Chapter 46
***
I returned to Germany and had to keep up with a pretty busy schedule.
But more important than anything else was spending time with my family.
The day Thomas Tuchel grabbed me and dumped a mountain of work on me.
I barged straight into Chairman Dirk Chingler's office and demanded vacation.
“Is this really true?”
“Yes. Once we get promoted to the first division, GL has agreed to back us as the main sponsor.”
Chairman Chingler checked the results I'd achieved in Korea, then
nodded and gave me three days off.
Thomas Tuchel naturally objected, but the mood at Union Berlin was already on my side.
But this couldn't be helped. What kind of crazy bastard expects an employee back from a business trip to go straight back to work without even a single day off?
Anyway, thanks to the support of Union Berlin's executives and staff, I managed to secure a short three-day break.
‘I’m free.’
And then came the long-awaited first day of vacation.
Maybe because I was so exhausted, it felt like I slept the whole day.
“Oppa, come eat!”
“Mm?”
By the time I came to my senses, evening had already arrived.
“I said come eat.”
“...Who are you?”
“You’re doing weird stuff again. I’m Park Jeonga, your little sister now, okay? Hurry up and come out to eat.”
“I actually did have a little sister...”
I was so out of it that I couldn’t even recognize my own sister.
“Oppa, are you senile?”
I flicked my sincerely worried little sister on the forehead.
“Eek!”
Behind me, I could see my sister clutching her forehead and whining.
“Stop pretending it hurts.”
“Hey! It really hurts!”
I ignored my sister’s whining and moved to the living room.
My mother and father greeted me there.
It felt like it had been a long time since I’d eaten with my parents.
I had tried my best to at least have dinner with them.
But with the season underway and one incident after another piling up work, I had to practically live at the clubhouse.
“I heard you brought over those exchange students from Korea.”
The moment I scooped up a spoonful of rice and put it in my mouth, my mother spoke.
“Yes.”
I nodded at my mother’s words.
“Invite them over sometime. They must be having a hard time adjusting to life abroad, so at least feed them a proper meal.”
‘What is this.’
Why does she want to torture them?
Was she still that hateful toward Korea?
“...Mom, do you hate Korea that much?”
“If you don’t want to eat, then don’t.”
The rice bowl disappeared.
Anyway, that evening I spent time chatting warmly with my family.
“Wow. You brought back the crazy Son Hongmin.”
My sister, who had also regressed like me, gave a reaction I was satisfied with.
We were living in the era of Daehongmin back then.
The fact that even an entertainer with no interest in football knew Dae.Hong.Min was undeniable proof of that.
“Honestly, I didn’t get it when he re-signed with Tottenham. If he’d transferred somewhere else, he could’ve lifted one more trophy, couldn’t he?”
Anyway, the football-clueless Park Jeonga tried to badmouth our Daehongmin.
“Ahem. Romance.”
I shut her down with facts. Sadly, the world is about results.
Since he lifted the trophy at the very end, it should be called romance, not lingering attachment or stubbornness.
“How’s business going?”
“Oh, but you should show a little interest in the family business too, oppa.”
“I already recommended my family’s messenger app as the club’s PC messenger. Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s... fair enough.”
The business run by my sister and father was growing quickly.
It seemed to be popular with the younger generation.
Lately, my father had been studying all sorts of things.
He seemed to be feeling pressure as the messenger business he was running with my sister grew rapidly.
They’d even received investment offers, and he apparently thought taking the investment was a good idea.
Honestly, I didn’t understand why they’d take investment.
“We’re not exactly short on money, so wouldn’t it be better to just hold on to the shares?”
“Unless it’s some weird investor, it’s safer to take it.”
According to my sister, the money that would be invested in us could end up going to a rival company, so unless the investor was making bizarre demands, it was better to accept it.
And because our family are immigrants, apparently we’d only be protected by the German government if as many of us as possible held shares.
“Oppa, those EU bastards are no different from those damn Chinese.”
My sister said the European Union was the kind of place that would tear a company apart over monopoly concerns the moment our family held most of the equity.
I honestly admired a side of my sister I didn’t usually see.
‘Were you a celebrity in your previous life or something?’
***
Park Jeonga.
In her previous life, as a top idol, most of the people she met were members of the successful class.
Even the fragments of knowledge she naturally picked up while socializing with them were valuable in this era.
That’s what they mean when they say a position makes the person.
The higher the caliber of the people around you, the more you have no choice but to raise your own level too.
She didn’t want to hear that she was all flash and no substance, and she didn’t want to become a pretty doll at a party.
‘Because reputation matters in a person’s life.’
In that sense, her brother Park Chanhyeok was unusual.
