I Only Dreamed a Sweet Dream (2)
Knees, shoulder joints, fingers down to the tips of my toes. I checked the condition of my muscles one by one — my own private ritual, the origins of which I could barely remember anymore.
Unlike usual, discomfort nagged at me from all over my body.
I kneaded at the spots that felt off a few times. It was like trying to work out lumps in a bowl of grain porridge that had gone sticky and clumped.
"…Kim, Kim!"
"Yeah."
"What's wrong with you today? You can't focus at all. Something wrong with your body?"
"No. I was just thinking about how I should run."
Head coach Ríos studied my eyes intently, but the referee, who had just been given the substitution signal, was already looking toward the player coming on.
Beep—!
The moment the whistle blew, Castro came jogging toward the sideline.
He ruffled the back of my head a couple of times, then whispered the intel on their defenders.
"Their back line is sharp. The six holds the defensive line, and the twenty-four's the one who gets physical and sticks to you. The center-backs work well off each other too, so they won't be easy to break down."
"Got it."
"Right… go do your thing."
I pulled air deep into the bottom of my lungs. It was time to forget whatever was cluttering my head and focus on the match.
Number 24, the man Castro had warned me about — Robin Le Normand — pressed in at my side, chattering away nonstop.
The mix of slang and French in his patter got under my skin. At best, I could make out a third of what he was saying.
"Don't look at me like that, you piece of—. Just keep your head down and go home quietly."
"……"
"I'm on a different level from the rest of these guys. I'll let the ball go — but I never lose the man."
He clipped his words so heavily that beyond that, I simply couldn't follow.
"Drop the line!"
Then a defender's roar rose from the Las Palmas end. It was Aythami, who had come on in place of the attacking midfielder Nicolás.
Playing a man down, we had handed over complete control of the game, so the intent was clear: curl the line backward and prevent any further damage.
Inevitably, the opposing midfielders began to luxuriate in all that newly widened space.
Three minutes. Five. Seven.
Las Palmas frittered the time away, helpless.
The midfielders had retreated all the way to the edge of the penalty box, which meant even when the opposition made a mistake, we couldn't win the ball back.
If only they could knock it down to a designated spot — but neither Kurvelo nor Aythami looked to have a moment's breathing room.
All we could do was shuffle along in listless loops, trailing the passing veins of Real Sociedad like a shadow.
Thud—
Without warning, a forearm crushed down on mine and my head snapped around.
A pale face, flushed cheeks — with no ball anywhere near us, Robin Le Normand had committed his little act of insolence.
I shook his fingers off with just enough force to make the point.
"Bored, are you?"
"……"
"Did what I said earlier sting a little?"
"……"
"I didn't mean any harm by it, so don't take it too much to heart. But honestly, your head's already elsewhere, isn't it? You're just going through the motions so you can hurry off to Barcelona. Great club, that."
I wanted to stuff his smirking mouth full of turf.
"You'll be on a hefty wage, sure, but you have to weigh the boost to your reputation too. Think about it. Imagine how happy your family'll—"
The moment Le Normand registered the change of possession between the two teams, his mouth snapped shut.
Because Aythami's clearance out of the box had passed through Javi Castellano and was now rolling toward Pedri on the left flank.
Five defenders, two attackers up front.
Pedri had received the ball just below the halfway line (in truth, closer to the penalty box), so for the attack to develop safely, I needed to drop down and offer support.
But reality had a way of… refusing to oblige.
Before I knew it, three defenders had closed in around him, sealing off every passing lane. And turning sharply to drive into the space in front wasn't a clean option either.
Even if Pedri somehow wriggled free and picked up speed, the opposing midfielder closing in from behind would be certain to cut off his pass.
"Ngh—!"
Worse still, Le Normand had latched onto our striker, strangling his pace. Shoving and kicking when the referee wasn't looking did nothing, and neither did a sudden stop-and-turn.
The instant he tried to relocate a second time, the referee's whistle pierced the air.
Beep—!
Pedri hadn't even made it to the halfway line before an opposing midfielder's sliding tackle brought him down. Bewilderment hit first; the frustration of the smothered attack came a beat behind.
What did I just do?
I understood the problem immediately. Only after the duel ended did the mistakes come crashing into my head, one by one.
He should have used the direction and position where the striker was held — dragged the play so the defender's elbow joint took the strain.
Instead, I had moved on instinct alone, without the slightest thought for what the defender might do.
When would the next counterattack even come? Five minutes? I might as well have dumped ten into the trash bin.
…I wasn't focusing properly at all.
Before I knew it, we were in the twenty-fourth minute of the second half.
Real Sociedad, built around number 21 — Martin Ødegaard — was now dismantling Las Palmas with an elegance that bordered on contempt.
Scarcely had the whistle finished than their left winger had our defense twisted in knots.
He settled on the outer edge of the penalty box, flicking his feet left and right, layering feint upon feint.
Fortunately, Kurvelo and Javi Castellano held their nerve, narrowing only the shooting angle and refusing to bite.
Before long, the attacker, having given up on the dribble, rolled a pass toward the arc of the penalty box.
Ah—
A groan tore out of me, becoming one with the sighs of hundreds of traveling fans in yellow.
Real Sociedad's left-sided central midfielder had faked a shot and let the ball slip clean between his own legs.
The shooting lane stood open, gleaming.
On the far side, the waiting central midfielder loaded his weight onto his plant foot.
