Proof (2)
Training resumed after only a short break.
What had looked set to drag on all day wrapped up surprisingly fast once the chemistry started clicking into place. Had it not, they would have been out there another hour at least.
Even so, the schedule was not finished. In the locker room they ran through a light briefing on the upcoming friendly, and for that stretch the atmosphere turned thoroughly serious.
"Aigoo…"
After a long day of training, I came home completely spent and collapsed face-down on the living room sofa. My whole body ached. The mere idea of moving felt repulsive.
Might as well check my phone.
I had nothing particular I wanted to do, but staring at a screen still beat lying there like a corpse. I typed my own name into the search bar.
Lee Eunho must have finished handling things at lightning speed, because a string of negative articles about me had already gone up. They were not forced hit pieces either — pure, straightforward criticism that kept circling back to my age.
Hmm. Nice. Wonder what people are saying on social media.
In my previous life I had only ever used SNS to keep in touch with friends, so this kind of attention was a first. I was still human; of course the sudden interest got to me a little.
I followed a few close acquaintances first, then opened my own posts to check the reactions. Three videos combined for over ten million views, more than a hundred thousand likes, and over ten thousand comments — it was dizzying and, at the same time, genuinely good. The algorithm had clearly picked them up; views, likes, and comments were climbing in real time right in front of me.
Let's see… "Baek Yujin is a striker who can only trap the ball? All flash, no substance?"
And more of the same: without a pass he can do nothing; it only works because he has an outstanding passer; he could never pull that off on another team. Mixed in with the negativity were a few crude insults, and even some directed at my friends.
A lot of foreigners, too.
My clips had clearly reached overseas. Comments in other languages were piling up, and those leaned far more positive than negative. Who is this guy? Is he really Korean? I want to see that skill in an actual match. Is he on Korea's U20? — that sort of thing.
Maybe I was only looking at the good ones, but people are wired to see what they want to see.
I kept scrolling, and a few comments stood out far too sharply.
…That one actually stings a little.
It was obvious these people had never watched me play a single minute. If they had, they would never claim I only knew how to trap the ball. They would never call it a friend carry.
"…"
Of all the thousands of comments, I had no idea why these were the ones that caught my eye. Why were people so obsessed with other people's success — and so determined to hate it?
They had to know a careless remark could wound someone. And they still typed it out without a second thought.
"…Tch."
Still, getting cursed out was nothing new. In my previous life, working at a company, I had already eaten every insult there was to eat. None of it really registered anymore.
Footsteps sounded behind me.
"Yujin."
"…Huh? Noona?"
It was Jia.
"When did you get here?"
"Just now. I rang the bell and you didn't open, so I let myself in."
"Ah."
I must have missed it while buried in social media. I had given her the door code, so it was nothing strange.
Jia came closer and stared straight at my phone screen.
"That's…"
"It's nothing."
"Nothing, my foot. Why are you deliberately reading hate comments?"
I scrambled to cover the screen, but she had clearly already seen everything. She sat on the edge of the sofa and opened her arms as if to say, come here.
"I'll hold you."
"Can't you just lie down next to me instead?"
"Fine."
I shifted a little, and instead of settling beside me she draped her upper body right over mine. One hand stroked my hair; the other kneaded along my body like a massage.
"…I'm really fine, you know."
"But it still feels good, right?"
"…Yeah. It does."
How could anyone dislike having their girlfriend sad on their behalf, comforting them? Anyone who knew the reason would also know it was just a little dangerous, that was all.
After a while she met my eyes and spoke.
"Yujin."
"Hm? What is it?"
"Should I sue every last one of them?"
Where had that bloodthirsty idea come from all of a sudden?
"No. You don't need to do that."
"Why not?"
"Well… because I'm going to make praise for me come out of their mouths."
My plan was simple. One friendly match — and I would turn the dozens, hundreds, thousands of people who had left hate comments into people who liked me. Into fans.
I just have to play well.
All I needed was to prove I belonged on the U20 team. Fail, and I would eat more than double the hate I was getting now. Succeed, and I would be a hero, wouldn't I?
A documentary was already writing itself.
The friendly against France U20 would be played in Seoul, South Korea.
We trained and analyzed every single day for this one match.
It really is that important.
