The Hell Bell Rings
While Joo Jae-rim was busy cleaning up after his interview, a promising young talent from Atlético Madrid named Shinichi Yagami stood clutching his jersey, waiting for the moment it would end.
Will he swap jerseys with me...?
True, he'd been utterly demolished in the match, but his fandom only burned hotter for it. Having felt Joo Jae-rim's overwhelming talent with his entire body, he had become a fan for life.
It felt like he kept drifting toward my side of the pitch on purpose during the game...
It must have been intended as a moment of enlightenment for him... or so his fevered mind believed.
At this point, Shinichi Yagami had entered a kind of fanatical trance beyond the reach of words. And just then, Joo Jae-rim emerged from his interview.
"U-um, would you swap jerseys with me?"
Shinichi Yagami approached him cautiously.
I looked at the Japanese prospect who claimed to be my fan and was asking me one question after another.
The endless regressions had left plenty of cracks in my personality, sure. But not so many that I'd cold-shoulder a fellow player who called himself my fan.
"A jersey swap? Sure."
As I chatted with the Japanese kid, I found myself mentally calculating Japan's population. A kind of 'regression sickness' born of my repeated loops.
Japan was around 120 million, wasn't it...?
Japan's population was shrinking year after year thanks to its own birthrate crisis, but it was still a global population powerhouse all the same.
If I wanted to clear the mission, making Japan mine had to be my top priority. That much was non-negotiable.
"Want an autograph too?"
"Y-yes, sir!"
That thought made me a little kinder to the Japanese prospect. Honestly, after regressing so many times, you develop a rough outline of where your support runs high in any given era.
Every life, I'd made a fortune over the course of my playing career, and with that money I'd commissioned opinion polls across the entire globe.
Since I was Asian, I'd naturally assumed my support would be strongest in Asia. Unfortunately, even within Asia, opinion of me split along cultural lines.
Centered on Korea—assuming I never naturalized—Northeast Asia's support for me was unexpectedly high. Southeast Asia, on the other hand, was firmly Messi and Ronaldo territory. Within Southeast Asia, only Vietnam, thanks to its Sinosphere heritage, showed real support for me.
But if Northeast Asia was my stronghold, there were places where I got brutally crushed.
First and foremost, South America, Argentina included, had to be written off without hesitation.
In most of my lives, Brazil named Pelé and Argentina named Messi the greatest footballer in history—and the people of the other South American countries overwhelmingly chose Lionel Messi too.
Argentina especially—I could never crack that place if I lived a thousand lifetimes.
Regrettably, in Argentina, devotion to Messi was practically indistinguishable from religion. If Messi ran for president, he'd win in an unprecedented landslide.
And a slightly bitter truth: my decision to abandon South America wasn't purely about fandom—it was also about racism. Europe at least went through the motions of punishing it; South America didn't even bother with the pretense.
Still, this particular life had gotten off to a decent start, all things considered. In Europe right now, the image of me as the player who would surpass Messi had taken root successfully.
America can stick to its football where they throw the ball with their hands, for all I care.
North America was so heavily shaped by European influence that winning over Europe solved it automatically.
Which meant Asia was where I needed to focus first. Well... I'd shaved a bit off my image in that interview, but with proper management going forward, that much wouldn't be a real problem.
...Speaking of which, how does one even reduce an unlikable image?
The problem was that I was terrible at media games. The infinite regression had left me fundamentally unable to grasp the sensibilities of ordinary people. In fact, things that seemed perfectly fine by my standards had snowballed into serious controversies more than once.
Hmm...
When in doubt, the best move was to imitate 'someone.' And in that instant, I thought of Cristiano Ronaldo, the world-famous football superstar of his day.
Hmm... not Ronaldo, though.
No matter how I turned it over in my head, he was not a role model. Not even slightly.
While I was busy deliberating, the Japanese prospect piped up with a question.
"How do I get better at football?"
I fell into thought at his question. How to get better at football? In other words, his problem was that he wasn't good at it.
...Your worry is that you're bad at football?
I answered with the tone of someone asking, how do you not know this?
"Then practice."
"Ohhh—! Of course! Practice it is!"
"Rest is part of training too. Proper rest is essential."
"Ohhh—!"
With reactions that spewed out automatically at every word out of my mouth, I got tired of him fast.
Yep. Japanese kids and I just don't mesh.
Our meeting that day ended with an exchange of KakaoTalk IDs. For the record, when I mentioned that KakaoTalk was the only social media I used, he installed the app right then and there.
The Japanese reporters were watching the whole thing with hawk eyes, so I had no choice but to hand over my ID.
Ugh. So draining.
On the train back to Valencia, I quietly closed my eyes and let sleep take me.
Articles were pouring out in both Korea and Japan. Interest had been high even before kickoff, since everyone had billed the match as Korea versus Japan, so the sheer volume of coverage was considerable.
But public reaction turned out to be lukewarm, which, in a way, was only natural. This was the outcome everyone had predicted before the match even started. And the Japanese media had smoothly pivoted the framing from 'nation versus nation' to a contest between the 'sports' of baseball and football.
