling at the sight of Nicolas sulking with his head hung, Kang Doin casually turned his phone screen toward him.
“Huh?”
On the phone screen, a graph of blue and red lines was jittering up and down. Question marks bloomed above Nicolas's head in rapid succession.
“What is this?”
“What do you think? Stocks. I got paid recently, so I bought a few. The companies are still small, but they're going to grow fast.”
“Stocks?”
“Why, are you interested?”
Kang Doin asked with a bright smile. Nico had taken good care of him since he'd joined the team, and he'd even set up his goals in the last match — so he figured he'd return the favor.
But goodwill doesn't always land the way it's intended.
“See, I know a really good investment right now…”
“…So, let me get this straight.”
Ciudad Real Madrid.
As explained before, Real Madrid's training complex — a sprawling 1.2 million square meters — was packed to the brim with every conceivable football facility.
And naturally, the benefits matched the facilities. Room and board, discounts on products sold by club sponsors — those were just a couple of examples.
Which meant the coffee Toni and I were drinking right now could technically be counted as one of those benefits. The coffee machine in the cafeteria was free for anyone affiliated with the club to use.
He dropped a sugar cube into his freshly brewed, steaming coffee and summarized everything I'd just told him.
“So the reason you were late to our meeting is that you were recommending stocks to a teammate?”
“Stocks, not Bitcoin.”
“Tomato, tomahto.”
Tomato, tomahto?
Unlike crypto, stocks came with financial regulators protecting investors, daily price floors meant you couldn't watch your money evaporate overnight, just any random scammer couldn't issue them, and the government taxed them properly — it was a clean, legal investment vehicle—
—was the lecture I charitably started to deliver, before acknowledging my guilt and shutting my mouth.
Who was I kidding? Getting so absorbed in Nico's sudden interest in stocks that I showed up fifteen minutes late to meet Toni was entirely my fault.
So I bowed my head and bared the crown of it in a posture of complete submission, and Toni chuckled and clapped me on the shoulder. Acceptance of my apology, apparently.
“Still, you've seemed a lot brighter lately. It's nice to see.”
“I wasn't exactly gloomy before.”
“Yeah, right. When I first met you, you acted like some old man who'd already lived his whole life.”
He probably meant it as a figure of speech — the "old soul" cliché — but for someone whose actual mental age was forty… no, forty-one now, the words stung more than a little.
“W-was it really that bad?”
“I mean, I can't say I don't understand why you were like that. But I won't pretend I wasn't worried. What was I supposed to do if you couldn't adapt? Where would that leave me at the club?”
“I'd be fucked, wouldn't I.”
“Well, not quite to that degree… but no, you're not exactly wrong.”
Toni laughed it off cheerfully, but truthfully, he must have been sweating bullets too.
He'd gone out of his way to bring in a young striker prospect from a footballing backwater, paying a sum that was by no means trivial. If I'd failed to produce results, the scout who'd championed my signing so forcefully would have found himself in a very awkward position.
Of course, after yesterday's performance, all of that was now water under the bridge. Toni grinned and took a sip of his coffee.
“I watched the match yesterday. It was so satisfying.”
“It was. Not bad at all.”
“Hey, Doin. 'Not bad at all' doesn't cover it. A hat trick in forty-five minutes on your debut. Ismael called me after the game, you know? Said to thank me for bringing you in.”
“Good to hear.”
“Right? It went well. Keep it up just like this. When you make it up to Castilla and then the first team too. Let me walk around with my chest puffed out.”
“I'll do my best.”
I nodded with genuine sincerity. I owed him a great deal. He was someone who scouted youth players with everything he had.
The way he'd argued passionately for my contract with the club. The way he'd come to Spain and effectively taken on the role of my guardian. The way he'd personally spearheaded the resolution of all the legal complications when I moved from Korea to Spain.
For someone like me — who couldn't live with himself while owing debts — he was one of the very few people I needed to repay. I'd have to recommend him a stock or two before long.
Anyway.
Everything was going smoothly since I'd arrived in Spain.
I'd built an environment where I could focus entirely on football. I'd escaped that nightmare of an orphanage. My first paycheck had come in recently, and I'd finally taken my first steps into the stock market.
Everything was on track. Thanks to that, my mind was slowly finding room to breathe.
With fewer things to agonize over, my conversations with other people had increased too. That was probably why Toni felt my expression had brightened.
So now, all that was left was to focus purely on football.
Only football…
“Oh, right.”
Toni, who had been sipping his coffee the whole time, finally seemed to remember, and held out a shopping bag toward me.
“I called you out to give you this and then completely forgot.”
“What is it?”
“A debut gift and a hat-trick gift, all in one. Open it.”
I peeked inside the bag and found a white backpack embossed with the Real Madrid crest.
I looked up at Toni questioningly, and he smiled down at me with utter benevolence. A pure smile, without a shred of malice.
And then he uttered a truly gem-worthy line.
“You start school tomorrow. I went out on a limb and bought it for you to use as your school bag. Even with the club staff discount, it was pretty pricey.”
“…….”
“I put it to good use on your behalf, so study hard. Who knows? Maybe you're as talented at schoolwork as you are at football?”
