Punished for Being Too Good
***
I became a middle schooler, and I joined a professional club's youth team.
At first, I'd considered joining the school football club closest to home.
But the financial side of things was impossible to ignore.
In Europe, signing a youth contract with a club meant the club paid *me*.
In Korea, however, I was the one expected to pay "membership fees."
*Why should I have to pay to play football for them?*
In that moment, I found myself seized by a fundamentally philosophical question. It had simply been far too long since I'd started playing football anywhere other than Europe, and I'd failed to adapt to the peculiarities of Korean football culture.
*...Wait, no. Was this actually my first time starting in Korea?*
Come to think of it, I remembered that even before my regressions, I'd left to study in Europe at a young age. Though that memory was ancient history by now, so I couldn't swear to it.
In any case, no matter how quintessentially "Korean sports" the membership fee system might be.
Paying money to play football was something my pride would never accept.
*Why on earth are the fees so expensive?*
Besides, I knew those surprisingly steep fees would be a burden on my parents.
It would be far better to save that money and buy my little sister—now three years and six months old—one more pretty dress to wear.
— Oppaaa!
She was my little sister, nearly ten years my junior.
She felt vaguely similar to the sister from my past lives.
Honestly, though, I couldn't remember her clearly.
It had all happened far too long ago.
And, as slightly guilty as I felt about it, I preferred to keep the same comfortable distance we had now.
If I failed this life's mission, my little sister might vanish again, after all.
It was my own safeguard against being driven mad by the endless cycle of regression.
Anyway.
To avoid burdening my parents, I had no choice but to join a youth team under a professional club.
So the place I settled on was the youth team of a professional club based in Seoul.
There was no special reason behind the choice.
It simply happened to be the closest pro-affiliated youth team to my house.
The atmosphere when I joined the youth team wasn't bad, all things considered.
One player who'd lost his starting striker spot to me held a grudge, sure, but nothing worth worrying about.
As time passed, however, the ranks of the dissatisfied swelled at an alarming rate—
Well. There were various reasons for it.
The manager's special treatment of me, and a media that fixated on me and me alone.
Jealousy and inferiority complexes had fermented and blended into a toxic cocktail over all these small slights.
And the most corrosive ingredient of all was the striker who'd lost the starting battle to me, whispering behind my back and stirring up factional resentment.
Part of the problem was my poor grasp of Korean senior-junior culture.
It wasn't that European sports had no senior-junior hierarchy at all—but nowhere in Europe did people nitpick bizarre imagined slights or drag the whole group into punishment over one person's "attitude."
"Hey, Joo Jae-rim. Where do you think you're going? Didn't you hear? The seniors told all the first-years to gather after training today."
"The seniors can go screw themselves. If your football's that pathetic, spend your locker-room scheming time on practice instead."
Honestly, even if I had understood Korean senior-junior culture perfectly, I doubt I'd have bowed to it.
To an infinite regressor, watching nobodies who'd been born a mere year or two earlier playing dress-up as "seniors" was beneath contempt.
*What does a pathetic gap in age even mean?*
Perhaps because I'd now outlived most *nations*, I simply could not comprehend the minds of ordinary people.
In any case.
For all their grievances, none of it ever landed on me directly.
The public's interest in me remained white-hot—so much so that my joining a football team was deemed newsworthy.
Come to think of it, the article even ran a photo of me in the club uniform, so the club must have issued an official press release.
Even the self-appointed "seniors" apparently lacked the audacity to lay a hand on me while the club, the manager, and the entire public's gaze stayed locked on me.
Instead, their resentment migrated to the other first-years.
The seniors began taking their pointless frustrations out on them.
"Joo Jae-rim, hey. Think you're the only one who gets to shine? Because of you, the rest of us take the fall for nothing."
"Didn't anyone ever teach you that no player is bigger than the team? Could you *try* cooperating for once?"
And then—remarkably enough—
the victims blamed *me*, rather than the seniors who were actually tormenting them.
I couldn't make sense of this situation on any level.
*How is that my fault?*
By the time I'd come to my senses, everyone was blaming me.
Things that had barely registered as problems in Europe spiraled into major incidents in Korea.
"What kind of gibberish is that? If you gathered up players of *your* level, you could stock half the planet with teams that have a player greater than the team."
To be clear, being baffled was one thing—but a factual error was still an error, so I corrected it.
***
The club was well aware that relations between Joo Jae-rim and the youth players had grown strained.
One glance at the ever-growing list of parents filing complaints with the club told you roughly how bad things had gotten.
Given that situation, the club's board was neither incompetent enough nor foolish enough to miss the fact that a conflict was brewing between Joo Jae-rim and the rest of the youth squad.
But devising a countermeasure for the parents' grievances was easier said than done.
The parents' complaints boiled down to two things.
One was an objection to why a first-year—rather than a second- or third-year—was being fielded as the starting striker.
The other was their dissatisfaction that Joo Jae-rim alone was soaking up all the media attention.
In the incident's early days, the club did try to reason with the parents.
Player selection was strictly the manager's prerogative, based purely on merit, they explained—and the media's fixation on Joo Jae-rim was beyond their control.
The parents didn't even pretend to listen.
They genuinely, sincerely believed that their own precious children's talent was every bit the equal of Joo Jae-rim's.
*'Talking to a wall. This is genuinely driving me insane.'*
Had Seoul CF been a corporate-sponsored sports club, they could have simply ignored the parents' protests.
Unfortunately, Seoul CF was a citizens' club.
