Proof, Delivered in an Instant
"The match between FC Barcelona and Valencia is about to kick off, and joining us today are the two men behind last week's little controversy — Antonio Fernández and Esteban Salvador."
The panelists who had once stirred up the debate over Joo Jae-rim's talent had gathered in the podcast studio once again.
"Antonio, Esteban — good to have you back. It's been a while since our last broadcast. How have you both been?"
"Eh, busy enough. I've been getting threatening letters from Barcelona fans, for one thing."
Antonio Fernández — the panelist who had declared Joo Jae-rim's talent genuinely exceptional — answered the host with a shrug.
"Same here. Some Korean, or whoever he was, sent me a DM calling me a racist."
"Ah, now that's a shame. Because if you're not a racist, my friend, all you'd have to do is admit that Jaerimi's talent is real."
Esteban Salvador snorted at Antonio Fernández's words.
"Jaerimi? He's good for his age. But he still hasn't finished proving anything."
"So if Jaerimi scores even one goal against Barcelona, will you admit it then?"
"Well, obviously—"
The moment Esteban Salvador opened his mouth to answer—
Joo Jae-rim slipped past Barcelona's defender Marco Arce in a blink and buried the ball in the net.
"······."
"Hmm─ is my hearing going? Because for some reason, the voice that was yapping away just a second ago has gone awfully quiet."
Antonio Fernández kept grinning ear to ear, needling Esteban Salvador at every turn.
'Puta Madre! What the hell is Marco doing, failing to stop one little brat?!'
Esteban Salvador was cursing Marco Arce out in the privacy of his own head.
"Hmph. It seems Marco Arce let his guard down because Jaerimi's so young. Now the real match begins."
"Oh ho? Weren't you the one who said one goal would be enough for you to admit it?"
"Me? Of course not — that's what I said, and no, you didn't mishear me."
"You are truly pathetic."
At Antonio Fernández's parting shot, Esteban Salvador quietly turned his head away.
Even he had some shred of shame left.
After scoring, I was walking back toward the halfway line when my eyes met the defender sprawled face-down on the grass.
'Marco, was it?'
He was a defender with real ability — that much was obvious just from the fact that he played for Barcelona.
The one slated to anchor Barcelona's backline after Pau Cubarsí, the great defender La Masia had produced.
In his younger days, an arrogant personality and reckless tackling had made card-collecting his signature problem, but he was one of those players who mellowed out considerably with age once the captain's armband went on.
'Lamine Yamal, and now this guy too. Barcelona players all suddenly grow up the moment you hand them an armband.'
If armbands really had that kind of magic, I'd love to gift-wrap one for Cristiano Ronaldo.
After all, the man had aged far past the point of excuse and had still never matured a single day in his life.
'Come to think of it, he did say he'd be tagging along with the squad again today, didn't he······.'
If he'd come to watch the match, he was no doubt up in the away section or the VIP lounge right now, celebrating all by himself like an idiot.
Anyway.
The eyes of the boy named Marco were a churning mix of fury, humiliation, and everything in between.
"That one just now — I let my guard down, so if you—"
He opened his mouth at me, and I walked right past him.
Sorry, but I had a long, long road ahead of me, and I couldn't afford to stop and play with this kid.
In the league.
In the Copa del Rey.
In the Champions League.
In the World Cup.
From here on out, I would have to prove myself, over and over, against the strongest teams in the world.
And objectively speaking, FC Barcelona was a perfectly decent opponent to start that proof with.
'There's still plenty of time.'
One goal wouldn't be enough to shut the mouths of everyone demanding I prove myself.
Of course······. Once I'd proven all of the above, they'd only shift the goalposts and demand I prove my consistency instead.
Unfortunately for them, consistency was the one thing I was most confident in.
After all, no one on this earth had performed at the top for longer than I had.
The Barcelona fans who had filled Camp Nou were gripped by shock.
