Sky and Earth (3)
Let's give credit where credit is due, and move on.
Gentle comfort was never something I knew how to manage.
When I stopped dead in front of him, Aythami—sensing my presence—swept the towel off the crown of his head. Before our eyes could meet, I opened my mouth in my usual curt tone.
"That trick doesn't really work, you know."
"...What?"
"I've tried the towel-over-the-head thing myself. It's not a great method."
While countless stares needled my back, I turned over a small regret in my mind. If there was going to be a "next time," I decided I had better check whether there was a free seat before walking over. Standing awkwardly at the edge of the locker room, it turned out, was an exceptionally stupid choice.
"I know how ridiculous I sound, but I'm saying this from plenty of experience in the second team."
"I didn't think it was funny."
Sure he didn't.
"What are you going to do now?"
"..."
"Personally? Unless you're planning to slip away in a substitution, I'd like you to run your heart out."
Aythami kept his mouth pressed shut and offered no reply of any kind. Had he so much as looked choked up, I'd have counted myself lucky—at least a scrap of his stubbornness would have survived.
As it was, the listlessness on him felt less like disappointment than like cause for worry.
What do I do? What on earth could I say to put the fight back into him?
"They say effort gets you halfway with anything."
"...So it's confirmed I'm not even making it halfway?"
"..."
Right before my eyes, Aythami's face warped violently. His eyebrows twisted in opposite directions, and his eyes brimmed with sheer disbelief.
Hm. That had been a spectacularly inappropriate proverb to quote.
"Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you can't play. Over a long season, games like this happen. But going lifeless out there—that's a different problem entirely."
"..."
When stony silence answered me again, worry and irritation surged up at the same time. The Aythami I knew simply wasn't a man who suited gloom.
Where he'd tossed aside the jokes and the fooling around and cast himself as the hero of some tragedy, I couldn't begin to fathom.
Before I knew it, only rough, graceless Spanish was tumbling helplessly out of my mouth.
"...You're not going to say anything? Get angry, then. Yell. Spit a little. You spit plenty on a normal day—why so quiet now?"
"What—when have I ever..."
"Don't relax just because Pepe spoke to you gently. Honestly, if you keep your head bowed like this, you'll be left off the squad list from the next match straight through."
The one mercy was that the players around us, listening in, let out awkward laughs rather than frowning.
Considering my clumsiness, they were probably just taking it with a grain of salt—that had to be it.
Literally speaking, it was only "barely" a mercy.
"...So for your own sake, this is the moment to run 'hard.' Fold up the complicated thoughts and take nothing but the will to endure with you."
"Mm."
"They do say a crisis is just an opportunity. Fight your way through a rough patch, and who knows? Your evaluation might climb. They might even hand you a fatter weekly wage."
"Haha... now that's tempting. But I'm already paid plenty well, you know?"
What a blatant, scarlet lie.
"Your house purchase went sideways, didn't it? A raise would do you good."
"What do you..."
"Almarino? Or was it Almaría?"
Ah. Far, far too late, the shard of memory assembled itself into its complete form.
The Christmas party. Part of the conversation Castro and I had traded in secret, after I'd already spilled everything to Dani Castellano.
"Come here. Come in closer. I'm going to whisper."
The color drained from my face on the spot.
This was not something I was supposed to say.
"...Who told you? Come out with it while I'm still asking nicely."
God, what a dumbass.
"Castro. It was you, wasn't it."
"I swear to heaven, it absolutely wasn't me."
"Pedri."
"No, I didn't even know about it! I swear I had no idea!"
As Aythami's eyes blazed in every direction, the veteran players scrambled to dodge his gaze, faces full of dismay.
It struck me that perhaps, in football alone among sports, spite and obsession might serve better than understanding and remorse.
That glare—so vivid it bordered on murderous—was exactly the excellence I'd been hoping to see.
Damn it, damn it... damn it.
On the walk toward the center circle ahead of the second half, Castro took hold of my right ear and funneled in a gloomy voice.
"Somehow, I don't think I'll live past midnight tonight."
"..."
"And for the record, you've got forty-five minutes left."
"..."
"Enjoy it like it's your last. Got it?"
I did my level best to pretend I hadn't heard a word.
I understood his anger a hundred times over, but the price of a mistake could only be paid once the match was over.
At the very back, Aythami was letting out the roar of a beast (oddly rousing), and I had to be ready to hook that unlooked-for turnaround into my plan.
Twenty minutes, tops.
At the short end, the match would be decided in about ten.
As players from both teams settled into their positions, I gave the area around my knee a couple of light taps.
Today, I meant to use it a little roughly.
Looking back, I don't think I ever went into detail about the limits on my knee.
Back in January. After I'd scored five against Zaragoza and left my knee in tatters, two weeks of recovery followed.
