The Price of Crossing the Line
Before his regression, Jung Hyuk had been a player skilled enough to be rated World Class.
He had finished third in the FIFA Ballon d'Or — the award that crowns the best player in the world. That was how exceptional he had been.
Naturally, opposing teams had marked him relentlessly. Among the countless fouls he absorbed, more than a few had been vicious challenges thick with the risk of injury. No — there had been a great many of them.
He had been hurt by those rough tackles before. Some of the injuries had been severe enough that, had he not managed his body carefully, a comeback would have been nearly impossible.
And because of those experiences, Jung Hyuk knew exactly how terrifying an injury could be for a footballer. How utterly nightmarish it was.
So he was furious.
Furious at Pablo Osvaldo — who had casually injured a teammate, then thrown in a wink and that smug little smile for good measure.
Worse still, the player who had been hurt was Oh Jung-hoon: the same friend who, in the previous timeline, had abandoned his dream of becoming a footballer because of injury.
The full extent of the damage had not yet come back, but a terrible thought had already taken root in Jung Hyuk's mind — that his closest friend might be forced to relive the same nightmare all over again.
So Jung Hyuk had no intention of letting Pablo Osvaldo walk away untouched.
He was going to make him feel, firsthand, just how horrific an injury could be.
"If you cross the line," he said quietly, "you pay the price."
A short while later, Manager Mauricio Pochettino and the coaching staff worked to settle the squad.
"I never want to see anything like that again. We are teammates. Teammates who have to run the long schedule together. So keep this in your heads at all times — you do not injure each other. Ever."
Pochettino then ordered training to resume. The look on his face as he gave the command was grim. Even for him, this was a headache.
Damn it all…
He wanted nothing more than to go check on Oh Jung-hoon himself right that second. He wanted to scrap training entirely and slap Osvaldo across the face for that filthy tackle on a teammate.
But right now, training had to go on.
The Premier League calendar was brutal. Another match was already scheduled only a few days out. With the next fixture looming, they could not halt or postpone a session simply because something ugly had happened.
It was bitter — but that, too, was part of a manager's job.
The whistle cut the air.
Training resumed. Split into two sides, the Southampton players took the pitch with heavy expressions. They did not, however, go through the motions.
These men were professionals. Professionals who played in one of the best leagues in the world. As long as their bodies could move, they moved — to grind out points in the next match. That was who they were.
And so the Southampton training ground once again became the stage for a fierce contest.
Thump. Tap. Jung Hyuk's side attacked the way it always did — with him at the center of everything.
Something was different, though.
Jung Hyuk was moving in a way that was not quite his usual pattern. Ordinarily he operated as a central midfielder, driving the team's attack. He dropped into defensive work from time to time, but most of his minutes were spent creating goals.
Of course, if the manager specifically asked him to play as a defensive midfielder, he would. But on ordinary days, with no special instructions, he sat somewhere between a central midfielder and an attacking midfielder.
Today, though, he had dropped as deep as he could, dictating play from a position far closer to a holding midfielder. Naturally, that meant far more defensive work.
And that, in turn, meant he kept running into the opposing side's striker — Pablo Osvaldo.
Thud!
Jung Hyuk and Pablo Osvaldo collided all afternoon. The two of them marked each other with raw intensity. Osvaldo, in particular, kept throwing rough challenges at Jung Hyuk even after Pochettino's warning.
Jung Hyuk gave nothing back. When Osvaldo used an elbow, Jung Hyuk used one right back. No — he waited until the coaches and the manager looked away, then hit harder.
The smug smile that had been sitting on Pablo Osvaldo's face hardened, little by little, into stone.
And when, at last, one of Jung Hyuk's rough tackles put Osvaldo on the ground, that stone-hard face twisted into something ugly.
The atmosphere on the training ground went cold again.
Pablo Osvaldo had gotten back to his feet looking ready to charge Jung Hyuk on the spot. He did not actually do it — not with Pochettino watching, face set like iron — but he spat curses through a murderous expression all the same.
"You little bastard! You keep sticking to me on purpose, don't you?"
"Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about."
