The Eul-yong-ta Incident
'I did it.'
Honestly, I had been gritting my teeth and forcing myself to hold back through the string of fouls.
But the moment I tried to spread a pass, I felt someone yanking at my uniform from behind.
'A little shrimp like him, fouling already?'
My annoyance boiled over in an instant, and I spun my body around and smacked the back of the kid's head.
The little punk who'd committed the foul seemed startled by the sudden turn of events.
"M-moooooom─!"
He clutched the back of his skull, crumpled to the ground, and burst into tears.
I hadn't hit him all that hard. However much my irritation was spiking, there was still some reason left in me.
Anyway, the referee officiating this evaluation match looked visibly flustered too.
He clearly never expected a 'Eul-yong-ta' to break out at an elementary school match.
The ref's pupils darted back and forth, as if asking himself whether what he'd just seen was real.
Knowing full well this was a broadcast and not a real football match, he seemed to be agonizing over how to call it.
But the foul I'd committed was an unmistakable red card offense.
Before long, the referee drew a red card and pointed at me, ordering me off the pitch.
For a split second I nearly sent a knuckle sandwich flying at the referee who'd just handed down my expulsion… then I remembered my parents were watching, and restrained myself.
'Whew… calm down.'
It seemed my serious-football mode had switched itself on without my permission.
It always got stronger in important matches — and knowing my parents were watching, I must have unconsciously put more into it than usual.
In any case,
judging the referee's call to be reasonable, I gave a small nod without protest and headed for the bench.
Normally a sending-off means leaving the grounds entirely, but since this was a broadcast shoot, the rules weren't enforced that strictly.
Everyone on the bench stared at me, mouths hanging open.
Apparently they'd been moved by the spectacular performance I'd put on out on the field.
It was a little embarrassing to have gone that hard against a bunch of tiny kids, but…
Well.
It didn't feel bad.
The Fly World Class 11 evaluation match came to an end.
The final score was 11 to 5, a victory for the local football center.
It was a brutally lopsided margin — hard to believe Fly World Class 11 had actually been ahead early in the game.
After Joo Jae-rim was sent off, World Class 11 were slaughtered, one-sided and merciless.
Already clearly outclassed in skill, the team lost its ace, Joo Jae-rim, to a red card — and the match tipped entirely to one side.
In the end, Fly World Class 11 couldn't overcome being a man down and collapsed completely.
The match closed with a win for the regional football center.
The center's coach let out a quiet, private sigh of relief. Losing to a team whose players had only learned to play together thirty minutes before kickoff would have been a catastrophe.
Anyway.
"Great work out there, everyone!"
The filming of Fly World Class 11 wrapped.
Joo Jae-rim headed straight for his parents.
But he never reached his target.
"J-Jae-rim, have you ever received formal football training at a center?"
"Jae-rim, you're not in the school football club, right? Where did you learn to play?"
The moment the broadcast ended, the Main PD and Director Lee Jae-jin came sprinting to Joo Jae-rim's side. The two men who'd cornered him bombarded him with questions without pause.
Standing before the excited adults, Joo Jae-rim answered in a calm, level voice.
"I've never been in a school football club, and I've never had formal training."
Joo Jae-rim wasn't lying. At least not in this lifetime — he hadn't been professionally trained in this cycle.
But after repeating an uncountable number of regressions, Joo Jae-rim had developed a deep understanding of his own body, and along the way he'd acquired expertise that surpassed even elite trainers.
The best coach Joo Jae-rim had ever had was himself.
He understood exactly how and in what way the body should move to be efficient.
He knew precisely what training he needed.
But the Main PD and Director Lee Jae-jin, unaware that Joo Jae-rim was an infinite regressor, naturally couldn't accept his answer.
"Then where did you do your fundamentals training? Watching you practice, your basics looked rock-solid."
Joo Jae-rim offered the disbelieving adults one more answer.
"I just watched YouTube videos and practiced by myself at the neighborhood field."
Then, apparently tired of the endless questions, he started answering half-heartedly.
"I'll take one more question, and then I have to go."
Deciding too much time was being wasted on trivial things, Joo Jae-rim declared he would take exactly one more question.
At his practiced, matter-of-fact declaration, the Main PD and Director Lee Jae-jin faltered.
They found themselves agonizing over which question to pick from the sea of things they wanted to ask.
'Wait. Why am I the one following a kid's rules? I'm the Main PD of this show, aren't I?'
As Main PD Hwang Hyun-woo spiraled into this fundamental question of authority—
"In the first goal, you beat three players using nothing but upper-body feints… how did you do that?"
Director Lee Jae-jin stepped in and asked on the Main PD's behalf.
"It's simple. You watch with both eyes, and the instant they plant their foot reacting to your movement, you go the other way."
Joo Jae-rim answered flatly, as if solving a basic arithmetic problem.
'…Is that even something a human being can do?'
'…Why is this kid stealing my questions?'
While the two men stood there stunned, Joo Jae-rim's parting words drifted into their ears.
"See? Easy, right?"
All they could do was stare blankly at the boy walking away toward his parents.
"You did great, Jae-rim! Aigoo! My son's a complete football genius!"
"I'm decent at it, I suppose."
While I was chatting happily with my mother, a kid came shuffling over toward us.
"Um…"
'…Who is this?'
I looked at the kid's face and drew a blank. Unfortunately, he wasn't in my memory.
"Oh my, it's your friend from the show, Jae-rim."
But my mother apparently knew who he was, and welcomed him kindly.
"I-I'm a year older than you, you know."
At the words of a boy who clearly put great stock in seniority, I finally registered that he'd been on my team.
