Sky and Earth (5)
Step—
A single backward step from Igor Zubeldia peeled open the paths to his left and right at once, laying both routes bare.
It was an instinctive reaction, one that mirrored the state of his opponent's mind, and it told me everything I needed to know: no half-measures, no ambiguous feints would work here.
All that remained was to add one more sliver of acceleration to my body.
Two steps of distance became one, then half a step. I had reached the point where he could no longer react in time, and only then did I shift the ball's position a touch — from the center of my left instep out toward its outer edge. My center of gravity and my dribbling direction inevitably swung left.
The moment my path was fixed, Igor's shoulder and hip turned to follow — too late, and for nothing. The hand reaching for my shoulder was smothered by the speed, and the footsteps chasing after it were heavy but sluggish.
Before I even took my third step, the left-sided center-back appeared in full in my field of vision.
"Igor! Don't!"
A split second later, the center-back's shrill scream ripped through the air. He hadn't been able to see what Igor was doing — the man had slipped out of his sight — but he could guess at least this much: that a tackle was coming.
Thud—!
Sure enough, a dull impact slammed into the area around my right knee. As my legs tangled and I went sprawling across the grass, relief and absurdity washed over me in equal measure. Earning a free kick right at the edge of the penalty box wasn't a bad outcome, but a shin rolling up over my knee… the tackle was beyond clumsy — it was flat-out ignorant.
The referee's whistle was buried under Castro's stream of curses, drowned out entirely, and all that rang loud and clear was the crowd's chorus of boos. Pedri and Ramírez came sprinting in, and just as the commotion was swelling, I was carefully trying to untangle our knotted legs when Igor, sprawled beside me, spat out a low curse.
The head referee had come alongside him and was gesturing for him to get up.
Everyone in the stadium seemed to sense what was about to happen, the noise splitting into celebration and protest at once. Moments later, two cards slid out of the referee's breast pocket and hip pocket.
One was yellow. The other, red.
Before Igor Zubeldia had even managed to rise.
Once the chaos settled, the match resumed — eleven against ten. Pedri took charge of the free kick from twenty meters out, just beyond the penalty box.
Boom—!
Curled with the inside of his right foot, the ball grazed the center-back's head and bent toward the left side of the goal.
"Eyee-!!"
The defensive wall blocked my view of it, but the roar of the crowd and the stadium announcer's voice told me everything about how the free kick had ended.
The score stood at 3–2, and on aggregate it was now 5–5 — dead even.
"Kim. Kim."
"Huh? What?"
"…I asked how your muscles are feeling."
"Oh. I'm fine."
At my halfhearted answer, Dr. Bolaños, our team physician, abruptly knitted his brows.
"Focus on your body right now. You just took a dangerous tackle."
"I know."
"Do you see the coach glaring at you from over there?"
"Yeah."
"It's not just about you getting fouled. There's real concern about your reckless movement out there too."
I gave no particular reply, just watched the Las Palmas players celebrating behind the goal near the corner flag. Pedri was bouncing up and down, savoring his first Copa del Rey goal.
I understood how Pepe felt, but… surely the result of the match mattered more right now.
"Of course, as a coach, I can't exactly tell a player to take it easy out there."
"……"
"But I'm not just any coach. From the look of things, this is only going to get rougher. You'd be wise to set your own upper limit and play within it."
I didn't accept it deep down, not entirely, but I nodded anyway and gave Bolaños the answer he wanted.
"Okay. I'll be careful from now on."
"…Good."
Making an enemy of the team's physician would have been a foolish move, after all.
After Igor's dismissal, Real Sociedad had pulled their defensive line far back. Short of the occasional limited counterattack, they had conceded that they were under siege.
Las Palmas, by contrast, was luxuriating in space from the back line through midfield. The center-backs, Lemos and Aythami, strolled up near the halfway line at will, and even Íñigo pushed into the second band and beyond often enough to join the attack.
Thanks to that, in the 26th, 29th, and 35th minutes of the second half, I was running free through the yawning gaps on the right flank.
I did run up against the resistance of Real Sociedad's right back, Nacho Monreal — but after drawing a foul in the 26th and a verbal warning in the 29th, he showed his first real signs of shrinking at the 35-minute mark.
"Merino! Le Normand! Cover!"
Three steps off the right edge of the penalty box, Nacho Monreal called for help from his teammates. But the awkward defensive midfielder Merino was too busy dealing with Ramírez on the right wing, and the center-back Le Normand had his hands full with Castro.
Which meant the one-on-one between attacker and fullback stayed exactly as it was.
The instant I finished reading the situation, I closed the gap to within a step. Nacho Monreal scrambled back in a skewed, crablike retreat.
Had he been a slow-legged player, I could have simply burst past him, but Nacho Monreal's strength was his quick feet. Better to disrupt his balance first, then commit.
So I moved my left elbow by a fraction while scraping the surface of the ball with my right foot, bleeding off my dribbling speed — a false signal that I intended to cut inside toward the near post.
