The KakaoTalk Invasion
***
Ronaldo's letter, which had opened with the line "You should have respected me," filled an entire A4 page with plenty to spare.
'What is this bastard doing with his time if not on his smartphone?'
I immediately fired off a message to Cristiano Ronaldo. No matter how I looked at it, writing a letter by hand and mailing it instead of just using his phone was something I simply could not wrap my head around.
But even after waiting for a good long while, no reply came from Cristiano Ronaldo.
'......Is he ignoring me on purpose?'
My mood souring slightly, I was just about to send Ronaldo a photo of Lionel Messi hoisting the World Cup trophy when—
It suddenly dawned on me.
'Ah, right. I blocked his number, didn't I?'
I had blocked every single number with a Spanish country code.
'Spain' numbers had all been silenced, so no matter how many times Ronaldo changed his number, my replies never came—and apparently this was his workaround.
'Seriously, though. Blocking calls is one thing, but sending mail? Is this guy actually insane?'
Well...... that said, I didn't bother lifting the block, either.
If it was something genuinely important, or something he absolutely had to say, he'd summon me to the owner's office on his own anyway.
Sure, I'd unilaterally messaged Ronaldo without unblocking him first.
But Ronaldo had also unilaterally mailed me a letter, so I figured we could call it even.
***
Thanks to my heroic performance, Valencia had come away from the Barcelona away match with a win, and riding that wave of good momentum, they ran tactical drills in preparation for Matchday 37—a home fixture against Atlético Madrid.
Since Matchday 37 would be Valencia's final home game of the season, the players all vowed to give everything and take the three points.
"It's our last home match of the season—let's give it everything we've got and win!"
"Obviously!"
Well, everyone loves to say they'll give it their all......
In truth, by this point in the season, the odds were high that each of them was already deep in conversation with their agent about where they'd be playing next year.
Players satisfied with life at Valencia would stay, while the disgruntled ones would leave.
There was really no need to point fingers at anyone over it.
That was just how the professional world worked.
We had just wrapped up tactical training, and I was heading off to do individual drills—
when the player running as Valencia's left winger came up to me.
"Jaerim! Why didn't you answer your phone yesterday!"
He was the player widely expected to leave the club at the end of this season—
but reportedly, his attitude had flipped 180 degrees recently, and he'd even accepted the rotation role the club had offered him.
Every player wants to start, but football only has room for eleven starters.
And this kid simply fell a bit short of the quality required to hold down a starting spot.
Skill-wise, he was only a hair behind the regulars—but regrettably, closing that final hair's width is one of the hardest things in football.
'Wait, what was this kid's name again? Luis something......?'
While I was racking my brain for his name, Marcos Alvarez, standing nearby, cut in.
"He blocked the entire country of Spain."
"......What are you even saying?"
Luis made a face at Marcos Alvarez as if he'd just heard the most preposterous thing imaginable.
'It's true, though.'
I turned to my press secretary for backup, but Marcos Alvarez shot back a look that said, you're the one who has to say it.
"Chris kept blowing up my phone, so I got tired of it and blocked everything."
I relayed the facts as plainly as possible. There was no need to embellish and invite misunderstandings.
But Marcos Alvarez just had to append his own commentary.
"You might be the only man alive who'd block an entire country over one message from the owner."
Well, it wasn't just Marcos Alvarez—any ordinary person would find it incomprehensible.
Because this was a monumental achievement only possible for someone who had escaped a lifespan bound to a single mortal existence.
"What? Chris sent you a personal message? No way! Wait—more importantly, you blocked ALL of Spain over that?!"
Luis, apparently shell-shocked, started stammering incoherently.
Well......
I could understand the reaction.
It's because I hold Ronaldo in 'very slight' disregard—but in fairness, Ronaldo is a footballer with staggering accomplishments too. In his prime, he was hailed as the rival of the Lionel Messi himself.
And these days, he also happens to be the owner of a club called Valencia.
To any normal player, the majesty of the name Cristiano Ronaldo would be blinding.
'But what do I care if he's the owner.'
To me, an infinite regressor, everything Cristiano Ronaldo had built amounted to nothing.
After all, the one blocking my path wasn't Ronaldo—it was Lionel Messi.
"So what did you contact me for, anyway?"
I asked the guy called Luis why he'd been trying to reach me.
"Lamine Yamal asked for your number, so I wanted to check if it was okay to give it to him."
"Hm. I don't mind giving it out, but he won't have any way to reach me."
Naturally—every Spanish number was blocked, so nothing would get through.
The kid nodded along in agreement, then tried another question.
"Then how do you talk to your family? You're not on InstaGram either, are you?"
"I use KakaoTalk."
"What on earth is that?"
At the name of a messenger app he'd never heard of, Marcos Alvarez's curiosity perked up as well.
"A messaging app Koreans mostly use."
The two of them installed KakaoTalk, added my account, and vanished.
And from that day on—
"Jaerim, I downloaded this thing called KakaoTalk. What's your ID?"
More and more Valencia players started pestering me for my KakaoTalk ID.
***
Recently, KakaoTalk—the Korean messenger app—had been all the rage at Valencia.
Word had spread that it was 'the only app' through which one could reach Joo Jaerim, the 'legendary rare Pok*mon' who could otherwise only be glimpsed at the training ground.
And so Valencia's players went beyond simply creating KakaoTalk accounts—they went ahead and made a group chat.
But nowhere in Valencia's group chat was Joo Jaerim to be found.
Since Jaerim hadn't friended a single one of Valencia's players, no invitation could go through.
And so, a Jaerim-less Joo Jaerim faction group chat was born at Valencia.
***
Matchday 37—the home match against Atlético Madrid.
Valencia's fans managed to pack the stands to capacity.
