232_Realized -1
Thankfully, I am currently wearing soccer cleats that were given to me, but when I recall the times when I used to buy and wear them myself.
Without fail, the store employees would always say that when recommending newly released soccer cleats.
That once you try these on, you won’t be able to wear anything else.
That even if you don’t feel it much right away, once you wear these and then try wearing something else again, the reverse sensation you feel would be enormous.
And those words are largely true in most cases.
Not just soccer cleats, but whether it’s a phone, a TV, or anything else.
When you use a new product, you might not feel a huge difference, but when something happens and you take out the old one again, you end up surprised.
“How did I use this all this time?” you say to yourself.
Exactly so.
Is there something connected to human instincts?
People are always far more sensitive to the reverse sensation than to the actual sensation.
Feeling someone’s absence more keenly when they leave than when they arrive is likely a similar story.
“See you again! Our Jian!”
Jiu’s parents, who had stayed at our house for a week, returned to Korea.
Dad drove them to the airport, and I wanted to go see them off to the airport as well, but I couldn’t because of my training schedule.
When I returned after finishing training, the house felt desolate.
As I opened the door and stepped into the living room, for a moment I thought, had the house always been this unnecessarily large?
I had thought it was spacious even before, but seeing the empty house devoid of anyone, I even began to wonder if such a house was necessary.
Sitting alone on the sofa, everything suddenly felt pointless.
Well, if only Jiu had been here, it would have been okay.
Perhaps it felt that way more because Jiu wasn’t here.
Jiu had also left for Korea with her parents, planning to be gone for a few days.
At least it was fortunate that the goodbye said when leaving was “I’ll go and come back” rather than just “I’m going.”
If they had left without a set date to return, wouldn’t the empty feeling have been several times worse?
Anyway, even though I knew it was only temporary, I felt hollow and just kept holding onto my phone.
I knew that if I kept thinking about this and that alone, I would sink deep into myself given my personality, so I needed something to hold me back.
The funny thing was that it was people again.
Until Dad returned late in the evening, what I had been looking at all day was the group chat with my Fiorentina seniors.
I would giggle at the trivial things the seniors said there, and send pitiful words of comfort while sympathizing with their complaints about how hard things were.
It wasn’t like we had any amazing conversations that lasted for hours.
Just stories about life, trivial little things.
But strangely, just that alone made me feel like something was being filled.
Just chatting about this and that made me think again, “Ah, I have to work hard.”
Thanks to that, I was able to hold out without falling into deep emotions until Dad came back.
I’m not sure if “held out” is the right expression, but at least that’s how I felt.
On the weekend, I played in a match.
It was an away game against a team called Sheffield United, and it wasn’t an easy match.
The home team fans were quite aggressive and cursed us throughout the match.
The opponent, buoyed by such home fans, looked nothing like the weaker team they were made out to be.
Completely apart from tactics or the flow of the game, the energy they exuded itself didn’t feel like a weak team.
It wasn’t that they felt intimidated, if you know what I mean.
They tried to beat us.
Of course, even so, we won the match.
The monster called Haaland hammered in two goals, crushing them 2–0.
De Bruyne was still out, but I notched an assist, so I felt I could manage at least half of what he does.
My teammates moved like machines and perfectly controlled everything the opponent wanted to do.
It was a decent enough victory that the coach didn’t have anything particularly bad to say.
But after the match, returning to the hotel and lying alone in my room, I didn’t feel very happy.
By now, I had been to plenty of away games, and I thought it had been a long time since I was a child afraid of sleeping alone under an unfamiliar ceiling.
Just, how should I put it, compared to finishing the match with a victory, I didn’t feel any great excitement, shall I say.
I pondered deeply over why that was.
Well, was it because I was so satiated that winning a single game had become something natural?
Dunno.
Given that situation, rather, each win was as precious as ever, not something that could feel light, so it didn’t seem like the right answer.
Then was my play unsatisfactory?
Of course, it wasn’t a match where I could boast that everything was perfect.
But there was no such match to begin with.
No matter how good the result, there are always regrets.
Not once had there been a match that I could say was perfectly satisfying.
Even so, the joy of victory was always great and sweet.
So this didn’t seem like the right answer either.
Then what on earth was it, I was thinking,
when I seemed to find the answer from the phone I was holding without a thought.
On my phone, there was no congratulatory message from Jiu.
The message that always came after finishing an away game hadn’t come.
When I roughly calculated the time difference, the match had started at 4 a.m. Korean time, so it was only natural.
I ended up thinking that perhaps that was the reason.
That maybe because there was no one to share the joy with, I could only feel half of it.
And that thought was confirmed when I woke up and checked my phone again.
Seeing a message from Jiu, who had woken up on the other side of the planet while I was asleep, filled the half of the joy I hadn’t felt last night.
In a way, this too was a reverse sensation.
Normally I would just think “I guess that’s how it is,” but experiencing it with and without made me feel it more greatly and think about it once more.
Come to think of it, perhaps the reason Sheffield didn’t feel like a weak team in the end was for a similar reason.
They must have wanted to win even more because the people who would rejoice with them were right behind them.
And that energy was conveyed to me as well.
So on the way back from the Sheffield away trip, I had this thought.
Happiness has meaning in itself, but I thought perhaps it is only completed when there is someone you can share it with.
I thought that without someone to rejoice with you, it could only ever be half-complete.
After returning from Sheffield, I packed a large suitcase.
The next schedule was also an away trip, and it wasn’t just any away trip, so I needed a lot of luggage.
The next schedule was a match held in China.
I had to go to join the Asian Games being held in a city called Hangzhou.
