Harvest Day (2)
1 Calle Practicante Agapito Arbelo, in the northeastern part of Gran Canaria island.
It was 9:12 in the evening, as the island's sunset drew to a close. Five minutes up Paseo de Chil from the Port of Las Palmas, Parque de Don Benito came into view.
A moment later, a gray midsize sedan with its headlights on drove straight up the hill to the left of the park. The blurry figure inside the window was in the middle of a phone call, earbuds wedged in her ears.
"You said you'd deliver it by April 29th. Do you have any idea how much a single day's delay costs me? Yes. Obviously you'll have to take responsibility and bring it yourself. Talk to Escuria about the payment."
The driver was María Hernández, wife of Rubén Castro and owner of a fashion business.
"No, not now. I'm on my way home. The urgent thing is Escuria… Sara, call Sara. Yes."
The moment the call ended, María slowed the car and turned into a residential alley. The elegant patterns inlaid in the pavement and the tropical plants standing in rows everywhere made it easy to tell this was an affluent neighborhood.
After a few more turns left and right, she emerged onto a cliffside road at the edge of the district — the shortcut to her home, tucked into the innermost corner of the neighborhood.
Naturally, beyond the iron fence on the left, the night view of the Port of Las Palmas unveiled itself. Between the broad leaves of the subtropical plants lining the road, the lights of yachts and cruise ships clustered like ripening fruit — but María's gaze never wavered from the road ahead.
It was as if she could already see the disappointed eyes of her two sons, who had been promised that tonight, at least, they would watch the match together.
Thunk—
The car arrived at the house and rolled over the speed bump, easing its front wheels into the garage. María grabbed only the sample folder she'd brought from the office and hopped straight over the gray-white front gate.
As she crossed the lawn, the sound of a television drifted out through the living room window. The match between Las Palmas and Mirandés was somehow already racing into the middle of the second half.
She prayed, with a fair amount of desperation, that Las Palmas would win — and that the kids would be far too absorbed to pay any attention to their mother.
"A wonderful tackle from Javi Castellano! Íñigo receives the ball and spreads it wide to the right flank. Lovely pass."
"Las Palmas's overwhelming dominance continues into the second half."
"Nicolás Varela cuts inside. He attempts a dribble— ah, he lays it off to Kim."
"Kim takes possession for the third time since the break. My word, look at the stands falling into silence. Everyone is watching this young player. What will he show us this time?"
Inside the living room, beneath the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, two small children and one woman could not take their eyes off the TV screen.
"You must not lose your composure. Trying to stop Kim without covering defenders is simple greed."
"Mirandés's back line has been put through the wringer all match, and sure enough, their defense is visibly collapsing toward the center. Perea stretches out a leg from the diagonal… a brilliant la croqueta!! He shifts the ball's position in an instant and turns the defensive midfielder into a fool! Kim!"
"Now he battles with Fernández, one after the other!"
The boy continuing his dribble neatly deflected the hand of the player in red. He refused contact at his waist, where a foul would be given, while willingly conceding a sliver of his shoulder — an efficient trade.
Then, without any particular flourish — at least, that was how it appeared to those watching through the screen — the boy knocked the ball past the center-back on his right and burst forward.
"Kim closes in on the penalty box in a flash! Fernández is late to react!"
"The left back has no choice but to step inside to cover— and if that happens, then… Las Palmas's right back is completely free!! Kim will play the pass again, Mirandés! How many times is this now!"
Ramírez, starting at right back, collected the pass that had split Mirandés's defense wide open.
Castro and Pedri were already sprinting into the box. The cross he floated in with unhurried precision traced a beautiful arc and met Castro's forehead.
"CASTRO—!!"
"That's Dad!"
Up on the sofa, Kilian resented his little brother's premature eruption. The header had flown toward the left, struck the inside of the post, and ricocheted out diagonally.
"AAAH!! Again— it's Kim again!"
The black-haired boy who surged into the penalty box showed no trace of haste.
As if he understood by instinct that the tighter things got, the more he needed to slow down, he instead sold a shooting feint that bought him a half-beat of stillness. The ankle of his smoothly pivoting right foot killed the ball's spin just enough, and the remaining momentum carried his body toward the left.
Even as he reconfigured himself into a left-footed shooting angle in a single motion, the center-back nearest him could do nothing at all. He had already thrown his body into a sliding tackle on that first feint.
With the left-sided center-back naturally drawn out of position, the right-sided one shuffled his feet to cover as much of the shooting angle as he could.
The boy, without hesitation, rolled the ball into the space that defender had vacated.
The inside of his left foot.
A pass delivered the way Castro had taught him — a pass meant for Castro himself.
"KIM!! Ah— again to Castro!"
"EYEE—!!"
"Las Palmas's strike duo ripples the left side of the net! Castro! His second goal of the match!"
"Haha. Well, this is… remarkable, isn't it. The scoreline reads three-nil. Las Palmas lead by three."
"Whoa."
While his little brother bounced up and down on the sofa, Kilian let out an unrefined gasp of admiration. Even with his brief experience playing football, he knew exactly how difficult it was to possess that kind of composure inside the box.