"So? What do you want? Here to make me pay for talking informally to you?"
"…No. I wanted your phone number."
Truthfully, I wanted to tell him I didn't own a phone and send him on his way.
But under my mother's expectant gaze, I had no choice but to exchange numbers.
My parents didn't say it out loud, but they were clearly worried I couldn't get along with kids my own age.
Knowing they were worried, and still failing to make friends — for me, it was simply beyond my control.
These were bonds I knew would vanish anyway… so I couldn't bring myself to care the way I probably should.
Unlike my parents, who had sent me unchanging love across dozens of regressions,
those kids shifted at the slightest thing.
And above all, the mental age gap was worse than I'd expected.
"Jae-rim's mom! By any chance, do you know where Jae-rim learned to play football?"
"Ah… we never sent him to a football academy or anything like that. But he's loved playing with a football by himself ever since he was tiny…"
While my mother was busy trading pleasantries with the other adults,
Bzzz-bzzz─
I felt my phone vibrate in my hand.
The friend who'd just extorted my number had, in the blink of an eye, created a group chat.
Having checked the group chat, I could do nothing but quietly squeeze my eyes shut.
'What on earth is he saying? Damn it. And why is his profile name like that?'
My deepest apologies to my parents, but making friends was going to be difficult this time around as well.
Meanwhile, at the same moment—
"Min-jung, you don't need to say goodbye to the other kids?"
Child star Yoo Min-jung was riding in her mother's car, en route to her next schedule.
"Yep, it's fine. Saying goodbye to the Main PD was enough. I'll see them all again at the next shoot anyway."
As she answered her mother, the girl slipped into the group chat that kept buzzing nonstop and blocked notifications.
She'd given out her number because the cameras were rolling and she'd had no choice, but she had not the faintest speck of desire to get close to any of them.
'So childish.'
Perhaps because she'd entered the working world at such a young age?
The girl had inevitably matured far beyond her peers.
Modern society was endlessly cruel to people, regardless of age or gender.
That she'd been made to audition for a football program she had zero interest in was entirely her mother's doing.
Min-jung's mother had applied for the audition on her daughter's behalf, hoping she might finally make friends her own age.
Unfortunately, the girl considered it a waste of time and pushed back hard.
But she couldn't bring herself to defy her parents' wishes, and ended up attending the audition anyway.
At the interview, she'd given half-hearted answers to the Main PD's questions on purpose, hoping to get cut — but unfortunately, she'd landed the show anyway.
Once the acceptance text had already arrived, she couldn't very well back out on the spot.
In the cutthroat world of the entertainment industry, making enemies was the one thing you never did.
And of all people, getting on the Main PD's bad side was the worst possible move.
'Huh. I assumed they were filming on a shoestring budget, but this is pretty legit?'
But the moment she actually saw the set, Yoo Min-jung revised her thinking.
She'd realized that appearing on Fly World Class 11 was a better opportunity than she'd given it credit for.
'Mom snuck me into the audition and I pushed back, but thinking about it, it really is a good opportunity. I'm the center of the show, after all.'
Determined to make the most of the opportunity that had landed in her lap, the girl threw herself into the broadcasts.
But there was a separate problem.
That problem was that Yoo Min-jung was catastrophically unathletic.
In her entire life, she had never done a single minute of sports.
During mandatory PE periods at school, she was the type to always sit in the shade, reading a book or glued to her phone.
'Wait, am I about to get completely edited out of the show?'
A sense of crisis took hold of her, and in the car heading to her next schedule she found herself biting her nails without realizing it.
"Min-jung, stop biting your nails, sweetheart."
Her mother admonished her, but Yoo Min-jung was too lost in thought to hear.
After a long while of brooding, the girl's mind landed on a certain unnamed boy.
'That's right. Come to think of it, that insufferable little brat was actually good at football.'
If your own abilities fell short, you simply put someone else to use.
'Building a connection with me, the future top star — it'd be good for that obnoxious kid too, honestly.'
Time flowed quickly after the first shoot,
and before anyone knew it, the second filming of Fly World Class 11 had begun.
While the kids crowded around Director Lee Jae-jin asking him this and that—
"Teach me football."
Yoo Min-jung, ball in hand, deliberately approached Joo Jae-rim.
"Hey. You're bothering my training, so get lost… go over there and ask the director to help you."
And so the girl suffered the greatest humiliation of her young life for the very first time.
'He was definitely about to tell ME to get lost, wasn't he?'
The child actress had come up to me, made some bizarre proposal, and when I turned her down, wandered off muttering to herself.
Refusing an absurd request was only natural.
'Why on earth would I play babysitter? What a pain.'
And more than anything, even as she spoke to me she kept glancing sideways at the cameras — she seemed far more interested in the offerings than in the altar itself.
'Well. Can't say I'm all that different, can I?'
I too was here less for the broadcast than to watch my parents be happy.
I turned my head and looked at my mother.
And when I saw the smile playing at the corners of her mouth, I gave a small nod.
Meanwhile, at that very moment—
Jae-rim's mother, Han Hyo-min, was struggling to adjust to the sudden shift in atmosphere on set.
Not only was the staff fussing over her attentively, but unlike the first shoot, people now never stopped gathering around her.
She could have grown arrogant under all the fawning, but instead,
Han Hyo-min resolved to be even more careful in her conduct.
She understood that any misstep of hers could, at worst, stand in the way of her child's future.
'Careful. As careful as I can be.'
That said, watching an auntie who used to erupt in complaints at every turn go quiet was a relief to everyone around her.
One month later.
The first broadcast of Fly World Class 11 aired.