As a result, I ended up missing Jiu again.
The schedule was such that when I went to China, Jiu would return to the UK.
Whatever the case, it was our fate to be apart for a while.
The team took great care of me.
The plane ticket was a given, and they even had a medical team accompany me.
Thanks to that, I wasn’t going alone; several of us got on the plane boisterously.
And after flying for about 12 hours, I arrived in the country of China, the city of Hangzhou.
There I met the coach leading the Asian Games team and exchanged greetings with the hyungs I would be playing with.
The food and sleeping arrangements, which I had been a bit worried about, were better than I thought.
Everything was a somewhat unfamiliar environment, but in the end, I had come here to play soccer.
The essence hadn’t changed, so I don’t think I had much trouble adapting.
Of course, that didn’t mean there were no difficulties.
Well, there was unfamiliarity with things like the training style, the head coach’s and coaches’ instructions, and the teamwork with the hyungs I was matching up with for the first time.
It was only natural since the soccer played by the club team and that played by the Asian Games team were different.
But that was a matter of adapting.
Besides, I wasn’t forced to play any particular way.
The team wanted me to do exactly what I normally did, and receiving such great consideration, I tried to do what the team needed just the same.
There weren’t any great difficulties.
I started from the second group stage match.
It was a match against Thailand, and I played about 55 minutes from the first half to the 11th minute of the second half.
And somehow I scored three goals.
Well, scoring three goals might sound incredible, but.
Our team had won the first match, which I didn’t play in, 9–0.
As the Asian Games is not a tournament featuring full national squads, the gap in strength between teams was said to be considerable.
I rested for the third match as well.
The coach said there was no need for even me to play, and honestly, I felt like I wasn’t needed.
Since we won with a score of 4–0 again.
The ensuing tournament was the Round of 16.
Our opponent, having advanced as first in the group, was a country called Kyrgyzstan.
To be honest, perhaps because I slept during geography class, it was a country I was hearing of for the first time, but what mattered was simply that they were an opponent we had to beat.
In the end, we won 6–1.
Thanks to resting in the previous match, I started and somehow scored three goals again.
Perhaps because we were already leading by two goals and the opponent’s momentum was broken, I was able to pile them in more easily than I thought.
The quarterfinal opponent was China.
Before the match, I heard a lot that it would be a difficult game.
Probably because this was China.
Moreover, I also heard a lot that China was a team with a rough style and we had to be careful.
But when we actually entered the match, the only thought I had was that the coach was an extremely thorough person.
As if one had to be a perfectionist to be a coach in the first place.
Compared to the thorough preparation, the actual match was easy.
We won 4–0.
Somehow I scored three goals again, and unlike what had been feared, I didn’t get injured.
Compared to European players, the Chinese players seemed rather tame.
Of course, the spectators… I don’t want to talk about it, but since they quieted down when we scored goals, it wasn’t anything to worry too much about.
In the semifinals, we clashed with Uzbekistan.
And we won 4–1.
Somehow I scored three goals again.
The finals opponent was Japan.
By this point, the atmosphere was completely different from before.
From the coach’s expression as he prepared training, I felt a different level of resolve.
I could feel that the hyungs were quite nervous, unlike up until now.
I remember that the meal times, which had been noisy, were quiet on the day before the finals.
But the really strange thing was, I was less nervous than I thought I’d be.
I can’t explain the reason clearly, but I just don’t think I was extremely nervous.
Maybe because we had come up winning big in the previous matches, or because I didn’t feel like we would lose.
Rather than thinking we could win, I only thought we would win.
There didn’t need to be another reason for winning, but from the time I first arrived in China until the day before the finals,
Jiu had told me to definitely come back with a gold medal, so that was all I could think about.
Come to think of it, it was a bit strange.
Until now, Jiu had only told me not to get hurt and to do well, never that I absolutely had to win.
But this time, she said it had to be a gold medal, that I had to come back with a gold medal no matter what.
It was the first time I realized Jiu was such a patriotic person.
Anyway, that’s how the finals went.
And after winning 3–0, I won the gold medal that Jiu had wanted so badly.
Somehow I scored three goals again.
Only after winning the gold medal did I feel incredibly happy.
I think I felt a joy several times greater than the simple happiness that comes from winning.
So I thought about it.
Once again.
After a noisy celebration party, I lay quietly alone in my quarters and thought deeply.
The things I had felt over the past few days.
And the things I had felt even before that.
As I retraced everything, I looked back on why I had felt that way, why I had thought that way.
My thoughts went from the most recent events all the way back to when I was very young.
Why did I want to be good at soccer?
And having wanted that, why did my motivation for soccer drop right after coming to Italy?
And then why did my motivation blaze up again?
Why am I happy when I win a match?
If there were times when I was less happy even after winning a match, why was that?
Why did I want to only show a cool side in front of someone, even while disliking standing out in front of others?
Why did I feel full when they were there, and feel like everything had disappeared when they weren’t?
Even though I couldn’t greatly feel the meaning of a gold medal, why did I feel like I had to win it even at the risk of my life, just because someone wanted it?
What on earth was all this because of?
Until night turned to dawn, as I asked myself and answered one by one, I was able to find the answer.
Also, the emotion I had felt not long ago when I thought Jiu might like someone.
I was able to belatedly realize what that emotion I had been curious about was.
And I became able to understand words I had dismissed as mere nonsense.
Even now, admitting this is so embarrassing and strange that it makes my skin itch.
But I think it’s right.
I had only denied it, saying it made no sense and using the excuse that we were just friends… but it had actually been true.
I was in love with Jiu.