One-Word Replies
There were two reasons I turned down Lionel Messi's dinner invitation.
First, unlike Cristiano Ronaldo—who kept up his self-management with religious devotion even after retirement—Messi had simply stopped taking care of himself. His stated philosophy was to eat whatever the hell he felt like eating.
Granted, having been a professional athlete, he was still in better shape than your average civilian. But to me, someone who had spent over a hundred years of lifetimes managing my diet with surgical precision, it was an uncomfortable thing to watch.
Even back in his playing days, Messi's love of fast food and soda was legendary. There's a famous anecdote about him draining an entire can of cola right in front of Pep Guardiola—the man who had just declared a ban on junk food—then staring him dead in the eyes while he did it.
The public knew Messi as shy and quiet, but he was a man with more edge than people realized. A world-class competitor doesn't get to that level without a killer's hunger to win.
Come to think of it, it's honestly insane that a guy who ate whatever he wanted still collected four Ballon d'Ors.
Unlike Messi, I avoided carbonated drinks and nutritionally lopsided food like the plague. Once you acquire a taste for that kind of thing, resisting the cravings becomes a war of attrition.
Even gluttony must be guarded against.
Overeating was the other cardinal sin. Eat something delicious and you naturally overeat; overeat long enough and your body starts to fall apart.
Son, Dad got his bonus today—want to go out to eat?
I'm okay. I'd rather have the food Mom made.
Sorry, Dad, but that's why I preferred home cooking over restaurants.
The second reason was Cristiano Ronaldo himself.
I had already turned down Ronaldo's dinner invitation. If I then accepted one from Lionel Messi, Ronaldo would never let me hear the end of it.
If he really wants to talk, he can come find me himself.
And before long, my prediction came true.
Lionel Messi started showing up at Barcelona's training ground every single day just to watch me.
Having been denied a dinner invitation, Lionel Messi began dropping by Barcelona's training grounds whenever he had a spare moment.
"Whoa... Messi's here again today."
"I think the kid's gotten under his skin."
"At this rate, is Jae-rim actually going to sign with Barcelona?"
"Honestly, if Jae-rim wanted to, that could happen tomorrow."
"Hmm... he doesn't exactly look interested, though."
"It comes off a little inhuman, but somehow that just makes him more impressive."
Hwang Hyun-woo and the head writer exchanged quiet remarks. The mere existence of a talent so prodigious that even Lionel Messi couldn't stay away was enough to boggle the mind.
Doesn't the man have anything to do?
Joo Jae-rim, meanwhile, took one look at the daily-visiting Lionel Messi and smelled something unmistakable.
The odor of a man with no job.
In fairness, Messi really had been living half a freeloader's life since retiring. He ran an esports organization with his best friend Sergio Agüero, but it would be generous to say Messi actually did anything there.
He'd briefly tried his hand at sporting director and youth coach work, too, but his standards for evaluating players were so absurdly high that he was let go before long.
Even now, ten years later, the "Messi's got dog eyes" meme was still going strong.
The fact that Cristiano Ronaldo had liked the post and left a comment was, of course, part of the set.
During my time in Barcelona, I managed to build a surprisingly decent rapport with Lionel Messi.
Credit went to Messi for treating me not as some kid to be taught, but with the professional courtesy one footballer owes another.
S seeing Messi be that sociable left everyone around us floored—he was hardly an extrovert by nature, after all.
Once Barcelona confirmed that I was holding actual conversations with their living legend, they began prodding me about a youth contract. Over and over.
I rejected the offer without hesitation.
For someone whose goal was to surpass Lionel Messi, there was no reason to choose Barcelona.
Personal opinion, but unless something unusual happens, I figured I'd end up in the Premier League this life as well.
Or maybe I'd take a crack at the top-scorer records across all five major European leagues.
Whatever the case, my plan for this life was to stack up as wide a variety of achievements as possible.
Thanks to my overwhelming experience, I could—unlike any other player—deliver uniform performance regardless of what tactics a team threw at me. That was what made it possible.
At any rate, my peaceful daily routine didn't last long before it collapsed.
Unfortunately, word of my budding friendship with Messi appears to have reached "someone" as well.
From that day on, the text bomb barrage began...
Eventually I got annoyed and simply blocked Ronaldo.
So what's he actually going to do about it?
Thinking it over, the only things Ronaldo could realistically do were post attack pieces about me on social media or leak interviews badmouthing me. That was it.
With the Barcelona schedule fully wrapped, Fly World Class 11 returned to Korea after roughly a month of filming overseas.
Incheon International Airport was packed with reporters clamoring for an interview with Joo Jae-rim.
The overseas episodes of Fly World Class 11 had just aired in Korea, and the fallout was immediate.
"Everybody, let's just calm down for a second—"
Hwang Hyun-woo moved to step in front of the crowd himself. With this many people surging toward the cast, their safety was starting to look genuinely at risk.
"Since we're obstructing other travelers, we'll move to a separate interview area and conduct interviews there."
But before he could even reach the front—
Joo Jae-rim, with that signature air of his, had already quietly reined in the reporters and resolved the whole situation on his own.
...What the hell is this kid's presence stat? I've gone past being impressed. I'm just laughing now.
Watching him, Hwang Hyun-woo let out a hollow laugh.
I'd spent the past several hundred years living the life of a sports star.
Crowds gathering just to lay eyes on me? Old news.
That said, along the way I had once committed the atrocity of forcibly signing autographs for fans who'd come to see an idol...
...A light mistake. Whatever.
Anyway.
This is reporter Ju Hyun-mi of Yeonae Sports! Regarding your recent dating rumor with Yoo Min-jung—
The press conference proceeded without any particular hitches.
Which is to say, I parried the trash questions just enough to keep things moving.