BOOM—!
My eyes squeezed shut on their own. The official Copa del Rey ball drove down on the left side of the net along a merciless, unforgiving arc.
Three to nothing.
"Eyee—!"
[Donostia — the pride of Real Sociedad! The white-and-blue number twenty-one!]
"Ødegaard—!!"
This season, Las Palmas had never once conceded three goals in a match.
Could we come back from this?
Thinking of the second leg at Gran Canaria, we ought to be banking as many away goals as possible — under the away-goals rule, when the aggregate score is level, the team with more goals on the road takes the tie.
But the second leg wasn't until early March.
Once again Barcelona rose unbidden in my head, and my focus began to fray. I needed to be in this match, and all I could do was bear witness to the wretched thing festering inside me.
"Haha, there it is again."
"……"
"Once you make the move, let's link up properly."
"Shut up."
The words were out of my mouth before I regretted them. Achieving nothing, snapping at everything — the sight of me was ugly beyond words.
Maybe what made me angrier still was how hard it was to deny that I was being swayed by that damn chatterbox's sorcery.
"Whoa— I get that nothing's going your way, but don't take it out on me. None of this is my fault, is it?"
He picked nothing but true things to say. From start to finish, every last mistake was mine.
I had turned into an idiot blown sideways by an unsolicited transfer offer — one who could no longer answer the match in front of him or the manager's faith. I had climbed onto the stage unprepared and careless.
"White and blue~ oh, white and blue ones~"
"Forever, ever precious~"
"Donostia, Donostia—!!"
And somewhere in the chant, my emotions — determined to restore some balance to my heart — began summoning excuses I had no right to accept.
The texts from my grandmother and my mother.
Stella Parker. And Pedri.
Castro, and… the people who had offered me their kindness.
It's only natural to feel stressed, they said. Anyone might feel guilty over a transfer. Nonsense that meant nothing to anyone.
There was no such thing.
Watching the world as clumsily as I had, I had learned one thing: nothing in it came guaranteed.
I'm the one who changed.
I had soaked in a sweet everyday comfort and forgotten what it meant to want something desperately, to be starving for it.
"Your face is terrifying right now, you know that?"
"……"
"Relax a little. Your mom would be sad if she saw you, haha."
So that's what it looks like.
Only then did I grasp the problem, and I held my posture steadier than ever — because I had a guest to receive, one crawling up through the cracks of my reason.
A creature that preferred reproach to consolation. The very bedrock of my mind — the true friend who had kept pace with me all these years.
"I don't have a mom."
Confusion flickered across his face — and in exact opposition, satisfaction welled up inside me.
As ever, malice worked far better than goodwill.
The match resumed.
I stretched my range and began tearing all over the pitch.
Most of it was born of spite — but with every meter I covered, my mind felt a little lighter, as if the distance itself were setting it free.
The bench shouted something at me, but the clumsy, half-formed focus that had crept back cleared the obstacle away.
I wasn't going to see the ball anyway, so what harm was there in running a bit more? My knee, and everything else — they had nowhere better to be.
Once to the far left touchline, the next time all the way into the deep central zone in front of the penalty box. I tried to chase the ball wherever it went.
Then, in a flash, an opposing midfielder threaded a through-ball into the right side of the box.
I didn't hesitate — I threw myself into a slide along the pass's trajectory. There was a faint tick of a deflection, though not enough to change the ball's direction.
At a forty-five-degree angle to goal, a Real Sociedad attacker was handed his scoring chance.
Thwack—!
"Aaah!"
The ball off his left foot went tumbling harmlessly out of play. The keeper's save had kept Las Palmas's throat — barely — intact.
Four to nothing. I couldn't bear to even imagine it.
"Kim. You don't have to drop this deep. Wait up top — I'll get you the ball, I promise."
While the corner kick was being set up, Íñigo came over and spoke to me with a tight, solemn expression.
I had to keep the attacking situation in mind too, so I gave him nothing but a nod and pushed forward.
A glance at the scoreboard — somehow it was already the thirty-third minute of the second half.
Íñigo kept his promise around the thirty-sixth.
Once the corner had come and gone, Real Sociedad burned all three of their remaining substitutions, hunting for a change of fortune.
In the churn of it, their high press loosened.
"Pass!"
Íñigo, taking the ball from Aythami, set off forward through a one-two with Javi Castellano.
Since punching clean through the crowded center would be difficult, I resolved to drop into the second line — or beneath it.
Whether he'd been tipped off in advance or not, Le Normand cast off his center-back's position and glued himself to my back.
I forced myself to think the way I always did.
Mapping a route to slip between the opposing central midfielders, hunting for a pocket of space outside Le Normand's defensive reach.
I circled the anchor of their shape — the defensive midfielder in number 5 — tracing arcs around him.
My body was sluggish, but the opposing midfielders were running on half-empty batteries, and their dulled reactions paid me small dividends.
Le Normand's line of movement collided with the holding midfielder's, and both men hesitated for a heartbeat.
Íñigo seized the opening without mercy and slid the ball through the legs of the Sociedad player blocking his path.
I took my first touch with my left foot.
How many minutes had it been since I came on? I couldn't even calculate. One man short was one thing — but this was beyond terrible. The word didn't cover it.
CRACK—!!
Joy lasted only an instant. My right shin was swept away before I knew it.
The physical impact was beyond anything I could absorb — keeping my balance was all but impossible.
"Kim!!"