Korea Cup Quarterfinals (4)
They always say the medicine that tastes like pure garbage is the one that does you the most good. I had gritted my teeth and put together a whole step-up course for Nam-hyuk hyung’s growth, tears and all.
Unfortunately, before my junior’s pure heart could even be appreciated, hyung pulled off some miraculous advanced learning and earned himself an early exit.
Ah. This is a bit much.
Nam-hyuk hyung trudged off the pitch with his head hanging. Watching him, I could suddenly understand why the news kept screaming about the dangers of premature learning.
At that age you should be soaking up every second and learning properly, not racing ahead just to finish the curriculum.
Is this what it feels like watching elementary school kids solve engineering math?
Something about it left a nasty, sticky feeling in my chest. There was still so much left to teach him, and he was already walking out the door.
Maybe there would be another chance…
But he got sent off on accumulated yellows, so at least I won’t be seeing Nam-hyuk hyung again while we’re still facing each other in the Korea Cup.
Having my carefully prepared plan collapse and get tossed straight into the trash didn’t feel great, but I decided not to dwell on it too much.
I still had time before I left for overseas. Even if it was just the league, we would run into Gwangju again sooner or later.
In the upper split too… wait, no, Gwangju probably won’t make the upper split. Ah, whatever. As long as I know we’ll meet again, that’s enough.
The silver lining was that Nam-hyuk hyung had at least absorbed the middle stretch of my plan before clocking out early. The red card completely skipped the second half of the curriculum, but that was still better than learning nothing at all.
Mmm. He definitely learned about getting sent off on yellows. Next time we meet, even if I skip everything else, I should at least teach him how to handle handball fouls and own-goal situations.
“Hey, Baek. What are you grinning about like that? It’s annoying. Get out of my face.”
“Huh? What’s with you, Yoon Seung-hwan? You were rolling around on the ground screaming a second ago. When did you get up?”
He had been clutching his leg and giving the referee the most soulful eyes imaginable, so I figured it had to be pretty bad. Apparently not that bad.
“Don’t tell me you—”
“Dude, it actually hurt, so don’t even start with the ‘you were faking’ crap. You think I’m the same kind of bastard as you? Anyway, hurry up and get out there. I’ve got a PK to take.”
A PK?
I had been so focused on Nam-hyuk hyung’s red card that I completely missed it, but after the review the referee had apparently pointed to the spot.
Hmm. In that case I could strike the “gift a penalty” section from the curriculum next time we met.
“Augh, damn it!”
Whatever kick had sent him sprawling earlier clearly hadn’t been an act. Seung-hwan limped over, still wincing, and immediately started lining up for the penalty.
The result? This was the same guy who could bury a ball even when half the squad was piled on top of him. Did it even need saying?
BOOM!
The net bulged with that sweet, sweet sound.
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!
Ole ole~ Ole ole~ Ole ole~ Ole ole~
Ole ole~ Ole ole~ Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
The players and the Mad Green Boys erupted the moment the ball hit the net. Leaving them behind, I turned toward the Gwangju manager who had been running his mouth at me earlier and cupped both hands behind my ears.
“…Ugh… Linesman! He’s taunting me right now and you’re just going to stand there?”
“A-yoon!!! What did you say?”
“Come on, Coach. That’s just paranoia talking. Paranoia. See? He’s only trying to hear his girlfriend up in the stands. Calling that a taunt? Really?”
“No, that bastard is definitely doing it on purpose!”
“Look at his face, Coach. How pure is that smile? Total lovebird energy. The country’s already screaming about the low birthrate and now you want to ruin a wholesome couple?”
“For fuck’s sake! Has this guy lost his mind?! Give him a card right now or I swear I’ll—!”
Looks good on you, you bastard.
You had to hand it to Messi, the GOAT and god of football himself. Even a simple gesture like that could scrape the opponent’s soul raw.
I watched Bae Hee-sung roll around at the linesman’s feet like a kid denied a toy and let the corner of my mouth curl up.
Shin Nam-hyuk’s red card alone had been a mortal wound for Gwangju. When Yoon Seung-hwan drove home the dagger, the result was basically written in stone.
Gwangju had always struggled to attract star players because of limited funds. The only two reasons they had survived in the league this long were clear.
First was the presence of Choi Jeong-hyo, one of the handful of true tactician managers in Korean football history.
Second was the way his coaching either blossomed the players’ abilities or covered their shortcomings through pure system.
But in the 2038 season Choi Jeong-hyo had announced his desire to test himself overseas and used the Japanese J-League as his stepping stone. The vacuum left by the manager who had turned their two weaknesses into strengths cut deep. Gwangju had somehow kept limping along by leaning on a national-team-level resource named Shin Nam-hyuk.
With that player now gone, they had nothing left to fill the void.
TWEEEEET! TWEEEEET! TWEEEEET!
After the thrashing of Gwangju in the first leg, the schedule that followed was smooth sailing in every sense of the word.
The biggest mountain standing between us and the treble—the quarterfinals—now looked very climbable. That alone made everything easier.
We won 5–0 and Nam-hyuk hyung is out. The second leg should be even smoother. The league is basically locked for the upper split already. And the semis are against Gimpo, right?
I wasn’t about to write off a second-division side completely, but even so, they were clearly outmatched against a team currently devouring the top flight.
If the league situation had been precarious we might have needed to rotate the starters and that would have given Gimpo a slightly better shot… but with us sitting in overwhelming first place, none of that applied.
What’s certain is that both the league and the Korea Cup just became a whole lot more likely to end up in our hands.
I was still savoring the very real possibility of a big-league move when A-yoon’s grumbling voice cut in from beside me.
“Hey, Baek Yi-an. Are you even paying attention? Did you understand a single word I just said?”
“I was too busy looking at your face.”
“…Save the lines. Anyway, you have to keep focusing on the posture I keep drilling into you. If you don’t, you’re genuinely going to get injured. Didn’t that Yoon Seung-hwan guy on your team already get hurt?”
Injury, huh… She must have seen the team doctor sprint onto the pitch and crowd around Seung-hwan and decided that counted as a real injury.
Well, she wasn’t completely wrong. Seung-hwan had gotten injured—that much was fact.
Of course it wasn’t anything that would keep him out of matches. Just a scraped knee that needed some red medicine and a band-aid.
But A-yoon didn’t know the behind-the-scenes details, so she probably assumed Seung-hwan had been running with sloppy form, collided with Nam-hyuk hyung, and paid the price.
“If you don’t want the same thing to happen to you, you need to hold proper form when you run, got it? Look at that. Our Poppy—whoever’s kid he is—keeps perfect form the whole time he runs.”
She finished speaking, stuck her chest out, and beamed. She clearly believed Poppy’s form was entirely thanks to her tutoring…
“Our Poppy’s running is maybe not quite at that level—”
“What?”
“No, you’re right. Our Poppy is world-class. Front and back paws leaving the ground at the same time, perfect angles… that triangle shape, what is that again? The structure they use on the Eiffel Tower or something? I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere…”
“Hehe. Right?”
I decided to surrender to the murderous glare A-yoon was currently leveling at me. Not because I feared for my life, of course—sometimes closing one eye is simply the virtue of a gentleman.
Huff. Huff… huff.
Sorry, Poppy. A-yoon’s only watching you, so just run a little longer.
Poppy had already completed five full laps of the futsal court and was now staring at me with pure “please just kill me already” eyes.
Unfortunately, the actual guardian of Ibrahim Poppy was A-yoon.
Daddy’s sorry…
I could only cheer him on in silence and keep watching.