Frenzied Reactions
The U20 friendly held in Seoul, South Korea.
The opponent: France.
Pulling off that extraordinary trapping and scoring in a match like that meant one thing only — pure skill.
Every post on social media, every article about Baek Yujin's play — all of it.
Naturally, Baek Yujin's SNS and every football community online went completely haywire in real time while the match was still underway.
First, the comments under his most recent social media post:
The negative comments had mostly vanished. What remained was pure praise.
Even a few French fans left comments admitting he was the real deal.
But some of the community posts and articles were even more spectacular.
Every forced-hate post and hit piece in the world, and he didn't lose his cool once — not a single mistake all match.
This is the guy who's going to lead Korean football. No doubt.
All you haters got played, huh?
The next-gen stars are Baek Yujin and Seong Yumin.
Saw that Korea U20 was playing a friendly, figured I'd watch out of boredom — then four seventeen-year-olds suddenly show up in the starting XI.
I went in expecting France to roll over them, zero expectations… and every single one of them is carrying the whole damn team;;
Now I get why they held Baek Yujin until the second half.
With trapping like that, of course you hide him.
If he'd started from the beginning, the other side would've been dead on their feet and he wouldn't have even shown his face on the pitch.
A player putting on a show like this in such a short window — and he's only seventeen. Korea's future is bright.
Score a couple goals and suddenly everyone's glazing them this hard;;
If a cross came in as clean as Seong Yumin's, I'd score too.
Involved in the build-up, beat three guys by himself, slipped a killer pass out to the wing, then finished the cross with a clean first-time volley.
His teammates knew he'd been getting dragged online so they kept feeding him the ball — but a hat trick is a whole different story, right?
He didn't celebrate the first two goals, then the second he completed the hat trick he sprinted to the corner flag like he'd planned it all along. Absolute aura.
(Smiling brightly after the final whistle)
I'm a guy and I almost fell for him. For real.
Just next-gen G.O.A.T.
At this point is he better than Pierre?
Those two attackers are just absolute monsters, that's all — this kid put in multiple killer passes this match alone.
Midfield maestro Hong Seoin and pass master Han Seonwoo.
Man~ just picturing these two dominating midfields in Europe makes my chest swell.
Great at football, perfect proportions, interviews make them sound like good people, and they're handsome on top of it.
Is this even realistic? I'm so jealous I'm having a full-on reality check.
Effective immediately, I withdraw my support for Baek Yujin.
From this day forward, I leave the realm of mere support. Baek Yujin and I become one body, one being.
An attack on Baek Yujin shall be regarded as an attack on me.
If there are seven billion Baek Yujin fans in this world, I am one of them.
If there are one hundred million Baek Yujin fans in this world, I am still one of them.
If there are ten million Baek Yujin fans in this world, I remain one of them.
If there are one hundred Baek Yujin fans in this world, I am yet one of them.
If there is only one Baek Yujin fan in this world, that person is almost certainly me.
If there is not a single Baek Yujin fan left in this world — then I, too, no longer exist in it.
Baek Yujin, my love.
Baek Yujin, my light.
Baek Yujin, my darkness.
Baek Yujin, my life.
Baek Yujin, my joy.
Baek Yujin, my sorrow.
Baek Yujin, my pain.
Baek Yujin, my rest.
Baek Yujin, my soul.
Baek Yujin, me.
The U20 match naturally set the overseas internet on fire as well.
France — home to Pierre, a top prospect from a prestigious club — had just lost 4–2 to South Korea. It was almost inevitable.
Even as a friendly, it was impossible to ignore.
And the fact that a seventeen-year-old had produced that result made it all the more so.
The journalists wrote whatever they pleased, as if it weren't their problem — but anyone who had actually watched the match simply accepted it.
Baek Yujin was good. No one could deny he was a genuine prospect.
The same went for Seong Yumin and Han Seonwoo, and for Kim Minjun and Lee Juwon, who had spent the entire match shutting Pierre down.
Once you saw that level of ability, recognition was the only option.
It wasn't a matter of saying Pierre was better. The honest take was that all of them were excellent.
And that fact did not escape the eyes of managers at Europe's elite clubs.
"Yujin? Beautiful trapping. Interesting."
"A seventeen-year-old with a hat trick? Curious."
