The Whole World Is Full of Ho-Dongsaengs
A good while had passed since we came to Valencia.
Our family was slowly settling into life in Spain.
The first thing that needed adapting, of course, was the language.
It was true that AI had torn down the language barrier, but if you weren't just visiting as a tourist — if you'd actually moved here — learning the language mattered enormously.
Like a famous Korean footballer once said: learning the local language is a form of respect for the country.
Even five years into their emigration, the person who kept talking through a smartphone translator and the person who fumblingly tried to hold a conversation in Spanish — it went without saying that the latter received the warmer gaze.
"Alright, kids. From now on, every time you speak Korean, you pay a fine."
"...Eunbi has no money."
"Then how about this — if Eunbi uses Korean, no snacks for the whole day."
Mom and Dad threw themselves into learning Spanish. Their scholarly fervor was so intense that they even banned Korean from being spoken at home.
Well, it wasn't a bad method for rapid language acquisition.
"......."
Whoosh, whoosh— flick, flick.
"...You want me to eat?"
Nod, nod.
One minor(?) problem, though: from that day forward, conversation in our house vanished entirely.
'...Is paying a fine really that unbearable for them?'
It was, once again, the moment I realized where my own competitive streak came from.
"......."
"......."
When dinnertime went silent, it felt like a wall had gone up between family members.
Unable to bear the suffocating atmosphere any longer, I said to my parents:
"...Just use Korean at home."
"......."
"......."
When I said it in Spanish, my parents simply stared at me blankly, apparently unable to understand a word.
"I asked what you'd think about us just speaking Korean at home."
I helpfully translated into Korean, and—
My parents exchanged glances, nodded, and simultaneously switched back to their native tongue.
"Phew... my head almost exploded from the frustration."
"Right! Studying works better when everyone does it hard on their own instead of being oppressed."
Meanwhile, my little sister, who had watched the whole scene unfold, quietly went and fetched the piggy bank reserved for fines.
"...I never agreeded!"
"Eunbi, you just spoke Korean."
"Huh—!"
She clapped a hand over her mouth in shock, and my parents burst out laughing.
'...Why is that funny?'
Needless to say, this was a species of humor I failed to comprehend.
Anyway, the fastest Spanish learner in the family was my little sister. Being young, she probably just picked up languages quickly.
"Hola, I am Joo Eunbi."
Hmm...
She did have a habit of half-Spanish, half-Korean frankensteining her sentences.
But once she started school, I figured it would sort itself out soon enough.
On the whole, our family was satisfied with life in Valencia.
Naturally, though, not everything about the emigration was smooth sailing.
Unlike me — who had lived all over Europe — my parents had spent their entire lives in Korea, and they struggled a bit more to adjust to Spain.
That said, Dad had it slightly easier, since his work kept him meeting people from the club.
'The problem was Mom.'
Maybe it's a prejudice, but making friends gets harder as you age.
Unlike children, adults have to weigh a dozen different circumstances before letting anyone in.
I suggested to Mom that if it was too hard, she could go back to Korea for a while with Eunbi.
"What kind of family lives apart from each other? What would even be the point."
She refused, flat and final.
Still, lately she'd been much brighter than in those early days.
Following advice from people around her that she shouldn't just stay cooped up at home, she started a V-log about our emigrant life in Spain.
Mom filmed it; Dad edited it.
Eunbi made occasional appearances in the videos too.
Since uploads weren't exactly regular, the view counts weren't anything to write home about, and none of us paid much attention.
Mom's main reason for running the channel wasn't income — it was sharing the emigration experience and chatting with other people in the comments.
Well... honestly, she didn't need to do anything at all.
The annual salary Valencia had promised me was one million euros. In Korean money, that was a staggering 1.5 billion won.
Which was the club's way of saying their expectations for me were sky-high.
'Compared to my weekly wages back in my prime, it's laughably small — but for a 12-year-old youth player, it was unprecedented treatment.'
'Wasn't Messi on about 600,000 euros at around my age?'
A precise calculation was impossible, but even accounting for wage inflation and cost-of-living rises across the eras, I figured it came out roughly equal to — maybe a little more than — what Messi had been paid.
Anyway, Mom's channel grew modestly and unambitiously like that — until, at some point, her subscriber count exploded.
The cause: a single subscriber who made my existence known.
It hadn't been my parents' intention at all. My voice had simply leaked into the audio while the family was chatting.
It wasn't something I needed to hide, so we just left it public.
There's nothing wrong with a footballer's family running a YouTube channel.
A handful of malicious commenters did grumble about us cashing in on our kid's fame.
Not long after, they got mobbed and silenced by my fan club.
"People in the comments are asking if Jae-rim will make an appearance?"
There was a faint note of expectation in Mom's voice.
It wasn't ambition to grow the channel — more like the primal parental urge to show off one's accomplished child.
"If you hit one million subscribers, I'll appear."
Indulging her hope, I threw out a figure that seemed reasonable to me.
For the record, I chose a million because, having spent the better part of an eternity as a sports superstar, I had absolutely no sense anymore for what number counted as a lot.
"...Mom will work really hard."
Only from her reaction did I realize that one million subscribers might be a tad out of reach.
"How about 500,000?"
"...I'll do my best."
'That's high too?'
While I was privately agonizing over what the appropriate number actually was, the doorbell rang.
Ding-dong—
I rose from my seat without a word.
