No Time—There's Training to Do
***
I had absolutely no intention of playing in this match.
That is, until the racist incident happened.
'...'
Not just the broadcast crew—Valencia's staff had also begun talking among themselves with grim expressions on their faces.
Valencia's youth director gave the offending kid a serious dressing-down and made him apologize, but—
Even in that situation, the brat couldn't read the room. That snickering, joking excuse of an apology sat about as well with me as a boot to the shin.
"Coach, I'll play."
"Uh, oh? You will?"
Coach Lee Jae-jin was visibly thrown by my sudden declaration, but he gave me the go-ahead.
***
When I stepped onto the pitch, I looked straight at the one who'd spat his racism at us.
The moment our eyes met, he scoffed at me with all the arrogance of a peacock.
I suppose that means he's proud of his own ability.
Well, honestly speaking, for his age, he's decent.
In Spain and Europe in general, kids don't gather at internet cafés after school—they gather on the streets and play football from the moment they can walk. Just as Korean kids dream of becoming pro gamers, European kids dream of becoming footballers. The talent pool itself is simply built different.
Anyway, only the ones with visible promise get to start their careers at a neighborhood youth club.
The fact that he belonged to a club called Valencia CF meant his talent had been recognized, plain and simple.
'Seriously, he's riddled with holes. I don't even know where to start pointing them out.'
But to my eyes, he was nothing more than a walking list of flaws.
Watching him show off what little he had was almost painful.
Whether he noticed the pity in my gaze or not, he launched into a pointless string of flashy tricks.
"Whew—"
I sighed, loud enough for the whole field to hear.
There was no need to react to a trick routine that was all style and nothing underneath.
"You couldn't even react to my skill move, you peasant?!"
The brat bristled at my sigh and started to move.
'Now.'
I stuck my foot out without a word of warning.
A slow but clean, textbook tackle with zero wasted motion.
My foot touched nothing but the ball.
And the kid, stripped of it so abruptly, went tumbling across the grass.
"Th-that's a foul!"
The arrogant little runt protested to the referee, but the ref shook his head firmly.
"That's fair play!"
He must have been furious at having the ball stolen right off his feet by the very Asian kid he'd been mocking—I could feel him bearing down on me from behind, teeth clenched.
'One, two, three.'
At just the right moment, I peeled him off with a light, single-spin turn.
"Ooooh..."
The Valencia bench erupted at the fluid movement, as if the ball were sewn into my feet.
Watching that scene, a familiar internet argument floated up from memory.
'Why do people assume that if you're not doing something, it's because you can't?'
I didn't avoid flashy tricks because I couldn't perform them.
I avoided them because, frankly, pulling out those kinds of gimmicks against children was a colossal waste of efficiency.
'If I can shake a defender with nothing but upper-body feinting, why would I bother with fireworks?'
Doing that would be like using a cattle-slaughtering knife to pluck a chick.
And sure enough, with a flick of my hips and nothing more than a two-footed La Croqueta, I glided clean past another one.
'This one's actually decent, though.'
Valencia's defender tried to follow my weight shifting in an instant and his legs buckled, dropping him to the ground.
Still, he reacted to my movement right up to the very end—keep him clear of serious injuries, and he'd make a fine defender someday.
"St-stop him!!"
I kept driving forward, dribble after dribble, and the moment I entered the penalty box—
A casually dinked chip shot floated just over the goalkeeper's fingertips and kissed the net.
'Tsk. So that's why I felt off today. Not enough spin on it.'
The chip landed squarely inside the goal, but it did nothing for me.
The touch in my toes was dull. My condition was clearly not back yet.
***
"¡Dios mío! What a remarkable shot."
In stark contrast to Joo Jae-rim's dissatisfaction with his own performance, admiration poured out from the Valencia CF side.
Up to this point, even Valencia's coaches had been at their ease.
The talent Jae-rim possessed was indeed remarkable—but calling it historically great still carried a question mark.
'Well... historically great for an Asian, I suppose.'
