*Flicker. Fzzt.*
A fluorescent tube at the end of its life sputtered and flickered irregularly, letting out a sound like a death rattle. Each time, the yellowed wallpaper of the semi-basement studio rippled like a ghost.
The air in the room was heavy. A damp, musty humidity poured from the moldy, blackened wallpaper, mingling with the foul stench of alcohol rising from dozens of green soju bottles strewn across the floor, stabbing his lungs with every breath.
In the center of that room, which resembled a garbage dump, Ma Gangcheol stared at the CRT television with unfocused, dead eyes.
[Ah-! South Korea! It all falls apart here, after all!]
[The final whistle blows! The South Korean national soccer team’s advancement to the World Cup Round of 16 has been thwarted!]
The anchor’s voice was steeped in grief, yet at the same time, a strange anger lingered within it.
[Ah, it really is a shame. The possession was high, but there was no decisive blow! They lacked a reliable ace to score goals, a closer!]
[Isn’t this a problem that’s been pointed out for the past 10 years? That there is no ‘genius’ to lead Korean soccer. The absence of a crack who can turn the game around at the decisive moment is utterly heartbreaking!]
“Genius… closer… bullshit…”
Gangcheol muttered in a hoarse voice, picking up an empty soju bottle rolling across the floor. He tilted it out of habit, but not a single drop remained.
His hands trembled. He couldn’t tell if it was due to severe alcohol dependence, or the throbbing pain in his knees that warned of coming rain.
He forcibly raised his staggering body.
“Ugh…”
A grating sound of cartilage scraped from his knee—*skreek*. A cold, piercing pain bored into his bones, drawing a groan from him involuntarily. He hobbled toward an old display cabinet in the corner of the room.
There, yellowed and stained from dust and cigarette smoke, having lost its original gold color, a single trophy with a broken neck taped together was stuffed away.
[10th National Youth Soccer Championship MVP - Ma Gangcheol]
Twenty-five years ago.
Back then, Ma Gangcheol had been called the “Baby Tiger.”
When he had the ball, no peer could take it from him, and when he took a shot, goalkeepers could only watch blankly as the net shook, unable to react. Scouts from middle and high schools across the nation had trampled his doorway thin, and the media praised him as the talent destined to shoulder the century-long grand plan of South Korean soccer.
“Back then… I thought I was the protagonist of the world. I thought all I had to do was kick the ball, and everything would work out.”
But what was he now?
Far from the brilliant spotlight, he was a thirty-five-year-old has-been who couldn’t even keep a bench seat in the K3 League and had been released.
The cartilage in both knees had worn away completely, and his ankle ligaments were so tattered that even a little running tormented him with pain like being stabbed by knives. His bank balance had been in the red for a long time, and if he couldn’t pay his rent tomorrow, he would be kicked out of this moldy den.
“If only… that damned crosswalk hadn’t been there…”
Veins bulged in Gangcheol’s eyes.
A memory he wanted to forget, yet one that haunted him every night as a nightmare, tormenting him.
The day he had gone to finalize his contract to join the Real Madrid youth team in Spain.
A sunny spring day when he was eleven, on his way to meet the agent he had dreamed of.
The day his legs were crushed by a 25-ton truck trying to save a strange child who had rushed into the road.
*‘Gangcheol, you’re a hero. My proud son.’*
In the hospital, his mother had said that, even as she shed tears of blood.
The world had praised him too. A righteous man who had sacrificed his brilliant future at a young age to save a life. He appeared on the news and received a commendation.
But the price had been too cruel.
Nerve damage from a complex fracture. Growth plate destruction. The doctor had coldly delivered the verdict: “playing career impossible.”
The genius’s touch never returned, and what remained was not the scars of glory but a lifetime of regret and abject poverty.
The praise had been fleeting.
“The ill-fated genius,” “the vanished prospect.”
People had boiled over like a pot only to cool down coldly and forget him. Even the family of the child he had risked his life to save had cut contact after a few years. All that remained were the sighs of his parents, whose backs had bent under the mountain of debt from hospital bills, and his own miserable self dragging ruined legs.
“Fuck… they say good things happen to good people… it’s all bullshit…”
Gangcheol pulled out the last soju bottle stashed in the corner of the refrigerator and dumped the whole thing down his throat.
It was bitter. His throat burned, but his heart felt even colder and more painful.
That was when it happened.
A violent pain surged through his heart, as if someone were squeezing it.
“Urk…!”
The bottle fell to the floor with a loud crash.
