142. A Sudden Weight on the Shoulders -2
“···Aren’t you tired?”
“Huh? Um, a little?”
“···Ah, really? You are tired?”
“I am tired. I’ve been at the airport since morning, already for several hours. But why all of a sudden?”
“Mm··· nothing.”
“What the hell. You’re making me more tired.”
With an incomparably innocent face, marveling at Jiwoo’s admission of being tired, I grimace.
Just as Jiwoo said, we’d been traveling and waiting since morning, already for several hours, yet Jiwoo had been chattering away without showing any sign of fatigue. I’d asked out of curiosity.
So this was the energy level of a tired person.
How someone claiming to be tired could talk non-stop for several hours without resting for even a minute was something I simply couldn’t understand.
I’d been watching Jiwoo by my side for several years now, but I still couldn’t get used to it sometimes.
If Jiwoo had been a soccer player, wouldn’t they be called something like the one with two hearts or three lungs?
“Ahh, I wanna go already. Even after barely getting on the plane, we have to fly another thirteen hours. There’s no hardship like this.”
“···See, who told you to come along.”
“Who said I’m following!? I’m going to my house, okay? I’m not following you.”
“···Did you have to skip school for this?”
“No, well. My practicum’s already done anyway, so I just self-study every day. It’s fine if I don’t go for a few days.”
I didn’t know how it got approved, but Jiwoo had decided to skip school and board the plane to Korea with me.
Thanks to that, the long flight didn’t seem like it would be boring, but the journey there clearly wouldn’t be easy.
First of all, there was no direct flight from Florence to Incheon Airport.
We had to leave home early in the morning by car and come to Rome, and from Rome to Incheon, we had to fly another thirteen hours.
Thirteen hours is just thirteen hours in words, but wasn’t that practically spending a day up in the sky?
I wondered if time would even pass.
I was tired even though I hadn’t done anything yet, and I started to regret saying I’d go to Korea for no reason, but—
“Yeah, Mom! I’m getting on the plane soon! Yeah! Yeah!”
···Seeing Jiwoo, who was on the phone again in the meantime and looking quite excited for some reason, made that momentary regret disappear again.
Actually, when I decided to go to Korea, Jiwoo had made a face like being struck by lightning out of a clear sky upon hearing the news.
When I asked why, Jiwoo asked if that meant they had to stay here alone while I was gone.
That somehow looked funny, so I half-jokingly asked Jiwoo to watch the house well for me.
To my real bewilderment, Jiwoo almost cried.
It’s not like they were a baby, but Jiwoo was on the verge of bursting into tears, asking how they could stay here alone.
So I quickly said okay, let’s go together if you want, and only then did Jiwoo stop and brighten up.
I didn’t know if it was the thought of going to Korea or skipping school that made Jiwoo happy, but anyway, from that day on, Jiwoo had been waiting for today in great excitement.
Anyway, seeing Jiwoo so excited made me feel inexplicably happy too, but on the other hand, I felt a bit nervous.
It was because I had received an invitation. From Jiwoo’s parents.
They had invited me to have a meal together after the match in Korea··· mm.
Actually, there was nothing to be nervous about.
I used to visit Jiwoo’s house often when I was young, so I had seen Jiwoo’s mother frequently.
It might be a bit awkward, but there was no reason to be nervous at all.
But··· I didn’t know why I was nervous.
Strangely, it bothered me and made me more nervous than the fact that I was going to the national team.
I couldn’t explain it in words, but I’d felt something similar four years ago when I took the open tryout.
If you ask why that and this feel the same··· I don’t know either.
“Huh? What Jian likes best? Well? This kid just eats everything, why?”
Sss.
I really don’t know.
···
“···Hey, are you putting something on your face right now, or are you beating your face up?”
“What. Don’t look.”
Looking into a round mirror, Jiwoo was patting their face with a palm-sized cushion—*pang, pang*—with a rather combative look.
···Doesn’t it hurt?
It looked less like applying cosmetics to the skin and more like intimidating the skin into swallowing them.
Regardless, I let out a long yawn and turned my gaze to the conveyor belt spinning round and round.
I was waiting for our luggage to come out like a diner waiting for my favorite sushi at a revolving sushi restaurant.
Lest I miss it, I watched the passing luggage with wide, glaring eyes.
I had felt like I would be floating in the sky forever, but we had finally arrived.
I thought time wouldn’t pass, and it really didn’t.
Thirteen hours was something that exceeded expectations even though I’d steeled myself.
I did all sorts of things to pass the time.
Sleeping soundly was a given, and I watched a movie sharing one earphone each with Jiwoo, and analyzed the patterns of clouds passing by the window.
I’d probably done everything possible on a plane.
Yet when I thought there was nothing left to do, there were still about five hours remaining.
Anyway, having endured somehow, eventually the plane gave up first and settled onto the ground.
And the air I breathed after getting off the plane was Korean air.
Hmm.
Come to think of it, it had been four years since I returned, so I thought a lot would have changed. But it didn’t seem that way.
I thought the emotions would be special too, but they weren’t particularly so.
Maybe because my mind was blank, I could hardly feel it was real. If not for the welcome Hangul visible here and there, I wouldn’t have known this was Korea.