That was what Valencia's coaches thought to themselves.
Even the coaching staff couldn't help harboring a subtle undercurrent of condescension toward Asia.
But as the match resumed and Joo Jae-rim kept carving through the field—
At some point, not even the sound of a swallowed gulp remained on the sidelines.
That was how shocking his performance had been.
'¡Madre mía! There is no predicting his shooting timing at all.'
Above all, the sight of Joo Jae-rim striking the ball exactly when he wanted, exactly where he wanted, was shock incarnate.
Jae-rim rattled Valencia's net once more with a half-beat-early shot.
Then, wearing the expression of a man entirely unmoved, he trotted back to the halfway line.
And from then until the final whistle, he kept up the tireless, methodical work of pounding Valencia's goal over and over again.
***
The match ended.
And every single Valencia youth official sprinted toward Joo Jae-rim.
They were so worked up the interpreter could barely keep up with them.
"Oh, sweet heavens! Thank you for sending this genius boy to Valencia before anyone else!"
Watching officials who'd been slightly haughty before kickoff now gawping in open awe, PD Hwang Hyun-woo felt a long-dormant surge of national pride come flooding up from somewhere deep in his chest.
'Ahh, yes... this is absolutely going in.'
A smile spread naturally across Hwang Hyun-woo's lips.
He could already picture the viewers watching this scene at home feeling almost exactly what he was feeling.
The camera crew too, grinning ear to ear, were shooting in a frenzy—
That was the moment Cristiano Ronaldo slowly began walking toward Joo Jae-rim.
"Th-the interpreter, NOW!"
PD Hwang Hyun-woo scrambled to deploy the interpreter.
But before any interpreter could be thrown in—
The two of them had already begun talking.
Spanish came pouring out of Joo Jae-rim's mouth!
"...Director Joo. Jae-rim speaks Spanish too?"
Joo Sang-hyun couldn't answer Hwang Hyun-woo. He was seeing his son speak Spanish for the very first time himself.
PD Hwang Hyun-woo turned to the interpreter.
Because he desperately wanted to know what Ronaldo and Jae-rim were saying to each other.
The interpreter, catching his eye, opened his mouth slowly.
"Um... Ronaldo invited him to dinner..."
"Invited him? And?"
"Jae-rim declined."
"What? Why on earth—"
The interpreter answered as if he himself couldn't believe what he'd heard.
"...He, um. He said he has to train."
PD Hwang Hyun-woo, receiving the message in full, found himself equally speechless.
***
Cristiano Ronaldo, whatever warmth he'd taken to Joo Jae-rim, had never expected much of his actual ability.
'Well. His eye for the game is decent enough. I'll throw him a bit of lip service and be done with it.'
But the moment Joo Jae-rim was put onto the pitch—
'Hoo... it's like watching my own youth.'
He saw the atmosphere around the players change, and his interest sharpened a notch.
And then, watching the performance that followed, Cristiano Ronaldo was left in genuine awe.
'Good Lord. This boy has the talent to become the greatest in the world—right beside me.'
Ronaldo acknowledged the talent Joo Jae-rim carried.
The dinner invitation had been, in its own way, a gesture of goodwill.
"I have to train. No time."
Jae-rim refused his offer on the grounds of training. And yet, somehow, Ronaldo's mood was not a bad one.
***
"I have to train. No time."
I cut down Ronaldo's dinner invitation with surgical precision.
"Heh. Too shy to meet your 'idol' one-on-one, are you?"
'What is this guy on about now.'
While I understood Cristiano Ronaldo—the self-proclaimed number two—better than anyone, I had not, over the course of my many lives, ever been on particularly good terms with him.
The era was all that differed—beyond that, Cristiano Ronaldo had never once missed an opportunity to needle me as I made my name in European football.
And me? I never took any particular action over Ronaldo's provocations.
I knew, as did everyone around me, that the man was talking out of his hat.
And then, somehow, Ronaldo got hold of my number and began bombardiering me with texts at all hours of the day and night.