His vision spun. He tried to inhale, but air wouldn’t enter, as if his lungs had petrified. A heart attack? Or acute alcohol shock?
In Gangcheol’s blurred vision as he collapsed on the floor, he saw his own face reflected in the shards of the broken soju bottle.
Pathetic. The face of an old, sick, ugly loser.
*Is this… how I die? On the floor of this stinking underground room?*
It was too futile.
Without ever having worn a proper pro uniform even once.
Far from being filial, having only driven nails into his parents’ hearts his whole life.
To end his life in a lonely death like this.
His consciousness gradually faded. A cold chill bored into his heart.
At the moment when death was imminent, Gangcheol regretted so deeply it pierced his bones.
If there is a god.
If, truly if, he were given one more chance.
*Never… I’ll never save anyone again.*
He would never do that kind of heroic play-acting again. He wouldn’t do the stupid thing of sacrificing everything for others.
He would choose his soccer, his life, his glory.
Call him selfish, call him trash—he didn’t care. He… he had wanted to play soccer so badly it drove him mad…
A stream of hot tears flowed from Gangcheol’s eyes, wetting the cold floor.
With those tears, his world sank into eternal darkness.
***
“Gangcheol! Wake up! The sun is high in the sky, how long are you going to sleep!”
“Uwoaargh!”
Gangcheol let out a shriek like a death rattle and shot up.
His heart was pounding as if it would burst. His entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
He had definitely died. He had vividly felt that terrible pain of his heart stopping.
“Huh…?”
Gangcheol opened his eyes and looked around blankly.
The musty mold and alcohol stench that had assaulted his nose were gone. Instead, the fluffy scent of a comforter thoroughly dried in the sunlight tickled his nostrils.
It wasn’t the semi-basement where he had to keep the lights on even during the day. Dazzling morning sunlight poured through the window, stinging his eyes.
And above all, the sensations he felt were different.
“What… is this?”
He looked down at his hands.
They weren’t the rough hands of a middle-aged man, calloused from wandering construction sites, riddled with scars, with veins popping out.
White, small, soft hands that hadn’t hardened yet.
They were the clean hands of a boy, without a single callus on the palms.
Gangcheol touched his own face with trembling hands.
There was no prickly beard. There were no sunken cheeks from alcohol poisoning.
Instead, he felt plump, soft, vibrant skin.
As if in a trance, he picked up the mirror on the desk beside his bed.
“Huh…”
Inside the mirror, an eleven-year-old boy with chubby baby fat and large eyes was staring back at him with a blank expression.
It was his childhood self, existing only in the photo albums of his memory.
“A dream? Is this like a flashback before death? It’s too vivid…”
To confirm, he pinched his own cheek as hard as he could.
“Ow!”
It hurt. It hurt so vividly. Enough to bring tears to his eyes.
It wasn’t a dream. This was a cruel reality.
Gangcheol jumped down from the bed.
The moment he landed, he felt a thrill.
His knees didn’t hurt.
His ankles that had ached whenever it rained, and his creaking waist were, unbelievably, light. It felt as if heavy sandbags that had been attached to his body had been removed.
He bounced in place. He felt the elasticity of his feet pushing off the floor. It was the healthy, explosive body he had lost in his previous life, the one he had longed for so much.
Only then did the scenery on the desk enter his eyes.
Instead of a dust-covered, broken trophy, shining golden trophies were proudly displayed.
And an envelope with torn marks, placed in the center of the desk.
[Real Madrid Youth Academy - Enrollment Contract]
[Invitation: To Mr. Ma Gangcheol]
His heart felt like it had dropped with a thud.
These documents. He remembered them.
The documents his mother had kept deep inside the wardrobe her whole life, throwing her body in the way and shedding tears whenever his drunken father tried to tear them up. The proof of the brightest moment of his life.
Gangcheol slowly turned his head and checked the calendar hanging on the wall.
A date circled in red colored pencil.
May 12, 2013.
“2013…”
Strength left his legs, and he nearly collapsed.
He had returned.
To right before everything was destroyed. To that very day of fate that had been the most brilliant, and the most terrible.
Gangcheol picked up the mirror again and stared intently at the youthful face reflected within it.
The face of an elementary schooler, soft with downy hair, inhabited by the soul of a thirty-five-year-old man.
Once he grasped the situation, a hollow laugh burst out.
“Ha… so this is round two of my life? God sure has a twisted sense of humor.”
He muttered in disbelief, pulling on his own chubby cheek fat in the mirror.
“I regress only to end up a fifth grader. Good grief.”