I felt like I’d have to go outside for it to feel a bit more real.
When will my suitcase—
“Ah, there’s ours. That one’s yours, right, mister? And the one next to it is yours.”
“Oh, right. Maybe because it’s business class, it came out quickly.”
As if to prove I’d come to Korea, I immediately experienced the power of a Korean proverb. Speak of the tiger, and it appears—I snatched up the suitcase that arrived right on cue and checked to make sure it was ours.
“Now, let’s go.”
I finally headed for the exit.
Hmm.
Now it felt like reality was starting to sink in, maybe.
That little kid who left this place at thirteen has returned at seventeen.
Still, the airport seems the same as back then.
Nothing seems to have changed much—
“Oh, oh! He came out!”
“Waaaah!”
“Player I Jian! Player I Jian!”
“Waaaaah!”
...Wait a minute.
What is this.
Is this··· a dream?
“Please look over here for a moment!”
“Player I Jian!”
The moment I stepped out of the exit, I was met with a blinding barrage of cameras that made me scrunch up my eyes and voices calling my name frantically.
“···”
I could only stand there blankly for a moment and rub my eyes.
···
“···”
Inside a passenger car driving down the road.
I sat in the back seat and quietly looked out the window.
Lost in the thought of whether four years was really such a long time.
It was because the scenery outside the window felt somehow foreign.
I had clearly returned to my homeland, so why did I feel like a foreigner who had come to an unfamiliar place?
I kept turning my head this way and that, looking around.
After barely escaping the airport, I was now traveling separately by car.
The destination was Paju.
I was riding in the car of a national team official who had come personally to the airport to meet me.
Because of the flight schedule, I was the latest to arrive, so they said I had to join right away.
The other players had already entered the training center and were managing their condition.
So I had to part with Dad and Jiwoo, promising to meet again after the match.
After being left alone like that, only then did my heart start pounding like crazy.
Only now was it starting to feel real.
That I had come to Korea, and that the reason I had come to Korea was unbelievably to join the national team.
But the fact that so many people recognized me, and on top of that had crowded the airport just to see me, still didn’t feel real.
No, it was as if I were some celebrity··· countless cameras were focused on me.
Girls around Jiwoo’s age were calling out to me, and I didn’t know what to do.
···The story I’d heard from the monster of Naples not long ago, that I was very popular in Korea, hadn’t been a lie after all.
Anyway, my heart was still racing.
Was it because they had called me several times before, yet I had dragged my feet and not come easily?
Everyone seemed to have high expectations for me.
Honestly, because of this, I felt like canceling my decision and going home right this moment··· but since I’d come this far, I couldn’t do that.
I had no choice but to steel my heart.
Well, surely··· I decided to hope that I wouldn’t have to play in this match right away.
It was my first time.
Probably I would just be warming the bench and learning what kind of place the national team was.
“···”
Hmm.
I was starting to feel scared about playing in a match after so long.
···
It was late afternoon when I arrived at a place called Paju, where the national team training center was located.
Maybe because of the time difference, I had slept fitfully in the car and before I knew it, we had arrived.
Thanks to that, even while getting out of the car and grabbing my luggage, I couldn’t tell if this was a dream or reality.
It was the same when I followed the official to enter the center.
At the entrance of the center too, just like at the airport, people calling my name and cameras were lined up in abundance. Whether because of that or because I lacked sleep,
I think the thought that this couldn’t be reality kept crossing my mind.
But the moment that felt the most unreal was what came next.
I entered the training center in a daze, received my room assignment, and
after being in the room for a moment, the official brought me necessary items.
Things like drinks and snacks to eat, and training clothes and uniforms to wear while exercising···
Seeing my name written on that red uniform, which I had only seen on TV when I was young, gave me a feeling of certainty.
That this was indeed a dream.
My name was written on the national team uniform, and I felt a strong conviction that this couldn’t be reality.
So somehow, on the first day, even as I fell asleep, I thought this.
If I slept here and woke up, the ceiling of my own room would greet me when I opened my eyes.
That all of this was just a somewhat long and bizarre dream.
But when I opened my eyes the next day, what greeted me wasn’t the ceiling of my room, but an unfamiliar ceiling.
Outside the window was still Korea, and where I was was the Korean national team’s training center.
A dream that wouldn’t break—eventually, it was reality.
But my mind was still blank, same as before.
I got up and timidly went to eat breakfast, awkwardly greeted seniors who somehow looked a bit scary···
No one was stopping me, yet I somehow felt like I shouldn’t be here, like I’d be kicked out at any moment.
But seeing that everyone knew my name and people I was meeting for the first time greeted me warmly, I guessed it wasn’t a lie that I had been officially called up.
Anyway, when I came to my senses, I was at the training ground.
The weather was quite chilly, and the color of the grass was very different from Italy’s.
The seniors playing in Europe said I would have to adapt to this grass.
I slowly ran with the seniors and got used to the feel of the grass.
Well, since I’d started soccer on this very grass to begin with, the sensation returned quickly.
Running until I broke a sweat, the chill I’d felt quickly faded.
And then the real national team training began.
Only then did the fact that I had become a national team player start weighing down on my shoulders.