It gave me a decent idea of why corporations muzzle the press with advertising money.
There was, however, one thing I personally could not wrap my head around.
"Why is my mom's YouTube turning into a Gal-deup-cup?"
Football fanatics and baseball fanatics flooding in from both countries had turned my mother's YouTube comment section into a war zone.
They argued with the ferocity of people whose very lives were on the line. A few of them even forged friendships that transcended nationality in the process.
What exactly are these lunatics doing in someone else's YouTube comment section...?
I worried my mother's channel might lose its original character, but she didn't seem the least bit bothered.
"Well, the view counts just keep climbing, don't they?"
At some point... my mother had become a view-count monster.
Monday. A school day.
Honestly, I wanted to quit studying altogether, but the law left me no choice—Spain made education compulsory until age sixteen.
...Three more years of this, roughly.
In Korea, footballers usually went on to high school too. Dropping out of school to go all-in on football, like the player Yi Jeok-ryong had, was a rarity.
Granted, he only dropped out of middle school to dodge military service.
Here in Spain, though, plenty of kids chasing a professional career simply never enrolled in high school. It made sense, really—by that age you had a fair idea whether football could put food on your table.
Most kids who felt sure they could earn a living from the game skipped school and devoted themselves to club training instead. What people liked to call 'focus over breadth.'
After all, there were plenty of cautionary tales of kids who tried to juggle both half-heartedly and ended up failing at everything.
Let's be honest—in Korea, half the school football teams just sleep through class anyway.
Part of it was that Spain, unlike Korea, had a grade-retention system, which made balancing academics and training that much harder. In other words, the only Spanish kids who went on to high school were the ones actually interested in university.
That said, it wasn't as if Spanish footballers never attended high school at all. When a youth player wanted to pursue one, the club often accommodated them.
Having lived through infinite regressions, I could graduate from university whenever I felt like it.
But why would I...?
Needless to say, I had zero intention of going to high school.
The bell of hell is ringing...
My primary school had formed all kinds of partnerships with Valencia CF, so it showed considerable consideration for the club's youth players. Match days, for instance, allowed me to skip school through entirely legitimate means.
Of course, on days without a match, there was no mercy—I had to show up.
...I suppose that's fair.
The biggest problem with this place, though, was that nearly every student in it was a Valencia fan.
Korea was so much more peaceful.
I watched the kids swarm in the moment class ended and let out a quiet sigh.
"Jae-rimi! What are you doing after school? Let's play!"
"I have training."
"Don't you ever get a day off?"
"Nope."
Fitting for a continent where football was practically a religion, I was a star here.
God, what a pain in the ass.
This was not what I wanted. Yesterday or today, all I'd ever asked for was a school life as quiet as a dead mouse.
"Can we come cheer for your match this weekend?" one kid asked, while another nearby handed me a jersey.
"No. Don't come."
I signed the jersey with practiced ease as I answered.
"Too bad! We're going anyway!"
And needless to say, these Western brats did not listen to a word I said.
"Jae-rimi, you've got this!!"
"Blow those bastards to pieces!"
The Spanish kids who'd come to the stadium began cheering at the top of their lungs. And beside them sat Korean football fans, wearing bewildered expressions at this sudden chorus of children.
It's a youth match. Why on earth did they bring Taegukgi flags?
Watching interviews with the other Korean players based abroad, they all said the same thing—that hearing Korean fans cheer or seeing the Korean flag in Europe gave them strength.
Never did anything for me.
Frankly, I couldn't relate. Well... I think I felt something like that in my early regressions. But as the lifetimes stretched on endlessly, at some point even the fans' cheers stopped moving me.
I was never that sentimental a type to begin with.
Regardless of my feelings, I worked hard on fan service. I knew perfectly well that it was the fans' love that let me make a living playing football.
But my skill at football wasn't a product of that love—it was the result of my effort, and nothing else. Demanding a stake in my ability just because they'd cheered for me was shameless.
I wonder if someone like that will show up in this life too?
While I was gazing at the Korean fans, wallowing in bitter old memories—
Trill—
With the referee's whistle, the league match against Real Betis Juvenil A kicked off. I sat on the bench and watched the game unfold.
Once again, like clockwork, I was a second-half substitute today.
The match itself, how should I put it...
...Why are they playing so desperate?
Opponents across the pitch radiated urgency. They looked like they were racing against some invisible time limit.
"Jae-rim, get warmed up!"
And that feeling reached its climax the moment I started stretching with twenty-five minutes left on the clock.
So it was because of me.
Valencia Juvenil hammered the dagger goal into the net of the panicking Betis side. The score became 3–0.
In the end, I didn't play at all that day. Sending me out against an opponent whose will to fight had already been annihilated would have simply been too cruel.
Instead, I was promised a start in the next match. My minutes restriction remained in place, but starting was meaningful in its own right.
Because Valencia's next opponent was—
FC Barcelona, the strongest force in youth football.