"It seems there are no further questions, so we'll end the interview here."
"Just one moment! Joo Jae-rim, what is the thing you want most in the world right now?"
"To go home and eat a meal my mother made. Thank you."
That last one was my own modest brand of public service, aimed at my mother.
With the homecoming, Season 1 of Fly World Class 11 came to an end.
The main PD clung and whined about doing the next season together, but I shut him down flat. Playing house with a bunch of toddlers was something to end here.
Yes, I'd decided to treat this life as a healing run.
That meant easing off the pressure of clearing the mission this time and paying a little more attention to my family—it did not mean throwing the mission away entirely.
At any rate, a few days after I flatly rejected the main PD's attempts to grab me by the pant leg over Season 2, something unexpected happened. I'd assumed filming for Fly World Class 11 was completely finished, but the main PD gathered the cast one more time. Viewership had surged so much that a special episode had been greenlit.
"Jae-rim, the other kids are all coming back for the special episode."
"So what?"
"It's the finale. You should say your goodbyes."
"If they need me, they can reach out themselves."
No contract covered this, and I declared I wasn't going.
"Son, are you going to film that special episode?"
"...Yes."
"Good. Say a proper goodbye to your friends~"
I crumbled before my parents' expectant gazes.
...Wow. The pay was stronger than I thought.
Perhaps because the show had gone global, the appearance fee the OTT platform dangled was nothing to sneeze at.
In any case, with the wrap party filming of Fly World Class 11, the show was truly, finally over.
And after the wrap party, time flew.
Yoo Min-jung had been a child actress even before Fly World Class 11, and she rode the show's popularity into a prolific run of work.
I'd told her to just do whatever she wanted because asking me about everything was a hassle—and she went around telling the whole world about me.
It wasn't just Yoo Min-jung—I got casting calls for television too, all of which I rejected without ceremony.
Kim Hyun-sung, meanwhile: the training in Spain must have paid off in a big way, because he passed the tryout for a professional club's youth team.
He'd left me a note of gratitude.
...Why is he thanking me, though?
Since it clearly wasn't a message that demanded a reply, I didn't say anything beyond a word of encouragement.
I aged another year and became a fourth grader.
A new semester beginning with the first breath of spring.
No nerves. No expectations. No thoughts at all.
"You're the kid from that show last year, right?"
"Jae-rim, how was Spain? Our family's thinking of going there for Dad's vacation this year."
Once again today, the kids bombarding me with questions showed no sign of letting up. All I could do was pray they'd vanish sooner rather than later.
Why are you telling me about your family vacation?
I endured it with the mindset of this too shall pass.
Thankfully, it didn't take the kids long to lose interest in me. When I failed to react to anything, their curiosity faded on its own.
"What's with that guy? You were on TV once and now you think you're a celebrity? Why is he so insufferable?"
My attitude earned me whispers behind my back and a spot as the class outcast.
Frankly, I welcomed the situation.
Once I was reinstated as Dobong Elementary's official pariah, the number of things annoying me dropped off dramatically.
Granted, school bullying usually comes hand in hand with violence—but perhaps thanks to my notorious epithet, the Monkey Wrench of Dobong Elementary, nobody dared pick a fight.
Either way, school life went on much as before.
I slept through class. Elementary school knowledge already lived in my head, all of it.
And honestly—this wasn't even middle school material, just grade-school basics.
So skipping class being a reason I couldn't rank first in the whole school? That logic didn't hold.
"Joo Jae-rim just sleeps all through class, so how is he always first place?"
"Right? Absolutely insufferable."
It pained me a little, reaping the grades without any visible effort—but a guaranteed sleep schedule was non-negotiable.
My homeroom teacher used to nag me endlessly—what will you eat when you grow up if you fail as a footballer?—but after I proved myself with the top score in the school, she left me alone.
Even if I fail as a footballer, I'll just regress anyway...
She seemed like a good teacher, the type who genuinely cared about each individual student. From an infinite regressor's standpoint, that translated to: insufferably hands-on.
At any rate, fourth grade flew by as well.
Before I knew it, the final exams of the second semester were done and winter break had begun.
The professional clubs that had been circling cautiously must have gotten impatient, because they launched a full-court press on my parents.
In two more years I'd be shopping for middle schools, so the clubs were making early contact, desperate to funnel me into their youth academies by any means necessary.
"We apologize, but we'd like our son to decide his own future himself."
My parents handed the choice to me.
The professional clubs, however, much preferred talking to my parents.
"Jae-rim, this gentleman here is from Suwon, and—"
"I'm already the best in the world, so I don't really need training. Also, I'd appreciate it if you spoke to me formally."
"...Yes, of course. Then we'll take our leave for today."
Unlike my parents, I dealt with them so airtight that not a single needle could slip through.
Meanwhile, my parents also asked about sending me to Europe for serious football training.
"Jae-rim, would you like to pursue football professionally in Europe?"
"I'm fine. I can do plenty on my own just watching YouTube."
But I turned down their proposal.
Since I had no intention of taking European citizenship, there was no reason for my parents to suffer in a country where they couldn't speak the language.
My move to Europe could wait until my physical frame was close to finished developing.
And if you get overworked at too young an age, it comes back to bite you later.
This life was planned around playing for the South Korean national team, so managing my body early for the long-haul flights ahead was important.
But then, life never does go according to plan.
Two more years flowed past from there.
It started when I entered middle school and joined the football club to try out for the youth national team.
That's when the trouble began.
"Hey, Joo Jae-rim. Where do you think you're going? Didn't you hear? The seniors are gathering all the first-years after training today."
"The senior's the one talking out of his ass here. If your football's that garbage, spend less time playing politics in the locker room and more time actually practicing."