Just a Sweet Dream (1)
A heavy morning.
The body naturally followed the mind's dreary lead. I rolled my stiffened shoulders through an unhurried stretch, then checked the boxed meal Coach Juan had left outside the hotel room door. My lower back and the tendons around my knees felt tight and unyielding; as soon as I finished eating, I would need to spend serious time working through a mobility routine.
The small mercy was that Rubén Castro had vanished for the moment. Between his relentless lamentations last night and his running jokes about how school cafeteria meals were strictly meant for children, his presence would have guaranteed a whole morning spent deflecting teasing.
Click.
"Oh, you're up."
The universe rarely missed an opportunity for a cruel joke. Before the thought even settled, Castro swung the door wide and stepped inside. Judging by the towel slung around his neck and the faint scent of exertion clinging to his skin, he had just returned from a brisk morning jog in the hotel fitness center. Dodging his appraising glance, I spread the meal across the center of the bedspread.
"How are you feeling?"
"...Fine, I guess."
"Which means completely miserable. Go get on the massage table later."
The man who had felt like the most comfortable confidant in the world last night had transformed back into a relentless nag this morning, refusing to give his mouth a moment's rest. He pointed out my sallow complexion, asking what kind of nightmare I had suffered this time and demanding I stop hiding things and spit it out. It would have been difficult enough to formulate an honest reply to a deadpan inquiry, but with him playfully poking my forearm every three seconds, there was zero chance of coaxing a word out of me.
"Oh, right. Pedri wanted me to pass along a message."
"What message?"
"Check your damn phone. He said if you don't take care of it before noon, he's barging into our room to snatch it himself."
It made no sense whatsoever. Setting aside the lid of the food container, I pulled over my travel bag and unbuttoned the front pocket. Bringing my phone on an away trip had clearly been an invitation for trouble. The moment I tapped the glass screen awake, a thick barrage of unread notifications stared back at me.
A lively festival of missed calls and urgent texts, all courtesy of Freckles. It had been quite some time since the transfer rumors first hit the Spanish press; apparently, word had only just reached her ears.
Transfer rumors my foot. I silently chided myself for the hasty assumption. How was I supposed to answer? When are you coming back to school?
Pushing past the hesitation, I typed out the blunt, clumsy sentiment and hit send. Pretending not to see her lingering dread and anchoring her thoughts on the future was the only decent thing I could do.
"Look at you. Finally acting like an actual seventeen-year-old."
"……."
"Get on social media once in a while. How many times do I have to tell you?"
"A footballer only needs to be good at football."
"Aish, why do I even bother. I'm hitting the shower first."
"Okay."
Buzz—
The second our pointless banter wrapped up, another message landed in the inbox. That was unnervingly fast. Wondering what bizarre remark she had drummed up now, I looked down at the illuminated glass. My cheek twitched involuntarily.
It was not from Freckles.
It was from someone I could no longer greet with warmth, nor entirely detest. A ghost from my past who felt like family yet had grown as cold and distant as an utter stranger.
Not once had she reached out since I boarded the flight out of South Korea.
In truth, if judged solely by who she was, a message from her should not have triggered such visceral revulsion. My uncle, my aunt, and cousins around my own age—there had been a time in my childhood when I counted down the days on the calendar just to visit my grandmother's home in Wangsimni. But knowing with absolute certainty that this tied back to my mother turned any potential fondness into an icy crawl along my skin. It was an ambush. A thoroughly insolent raid on my peace of mind.
My appetite vanished in an instant, in the most literal sense of the phrase. Putting down the fork, I took a few shallow gulps of water instead. With barely any fuel resting in my stomach, the acid began gnawing at the lining, demanding more, but eating felt entirely inconsequential now.
Hiss—
Right on cue, the muffled rush of the bathroom shower played in the background, coating both mind and body in a heavy, damp fog. It had all been too quiet lately, hadn't it? Life, it seemed, was busy packaging another bundle of trials just for me.
"Ah……."
"Eyee—!!"
"Opening goal to number 19 for La Real—!"
"Isak—!!"
Las Palmas's 4-4-1-1 formation, designed to park two rigid buses across the back, had crumbled into jagged pieces almost before the opening whistle finished echoing. In a match where Castro's veteran holdup play up front was paramount, none of it was penetrating my thoughts. I was still turning over my grandmother's text messages in my head.
Stripped of their polite framing, the subsequent follow-ups boiled down to a single request: could I lend them money? Something about the key-money deposit for an apartment under my mother's name, promising to pay it right back the moment the current tenant vacated the unit.
I could only guess they had reached out after seeing the glossy headlines about my newfound profile. In reality, my substantial wage bump had only been paying out for two months following the contract extension. Thanks to the club's guaranteed net-pay arrangement, the Spanish tax authorities hadn't taken half of it, but two months of wages amounted to roughly eighty million won. While I didn't know the exact figure my grandmother was demanding, it would fall drastically short of covering an entire apartment lease deposit in Seoul.
Naturally, I had no desire to entertain such an absurd extortion. Yet an ugly dread gnawed at me: if I refused, what kind of chaotic tantrum would they unleash back home?
"The midfield is getting completely overrun."
"Their transitions are terrifyingly sharp. I've got a bad feeling about today."
