Proof (1)
Three days had passed since the final.
Seongil High had lifted the trophy, and I had claimed the top scorer title over Seong Yumin.
Just thinking about the swarm of reporters, scouts, and managers that had descended on us that day still sent a faint chill down my spine.
There had been so many of them.
According to Lee Eunho, who had volunteered to handle every email related to me, there had even been offers to appear on variety shows.
Well, that was that.
I still had too much on my plate to even consider showing up on television. Maybe if I ever found some free time, I'd think about it.
With the national tournament over, the Seongil High soccer team had entered its off-season. No more competitions on the calendar, and time to spare — the others could finally rest.
I had assumed I'd get to rest like everyone else. But I still had the U20 national team waiting for me.
The school had given its blessing, and Manager Lee Ganghyeon, after meeting with me, had told me to play. So the friendly match coming up in a few weeks was something I needed to prepare for.
The opponent: France.
The match would be held in Korea.
If we lose, the hate's going to be brutal.
A team that loses at home never gets the benefit of the doubt. How had it gone in my past life? I was pretty sure several players had gotten injured in this same friendly, and the abuse had poured in by the bucketload.
Even now, the internet was probably full of nonsense. The manager had all but confirmed my selection — and my friends' — in an interview, so the chatter was inevitable. If I failed to show anything, I'd catch twice the flak of anyone else. Guaranteed.
Which was why, with time on my hands, I wasn't resting. I was out alone, practicing soccer.
It wasn't dull. Soccer was always fun, and with Jia noona's schedule to look forward to, boredom never stood a chance.
Thud—!
I drove a shot into the wall. The ball rebounded, and I trapped it between my toes and shin before settling it on the instep of my foot. From there I ran, volleyed it with the opposite foot, and caught it on my instep again.
I kept going, curious how long I could string it together without letting the ball touch the ground — and before I knew it, Jia noona had arrived.
It felt like about thirty minutes. The ball was still on my foot.
"Yujin."
"You're here?"
"Yeah. But hey."
"What?"
I stood there with the ball balanced on my instep as Jia noona stepped in close and looked up at me. She tilted her head, studying me from that short distance, then held her hand flat above her own head and mine, comparing.
"Yujin, did you get taller?"
"Taller?"
"Yeah. You seem a little bigger."
"Do I?"
Now that she mentioned it, something did feel different.
Did I actually grow?
Before, I'd only needed to tip my chin down a little to meet her eyes. Now I had to tip it a bit more. I'd hit 180 centimeters in my second year of high school and 183 in my third, so a little more growth wasn't out of the question.
"…You did. You got taller. You were cuter when you were small."
Jia noona muttered it under her breath, but we were close enough that I caught every word.
"What, you don't like me tall? I'm going to grow a little more, you know."
"No. I just like you, that's all."
"…"
I'd asked it as a joke. The answer came back casual, almost offhand — a light little sentence that still managed to land right in the center of my chest.
"Oh, right. Yujin."
"…Yeah? What is it?"
"Have you ever thought about doing social media?"
"Social media?"
She was right — I didn't do SNS. In my past life there had been any number of reasons not to, and as a soccer player now, I simply hadn't seen the point.
"Why do you ask?"
"I just thought popularity is a good thing, isn't it?"
"Better than having none, sure."
There was a saying that soccer without fans was just kicking a ball around. Fans were always better to have than not. And social media was one of the ways you built them.
"Then want to try? I'll manage it for you."
"You'll manage it?"
"Yeah. My gallery's full of your videos and photos. We just post short clips of that stuff."
"…I knew about the videos. Photos?"
I knew she filmed every day — I'd seen her do it. Photos were news to me.
…Has she been taking pictures while I sleep?
I was going to have to dig through her gallery one of these days.
"It's nothing."
"…Fine. I'll try SNS."
"Really? Then let's start with what you were just doing."
"Just now? You filmed that too? Isn't that kind of boring, though?"
It was just shooting and trapping. What was interesting about that?
"Yujin. You have no idea how incredible you are. I looked it up — barely anyone in history has been able to pull off skills like that."
"Mm… alright."
And just like that, half in a daze, I made an SNS account and posted three trapping videos.
With no idea what was about to come back at me.
The next day.