For the record, changing my phone number or messenger ID accomplished absolutely nothing.
In any case, if I let some trivial thing sour my mood, who knew what kind of grudge-fest he'd cook up next.
No—it was a certainty that trouble would follow.
The best policy was to avoid entanglement with Cristiano Ronaldo altogether...
'Turning down one dinner should be fine.'
Honestly, even that was touch-and-go.
And that evening.
"Joo Jae-rim! Ronaldo posted about you on social media!"
The moment I finished training and walked into the accommodation, the kids' voices rang through the halls.
I let out a sigh nobody was meant to hear.
'...Should I not have refused the dinner after all?'
But contrary to my worries, Ronaldo's feed held a post praising my talent.
'......? What did this lunatic eat wrong today?'
***
The day's filming with Valencia wrapped up in success.
The Main PD declared a rest day for the cast the following day.
He announced it as a "victory celebration holiday," but it had plainly been scheduled from the start.
Regardless, under the banner of celebrating our win, the Main PD granted the cast a chance to tour Valencia, and they split into groups to film sightseeing videos around the city.
While the kids buzzed with excitement over the Main PD's announcement, sketching out their tourist itineraries—
I decided to stay behind at the accommodation and run recovery and fundamentals training.
"Hey, Joo Jae-rim. If you've got nothing special planned, wanna come hang out with us?"
"I have training to do."
"...Oh. Right."
The girl whose name I couldn't recall (I'd forgotten it) made a wounded face at my answer and quietly drifted away.
'...What exactly is wrong with training during free time?'
I genuinely could not understand it.
***
'If you were going to refuse, at least refuse with a decent excuse. "Training"? Really?'
Yoo Min-jung, the one who'd offered to hang out with him, was flabbergasted.
'And could it kill you to think for two seconds before refusing? Seriously, zero manners.'
As far as Yoo Min-jung was concerned, Joo Jae-rim had thrown out a preposterous excuse.
But the next morning.
Watching Joo Jae-rim head out in his training gear, the girl had no choice but to concede.
"...He's actually insane. Insane about training."
***
I woke, ran through my routine, and changed into my workout clothes.
Waking at precisely 6 a.m. meant my condition had returned to normal today.
In any case, as evidenced by the fact that the production team had rented a detached house for the accommodation—
The place was in an upscale, reasonably safe neighborhood.
"Jae-rim, don't follow any strangers, okay?"
The Main PD, however, warned me sternly.
'Not strictly necessary, but sure.'
Spain was familiar ground to me.
There was little cause for concern.
I'd played on Spanish pitches any number of times in the past.
But the Main PD, apparently still worried after delivering a lecture of truly impressive length, attached the youngest staff writer, the camera director—and, as it happened, my father.
***
'That boy of mine is just too diligent, honestly.'
Joo Sang-hyun worried, as a father, that his son lived far too fiercely.
'It'd be fine to take it easy once in a while.'
Watching him discipline himself and train with such ruthless rigor from such a young age, Joo Sang-hyun felt equal parts pride and heartache.
'Agh, the battery's dead.'
While he stepped away to swap the camera battery—
A foreigner approached the training Joo Jae-rim and called out to him.
Joo Sang-hyun spotted the stranger addressing his son and bolted out in alarm.
Then he planted himself behind his son, shielding him.
A father's instinct—placing himself between his child and the unknown, ready to protect at the first sign of trouble.
"Oh. Ah, you were in the middle of filming. My apologies."
But the stranger, realizing they were filming, gave a thumbs-up, handed Joo Jae-rim what looked like a business card, apologized politely, and disappeared.
While Joo Sang-hyun exhaled a sigh of relief—
"Who was that?"
The junior staff writer who'd come along rushed over and peppered his son with questions.
"A scout from a professional club."
"A scout? Whoa! What did he say, that's amazing!"
"He said if I'm not under contract, he'd like to scout me for their youth team."
His son really did exist on a completely different plane from him.
'...Can a kid really say that so flatly?'