Jung Hyuk's blank, clueless face made Osvaldo flush red. Then, in a low voice — soft enough that it should have been private, but clear enough that Jung Hyuk heard every word — Osvaldo said:
"Fine. I'll put you in the hospital just like that kid who went off a minute ago."
A deep smile spread across Jung Hyuk's mouth.
Come on, then. No — please, come at me.
The whistle blew. Play restarted the moment Jung Hyuk and Pablo Osvaldo stepped apart. Both sides locked back into the game — some chasing a goal, others throwing everything into stopping one.
Then, mid-attack, Pablo Osvaldo got on the ball.
Perfect.
Osvaldo looked at the goal and swung his leg at once — a shot attempt on a lightning-quick trigger.
But a sliding tackle came in under his feet.
Slash!
The tackler was Jung Hyuk. The challenge was razor-sharp, clean, and legitimate — a perfect touch on the ball.
"Tch—!"
Osvaldo surged up with a twisted face and took off after Jung Hyuk. Jung Hyuk, strangely, advanced at a crawl — so slowly it almost looked as if he were waiting for Osvaldo to catch up.
Already gassed, kid?
A thick sneer settled on Pablo Osvaldo's face. He figured Jung Hyuk — who had been starting steadily since the beginning of the season — had simply worn down faster than usual.
And right then, Osvaldo launched himself at him.
Slaaash!
It was the same back-tackle he had used to hurt Oh Jung-hoon earlier. A high-legged sliding challenge designed to injure. He meant to shatter the ankle of this cocky little brat he could not stand.
Thud!
The instant Osvaldo's foot stamped down on his ankle, Jung Hyuk sprang upward, trying to bleed off as much of the impact as he could. The pain still hit hard.
But even through that hideous pain, Jung Hyuk did not scream. He simply looked down at Pablo Osvaldo, sprawled on the ground, with eyes like ice.
There you are. Finally.
Jung Hyuk, who had been lifted into the air by the tackle, came back down. And as he fell, he drove every ounce of force he had into his leg.
Pablo Osvaldo — still lying flat from his own sliding tackle — lifted his head with a face gone white.
"Wh—what the hell—!"
What Osvaldo saw was Jung Hyuk, smiling brightly, stamping his leg down.
Crack!
The next day, articles appeared that Southampton fans found nothing short of nightmarish.
And that was not the end of it. Fresh articles followed almost immediately.
Articles about Oh Jung-hoon and Pablo Osvaldo's injuries at Southampton kept coming. So did pieces reporting that the notorious problem child Pablo Osvaldo had put in a brutal tackle on Oh Jung-hoon during training — and that that was how Jung-hoon had been hurt. Alongside them, a stream of rumor pieces that had nothing to do with the truth kept spawning.
Korean fans, of course, were livid.
And then, a little later, another wave of articles appeared — the kind that finally let Korean fans breathe out.
Oh Jung-hoon's injury was less serious than feared. Whether because of how carefully he managed his body or pure luck, he was recovering quickly. Korean football fans exhaled in relief.
And then the articles on Pablo Osvaldo arrived.
The articles kept coming. Because this was Southampton — the side currently tearing through the league with blistering form — the coverage only multiplied. Naturally, the fact that Osvaldo's injury had come from a collision with Jung Hyuk also came out, and the rumor mill spun even harder.
And then:
Mauricio Pochettino insisted the club had no internal issues and denied the various rumors outright.
But despite the manager's words, Jung Hyuk did not feature in the subsequent match against Crystal Palace. Without him, Southampton put in a lifeless performance and scraped a 0–0 draw.
That only fed the controversy further — until Pochettino shut it down, for the moment, with a simple line: he had merely given Jung Hyuk a rest.
And then Jung Hyuk started Southampton's Matchday 7 fixture against Swansea City, played the full ninety, and buried every last rumor himself.
After sitting out one match under a cloud of controversy, Jung Hyuk returned and put on another monstrous display. Southampton fans and Korean football supporters erupted all over again.
And the frenzy did not die when the final whistle blew. It burned all the way through to the next fixture — because the next opponent was enormous.
Because right now, they were widely regarded as one of the best sides in Europe.