The Man of Valencia
Cristiano Ronaldo, whatever petty sulk he might still be nursing over Joo Jaerim performing Lionel Messi's celebration, made his customary pilgrimage to the stadium today all the same.
Only I am capable of truly recognizing Jaerim's greatness at Valencia.
A mentor, after all, had a duty to look after his disciple to the very end — even when the boy wandered down the wrong path.
"Chris, there's a rumor going around that Lionel Messi has been asking after Jaerim's phone number."
"SIU?"
He was absolutely, positively not growing impatient upon hearing that Lionel Messi had recently gotten his hands on Joo Jaerim's contact information.
"Whatever happens, keep those two from ever meeting!"
That said, after catching wind of the Messi rumor, Cristiano Ronaldo did dip into his own pocket to establish a brand-new team at Valencia.
A team whose primary mandate, specifically, was to intercept any and all contact between Lionel Messi and Joo Jaerim before it could happen.
As the owner of Valencia CF, it was only the obvious decision.
There was no way he could allow Valencia — and the disciple (?) he had nurtured with such tender care — to be snatched away by that great axis of evil: Barcelona and Lionel Messi.
Jaerim.
Cristiano Ronaldo turned his head toward the pitch.
There was Joo Jaerim, strolling idly up and down the halfway line.
So the letter I sent did move him. Good.
The mood between Ronaldo and Jaerim had been excellent lately.
...At least, that was how it seemed to Ronaldo.
He was especially pleased that Jaerim had finally sent him a message — because for all the texts he'd fired off, he hadn't received a single reply before then.
An ordinary man would have wilted under Jaerim's cold shoulder and drifted away long ago.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the more Jaerim iced him out, the more Ronaldo's obsession grew — exponentially.
Jaerim. Soon, the name of my celebration will leave those very lips of yours—
While he was swearing this oath deep in his heart, Jaerim's chip shot floated over the goalkeeper's fingertips and rippled Atlético Madrid's net.
"Vamos—!!"
And in the same instant that Jaerim scored, every Valencia fan in the stadium turned their gaze toward Cristiano Ronaldo.
Cristiano Ronaldo did not betray the expectations directed at him.
"SIUUUUUUUU──!"
At fifty-five years young, Ronaldo simply loved being the center of attention.
He decided to go for a chip from there? Just how much confidence does he have in his own shooting?
Atlético Madrid's manager, Diego Garcia, let out a hollow laugh.
A single mistake, converted instantly into a conceded goal. You could call these moments the cruel beauty of football all you liked — it didn't stop the hollowness rising from somewhere deep in his chest.
One unexpected strike and my entire team froze up.
Joo Jaerim's goal had been fatal for Atlético Madrid. Right up until it went in, Atlético had been the ones dictating the match; the moment it crossed the line, the flow of the game swung entirely to Valencia.
"Hold your positions! Don't lunge in recklessly!"
"Puta Madre! I said no stretching your legs out there!"
From the moment they conceded, Atlético Madrid's players began marking Jaerim far more aggressively.
But Jaerim possessed the cunning to turn that roughness to his own advantage.
So that's what being young is good for.
Rather than forcing a dribble and losing the ball, Jaerim drew the foul — and the referee, watching him roll across the grass, obligingly blew his whistle for the violation.
...... Did Lucas actually kick him, though?
It was acting so flawless it could fool even Diego Garcia, the Atlético Madrid manager himself.
"No, I'm telling you, that's a Hollywood performance right there!"
"You son of a—! You actually kicked Jaerim?!"
Lucas Varela pulled a wounded, innocent face at the referee — and a tidal wave of boos rained down on him from the Valencia stands.
"Boooooo──!"
Some fans, unable to contain their fury, hurled debris onto the pitch.
But a moment later.
The instant Jaerim rose to his feet, unharmed, the same fans who'd been boiling over with rage quieted down as if nothing had happened. Instead, thunderous applause rolled through the stands — applause for Jaerim, who had survived the opposition's brutal foul (?) and stood back up without a scratch.
Heh... they absolutely adore him.