And the moment the board disregarded the parents, their complaints would come pouring down on the club's owner—the mayor himself—in the form of endless civic petitions.
That said, they couldn't exactly order the manager to bench Joo Jae-rim either.
If Joo Jae-rim failed to develop because he wasn't getting playing time, every last ounce of blame would come crashing down on *them*.
The board had been cheering outright when Joo Jae-rim joined their affiliated youth club.
Now, the very prodigy they'd celebrated had become a source of suffocating pressure for the club.
Without any viable countermeasure in hand, stuck between action and inaction.
The incident finally, inevitably exploded.
The second- and third-years had subjected the first-years to brutal hazing.
The board's consensus leaned firmly toward punishing the ringleaders of the abuse.
But—
"…The order from above is to bury this incident."
The club staff had no choice but to obey the directive handed down from upstairs.
They were salaried employees, after all.
Besides, they couldn't very well drive out the entire pool of promising prospects—the club's own future—over a single player.
It would be one thing if Joo Jae-rim intended to stay with the club, but the overwhelming likelihood was that he'd move abroad the moment he came of age.
"And disciplinary action for Joo Jae-rim."
"…On what grounds?"
"He disrupted team morale. Something like that—just hit him with one."
Since fan opinion made expelling Joo Jae-rim impossible, the board could only pray that a disciplinary mark would bruise his pride enough to make him walk out on his own.
***
Four years had passed since the season 1 finale of Fly, World Class, yet the public's fascination with me burned as fiercely as ever.
People were still talking about me on social media to this day.
Most of the posts were kind, though it wasn't as if the insults and criticism had vanished entirely.
The moment you stepped into members-only internet cafés, the full-blown character assassination began.
The parent cafés for families with football-dreaming children were by far the worst.
Everything from curses that my arrogance would doom me to failure, to claims that I was actually just a mediocre prospect the media had pumped up—every conceivable variety of delusion was scrawled across those boards.
It bore an uncanny resemblance to what a footballer named Lee Kang-jin had endured as a child prodigy.
It was a bitter reminder that South Korea hadn't changed much, then or now. Nothing seemed to galvanize the nation quite like grabbing a talented person by the ankle and dragging them back down.
Well. On some level, I understood.
That was simply what parents were.
It's hard to admit that your own child is mediocre and falling short.
What parent in this world could look their own child in the eye and admit inadequacy?
*"Our son only fails because he doesn't study—his mind is brilliant, really."*
*"Our son would succeed if he just tried harder."*
Failing to see your own child objectively was practically a national pastime.
What my endless regressions had taught me was this: talent is, for all practical purposes, fixed at birth.
Granted, if you poured in infinite time the way I had, perhaps you could surpass your natural gifts.
But unfortunately, "effort" itself turned out to be a talent too.
For one person, sitting at a desk for ten hours studying is torture; for another, it's an endurance level they can manage without flinching.
Likewise, if you handed most people the goal of becoming the world's greatest footballer and told them to live the same life on repeat for five hundred years, the vast majority would go mad long before the finish line.
I, however, did not go mad.
My conviction that I possess the talent to become the world's greatest footballer rests entirely on the fact that I kept my sanity through those long centuries.
Sure, infinite regression had severed my ability to understand the hearts of ordinary people—but I was confident I still fell comfortably within the range of "functional human being."
And yet the reason the vast majority called me rude, socially inept, a spoiled brat—
was nothing more than a very trivial problem: mediocre people simply cannot comprehend the existence of a genius.
Anyway, the next day.
I made my way to the manager's office after being summoned, where the manager relayed the news that the club had issued me a disciplinary sanction—for disrupting team morale, allegedly.
The moment the words reached my ears, I simply burst out laughing, hollow and humorless.
"You're doing your damnedest to make me naturalize for China or Japan."
I felt the manager flinch at my muttering.
His face began draining of color, slowly.
Apparently, he genuinely believed I might do it.
*What on earth does this man take me for?*
Well, not that I bothered correcting his misunderstanding.
I left the manager trembling alone in his office in terror, and spotted the ringleader of the locker-room scheming scuttling away.
"Hey."
"Uh—y-yes?"
Now that I'd actually walked up to him, the nerve had evaporated.
"*Sigh.* What am I even doing here."
The moment I saw the kid's baby-faced features, all I could think was that this was beneath me—screwing around with a bunch of tadpoles—so I walked off without another word.
***
Training alone at the grounds where I'd practiced since childhood, I sank into deep contemplation.
*What if I just went abroad to study football now?*
It was at that exact moment, as I weighed the idea with complete sincerity—
*Vrrrm*—
Cristiano Ronaldo was calling.
Well, it wasn't only Ronaldo—Lionel Messi checked in from time to time as well.
Oh, and it seemed Ronaldo had finally noticed I'd blocked his account, because he'd started contacting me through his son's account instead.
And yet, in all that time, he hadn't asked me to unblock him even once—which, I had to admit, wasPeak Ronaldo behavior.
In any case, I had a long-overdue conversation with Cristiano Ronaldo, and after hearing my story, he declared with supreme confidence that I should leave everything to him.
Frankly, I trusted him about as far as I could throw him, but I let him run with it.
I knew perfectly well that even if I tried to stop him, Ronaldo would do whatever the hell he pleased.
And sure enough, before long, a post went up on Cristiano Ronaldo's social media.
*…No. Why is this bastard suddenly attacking an entire continent?*
The situation had snowballed far bigger than expected, but I decided not to sweat it.
*Not my circus. He'll clean up his own mess.*
After all, it wasn't my mess to clean.