I reported for U20 camp and started training alongside the existing squad.
The surprising part was how loud the locker room was. With a friendly so close, I'd expected a more serious atmosphere — but the place was buzzing.
Is that the manager's influence?
Better than everyone sitting around wound tight and silent, at least. The guys who'd arrived earlier seemed to be getting along well enough.
"Oi! Ddolgaeng-i!"
The moment I walked in, Hong Seoin greeted me like an old friend.
"Hey."
True to form, he slung an arm around my shoulders and shoved his phone in my face.
"Ddolgaeng-a, this you?"
"What is it?"
I peered at the screen, wondering what he wanted to show me — and found a familiar SNS page staring back.
"…Four million?"
The video Jia noona and I had casually edited and posted yesterday was sitting at four million views. For something that had been up barely a day, the number was absurd.
…What about the others?
I checked the rest of the videos on the quiet. Three million. Five million.
"So. This is you, right?"
"Uh… yeah. That's me."
"Knew it! Oi! It's Ddolgaeng-i, I told y'all!"
The second I nodded, Hong Seoin bellowed across the locker room like he'd just won a bet. The noisy room went dead quiet, and every head turned toward me.
Nearly twenty pairs of eyes. I felt a little awkward under the attention.
We stood there blinking at each other for about three seconds.
Then — a stampede.
"Yujin, when did you start SNS?"
"Me? I just made it yesterday."
"For real? Check it once."
At Seong Yumin's prompting I unlocked my phone and opened the app — and the notifications hit like a flood. Likes, comments, follows, messages, stacking by the thousands, still pouring in in real time.
What the hell is this.
My mouth fell open.
"Whoa. SNS star, huh?"
Five hundred thousand followers.
…What.
Overnight, I'd become an SNS star.
Fortunately, the brief chaos settled the moment the manager walked in.
"Alright, alright — let's train. We've got a friendly to prepare for."
"Yes, sir!!"
We fell into training naturally, already in our thin training kits. Mostly passing drills to build chemistry, then half-court scrimmages.
And once I was paired with Hong Seoin, the game got almost stupidly easy. All I had to do was move a little and the ball found me. The nickname "Korea's Zidane" wasn't wasted on him at all.
"Hyung, you thinking about going abroad?"
"Yeah."
"Really?"
"Sure. Gotta hit Europe at least once, don't I?"
"…Then why'd you turn down every offer?"
"No gukbap over there, is there."
"…What?"
…That was it?
"Yeah."
"You'd go abroad if there was gukbap?"
"Course I would."
"…Are you serious?"
"I'm always serious. It's soul food, ain't it?"
"…"
Something about the way he said it made it sound like a joke.
They must have figured he wasn't being serious.
All those scouts and managers had probably taken that answer as a polite dodge and never treated it as the real reason.
This hyung's a little weird too.
I'd thought he was normal aside from the dialect. That one line wiped the thought clean off the board.
I was catching my breath during a break when a familiar voice came from behind us.
"Looking good, SNS star."
"…Huh? Mister?"
Lee Eunho had appeared behind us while we rested.
"What are you doing here? And I'm not an SNS star."
"Sure, sure. The manager here asked me to help out with coaching, so I came."
"…You? Weren't you retired?"
"Retired, nothing. It's a break. A break."
He was joking. Obviously.
"Looks like I'll be helping out for about a month."
"Hey, Mister."
"What."
"Is there a lot about me online right now?"
"Hmm… yeah. Plenty."
"Hate comments?"
"I won't lie and say there aren't any. Starting SNS seems to have made them worse, actually."
I didn't need to look to fill in the blanks. They'd be saying I'd lucked or parachuted my way onto the U20 squad and was shamelessly farming clout on social media.
"Then could you write a few posts criticizing me?"
"I could, but… why?"
Lee Eunho tilted his head like he was sure he'd misheard. Fair enough. Asking someone to trash you online wasn't exactly a common request. Nobody enjoyed that.
"So people look at me even worse. A redemption arc hits harder when the fall is public."
"Well… alright. If that's what you want."
"Thanks."
I was going to have to prove who I was either way. Better to take the hate first and become the hero who rose out of the chaos, wasn't it?
If it went according to plan, it would be perfect.