The Atlético Madrid manager couldn't help but marvel. It astonished him that a prospect who had only just debuted was already this beloved by the fans.
Meanwhile, at that very moment.
Jaerim played the ball to Rafael Silva and made his request.
"The second the ref blows the whistle, play it straight to me."
Rafael Silva nodded along to Jaerim's request with a puzzled look on his face.
As one season wound toward its close, plenty of players found themselves agonizing over where they'd be the next one. And word had already spread far and wide that Valencia was set to undergo a sweeping squad restructuring built around Joo Jaerim.
Rafael Silva, Valencia's key midfielder, was no exception to that worrying.
If this had been last season, Rafael Silva would have left for Real Madrid without so much as a glance backward. But ever since he'd started playing alongside Jaerim at Valencia, his thinking had been slowly shifting. Without quite realizing it, a new desire had taken root in him.
Jaerim...
It was the desire to keep standing beside this young player who was about to write his name into football's great history.
"Even Lionel Messi had his three loyal companions by his side."
José Manuel Castillo, Valencia's sporting director, had read Rafael Silva's heart like an open book and stoked that desire deliberately.
"The second the ref blows the whistle, play it straight to me."
While Rafael Silva was still replaying his conversation with the director, Jaerim had come over and made his request — and Silva nodded without a moment's hesitation.
The distance was, after all, too far for him to take a shot himself. And more than anything, there was the simple, unshakable faith that if it was Jaerim, the boy would score in some fresh, unimaginable way that neither he nor anyone else had thought of.
And a short while later.
Twweet─!
The referee's whistle rang out, and Rafael Silva played the pass to Jaerim exactly as promised.
Jaerim shook off an onrushing forward with a feint and burst into the penalty box.
Huh...?
It was, by any measure, a reckless move. The box was already packed solid with Atlético Madrid players who'd settled into their positions.
But there, in that space crowded with Atlético defenders, Jaerim had found a single seam —
and at a timing no one on the planet could have predicted, he tried his shot straight between Lucas Varela's legs.
Thwip─
The strike had stolen the timing of both the defender and the goalkeeper perfectly; caught utterly flat-footed, the keeper didn't even react as the ball drilled into the corner of the net and bulged it.
"...Va, Vamos!"
Only after the referee awarded the goal did the crowd's roar erupt, a beat late — and the moment Rafael Silva laid eyes on Jaerim walking expressionless back out through a forest of Atlético Madrid players,
an indescribable electric thrill coiled through his entire body.
And then, quickly, he understood.
The Man of Valencia.
There wasn't a striker like him anywhere else on Earth — nor ever would be.
That day, Rafael Silva decided to stay at Valencia.
Valencia's assault didn't stop with Jaerim's multi-goal performance.
"Ah, for fuck's sake! They play the ugliest football I've ever seen!"
Atlético Madrid's goalkeeper, Adrián Romero, finally blew his top.
Because Jaerim kept pulling the trigger at timings that were simply impossible to anticipate.
I refuse to get stuffed and mounted into football history like this.
He'd barely scrambled into position to make the save this time — a hair later and he'd have suffered the humiliation of conceding again while rooted to the spot, utterly unable to move.
"Then stop him from shooting! Or at least narrow down the angles, something!"
Adrián Romero bellowed at his defenders.
On any normal day, they would have raised their hands in apology.
Today, their reaction was different.
"Puta Madre — you think we didn't try? You think he'd have gotten through if it were that easy?!"
Adrián Romero nodded — the pushback was, honestly, fairly reasonable — and instead of chewing out his defenders, turned his glare on Jaerim.
...God, dealing with that little bastard is miserable. Maybe I should just transfer to Valencia.
Stealing a keeper's timing so he can't react to your shot isn't a difficult thing to do.
After all, I could fire a shot anywhere I wanted, from any posture, from any position on the pitch.
For the record, I hadn't used this style of shooting from the start.
It began when I was looking for an easier way to put the ball in the net and, by pure chance, a video popped up on my Neutube feed about a Major League pitcher from the old days.