"Mom!"
Kilian's younger brother spotted María Hernández — who had been exchanging a glance with the babysitter — and leapt off the sofa. As a torrent of chatter followed about how Dad had scored two goals and how Las Palmas was winning, María quietly approached Kilian, still sitting on the couch.
She wondered if he was upset at having missed the match from the very beginning.
"Kilian?"
"I want to play with Kim."
"Huh?"
"No — I'm saying he should come play with me."
María was rather taken aback by her eldest son's stubborn look. She was relieved he wasn't angry, but it was a request she couldn't quite answer one way or the other.
"Kim has clearly altered his style. His number of dribble attempts has increased significantly, but the way he manages the game remains the same as the first half. He has raised the proportion of combination play."
"Exactly. He frequently involves the flanks — especially both full backs — in the attack. He avoids overexerting himself while putting constant pressure on the opposing defense instead. There's far too much intent behind it to call it a temporary change."
"Ah, and Mirandés… they're simply out of luck."
"You don't need to go to Port Aventura! Asking Kim — I'll go to the training ground myself and tell him in person. Okay?"
The fruits of Rubén Castro's brand of early education left María dumbfounded. When summer vacation had come up and the boy had been bouncing off the walls about going to the amusement park with his dad, this was hardly the time.
And then there was the weight of the invitation itself.
Piecing together the stories Castro had told her, it seemed she would need to lay out nothing less than a royal banquet for the boy (since he would never, ever set foot in the club cafeteria!). For María, running a fashion business, it was a decision that was difficult on every count.
"Kilian, that would be rude to Kim. Hmm, for now you'll have to ask your dad first…"
"I will! Mom, you're the best!!"
It hadn't been permission at all, but watching her son leap up and down on the spot, she couldn't help bursting into a small laugh. His unbending stubbornness, his refusal to let go of anything he wanted — he was exactly like his father.
The kind of personality that sometimes kept her up worrying, and was impossibly endearing all the same.
That was just how it was.
The same moment. Apartment 1501, Cheongma Apartments, Manseon-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, South Korea.
It was past five in the morning. A man who had been sleeping soundly in a small room overlooking the Gapcheon River snapped his eyes open and bolted upright.
The certainty that he had overslept past the appointed hour drew a short groan from him.
Aw, no.
The sleeper's name was Park Jun-seo — a high school senior with only days left until his midterm exams, and Kim Kyeong-heon's older cousin.
He fumbled for the square-framed glasses lying beside his blankets and first took stock of the silent house. To watch the football match, he would have to turn on the living room's Wi-Fi router — but if his parents in the master bedroom woke at the sound of suspicious movement, no greater disaster could be imagined.
Socks first.
After that precaution, laid down to smother his footsteps, Park Jun-seo turned the doorknob at a pace so glacial it seemed to have stopped altogether. Startling himself over and over at the tiniest slivers of sound, he at last managed to press his weight onto the floorboards.
Then, under the dim pre-dawn gloom, he reached with the most delicate of gestures for the power button on the Wi-Fi router beside the sofa…
Click—!
A sound he never gave a second thought on ordinary days — the click of a power button — rang out with astonishing volume, and Jun-seo's heart hammering wildly in an instant.
Tap. Tap.
As if that weren't enough, there came the sound of something patting the floor from one corner of the living room. The timid, easily frightened boy turned his creaking neck and made out the silhouette of a white Maltese.
……
……
The creature known as Darongi was glaring at a member of its pack with eyes black as ink.
The man who had become a Wi-Fi thief, feigning that he had seen nothing, rose onto his heels and scurried back into his room.
Right on cue, a figure that was unmistakably his younger cousin appeared on the screen. On the right side of the attacking third, a black-haired player was bravely weaving in between the red shirts.
Even though this was not a Korean broadcast, and he couldn't hear a single word of the audio, each passing moment was more than enough to draw silent gasps of awe from him.
His younger cousin — the one he'd played with in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon until he was seven — moved this way and that with an infuriating grace, treating opponents with utter cruelty. He flicked the underside of the ball up to glide past sliding tackles, and somehow, some way, sent defenders rolling across the grass alone.
As a cousin, Jun-seo wanted to fire back at the disrespectful tone floating up through the chat window, but his fingers wouldn't move easily. The truth was… he didn't know much about football.
For all the punishing effort that earned him sky-high test scores, he was hopeless at sports. Fortunately, the bitter words aimed at the unwelcome intruder were handled by others on his behalf.
When the Mirandés full back, fretting over the space on the flank, eased off his pressure, the player in yellow instantly burrowed into the deepest reaches of the right side of the penalty box.
Moments later, a light shot struck with his right foot tumbled into the far left corner of the goal.
On the phone screen, the crowd greeted with silent cheers the moment of electric thrill that the aesthetics of simplicity had summoned.
"…Mmgh."
In the 40th minute of the second half, Park Jun-seo confirmed that his younger cousin had scored his second goal of the match and clenched his fist. He was glad he'd attempted his little rebellion, small as it was, with midterms just around the corner.