Training (1)
After a pleasant weekend, Monday morning brought me back to the Seongil High football club room.
They say words become seeds, don't they?
"Next week, our practice match opponent has been decided."
"Who is it?"
"Seowon High School. Last year's champions."
"...!"
"..."
My wish had come true.
But did we even play a practice match around this time?
As far as I knew, we never had—not at this point in the season. If we had, Han Seonwoo, who used to tell me every last detail of school life, would have mentioned it.
Well, no harm done.
It wasn't a bad omen, so I let it go.
"Seowon High...?"
"...That's where all the geniuses are, right?"
"We're playing them...?"
Listening to the muttering around me, it sounded like half the room had already lost the will to fight before the match had even been scheduled.
Seowon High products do tend to be good, I'll give them that.
I'd never watched a Seowon High match myself, but I'd seen plenty of players who came out of there. Almost every one of them was a monster in his own right—no exaggeration. Seowon High was probably full of raw gems like that.
They're already thinking about losing before we even kick off.
I couldn't entirely blame them. Most of the ones talking like that were second- and third-years—guys who'd faced Seowon at nationals or at least watched them play. After failing to win a championship of their own recently, their confidence was scraping the floor.
I, on the other hand, had zero intention of losing. The coach didn't seem about to say anything, so I opened my mouth first, as if stating the obvious.
"We'll win."
"...Huh?"
"...What? Kid, you only say that because you don't know anything."
Hmm. How long was I going to stay the youngest, anyway?
Not important right now. I pressed on.
"I know. I've got friends there—I've heard all about them."
"Don't tell me Seong Yumin—"
"I'm better than him."
I'd won our bet yesterday, so Yumin had nothing to say about it.
"Right, Seonwoo?"
I turned to Han Seonwoo sitting beside me, looking for backup.
"Yumin's going to lose. Guaranteed."
The look in his eyes was vicious. This one was taking it seriously.
Maybe I should've teased him a little less.
Fortunately, all that fury seemed aimed squarely at Seong Yumin.
"See? The first-years are all ready to win. Are we really going to freeze up before the match even starts?"
Do Woojun, reading the locker room, chimed in.
"Don't even think about losing. The first-years are fired up—what's a second- or third-year doing folding already?"
"Yeah! Let's win this!"
"We can do it!"
The will to fight came flooding back. Everyone clapped and fell in behind the call. There was something not half bad about shouting your resolve out loud like that.
Morning training at Seongil High started the way it did everywhere—with a light run. Once that was done, we laid out agility ladders on the ground to loosen up, then moved on to a hundred-meter dash and the yo-yo test.
"What'd you get?"
"Twelve-point-one."
"Yo-yo test?"
"Fifty-one."
Solidly upper-tier. Fourth on the team in sprinting, third in stamina. Seonwoo wasn't volunteering his numbers, which probably meant he was behind me.
After the measurements, we moved into shooting drills. The setup was simple: stand with your back to a training dummy planted at the edge of the penalty box, then turn and finish the moment a pass arrived.
"Woojun! Top right!"
Thwack—!
Unlike the forwards, who just had to beat the keeper one-on-one, the defenders had to put the ball exactly where the coach called it.
When my turn came, the pass rolled in to my right. I spun with it and struck with my left foot toward the top-right corner.
A clean left-footed finish.
The ball went in, and Coach Ryu Ilhae looked at me as if something didn't add up.
"You're two-footed?"
"Ah—yes."
Come to think of it, until now I'd only used my left for light dribbling. No shots, no passes. In my last life I'd injured that foot, and I must have been avoiding it without realizing.
"You look comfortable with it. Must've practiced a lot. Next."
"Uh... yes."
The praise left me feeling oddly awkward.
My left and right were pretty even from the start, though.
Even before the real practice, the feel on both sides had been about the same. It was almost as if I'd been born two-footed. Figuratively speaking, of course—I'd still drilled myself half to death.
"Seonwoo, I think I use my left better than you."
"I use mine better."
"Come on, that's a stretch."
"Score in a match and I'll give you credit."
"I just scored."
"That doesn't count. In a real game."
I was still quietly needling Seonwoo when Ryu Ilhae clapped his hands twice and called out.
"Bell's about to ring—get back to class. Individual training during free periods is fine, but don't overdo it. Don't get yourselves hurt."
"Yes, sir!"
"Got it!"
One by one they peeled off. I took the hint, grabbed my bag from the locker room, and headed for class.
Half of my academic life consisted of sleeping through the afternoon so I'd be ready for training. Not because I particularly wanted to sleep.