"Valencia! Valencia! Valencia!"
Far more people than usual had flooded into the stadium to witness Valencia's final home game of the season.
If Valencia's results hadn't turned around, they never would have filled the seats even for a final home match......
But before the season drew to a close, Valencia had staged a resurgence, giving their fans reason to hope for the next campaign.
And above all, what had kindled the greatest hope in Valencia's fans was the arrival of a megaton-grade prodigy.
"Jaerim—!!"
Indeed, the Valencia fans filling Estadio Nuevo Mestalla that day were chanting the name of one boy at the top of their lungs.
It was the name of the World Class youth product Valencia had produced for the first time in ages—the architect of their resurgence.
"¡Vamos!"
The moment Joo Jaerim stepped onto the pitch and began warming up before kickoff, a tidal wave of cheers erupted through Estadio Nuevo Mestalla.
"Jaerim! Stay with Valencia forever!!"
Just as in the Barcelona match, Joo Jaerim had made the starting lineup for this match as well.
He had proven to the manager, through the game against Barcelona, that starting him carried no risk.
'Hah...... If it were up to me, I'd give the kid a rest, but there's nothing to be done.'
In truth, manager Julián Cortés Navarro had desperately wanted to grant Joo Jaerim a rest for this match.
Jaerim was so young that the manager wanted to carefully manage his playing time.
But he had no choice but to field him from the start.
Today was the final home match of Valencia's season.
If he benched Jaerim, the wrath of Valencia's enraged fans would come down on his head without mercy.
"Jaerim—if anything feels off with your body during the match, signal me right away."
"Si."
All the manager could do was offer his young prodigy a word of caution.
With any other prodigy, he might have worried the kid would hide an injury and push through after such a warning—but strangely, Jaerim's reassurance left him at ease.
'He only debuted this year, and yet talking to him feels like talking to a battle-hardened veteran.'
Manager Julián Cortés Navarro let out a hollow laugh.
***
'Is that the one? The kid who gave Barcelona's boys the runaround?'
Lucas Varela, Atlético Madrid's defender, studied Joo Jaerim.
After all, Jaerim had exploded for a hat trick against Barcelona at the tender age of fourteen—it was only natural his name had spread through the players' ranks.
Atlético's manager had even singled out Joo Jaerim as the man to watch above all others in the match against Valencia.
"Puta Madre, that's a fourteen-year-old?"
And the match footage and stat sheets Atlético's coaching staff had prepared on Jaerim were enough to draw bitter laughs from the Atlético players.
"Damn, this kid's scored more goals than you, Sergio."
"Shut it, you bastard."
A few of the Atlético Madrid players even took photos of Jaerim's stats with their phones.
They were numbers so absurd, no one would believe they'd been posted by a rookie called up and debuted at the tail end of the season.
'I heard he's young, but he's built pretty well, isn't he?'
Jaerim's physique looked solid and springy all over.
The fruits of a strict diet and meticulous self-management since childhood.
'Still, a hat trick against Barcelona at that age......'
It was outright overwhelming talent.
It would have been easy to dismiss it—write Jaerim off as a fluke, claim Barcelona had simply let their guard down—but Lucas Varela was not that foolish.
At the same time, he wasn't afraid of facing him, either.
He, too, had once been called a genius.
As Atlético Madrid's iron wall, he had no intention of rolling over.
"Come at me, kid."
Lucas Varela's eyes met Jaerim's, and he lobbed a light provocation his way.
A gentle scratch, just to see how the kid would react.
"What did you say, you banana-faced freak? You look like something a monkey chewed up and spat out."
But upon hearing Jaerim's retort, he resolved to change tactics.
'Hmm...... Yeah. Let's not use trash talk......'
Despite his fearsome looks, the man possessed a heart of glass—and Jaerim's brutally vivid description had left a mark.
***
Lucas Varela.
A friend with a tender heart beneath that menacing face.
I remember him—we overlapped at Atlético Madrid in a previous life.
"Come at me, kid."
In his own head, he probably thought he was rattling my cage, but regrettably, it had zero effect on me.
"What did you say, you banana-faced freak? You look like something a monkey chewed up and spat out."
If anything, push me that hard and he'd be keeping his mouth shut and just playing football for the rest of today's match.
Anyway, the match kicked off, and as of now—fifteen-odd minutes into the first half—my contributions had been minimal.
'Contributions my ass. The ball has to come to me before I can do anything.'
The ball simply refused to cross over from Valencia's defensive third.
An ordinary player would've gotten frustrated and dropped deep, but I quietly waited at the halfway line, trusting my teammates. Not because joining the defense was a chore.
Football is a sport of momentum—wait long enough, and the flow will eventually swing your way.
My job was simple: seize the opportunity when it arrived, and finish it.
For other strikers, that's a maddeningly difficult thing to do—but regrettably for me, it was the easiest thing in the world.
And a moment later.
The opportunity I'd been waiting for arrived.
Rafael Silva cut out an Atlético Madrid pass.
I called for the ball, and Rafael Silva delivered it to me without a shred of hesitation.
His pass arrived exactly where I wanted it, decelerating perfectly to make it easy to receive.
'Not bad at all.'
Better than I expected—no, objectively speaking, an excellent pass.
With a little more experience, this kid could carve his name into the history books.
Anyway—I took the pass, breezed past the last defender, and—
the instant I spotted the goalkeeper straying a touch off his line, I went for the chip.
Thwump—
The ball I'd dinked lightly off the instep.
Riiip─
Traced a parabola so beautiful it belonged in a physics textbook, and tore into the back of the net.
And then.
"SIUUUUUUU─!"
Right on schedule today as well, the voice of 'Noise-u-u' rang out beside my ear.