Fast ball. Faster ball. Fastest ball.
Well... yeah, his legacy took a hit over the whole doping thing.
Still, there was plenty worth watching and learning from.
Because in the end, the mechanics of pitching and shooting come down to the same thing: stealing the opponent's timing.
That said, as that what's-his-name Clemens fellow's case demonstrated, doping remains an inescapable problem in modern sports.
In every sport there exist drug designers whose entire job is manufacturing substances that slip past doping tests, and they tend to circle promising young players at exactly the moment injury has left their minds fragile and unsteady.
Come to think of it, a few of them came sniffing around me too.
It was all the way back in the distant past, but these so-called drug designers had approached me as well. Presumably they found it hard to believe that an Asian kid was chewing up the football world and spitting it out.
What did they say again...? They wanted me to tell them the ingredients of whatever medication I was taking, or something?
For the record: drugs, narcotics, alcohol, cigarettes — I would sooner die than touch any of them.
Get hooked once and there's no reining it in, and the damage follows you into the next run.
That said, players doping these days are fewer than in the past. Advances in technology have hardened the detection systems considerably.
And a moment later, I took another shot.
"You seriously play the ugliest fucking football I've ever seen."
My shot this time was denied by the keeper's save — but the review of my shooting was deeply satisfying.
I had just received the highest praise a human being is capable of uttering.
Right at the end of the first half, Valencia conceded a goal back to Atlético Madrid.
The first half ended 2-1, and during the halftime team talk, Manager Julián drilled the defenders on staying locked into the match until the final whistle.
This is exactly why I prefer strikers.
Then, Julián's gaze landed on me.
"......"
"......"
I looked him dead in the eye.
I could face heaven itself without a flicker of guilt, after all.
Besides, with a multi-goal performance under my belt, the Man of the Match was me no matter what anyone said.
"Jaerim, outstanding work out there."
Manager Julián was evidently satisfied with my showing too; he gave me a thumbs-up before getting to the point.
"And in the second half, you play twenty more minutes, then I'm subbing you off."
"Si."
I nodded at the manager's words.
I'd already bagged a hat trick once against Barcelona. There was no need to grind my body into dust chasing another.
And so, having let go of any greed for a hat trick, I headed into the second half.
Atlético Madrid's marking on me grew even tighter, so I switched my style to pass-first play.
"Jaerim!"
And right on cue, I slid a pass into the path of what's-his-name Luis making his run into the penalty box—
and in the process of stopping him, Atlético Madrid's defenders conceded a foul.
"Jaerim, you won this penalty. You take it, Jaerim."
The referee's whistle blew, the penalty was given, and the lad who'd won it handed the ball over to me.
"Thanks. Luis Pereira."
And that day, I finally succeeded in memorizing his name, perfectly.
I buried the ensuing penalty with a clean strike, claiming my third hat trick since the Barcelona match.
And as I was strolling back toward the halfway line, just like always—
"Jaerim─!! Celebration!!"
the Valencia fans began chanting my name, hat trick hero that I now was.
They wanted a ceremony.
Apparently there were far more fans at Valencia craving my celebration than I'd realized.
Hmm...
It might sound obvious, but I used to do celebrations too, once upon a time. Back then, watching the fury twist across a goalkeeper's face had been genuinely exhilarating.
But as the runs piled up, scoring goals stopped moving me. And at some point, I caught myself performing celebrations as a mere extension of the job description.
After that, I stopped doing them altogether...
Maybe just this once, as a bit of fan service...?
It was the last home game of the league season — treating the fans to one celebration felt like a reasonable gesture.
SIUUUUU─!
I jogged slowly toward the corner flag, and the instant that "SIUU" rang out from somewhere in the stands, I found myself executing Ronaldo's celebration before I could stop myself.
Ah... damn. Mistake.
Just as the Valencia home crowd erupted with delight at the celebration I'd performed with a look of open regret on my face—
"SIUU! SIUUU! SIUUUU! SIUUUUU─!"
......Is that Morse code?
Cristiano Ronaldo sent me a signal of unknown meaning.