"Incredible killer pass! Seoin? Seonwoo, was it? I'd like to see him in person."
"Unbelievable. Dribbling like that… doesn't it remind you of the god of dribbling? I need to see him immediately!"
Managers currently working in the EPL and La Liga were no different.
"South Korea… a place with good memories. Is this the second coming of Kim?"
"Oh… remarkable reaction speed."
Bundesliga managers felt the same.
Around the world, interest in the U20 side began to swell.
Right after the match, I came home and was browsing the internet when I stumbled on a strange post.
I left hate comments without knowing anything.
I was one of the people who went to watch the match live, and hyung — your play was genuinely beautiful.
Honestly, I felt like I was watching Bergkamp, the one I'd only ever seen online.
I couldn't take my eyes off you the entire match.
(…abridged)
I'm truly sorry.
"…Now I feel a little bad."
I'd deliberately baited the hate, so reading an apology post made me feel awkward.
Not everyone, of course — but without those few articles, some of them never would have piled on in the first place.
Well. The ones who were going to do it would have done it anyway.
The ones who wouldn't never would. That was just how it worked.
And yet people still left hate comments — an unavoidable side effect of the internet's anonymity.
Do I still have some time?
Jia was staying over at our place tonight and was currently in the shower.
Bored while I waited, I opened SNS as well.
I'd turned off the notifications, so I hadn't noticed — but a flood of follower alerts and message alerts had piled up.
The moment I checked the short video I'd posted before the match as planned, I thought I was seeing things.
"…Ten million?"
10M.
Whether it was the U20 effect or not, the view count had hit ten million.
Likes were past a hundred thousand. Comments past ten thousand.
Even the follower count had jumped noticeably.
Nice.
When I casually scrolled the comments and found nothing but positive reactions, it seemed today's match had made me a lot of new fans.
"…Becoming a star really does happen in an instant."
It felt almost hollow, in a way.
I'd earned this result by playing well — but so much changing overnight still hit strangely.
Still. Don't get ahead of yourself.
I'd seen more than a few geniuses get drunk on sudden stardom and collapse.
I could enjoy it a little. I had no intention of drowning in it.
Footsteps.
"Hm? What are you doing?"
"Oh — you're done washing up?"
"Yeah. Just now."
Jia, changed into pajamas after her shower, sat on the edge of the bed.
There was still a faint dampness to her that made it hard to look for too long.
Whether she knew that or not, she pressed right up against me and lay down at my side.
"How are the reactions?"
"What do you think? Absolutely incredible."
"Heh. That's a relief."
She'd been smiling at me — then her expression hardened in an instant.
She lifted a hand and pointed at my desk.
"But Yujin."
"…Yeah? What?"
"Who's Pierre? A girl?"
"Haha. Not a girl. A football player."
She must have seen Pierre's French national team jersey sitting on the desk.
I didn't think I'd end up with that either.
It was right after the final whistle.
Pierre had come over first and asked to swap jerseys.
From the English I could roughly catch, he'd been impressed by my play.
There was no reason to refuse, so I swapped. While I was at it, he'd suggested exchanging numbers too — and I'd accepted that as well. Pierre's number was now in my phone.
"Really? Is he good?"
"He is."
Not just good — in my previous life, a perennial Ballon d'Or contender and practically the face of France.
"Better than you?"
"Mm…"
You couldn't measure football ability with perfect precision, but going by today's match alone — I'd scored a hat trick, Pierre a brace.
I could say I'd played better.
"I'm better."
It wasn't a lie, was it?
"Yeah? Then want to make a bet?"
"A bet?"
"Yeah. Whether Korea can make the semifinals or not."
"And the prize?"
"Hmm… a wish ticket?"
"Deal."
I accepted without a second of hesitation.
"Really? You didn't even think about it?"
"Of course. I'll show you."
I felt a little bad saying it to Jia, but there was nothing to deliberate over.
In my last life, we finished as runners-up.
And even that had been a painful loss on penalties.
The core of that squad had been my friends, of course.
The roster now was better than back then.
With a genius manager like Lee Eunho in charge — the semis?
More than possible.
What should I use the wish ticket for?
I'd made wish bets with her plenty of times in my previous life.
I'd lost most of them — but this one was different.
A guaranteed win.
Oh. Cosplay sounds good.
A whole flower field bloomed inside my head.