CS 09

Chapter 9

The Forty-Year-Old Man Hides His Age (1)

I woke up to the sound of an alarm ringing in my ears.

It was still dawn, so the sky outside the window was a dark blue. I had spent another busy day yesterday, and my entire body was filled with fatigue.

But even when you’re tired, you still have to go to work.

I turned off the alarm, brushed my teeth and washed my face in the bathroom, trying to clear my groggy mind.

That was when I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket.

Wondering what was going on, I took it out and found several messages waiting for me.

It was Santiago.

-Directores de fútbol: Tony.

-Directores de fútbol: The exchange students are visiting the club today, right?

-Directores de fútbol: Make sure you bring them here without being late.

-Directores de fútbol: And you remember the scouting file I sent you before?

-Directores de fútbol: Send it to me again when you get to work.

I replied to the Real Madrid football director that I understood, then let out a deep sigh.

It had already been more than six years since I had made a fuss about getting to work as a scout at my dream workplace.

What I had learned during those years was that even a dream workplace was ultimately just a place where people worked.

Which meant every day was exhausting, fucking annoying, and made me want to quit.

It wasn’t even like the salary was particularly high.

Whenever I saw players talking about how much they were getting paid per week, I couldn’t help but feel an even greater sense of deprivation.

Even so, there was only one reason I took a dress shirt out of the closet and changed clothes.

“…I’ve got to make money.”

I muttered the words almost like a lament before leaving the house.

I started the car in the parking lot and took hold of the steering wheel.

After driving for several minutes while listening to songs from Spotify’s popular charts, I arrived at a hotel located on the outskirts of Madrid.

I parked nearby and entered the hotel.

My destination was Room 402.

I took the elevator upstairs and lightly knocked on the door.

Knock, knock—

The sound echoed through the hotel corridor for only a moment before a familiar boy’s voice came from inside.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Tony. Did everyone sleep well?”

The moment I finished speaking, the door to Room 402 swung open, revealing a black-haired Korean boy.

Or rather, I wasn’t sure if I could still call him a boy.

The boy had changed considerably over the past few months.

That was especially obvious when looking at his physical development.

Now sixteen years old, he had shot up in height during his growth spurt.

The short 168-centimeter frame he had once possessed was nowhere to be seen anymore.

Perhaps thanks to that, the baby fat had disappeared from his face as well, leaving behind sharply defined features.

I had no doubt that the moment he made his first-team debut, he would attract a considerable amount of popularity simply through his presence.

And what about his social status?

The boy who had once been an unknown prospect from an orphanage was now an official member of Real Madrid, a highly anticipated prospect, and a striker who would lead the future of Madrid.

And the person who had discovered him was none other than me.

Feeling proud of that fact deep down, Antonio asked the boy,

“You’re up early. What about the other players?”

“They’re still sleeping. Everyone must be tired from yesterday’s long flight. We were on the plane for more than fifteen hours.”

“You look pretty energetic yourself.”

The boy gave a small chuckle and shrugged at the question.

His answer was somewhat difficult to understand as well.

“Well, I’m pretty used to long flights.”

Antonio didn’t attach any particular meaning to those words.

Naturally, he didn’t ask something like, Why are you used to flying when this is supposedly your first trip abroad?

That could have been a painful question for a sixteen-year-old boy from an orphanage.

More importantly, although the boy spoke Spanish fairly well, he wasn’t completely fluent.

As evidence of that, hadn’t he never once used particularly polite expressions even when speaking to someone considerably older than himself?

So, this time as well, Antonio simply assumed it was a slip of the tongue from a boy whose Spanish was still imperfect and entered the hotel room.

It was time to work.

“So, why did you choose Real Madrid?”

Tony’s question came rather suddenly while he was driving.

It was the morning of my second day in Spain.

Sitting in the back seat, I looked out the window at the streets of Madrid before quietly asking,

“Why are you suddenly asking that?”

“Well, you know… I heard Valencia and Mallorca offered you contracts too. I suddenly became curious about why you chose our team despite that.”

“……”

“Ah, of course, you don’t have to tell me if it’s difficult to talk about.”

It wasn’t particularly difficult to talk about.

I was just wondering how I should explain it.

When the showcase for the study-abroad program organized by the Korea Football Association ended, there were three teams interested in me.

All three teams wanted not only to bring me over as an exchange student but also to sign me to a contract.

That was because, thanks to the existence of my biological father, who was running a taekwondo academy in Spain, I was exempt from FIFA’s transfer regulations.

There was no reason for them not to pursue me.

And the team that ultimately won the competition was Real Madrid.

Why?

There wasn’t much to it.

They simply offered the most money.