Their beloved Barcelona had conceded to a scrawny fourteen-year-old boy as if he were strolling through an open gate.
"You braindead bastards, focus, damn it!"
Some of the home fans even started hurling vicious abuse at their own defenders······ because they believed the disaster had been born of carelessness.
'No······. This was never our defenders' fault.'
Lamine Yamal, for his part, was flustered by the turn of events — but he did not look away from the truth.
What had just happened was not a lapse in Barcelona's defense.
Joo Jae-rim was simply that good.
Yamal turned his head at once, and his eyes met Pau Cubarsí's.
Cubarsí gave him a small shake of the head.
It meant: there's no stopping him alone.
'······So a monster has arrived.'
Lamine Yamal had known about Joo Jae-rim long before this match was ever scheduled.
More precisely, he couldn't not know.
This was the boy who had shattered three of Yamal's own youngest-ever records in one sweeping stroke.
'It really would be something to bring him to Barcelona······.'
As a kid, Yamal's personality had been so close to Cristiano Ronaldo's that people called him "Little Ronaldo" — and he'd caused plenty of the same kinds of trouble to match.
But after being named Barcelona's captain, he had matured naturally as the years went by.
"Heads up! The match is just getting started!"
Lamine Yamal — now a good husband, a good father, and a good captain — went around steadying a backline whose panic was written all over their faces.
Having drawn first blood, Valencia kept hammering away at Barcelona.
And naturally, the beating heart of that assault was Joo Jae-rim.
Playing as Valencia's striker, Jae-rim dropped all the way back into attacking midfield, spraying passes here, there, and everywhere as he conducted the game.
Time and again, his playmaking carved out one dangerous chance after another.
And watching him work, the Barcelona fans couldn't help but think of someone.
"It's him! That's Messi — that's Jaerim playing like Messi!"
The voice of the Barcelona fan was equal parts awe and terror.
If anyone on earth knew exactly what Lionel Messi meant, it was the fans of Barcelona.
"Boooooo─!"
Every single time Joo Jae-rim touched the ball, a fresh wave of jeers crashed down from the stands.
And in that moment, Barcelona's fans finally began to understand the rival crowds who had once booed their Lionel Messi.
But under that torrent of abuse from tens of thousands of fans, Joo Jae-rim's expression never flickered — he simply added another goal, calm as ever.
Joo Jae-rim scores a MULTI-GOAL against Barcelona! A fourteen-year-old boy is tearing Barcelona apart! This cannot be happening!! This should not be possible!! But it is happening — right now—!!!
The first half ended, and the second began.
Early in the second half, Valencia were still dictating the tempo.
But slowly, the flow of the match began to tip toward Barcelona.
"Barcelona counter! Lamine Yamal — Yamal slips it through! And Mikkel Bro Hansen finishes it! Barcelona pull one back! The score is 2-1, and Barcelona have begun the chase!"
Valencia could not simply ignore the raw gap in pedigree between themselves and Barcelona.
Five minutes after Barcelona's goal—
This time it was the Danish striker Mikkel Bro Hansen who threaded the pass, and Lamine Yamal who put it away.
"A killer pass from Mikkel Bro Hansen!"
"And emerging at the far post — Lamine Yamal! Yamal equalizes!!"
By the time twenty minutes of the second half had passed, the match had somehow been dragged back to square one.
"Jaerim, we're sorry······."
The Valencia players came over apologizing, shame written across their faces, but I felt nothing in particular.
This kind of thing had happened to me more times than I could count. It was old news.
"Why are you apologizing to me? The match isn't over yet."
They all stared at me like I was some kind of anomaly.
'What exactly do these guys think I am?'
I turned my head away in silence.
That was all there was to say.
'Come to think of it······.'
It crosses my mind sometimes.
What if the one cursed with this godforsaken regression had been someone other than me?
If that person had simply been born with more talent than me from the start, wouldn't they have cleared the mission right around the time their sanity began to crack?