Watching Toni beam with childlike innocence and offer his warm words of encouragement, I squeezed my eyes shut.
High school. At my age.
It was a gem of a feeling. (And yes, by "gem," I absolutely meant the word that rhymes with it.)
SEK-El Castillo.
An international private school in Madrid, Spain.
Built by the SEK Education Group — one of Spain's flagship educational institutions — it was one of the most prestigious schools in all of Madrid.
Yes, a prestigious international school. A private one. Which is a polite way of saying the tuition was obscenely expensive.
The student body could therefore be divided broadly into two categories.
One: children of the upper class, whose parents could shoulder the steep tuition.
Two: students with academic achievements outstanding enough to earn scholarships.
Either way, getting into this elite international private school was no easy feat.
Which was why the students here generally got along well with one another. After all, making it into this school meant you had proven your worth — whether that worth was your parents' money or your own talent.
And so the students in the classroom were chattering and laughing merrily as always, in the moments before morning assembly.
The topic of conversation, today, was the existence of a foreign exchange student transferring in.
“Transferring in March?”
“Second term's basically over. Is he an idiot or something?”
“How did a total moron get into our school?!”
“I heard he's Korean, too.”
“Korean? Not a Chino?”
“I'm reporting you for racism. Good luck out there.”
Unlike Korean high schools, which enroll students in March and graduate them in February after two long vacations, Spanish high schools run from September to June.
And unlike Korean schools with their two-term system, Spanish high schools have three.
September through December is the first term.
January through March, the second.
April through June, the third.
And unlike Korean high schools, where showing up is basically all that's required, Spanish high schools have a grade-repetition system: fail to meet the academic standard, and you don't advance to the next year.
In other words, a foreign student transferring in now, with the second term nearly finished, was effectively declaring that he'd given up on moving up a grade this year.
And so the students prepared to hold a rigorous academic debate on exactly what kind of intelligence could produce such an asinine decision…
“Wait, though — I heard he's a Real Madrid player? Plays for the under-19 team.”
“Oh, never mind then.”
“Doesn't matter, then.”
The debate was abruptly suspended the moment the exchange student's affiliation with Real Madrid's youth side came to light.
Only students with money or brains could get into SEK-El Castillo — but as with everything in life, there was one exception.
Real Madrid youth players.
This was possible because Real Madrid held a partnership with the SEK Education Group, and in fact, several Real Madrid players were already enrolled at the school.
Above all, they were footballers. As long as they played well, whether they got held back a year or anything else simply didn't matter to them.
And so the students stopped badmouthing the transfer student. If anything, a growing curiosity about this "Real Madrid player from abroad" began to bubble up.
And into that storm of curiosity, the transfer student made his appearance.
“Alright, everyone. Take your seats.”
Following the homeroom teacher through the classroom door came an East Asian boy.
“As you can see, we have a transfer student. He's from Korea, and his name is… well, he says to just call him Doni. He hasn't been in Spain long, so everyone, take good care of him. His seat is waaay over there, last row on the right.”
“…….”
“Doni? Anything you'd like to say?”
“…….”
“No? Great, moving on. Class dismissed for assembly. Have a good day of lessons, everyone.”
Click.
With the sound of the homeroom teacher closing the door behind her — having said her piece and vanished like the wind — a brief stillness settled over the classroom.
The transfer student stood at the teacher's desk with a dazed expression, and the students studied him for a moment before dispensing their impressions, one by one.
Mostly the girls.
“He's really good-looking?”
“Pretty tall, too.”
“He looks like an idol.”
“Hey, I was gonna say that!”
In the twenty-first century, where K-pop idols charted on Billboard and Korean dramas became Netflix flagship titles, even Spanish students held a certain fondness for Korean men.
Granted, that fondness came with the condition of "good-looking" attached — but at the very least, the transfer student cleared that bar.
And so the students who'd taken a liking to him began sidling up to the desk where he stood.
Had Kim Gu — the great Korean patriot — witnessed it, he might have wept and called it a cultural victory. But for the transfer student himself, it was nothing short of a misfortune.
“You said to call you Doni? What's your real name?”
“You're from Korea, right? Got a favorite idol?”
“Got a girlfriend?”
“I heard you're a Real Madrid player — is it true? What position do you play?”
“You're tall. How many centimeters?”
“Any Real Madrid players you like?”
“Your skin is amazing! What products do you use?”
“Are you on Instagram? Or TikTok?”
The questions came in an unrelenting barrage. The transfer student, barely clinging to a mind that felt ready to float away, lamented how things had come to this.
God damn it.
He'd predicted long ago that the combination of Real Madrid and Korean nationality would draw more than a little aggro from Spanish students.
That was exactly why he hadn't wanted to go to school. He'd wanted to attend quietly and unobtrusively — and instead, he'd ended up the center of everyone's attention anyway.
Fortunately, he had a trump card prepared.
The transfer student, Kang Doin, spoke in a low voice.
And then, as haltingly as he could manage:
“I… no speak Spanish. Difficult.”
Kang Doin had declared himself a helpless foreigner!