Perhaps if I had been another youth player, I might have chosen a different team.

Quite a few youth players have things they consider more important than money when choosing a club.

Namely:

Does this team have the conditions necessary to help me develop?

The possibility of being promoted to the senior team, the club’s vision, training facilities, living conditions, and so on.

Their considerations were fundamentally different from those of senior players, for whom winning trophies and earning a high weekly wage were the most important things.

They were still at an age when they needed to develop.

For players whose goal was to enter the professional ranks, establishing themselves as professional footballers was more important than simply getting paid more money right away.

That was why most ordinary prospects valued an environment where they could play over money.

But I wasn’t an ordinary prospect.

I was a prospect with twenty-five years of experience.

And not just any experience—I retained all the experience from my professional career.

For someone like me, competition and development weren’t particularly important.

Even if I developed, my opponents were still youth players.

To me, they were all just Spanish kids who were still unfinished.

That was why I chose Real Madrid.

They were all pretty much the same, so I simply picked the club that paid the most money.

“Well… it’s Real Madrid, after all.”

However, if I said that directly, I might come across as rather unpleasant to a Spaniard.

So, when Tony asked why I had chosen Real Madrid, I gave him that answer instead.

It was boring and pretentious, but fortunately, the person who had asked the question seemed to like the answer quite a bit.

Tony’s face brightened when I saw it in the rearview mirror.

“Doni really does know football. Real Madrid is a great team.”

“Well, yeah. It’s one of the most famous clubs in Spain, along with Barcelona.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t even compare Real Madrid to Barcelona!”

From there, Tony began explaining just how great Real Madrid was.

How many Champions League titles and league championships they had won, how much the club was worth, and how only the best players in the world could play for Real Madrid.

I wasn’t particularly curious about any of that, nor did I particularly want to hear it.

But considering how much he had done for me during the contract negotiations with Real Madrid, I could endure this much labor.

“Uh… Do-in.”

“What’s Mr. Antonio saying right now?”

Unfortunately, Tony wasn’t the only one riding in the car with me.

Apparently, the Korea Football Association had attached a condition to the arrangement with the Spanish clubs that three prospects had to be brought over.

Tony had told me about it during the contract process, so there was no doubt about it.

In other words, there were two more Korean boys coming to Madrid besides me.

Their names were as follows.

Park Min-hyuk, a midfielder with excellent passing and press resistance. Age fifteen.

Kim Woo-sung, a tall center-back standing in the high 180-centimeter range. Age sixteen.

The two possessed different positions and strengths, and apparently had enough footballing talent to be selected by Real Madrid.

However, it seemed they had no talent for Spanish.

So, for the poor mutes sitting beside me with their mouths tightly shut because they couldn’t understand what was being said, I kindly provided a topic of conversation.

“I heard Ronaldo is a better football player than Messi?”

For the few minutes until we arrived at the training ground, the two Korean boys debated whether Ronaldo or Messi was the greatest player.

Of course, calling it a debate was generous.

In the end, it was simply a one-sided argument with a predetermined conclusion.

They brought up the number of Ballon d’Or awards, whether or not they had won the World Cup, their treatment of fans during visits to Korea, and various other things to argue that Messi was the greater player.

Meanwhile, Tony, who couldn’t understand Korean, was bewildered by the sudden rampage of the two Korean boys and simply focused on driving.

I was satisfied by the fact that no one was talking to me anymore, so I leaned against the window and enjoyed some time to myself.

In the meantime, time passed, and the car finally came to a stop at our destination.

Ciudad Real Madrid.

The Real Madrid training complex revealed its overwhelming grandeur before us.

As obvious as it may sound, Real Madrid is a Spanish football team.

Therefore, it uses Spanish.

Naturally, Ciudad Real Madrid is Spanish as well.

Here, Ciudad means “city.”

In other words, Ciudad Real Madrid can be interpreted as “the city of Real Madrid.”

As for why a mere football team’s training ground was given such a name, you only had to see it for yourself.

Because it was as large as a city.

“Wow……”

“…It’s fucking huge.”

I wasn’t quite as openly impressed as the two guys beside me, but even I was secretly amazed by the overwhelming scale of the training complex.

I heard the total area was approximately 1.2 million square meters.

The Korea national team training center in Cheonan, where the showcase had been held, was just under 500,000 square meters.

So this place was roughly two and a half times larger.

The name “city” certainly wasn’t an exaggeration.

Above all, the facilities were excellent.

There were natural-grass and artificial-grass pitches divided between the senior and youth teams, along with various other facilities such as training areas, medical facilities, and gyms.

There was even a home stadium for the reserve team within the training complex.