"Oh? Noona!"
"Yujin?"
"What? Is this the boyfriend you've been hiding? He's cute~ You two look good together."
"A first-year? No wonder you kept him under wraps."
"Haha. Nice to meet you."
Sometimes I'd spot Jia in the hallway and run over, trading hellos with her friends. At lunch I kicked a ball around with Seonwoo, and before I knew it, after-school training had rolled around again.
Tonight we had evening training as well, so I'd messaged her ahead of time—
I texted back suggesting she study at my place instead, but the reply that came was, So Yujin doesn't want to see me...
She's teasing me again.
She probably wanted to watch me fluster. I played it cool and wrote that I'd only said it because I wanted to see her the second I got home, and that was that.
Evening training began.
We started with a light rondo, moved into passing games, and finished with a half-pitch mini-match that put everything from the passing drills into practice.
This is fun.
By all rights, structured training should have felt dull. Somehow even that was enjoyable. Standing on a pitch, it seemed, was enough to make me happy.
When everything was done and only a little time remained, we were resting in the locker room.
He said something about talking tactics, didn't he?
That was what the coach had mentioned before we came in. Before that, the seniors had freely used the showers and changed. The casual atmosphere suggested things had been this way since last year.
Once things had more or less settled, Ryu Ilhae banged twice on the cloth-covered whiteboard and gathered every eye in the room.
"I assume you're all sorted. Then focus."
With a soft rustle, he pulled the cloth aside.
"We'll likely use this formation for the practice match. It could change, and you may have other ideas—so I want to hear your opinions."
From the way he put it, this wasn't a final decision so much as a rough outline. Magnets and names were already stuck in place; Ryu Ilhae had the formation and the lineup mapped out. There were probably more tactics where that came from.
Good—I'm in it.
A 4-3-3. Four defenders, three midfielders, three attackers. Dead center at the tip of the midfield three—no, the central striker's spot—sat my name.
Looking closer, a surprising number of first-years were in the starting eleven. Even for a practice match, it was a lot.
Can't be helped.
Seniors who'd decided football wasn't a viable path, or who simply couldn't keep playing, had left, opening up spots. First-years had to fill them.
What was strange was that the seniors left off the sheet didn't question it at all.
They trust him completely.
Most of the first-years looked puzzled, but the second- and third-years were different. They had absolute faith in Coach Ryu Ilhae. That said something about what he'd shown them over the past year—and I was curious what that something was.
One of the first-years studying the formation raised a hand.
"What is it?"
"Um... why am I starting...?"
Not a question about the tactics—about the selection itself. His self-confidence looked paper-thin.
Fullback, was he?
I knew the name. Jang Hoyeon. Everything about him was average in a way that almost seemed deliberate—running, stamina, match performance, all of it merely fine. With so few players who truly stood out, that bland competence stuck in the memory.
"I put you there because I think you can do it. Do you need more of a reason?"
"Ah... no, sir."
"Coach. I'm curious why you chose a 4-3-3."
This time it was Do Woojun. The way his eyes lit up, pure scholar's curiosity, he genuinely wanted to understand the system.
"Last year, our team was average across the board—finishing, midfield control, wide penetration, all of it. Even that fell off once a few players who'd built chemistry together left."
Everyone nodded; they already knew.
"But this year's incoming class changed the picture. Box finishing, the midfield, the flanks—everything got reinforced. You can say the first-years lack experience, but this is a practice match. I think it's more than enough of a test."
What followed was dense tactical talk—how each position should move, how to operate inside a match. The coach seemed to be speaking lightly, but from the listeners' side the volume of information kept mounting.
And yet something odd stood out.
So I move over there, then?
Unlike the others, who wore faintly bewildered looks, I was following him before he even finished explaining. The first thing that came to mind was my previous life. Fifteen years of watching overseas leagues with my own eyes—if I still understood nothing after that, that would be the strange part. Even watching with my brain switched off, fifteen years wasn't nothing.
Yeah. That tracks.
A reasonably sound inference. Which left me with a question of my own.
"Um, Coach."
"Hm? What is it?"
I'd been quiet while the others fired questions, so when I spoke, his expression shifted—like a scientist just before an experiment.
"Doesn't the lone striker in this formation need to be a complete forward? From what you said, he has to finish, pass, and make decisions."
"That's exactly you, Yujin. Before I built the system, I watched every clip from your middle school. You can do all of it."
"...Right."
If he said jump, I'd jump.
This wasn't locked in yet, after all. There was still plenty of time.