"I'll be right back."
"Good. Return before this tea grows cold."
"Jae-rim's dad, what kind of joke is that?"
"What? You've never read Romance of the Three Kingdoms?"
"Who reads that anymore?"
Because I already had a pretty good guess who was ringing our doorbell at this hour.
Ever since I'd flatly rejected his mentoring offer, Cristiano Ronaldo's clinginess had continued without pause.
How clingy, you ask? This lunatic once screenshotted his entire career goal record and trophy list and sent them all to me.
'Why? Why is he like this?'
Ronaldo's obsession was beyond comprehension.
'Should I file for a restraining order?'
At this point, I felt like even a Spanish court would take my side.
Anyway, true to form, Ronaldo offered to become my mentor once again today.
"I, the greatest footballer of all time, shall be your men—"
"Not happening."
I shut him down without mercy.
Even after Joo Jae-rim left for Valencia, news of him kept reaching Korea — sparse, but steady.
It was all thanks to Valencia's official YouTube channel, which had been uploading footage of Joo Jae-rim.
And then, naturally, the football fans who watched the match went and crashed the Football Association's website.
Valencia these days had a fair number of young players who had joined after seeing Cristiano Ronaldo's name on the roster.
Well, I understood.
To me, Ronaldo was just a bizarre old man who kept trying to act like we were close.
But to the youth players, Cristiano Ronaldo was a legend who had defined an entire era.
"Guys! Ronaldo's visiting the stadium today!"
"For real?"
"Yeah! I think he's coming to watch the match!"
With so many ho-dongsaengs at the club, word that Ronaldo would be attending today's match spread through the youth squad in an instant.
"Listen up, everyone. I'm declaring it now — I'm going to dominate today's match and get called up to the first team."
"Yeah, no. That's gonna be me."
The Juvenil A players burned with determination ahead of the match.
The desire to prove themselves to Ronaldo — the club owner and the object of their worship — and earn a call-up to the first team.
I watched these teenagers incinerating their youth with such passion and quietly exhaled.
'Haah... the whole world is full of ho-dongsaengs...'
Spain had league football for its youth players.
Unlike La Liga, however, these matches weren't organized by the Liga de Fútbol Profesional (LFP), the Spanish professional league — they were run by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF).
The RFEF's youth competitions included the Copa de Campeones de Juvenil, the Copa del Rey Juvenil, the División de Honor Juvenil, and the Liga Nacional Juvenil.
Valencia Juvenil A belonged to the División de Honor Juvenil.
The División de Honor Juvenil was split into two groups of eighteen teams each, with every side playing thirty-four league matches in a home-and-away format.
The top four teams from each group advanced to the Copa de Campeones to contest the national title — and the winner of that tournament earned a spot in the UEFA Youth League.
Short of the senior team qualifying for the Champions League, it was the only route a youth side had into the UEFA Youth League.
Anyway, today's opponents were Atlético Madrid Juvenil A.
The División de Honor Juvenil, like La Liga, was dominated by the big three: Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, and FC Barcelona.
It was only natural that promising youngsters flocked to clubs whose senior teams were doing well.
A successful first team ultimately meant the club had money to burn.
Valencia's youth talent pool was, if anything, actually better than average — thanks to the gathering of 'ho-dongsaengs.'
And because they were Ronaldo's fans, their loyalty to the club was remarkably strong too.
Every now and then, in what must be an attempt to imitate their idolized club owner, one of them would go full villain — lodging counter-offers against other teams...
'That's all stuff you actually did, Ronaldo. Suffer through it.'
Still, none of them had yet done what the current lord of Valencia did best: 'counter-offering against rival clubs.'
'Valencia's rivals are Villarreal and Levante, and both are a weight class below us right now — so maybe that's only natural.'
Anyway — overshadowed by La Masia of FC Barcelona and La Fábrica of Real Madrid, the Atlético Madrid academy, La Academia, was itself a storied production line of talent.
And then, out of nowhere, the Atlético Madrid vs Valencia youth match caught fire in Korea and Japan.
Nothing particularly special — a Japanese prospect simply happened to be playing for Atlético Madrid.
"Huh?"
I spotted him the moment I walked into the stadium.
Now, he wasn't skilled enough to be a 'familiar face' to me, strictly speaking.
I recognized him simply because, apart from me, he was the only Asian player here.
"It's a pleasure to meet you-ssu. Let's have a good match-ssu. Good match-ssu?"
He approached me first and offered a greeting.
Not that I judged him poorly for it — quite the opposite, actually. All in all, he made a decent impression.
He'd greeted me in Korean, no doubt out of consideration in case I couldn't speak Spanish. It was a thoughtful touch.
"I speak Spanish."
I answered his consideration with a greeting in Spanish, and we ended up having quite a long conversation.
But there were still plenty of mountains I had to climb before I could surpass Messi.
The last thing I could afford was to be upstaged by a player whose name I didn't even remember.
Not that I held any ill will toward the kid, of course.
'This is all the Japanese media's fault. Try to understand.'
My job today was simple.
To make sure the Japanese media never uttered the word 'rival' again, all I had to do was thoroughly obliterate Atlético Madrid.
Thanks to the club's self-imposed minutes restriction, I'd only be given twenty minutes on the pitch—
'That's more than enough. Plenty of room to spare.'
All I had to do was blow the game open within those twenty minutes and walk away with the win on points.