"Khh."
As I forced two or three more backward steps out of him, the white line of the penalty box came into view.
Which way should I break out? Going right made it easy to find a shooting chance, but the angle would be tight. Going left meant cutting through the central area — a wider angle, but the center-back would come flying in.
"Pass!"
The very moment I was about to decide, Castro burst outward from inside the penalty box and bellowed for the ball.
What?
He was asking for it in a position where, by any reckoning, a decent shot was hard to imagine. Either he saw something I didn't, or he was simply starved for a goal — that was all I could guess.
Then Castro's eyes fixed on a spot below his own feet — no, on the open ground a touch in front of it.
In that instant, my striker's instinct reconstructed the picture Castro was drawing. Slim as it was, I could see an estimate that just barely made a shooting angle possible.
Tap—!
I rolled the ball toward Castro without much agonizing. Right after, I twisted my shoulder by the smallest degree — if I was going left, I needed Nacho Monreal to doubt himself about another burst down the right one more time. At the same instant I maxed out the output of my thigh. Inside the penalty box, the ball Castro had nudged gently away was waiting, desperate to be struck.
Two and a half steps to the shooting point.
When Nacho Monreal failed to grab my shirt, the right-sided center-back spun his hands behind his back and simply blocked the spot where he expected the shot to travel. Le Normand, the left center-back, was held up — no, bought time for me — by Castro.
I checked where the shot would happen and where the goal sat, then drove the studs grown into my right sole deep into the grass. As my arms swung to hold my balance, I had to finish the pendulum of my left leg.
Keep it simple. Keep it clean.
Pang—!
The ball, pushed away by my left instep, swam through the air carrying just the right pace and curve — the exact measure needed to slip past the wall and stay beyond the keeper's outstretched hand.
And then, in the top-left corner, from the yellow netting tucked against the goal frame, came a sound like chain mail shuddering. Or maybe, in part, it was the roar of the crowd that had already begun to scream before the ball arrived.
"EYEE-!!"
"That's us! We're going to the final, dammit!!"
"WOOOAAAH—!!"
Honestly… a bunch of rich idiots. I told you not to throw your scarves.
The moment I folded away my private commentary, I made my way toward Castro, flattened on the grass.
"You okay?"
"…You monstrous bastard."
"……"
"You shoot, it goes in."
He grabbed my hand and hauled himself up, grumbling without pause. The heart of his complaint was that he was the only one losing out here.
"Ugh, when am I ever going to score?"
"Next time—"
"You've got less than ten minutes left to live, and you're saying next time?"
Having reduced me to a mute with a mouthful of honey, Castro chuckled away, looking pleased as could be.
"That makes two."
"Two what?"
"Two debts."
"……"
"If you survive after this match, pay them back."
A moment later, Pedri came vaulting onto my back, cutting the absurd conversation short. Amid the unceasing roar, the Las Palmas squad came flooding in from every direction, and for how long did they take turns ruffling my hair, my uniform, the back of my head, all under the pretext of celebrating?
A broad shoulder blocked my view ahead. When I lifted my head, I saw heavy dark eyebrows and nostrils flared toward the sky.
Aythami.
I dodged his eyeballs with practiced speed and shifted my gaze to the sparse thicket of nose hair just below.
True, a teammate had scored, so it would have been stranger if he hadn't come over. Anyway, he had come, and if anything I seemed less angry than I'd expected… or maybe not. I couldn't tell.
Should I apologize now?
But the score was still 4–2. One more goal conceded and, under the away-goals rule, we'd need to score two. Then again, putting it off until the final whistle made me feel like a pathetic human being, and that sat just as uneasily in my chest.
Before my thoughts could settle, the lips and philtrum in front of me began to tremble. For reasons I couldn't fathom, Aythami burst into an awkward laugh.
"Kim, you really are… hilarious. Such a rotten personality, and yet you can't manage your expressions to save your life."
The word hilarious left me genuinely unsure. It occurred to me, briefly, how pathetic it was to hope it had been a compliment.
Just then, a palm the size of a pot lid came down over my head.
"Let's call today water under the bridge. Though it's true you got shaken awake because of it."
"…Really? It's fine?"
"If you weren't a minor, I'd have given you a proper earful — but you do have a guardian, don't you? Take it up with your guardian."
As the head referee gestured for the players to restart the match, I tried to work out whether Aythami meant my actual father by guardian — or Castro.
"Besides, I have a feeling you'd catch hell from someone else even without me."
"…Why?"
Aythami's hand pointed toward the Las Palmas bench. There was Bolaños shaking his head, fitness coach Juan Naranjo grinding his molars, and Pepe hollering at the top of his lungs.
"…Somebody tell that damn kid—!! Hey! He's playing one match today and that's it—!!"
I see.
So I'd made an enemy of the team doctor.
March 6, 2020. Copa del Rey semifinal, full time.
UD Las Palmas 5:2 Real Sociedad
88' Ruben Castro (PK)