There was a reason Tony was so proud as he took on the role of our guide.

“All right, this is the dormitory. The reserve-team players use it sometimes too, but it’s mainly for the youth players.”

After arriving at the Real Madrid training ground, we were exploring the training complex under Tony’s guidance.

Just like the other training facilities, the dormitory building had a clean and sophisticated appearance.

Tony explained that this would be where we would be staying soon.

I liked that the rooms were fairly spacious.

What I didn’t like was that they were shared by two people.

I’d had enough of sleeping with other guys back when I was in the orphanage.

So I asked why the rooms were shared, and Tony answered that it couldn’t be helped because of the youth policy the team currently followed.

“I don’t know the details either, but apparently it’s to increase communication between the youth players. If they live together in the same space, they’ll naturally talk more, and they believe that will lead to better performances on the pitch.”

“If adolescent boys are forced to live together in a cramped space, wouldn’t that just build up stress?”

“I agree with you to some extent, but… what can you do? It’s a decision made by the higher-ups.”

He couldn’t change my double room into a single room, but he offered me another alternative.

“Alternatively, you don’t necessarily have to stay in the dormitory. Unlike the other two, you have a house in Madrid, don’t you?”

“…That’s true.”

“Players whose homes are close to the training ground don’t stay in the dormitory in the first place. There’s no reason for them to. Most of the players staying here are from other regions.”

Tony’s suggestion was perfectly reasonable, but I wasn’t keen on it.

I had no intention of becoming even more indebted to my biological father.

Because the state had recognized my custody arrangement, he was now legally my father as well.

But that was nothing more than a miracle that had occurred because our interests happened to align.

I needed a Spanish visa to sign the contract.

He wanted to be a respectable father in front of his remarried wife and child.

That was all.

I didn’t need a father to act as my guardian.

And I certainly didn’t need an adult who would later claim my success as his own.

So this was enough for now.

“It’s fine. I’ll just use a double room. How are the rooms assigned?”

“One double room will be shared by Park and Kim. You’ll be sharing with one of the existing players.”

“Okay, got it.”

“What? Aren’t you curious why the rooms were assigned that way?”

“Park and Kim have different circumstances from me in the first place.”

Unlike me, who had officially signed a contract, the other two were exchange students who would return to Korea in a year.

More importantly, I was the only one who could properly speak Spanish.

So if I were to share a room with a Spanish player, there was only one possible choice.

It was simple process of elimination.

“So, who’s my roommate?”

“Hmm, since we’re here, why don’t we go meet him now? He’s in the room right next door.”

Tony told the other two players to wait in the room for a moment before taking me toward the room next door.

“Nico! Could you open the door?”

His knock and Tony’s voice echoed through the dormitory corridor.

A moment later, the door suddenly swung open, revealing a boy named Nicholas with slightly tanned skin.

“Hola! It’s been a while, Tony. Who’s the kid next to you?”

“He’s a new friend who’s joining the team this time. Kang Do In. If that’s difficult to pronounce, you can just call him Doni.”

“Oh! Come to think of it, the coach told me. He said some incredible kid was coming from Korea. Is this him?”

“That’s right. And you’ll be sharing a room with him soon.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Nicholas Becker smiled warmly and held out his hand to me.

“Nice to meet you, Amigo! I’m Nicholas Becker. Just call me Nico.”

I already knew his name was Nicholas Becker.

I also knew that most people called him Nico.

He was an excellent midfielder and, far in the future, would become the commander who led the midfield of Real Madrid and Spain.

He was also known for being a racist with an absolutely rotten personality.

I knew that firsthand because I had faced him directly as an opponent.

When was it?

When I was twenty-eight, perhaps, when I faced Spain in the Round of 16 at the World Cup.

—“Hey, Chino! Try pulling off that fucking goal celebration one more time. I’ll break both your legs into pieces!”

—“I heard you play in Saudi Arabia? How much do you get paid? Did you use that money to bribe the referee too?”

—“Oh, right. Didn’t you say you don’t have parents? A guy without parents somehow has patriotism, huh?”

I had insulted his country by shaking my butt during my goal celebration, mocked him by saying that it wasn’t the referee who had been bribed but the Spanish players, and sneered at him by saying that, judging from his skin color, he was obviously African, so why was he playing for the Spanish national team?

He and I had been at each other’s throats throughout the match, hurling insults at one another and attacking each other’s character.

During the match.

And even after it was over.

We had a long history of bad blood.

Of course, now it was nothing more than a personal memory that no one else remembered.

That was why I firmly grasped the hand Nicholas had extended and shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Nico. Let’s get along from now on.”

As expected, you never know what the future holds.