‘The things he does are just the work of a complete scumbag, but for some reason people like him.’
Well, perhaps that’s why he accepted her, a regressor, without question.
‘I’m grateful... truly grateful.’
However, her only complaint was.
- Fucking bastard: Water.
She still couldn’t escape being her brother’s water-fetching lackey.
‘...One day, I’ll definitely make him pay.’
***
The short vacation ended, and I returned to the club.
As evil boss Thomas Tuchel ground me down, the league moved along at a brisk pace.
[The Regionalliga reaches the midpoint. Union Berlin is still holding onto first place!]
[What are Union Berlin’s chances of back-to-back promotion?]
Union Berlin was still holding onto first place in the league.
Hot on Union Berlin’s heels was St. Pauli.
‘The word "fierce" still makes me flinch a little every time I use it.’
I often went to the youth training grounds to check whether the prospects were growing properly.
In youth football, Leon was the first to be recognized as having overwhelming talent.
After being briefed on Leon’s talent, Chairman Dirk Chingler even officially declared that he would not tolerate any kind of discrimination.
‘The fact that the team’s head coach was racist is pretty insane.’
Everywhere you went, there were crazy people, so you had to stay alert.
As they say, when five people gather, two of them are idiots.
“Kids, don’t slack off on learning German.”
I also took the chance to meet the Korean exchange students.
And as a senior in the overseas study project for promising players, I didn’t hold back from giving the Korean exchange students advice.
I wanted to treat them no differently from the existing youth players, but I still thought I should give them at least this much advice.
“Learning a language means respecting that country’s culture. If you want others to respect you, you have to respect them first.”
It may have been plagiarized from something Future Daehongmin would say, but that’s not important, so let’s move on.
Son Hongmin listened to my words with sparkling eyes, and I felt just a little guilty.
And the next person I met was Union Berlin’s goalkeeper prospect, Manuel Schmidt.
Actually, during the process of selecting exchange students, I had considered picking goalkeeper prospect Jo Woohyun as well.
But Union Berlin already had Manuel Schmidt, a five-star goalkeeper prospect.
Even if I brought him along, he’d still end up stuck as Union Berlin’s second-string keeper.
Maybe it would be different if Manuel Schmidt were as young as Leon, but he was only one year older than Jo Woohyun.
That said, we couldn’t exactly split his match time in half.
‘A goalkeeper only gets better by playing in matches.’
If handled badly, it could end up harming both of them.
As Union Berlin’s head coach, I had to make the choice that would help Union Berlin.
And according to the goalkeeper coach recently, Manuel Schmidt was growing very quickly.
It seemed that the extra information I’d given the goalkeeper coach about Manuel’s outstanding potential had helped a lot.
Looking at his attributes as a scout, Manuel Schmidt had grown so fast that he was already threatening Union Berlin’s goalkeeper position.
Manuel’s rapid growth was linked to my reputation as well.
It was proof once again to Union Berlin’s staff that my eye for players was real.
***
Interest in the Korean exchange students was hotter than I expected.
A lot of attention was focused on the fact that Park Chanhyeok had brought them.
Because Park Chanhyeok was the kind of guy who’d hit back-to-back home runs with Yanik Foit, Manuel Schmidt, and Leon Han.
Most of Union Berlin’s staff liked Park Chanhyeok, but not everyone there did.
Among them, Union Berlin’s new scout hated Park Chanhyeok to an extreme degree.
‘With talent like Yanik Foit’s, I could’ve recognized it just by looking!’
What filled him was jealousy.
It didn’t matter that no one there, including Thomas Tuchel, had tried to sign Yanik Foit.
Jealousy had clouded his judgment.
His jealousy and hatred toward Park Chanhyeok carried over to the Korean exchange students.
“Tsk. He must’ve brought them in and rated them as highly as possible because they’re his own people. This is why Asians just don’t cut it.”
He openly displayed contempt and discriminatory treatment.
Son Hongmin, who had been studying German the hardest, stiffened.
‘So this was what Chanhyeok-hyung meant when he said we might face discrimination in Germany.’
Looking at the scout who didn’t hesitate to make discriminatory remarks, Son Hongmin made up his mind.
That someday he would prove with his skill that he, and Park Chanhyeok, were right.
“Hongmin, what did that guy say? Something about Asians, I think.”
“He said Chanhyeok-hyung picked us because we’re from the same people and brought us here, and that Asians can’t make it or something.”
“What the fuck is wrong with this bastard.”
“Calm down. Didn’t Chanhyeok-hyung say it? That we’d be looked at through discriminatory eyes. Let’s prove it with football. That Chanhyeok-hyung wasn’t wrong.”
For the Korean exchange students in Germany, it was a sort of turning point.