From the manager's perspective and from ours, it carried real weight. One of the players — me — was still getting dragged online, and the man who had called me up was Manager Lee Ganghyeon. Lose, and it would be hard for either of us to hold our heads up. I did not have the kind of iron face that could stay unbothered under even more hate than this.
When I arrived at the stadium, I looked around at the packed stands. It felt as if every single person was staring at me.
"Yujin, you nervous?"
"Not really."
"Yeah? Good, then."
I truly did not feel that heart-squeezing kind of tension. I simply was not entertaining the idea that I might fail. I trusted my own ability. If we were ranking nerves, the night in my previous life when I came home late and drunk after getting married, without so much as a text, had been far worse.
"But aren't you getting cursed out way too much?"
"Think of it as me eating the hate I was going to get in the future ahead of schedule."
He was worried because I was taking heat that should have been his too, but my head was fine — and honestly, I felt a little guilty. My friends were originally supposed to make the U20 two years from now. Because of me, they had already been called up and were catching flak for it.
Well, they probably aren't thinking about it that way.
Their heads were almost certainly full of how to help me play better, not fretting over mistakes. So the guilt was mine alone.
"Man, look at those French guys' builds. One collision and you're flying."
I heard Seong Yumin mutter that while we were warming up and turned my head to look at the French players doing the same. Among them, only one face was familiar.
Raphael Pierre — rated as the next-generation football prospect. In my previous life he had climbed high enough in the Ballon d'Or rankings to prove just how good he was, a central striker with serious quality. As the manager had said, his speed was exceptional, so the key was never giving him open space.
Warm-ups finished. Match time. While everyone else peeled off their training tops and started getting ready, I headed for the bench.
Been a while since I sat on the bench.
I would probably come on in the second half. It irked me a little that every one of my friends was starting while I was not, but the manager had said a player like me from the opening whistle would make the match exhausting for everyone, and there was nothing I could do about that.
I don't know — wouldn't a two-striker setup with Yumin just work?
Even if one of us got marked, the other would be free. Seong Yumin had played as a striker before, so it should have been fine, but I did not say it out loud. I did not really have an objection anyway, so I just switched on a portable fan and quietly watched the pitch.
Our formation was 4-4-1-1 — a fairly aggressive setup, and one you could only run if you trusted your defenders. The fact that Lee Eunho and Lee Ganghyeon had come up with it was both impressive and a little surreal.
I waited in silence, wondering whether everything we had drilled would actually hold up.
Phweeet—!
The match kicked off.
Early in the first half, France's killer passes and Pierre's first touch produced a string of vicious attacks. He was so fast that even Kim Minjun and Do Woojun — both quick in their own right — were suddenly left with open space between them, and clear chances on goal kept appearing. Every time, Lee Juwon made clean saves and proved exactly what he could do.
But even he could not stop every single one forever. If we did not concentrate harder and make finer adjustments to the line, one of those was going to go in. By now, the moment Pierre received the ball as the lone striker, tension spiked on its own.
Of course, we had a star of our own.
"Yumin!!"
Seong Yumin took Han Seonwoo's pass.
Is he going to put it away?
About twenty minutes in — Yumin had almost certainly already read the state of their defense. The same guy who never studied a day in his life analyzed football like that.
As always, he tapped the ball — tap, tap — finding his rhythm. The moment a midfielder closed in, he exploded inside and beat him clean. What filled his vision then was a defender and the goalkeeper.
Yumin deliberately pushed the ball long, inviting the opponent to come. One of them took the bait, lunging in with a stretched leg. If that touch had been stolen, it would not have been deliberate in the first place.
Yumin got there first — a ball roll into a phantom dribble to leave him behind, then two more trailing players shrugged off with nothing more than light inside-outside touches.
He put it away.
Seong Yumin was the type who thrived on attention and never got nervous. In a situation like that, a mistake was almost unthinkable.
"Wooooaaaaaahhhhh!!!!"
The roar alone was enough to tell you the ball was in the net. Yumin sprinted toward the corner flag and shouted.
"Vamos!!"
"…"
The fact that he did not yell "Crack" was the fruit of my hard work. I had talked him into it — if he was going to Barcelona, he would need Spanish anyway — and he had actually bought it.
He proved it.
Seong Yumin had beaten four France U20 players by himself and shown the world he belonged on that stage.
First-half result: 1–0.
South Korea took the lead into the break.