In truth, that was merely the starting point of the "long journey to protect my dogani"—the knee joint Koreans prize enough to simmer into soup.
A footballer's knees are essential consumables, like rolls of toilet paper; you can't simply hoard them forever.
Take, for one, the friendly where I had to go up against Mantovani.
Flores's advice to build a habit of snatching the offbeat wasn't taking at all, and after being caught, cut off, and knocked off the ball one time too many, my patience hit rock bottom.
Furious that normal play simply wasn't possible, I found myself devising a new method whether I liked it or not.
I would shatter—shatter, and shatter again—the rhythm of my ball touches.
The shorter steps raised the difficulty of every touch, but up to four splits or so, I could just about manage.
The ball would then escape clean... while my body went tumbling into thin air.
"Kim! You okay?"
"Yeah."
"Ah. I thought I got there in time. I'm really sorry."
Given the countless whistles that blew afterward, it was plainly nothing to be satisfied with (the coaching staff, eyes rolling back into their skulls, ordered me never to play that way again).
From what I heard later, though, the verdicts held plenty to make the ears prick up.
Mantovani pronounced that in a real match, merely picturing it would be horrifying, while Aythami delivered resounding praise, calling it one of the most vicious things a defender can be put through.
Pepe and assistant head coach Ríos both said the injury risk was far too great and told me never, ever to play that way... but set against the weight of this match, there was nothing to be done.
Right.
It was true that Real Sociedad had played an excellent first half.
Built around the penetrating passes of their number 21—attacking midfielder Martin Ødegaard—they had shredded Aythami's composure to ribbons.
Once the back line felt the burden, the midfield dropped with it. And just like that, Las Palmas's forwards lost their chance to announce themselves.
I meant to reverse that for ten minutes... no.
For exactly fifteen minutes—no more, no less—I planned to turn it squarely on its head.
As if I'd forgotten everything Castro ever taught me, with a mindset more selfish and rotten than at any point in my life.
I would raise Aythami a pillar to lean on, if only for a little while.
And, as a bonus, make up—just a sliver—for my dreadful slip of the tongue.
The second half kicked off with Real Sociedad taking it, at the referee's whistle.
By tremendous good fortune, Aythami's form didn't fall off a cliff. If anything, he was bellowing with pure spite, rallying the squad onward.
Las Palmas's players rose to meet him, boldly shoving their deepest line up the pitch.
In the fourth minute of the half, Aythami launched himself out to the left flank.
A desperate bid to smother the cross.
Thwack!
Slow to react, but he forced his face into the ball's path all the same.
"Yes!!"
"Well done!"
Goalkeeper Valles and Lemos, the center-back partnering him, burst out their praise, but Aythami gave no reply—only his eyes kept burning toward the front.
"He's definitely staring at me."
"..."
"I'm dead. Genuinely dead."
"...I'll deal with you separately. Focus on the match."
Castro kept up his muttering even as he shifted to a spot below the halfway line for the corner.
On the ensuing corner, Valles suddenly soared up among the players of both teams.
Bang!
The ball he smashed clear flew far downfield, toward the left flank of Las Palmas's half just inside the halfway line.
Blue shirts and yellow shirts fought a fierce battle for position, but Las Palmas's superior touch on the ball claimed the attacking initiative.
"Play it here!"
Even against Castro's half-beat-early demand for the ball, Pedri didn't rush, swiveling his body with room to spare.
He knew how to turn the fact that the opposing midfielder had already read the passing lane into a weapon.
By the time two of our attackers had played their way past the halfway line on tidy dribbling and one-twos, I came tearing up from the second line, a holding midfielder clinging to my back. Factoring in the move after this one, I had to carry a pace that felt a shade excessive.
"Pedri!"
Tap!
From a spot nearer the arc of the center circle than the second line, Pedri's pass came trundling in over the grass.
To break the defensive line, I had to enter the danger zone—and to enter the danger zone, the natural order of things was to shed the holding midfielder stuck to my back first.
I wove together the direction my shirt was being hauled, the sound of his breathing, and the positions of the opponents I'd clocked on the run, and completed the picture in my head.
My left shoulder was being dragged the other way, so spinning left was the sound call.
And once I added the midfielder eight steps behind... I'd best turn the ball inside three steps or so.
A far simpler equation than the first half's.
At once, I drove the maximum load through my thigh and knee.
A 180-degree change of direction I wouldn't even have contemplated on a normal day.
Crunch!
My studs bit deep into the grass, and I used the rebound to swing my body through the rotation.
The moment my shoulder was halfway around, momentum pried the holding midfielder's grip loose.
Then, just as I lifted my foot to finish the pivot—
A forearm from behind suddenly coiled around my waist.
Unfortunately, a hold this brazen left no way to fight free. Without resisting his strength, I went down just as I was.