And if not that—
'···wouldn't their mind have shattered long before the two-hundred-year mark?'
By my own count, I had lived longer than the nation called the Republic of Korea.
···All while enduring the hollow ache that endless regression carves into you.
I honestly don't remember exactly how many more regressions I went through.
After my mind snapped somewhere in the middle and I burned through a handful of cycles as a gibbering wreck, I gave up counting altogether.
From that point on, I decided it was simply healthier not to keep track of time.
My football kept climbing with every cycle — but as if it were the price, my humanity kept eroding away.
Then, at some point, even that stopped falling.
I had reached the absolute limit of what a human body and soul could lose.
'And my humanity stopped draining any further, too.'
At any rate, I'd been making 'inefficient' choices lately.
If I were still the man from my previous lives, the moment Real Madrid tabled their offer I would have discarded Valencia without a second's hesitation.
Forget any confidence about winning titles — playing for a stronger club was simply more 'efficient.'
'Well. Efficiency is what that would've been.'
I had been drifting around the center circle when I dropped deep into our defensive zone and went in for the tackle.
"Mikkel!! Behind you!!"
Crunch─
"What the hell—"
Blindsided by the sudden challenge, Mikkel Bro Hansen couldn't react, and the ball was stripped from him clean.
Bro Hansen howled at the referee for a foul, but unfortunately for him, it was a textbook tackle — ball, and nothing but ball.
I rose from the turf, turned upfield with the ball at my feet, and drove straight into Barcelona territory.
"···Jaerim? What are you doing all the way back here?"
Panic was plain on Marcos Alvarez's face when he spotted me deep in our own half — but he collected himself quickly and began pushing the line up.
"Go — get up the pitch, you bastards! Counter!!"
Maybe it was Marcos Alvarez's shout that did it — Barcelona's defenders came charging at me without hesitation.
'Hoo······.'
I drew my senses up slowly, carefully.
The players' ragged breathing, the brush of the wind against my skin — every sensation snapped into perfect clarity.
I poked the ball between Barcelona players' legs and slipped past them, swatting away every desperate arm that grabbed for my shirt.
Before I knew it I was over the halfway line and closing on the penalty box, and there — the Barcelona defender named Marco planted himself in my path.
His face was set with grim resolve: this time, he would erase the humiliation of the first half.
With my senses dialed this high, I could feel even the tiniest twitch of his muscles.
I waited for the exact instant his center of gravity tipped fully to one side, then cut the opposite way — and he didn't so much as react as I blew past him.
'Too slow.'
The defender who launched a sliding tackle from behind sailed harmlessly past me, and the right-back sprinting over to cut me off tripped over his own teammate's legs and went down.
Through that opening, I stepped into the penalty box.
And once I was inside the box—
Swish─
The goal was simply the scheduled outcome.
"It's — it's in!! Joo Jae-rim! Joo Jae-rim's wonder goal! A WONDER GOAL! Joo Jae-rim's wonder goal─!!!"
When the ball ripped into the net, the Korean broadcast booth could only react a full beat too late.
"With the final whistle moments away! The pride of the Republic of Korea, Joo Jae-rim, becomes the first Korean player EVER to score a hat-trick against Barcelona─!!!"
That was the kind of goal Joo Jae-rim had just scored — the kind that knocks the soul clean out of your body for a moment.
Maybe it was because I'd carried the ball all the way from our own defensive end.
My breath was burning its way up my throat.
I slowed my breathing down, one inhale at a time.
'Still — this should be enough, right?'
Pulling my shirt off as I walked, I made my way slowly toward the corner flag.
Then, standing tall in front of the Barcelona fans, I raised the shirt high above my head.
"NOOOOOOOO─!"
And in that instant, a single man's scream tore through the silenced Camp Nou.
'That was Ronaldo's voice, wasn't it······.'
···Must've been my imagination, right?