U20 World Cup (1)
This U20 World Cup was being held in the United States.
Pure flight time alone ran over ten hours, and the stay would last at least a month. If we kept winning, we might have to remain even longer. Naturally, heading abroad meant I needed a passport. The only problem was that I had completely forgotten about the one I had carried in my previous life and nearly failed to get a new one issued. If the coach had not asked whether I already had a passport, I would have left without one.
After that minor mishap, I started learning English from Jia noona.
Truth is, I already know how.
It felt a little awkward to admit, but English was one thing I had truly mastered in my past life—well enough that locals had occasionally mistaken me for one of their own. Even so, I kept taking the lessons. The careful way noona taught me was simply too cute and pretty for me to confess that I already knew. She would scold me later, of course, but even that would probably be adorable in its own way. She taught so thoroughly that I nearly got caught pretending not to know. She was practically cross-examining me. If my English had not been genuinely solid, I might have slipped without realizing it.
Getting caught would be such a waste.
It had been ages since I last pulled a prank like this; getting found out so soon would have been a shame.
And so the days passed in a blur of soccer training and English study whenever free time appeared. Before I knew it, departure day had arrived. With every bag packed, I stood at the front door and shared one last conversation with Jia noona before leaving for America. We would not see each other for a full month. Everything important had already been said, yet I could not simply walk out the door.
“So you’re coming back in a month?”
Noona, still nestled in my arms, lifted her head and asked.
“Yeah. Looks like it.”
“If it were vacation, I would have gone with you… too bad.”
“…Yeah.”
It was not vacation, and midterms at Seongil High happened to fall right while I would be in America. The only silver lining was that the group stage would begin after the exams ended.
I want to stay with her.
The thought of not seeing her for a month made my chest ache for no good reason. It was not as if we would never meet again.
“I’ll call every night if I have time.”
“There’s a time difference, so if you’re tired you don’t have to.”
“…Still, I’ll leave a message at least.”
“Hehe. Okay.”
Buzz—
My phone vibrated. Time to go.
“I’m off.”
“Yeah. Have a good trip.”
Peck.
A simple kiss, and I left for America.
Twelve hours after leaving the airport, we finally touched down in the United States. Everyone else looked exhausted; for most of them this was their first experience of a flight this long.
“You’re not tired?”
Han Seonwoo, looking noticeably haggard, asked me.
“Not really.”
I had flown often enough in my previous life that the journey did not hit me hard. Whatever fatigue I had felt vanished after seven or eight hours of sleep.
“Really? I should’ve slept more…”
“You didn’t sleep?”
“Only a little.”
“Sleep on the way back.”
Staying awake through a flight this long was pure loss—physically and mentally.
“Got it. By the way, I can’t speak English. What am I supposed to do?”
“English? Ah.”
He was clearly fretting about immigration.
“It’s no big deal.”
“…Isn’t this your first time abroad?”
“…Jia noona said it’s nothing special.”
“Well, that’s a relief then.”
And it really was nothing special. All you had to do was answer the immigration officer’s questions accurately. How hard could that be? As if to prove the point, I cleared the process at nearly free-pass speed. The startled looks on the coach’s and staff’s faces when I strolled out looking completely at ease were pretty entertaining.
Once everyone had gathered, we headed straight for the hotel—the same one housing most of the players from every nation competing in the U20. We rode up to our assigned floor, checked in, and were told there would be no training that day. After unpacking, we went straight to the restaurant with the rest of the guys. For the record, my roommate was Hong Seoin.
The restaurant was packed with players of every stripe—some from our group, some from others. Pierre was among them. He seemed to be on his way to meet his own group and was walking alone.
“Oh! Yujin!”
“Pierre.”
We spoke in English. I knew a little French, but nowhere near enough for a real conversation. It was lucky Pierre’s English was solid.
“When did you get in?”
“Just now. We’re heading to eat—have you already eaten?”
“I just finished.”
“Weren’t you going somewhere? Looks like your group over there.”
“Seems so. Yujin, let’s talk more later.”
“Yeah. See you.”
I sent Pierre on his way and started walking again, only to feel something off. When I turned around, my friends were staring at me with openly surprised faces.
“Yujin, did you learn English?”
“Why are you so good at it?”
“Hmm.”
Come to think of it, I had never actually spoken English in front of them before. I had not been trying to hide it; it simply had not come up. The questions poured out over the meal—when had I learned, how had I done it, and so on. I brushed them off by vaguely claiming I had picked it up from Jia noona.