Aythami Artiles and Kirian Rodríguez muttered grim assessments from the bench, but the words merely buzzed around the outside of my ears without sinking in. No matter how hard I racked my brain, there was nobody I could turn to for advice.
I couldn't burden Castro. I had already leaned on him far too much; I didn't want to become the squad's resident poster child for teenage angst by unspooling yet another messy domestic crisis. Bringing it up to Uncle Bari was an equally terrible idea, since every single syllable would be relayed straight to my father. The man cared about me entirely too much. When it came to delicate family entanglements, his protective nature made him the wrong person to consult.
What about speaking directly to my dad? I would honestly rather take a dump right on my own mattress than initiate a conversation with him about my mother. Just picturing the fallout made my brain short-circuit in horror. It was a realm that nostalgic remnants of childhood affection simply could not patch over. I couldn't do it. Not in a million years.
"...Kim, Kim!!"
"Huh?"
Assistant Coach Roberto Ríos's sharp voice snapped the tether on my spiraling thoughts, tearing through the headache.
"How are the legs? Can you play today?"
"...Yes. Of course."
Despite the morning massage, my muscles were wound like overtightened guitar strings. Even so, the words 'I'm not ready' refused to form. How would that look to the dressing room? After throwing the entire club into turmoil over transfer speculation, begging off a match would be the height of shamelessness.
"Good. We're assessing how the flow develops, but you might be thrown on as early as the start of the second half. Stay loose and be ready."
I'd be fine. I pushed the physical warning signs deep into the background. When the manager told you to run, you ran.
"Castro's going to cry his eyes out. Hooked after just forty-five minutes?"
"……."
"Haha, they'll probably reshuffle the shape."
"True. They might slot Kim in behind the striker."
Rodríguez and Aythami Artiles tossed remarks back and forth with exaggerated nonchalance, clearly mindful of my mood. Perhaps because I had been sinking into a gloomy funk since dawn, their banter barely registered. Anxious foreboding was always the best antidote for minor petty irritations.
As I stepped out toward the touchline to begin warming up, the hostility from the stands cascaded down.
"Booo—!"
"Too chicken to show your face until now?"
"Go beg for pocket change from the Culés!"
Harsh words, considering I was still subsisting on the paychecks paid by Las Palmas supporters. Then again, if a transfer actually went through, the home stadium capacity would swell by over sixty thousand seats. By their logic, begging would indeed turn into quite a lucrative trade. If every fan tossed in a hundred won, that was six million won extra per match.
...Damn it. Even cynical mental arithmetic couldn't lift the fog off my spirits.
The halftime dressing room was a morgue.
Looking back across those forty-five minutes, Las Palmas had served itself up as the main course on Real Sociedad's dining table. Possession had split sixty-six to thirty-four, and the shot count was splayed wide enough to make a premier ballerino blush. Escaping with only two goals conceded felt like an undeserved miracle.
"Frankly speaking, there is only one problem: we aren't focused on the match."
"……."
"Look at our defensive phases. I instructed you to prioritize denying space, not to turn into statues occupying coordinate points on the grass! What on earth is the point of four midfielders lining up shoulder-to-shoulder if not a single one applies pressure?"
In the heavy stillness, Pepe Mel's reprimand cut like a razor.
"You expect your teammate to bail you out? Then each of you needs to take that proactive step first to earn the outcome! The match metrics... I don't give a damn about the rest. Possession? Shot counts? We are on the road against a top side; that happens. But you absolute fools, look at the running distance! Look at the work rate!!"
Crash—!
Unable to contain his fury, a sweep of his hand sent the tactical board's magnets scattering across the floor like hard rain.
"Are you already planning for your pensions? Should I hand out walking sticks to the lot of you? Displays like this won't earn you a pension, let alone a day's wages! Why did you travel all this way just to drag your feet?"
"……."
"Yes, matches get ugly. Passes go astray, and some days clear chances refuse to materialize. The coaching staff may have plenty of shortcomings, but this squad has never lacked passion and heart!"
His burning gaze scanned the perimeter of the room, singling out players one by one.
"...Mantovani, Ramírez, all of you. Play like grown men. If we are going to go down, do not humiliate the supporters who made the journey to back us! Prove to yourselves that you are leaving everything on that pitch!! Understood? Do you understand me?!"
"¡Sí!"
The whistle blew for the second half.
Las Palmas moved with far more urgency, but the trajectory of the contest only accelerated toward catastrophe.
Fifty-eighth minute.
Left wing-back Ramírez sent a horribly irresponsible backpass toward central defender Mantovani. Given the distance between them, both the weight and trajectory were atrocious. Hovering just outside the penalty box, Real Sociedad's center-forward seized upon the mistake without hesitation.
The ball clipped the outer edge of Mantovani's right boot, spilling into a lethal pocket of open space... and Alexander Isak looked poised to round through on a clean one-on-one with the keeper. He would have, too, had he not been dragged down from behind.
Whistle—!
"Woo—!"
"Eyee—!!"
Roars of triumph and furious jeers collided across the stadium. The referee reached into his breast pocket without a second's hesitation and produced a straight red card.
Mantovani. A defender built with the unyielding talons of an owl could never stomach watching an attacker breeze past him into goal, even if the price of stopping him was his own dismissal.
"Kim—!"
With Pepe Mel squeezing his eyes shut in sheer exasperation, Assistant Coach Roberto Ríos bellowed my name down the touchline.