…This is boring.
Back in the room with no ball to kick and nothing to do but lie on the bed, I had zero entertainment. Jia noona would already be asleep; it was daytime in America but the middle of the night in Korea. I was staring blankly at the ceiling when Hong Seoin returned.
“Hyung.”
“What.”
“There are two ways to piss someone off. One is stopping mid-sentence.”
“Then what’s the second?”
I did not answer.
“Ddolgaeng-a.”
“…”
I just kept blinking at him with a completely empty expression. Hong Seoin, thoroughly irritated, grabbed the roll of toilet paper beside him and flung it at me. It came flying toward my legs; I sat up and caught it cleanly with my foot.
“Whoa, you can do that too?”
“Guess so, when I try.”
I got off the bed and kicked the roll back to him. He casually flicked it up with his foot and started juggling.
“Hyung can do it too?”
“I can play a bit myself, y’know.”
Seeing that Hong Seoin could handle it just fine, an idea struck me like lightning.
“Then how about we keep this going—first one to drop it pays for dinner?”
We were not actually paying for our own meals, so it was purely for fun.
“Deal.”
I had been bored out of my mind; this was perfect timing. Hong Seoin’s touch was solid enough that neither of us held a clear advantage. Whoever made the first mistake simply lost.
We passed and trapped the roll with our feet over and over. One minute, three, five, ten. The passes grew stronger as time went on, yet nothing truly dangerous had happened yet. Right in the middle of a long rally, Hong Seoin sent a fairly firm pass my way.
Tak.
I cushioned it cleanly on the instep, but of course I had to return it with equal force. I sent the roll back with exactly the same power it had arrived with. Hong Seoin failed to control it; the paper bounced off and smacked into the nearby lamp. The fixture wobbled as if it were about to topple.
“Uh—uh?!”
I lunged forward in a panic, stepped on a blanket sprawled across the floor, and went down hard. Luckily I crashed onto the neighboring bed and walked away without a scratch.
“Ddolgaeng-a, you okay?”
“Ah, yeah. Not hurt.”
While Hong Seoin was setting the lamp upright again, a commotion rose from the next room. It sounded like someone who had heard the noise and was coming to investigate.
The room next door is definitely…
I was pretty sure it belonged to the coach.
Creak.
The door opened and Lee Eunho appeared. He wore the expression of a man who had known exactly what he would find.
“Aigoo… I knew you two would pull something like this.”
“Nothing happened.”
We had run around a little and I had fallen, but really—nothing major.
“Yeah, right. I heard every bit of the racket.”
“It really was nothing.”
“Seoin, is that true?”
I kept a perfectly straight face, so Lee Eunho turned to Hong Seoin. Instead of covering for me the way I expected, Hong Seoin told the whole truth—we had been playing with toilet paper and this was the result.
“Yujin, he says so. What good is cleaning up fast if you get hurt?”
“But it was fast.”
“If you get injured, none of that matters. Training starts tomorrow, so hold yourselves back.”
“…Yes.”
In the end we got a light scolding.
Obviously, this was my first time playing soccer overseas. Grass was grass no matter where you went, yet the fact that we were abroad still carried a quiet sense of anticipation. The moment we arrived at the training ground and began working together, one truth hit me with absolute clarity.
…It’s hot.
It was supposedly autumn, yet the heat felt exactly like midsummer. Everything else might have been debatable, but this I felt in my bones. Physical conditioning, passing drills, shooting drills—we were dying out there. The truly terrifying part was how Lee Eunho stopped us at the perfect moment every single time, preventing injuries and overexertion with uncanny precision. Rest, work, rest, work—the cycle never broke. With the group stage less than two weeks away, everyone was pushing hard.
Still, where there is a whip there is also a carrot. In the free time before we returned to the hotel we played a bit of futsal. Futsal forces you to cover both attack and defense and demands constant passing, so it doubles as excellent training for sharpening individual technique. …Except Seong Yumin, who already handled both ends of the pitch more than well enough, simply went berserk on his own without any of that structure.
Training continued under Lee Eunho’s careful management. He threw in mini-games so the players could enjoy themselves; aside from the extra toll the heat exacted, the sessions never grew boring. Time is relative. When you are having fun training soccer, it flies. Before we knew it, the day of the first group-stage match against Argentina had arrived.