Chapter 6
***
When word spread that I’d been accepted to study abroad in Stuttgart, Germany.
Quite a lot happened.
“Son, can’t you stay?”
I first had to persuade my parents about going to Germany for soccer study abroad.
They were worried about sending their underage child overseas alone.
“The association is even assigning me a guardian, so you don’t need to worry too much. And I’m really good at English.”
Well, that didn’t make the persuasion difficult or anything.
“Right. Once a man has made up his mind, he should go. If it gets hard, you can always come back.”
“…Dad, I have to come back after a year because of the visa.”
“Son, facts aren’t more important than feelings.”
Both of my parents respected my opinion as their child.
‘Maybe their MBTI type is F.’
In any case, after getting permission from my parents, I started preparing in earnest for study abroad in Germany.
I first got a passport and started studying German.
Because while I could communicate fairly well in English, I couldn’t speak German at all.
Learning the language of the place I was going to study in was important.
Wasn’t that what the future world-class Son Heung-min had said?
That learning a language is a form of respect for that country.
Personally, I thought that was true.
If we meet a foreigner who speaks Korean well, don’t we like them more too?
Besides, since playing defense required communication with the other players, I had to be fluent in the language.
Well. Even if that weren’t the case, if I were going to coach overseas, I’d have to know several languages.
‘English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese at least, right?’
If an obvious foreigner like me spoke to players in their own language, they’d probably feel close to me quickly.
That was probably one of the few advantages of an Asian being a coach.
Another was being able to land a great main sponsor that was far too good for a lower-league team.
In the future, once I became a coach, I figured several Korean companies would probably latch onto me.
‘Honestly, even just acting as a middleman—buying talented players cheaply in Korea and selling them high—would be pretty lucrative….’
At that moment, I quickly shook my head.
‘No, what am I thinking?’
Looks like I’d caught some of that from 21st-century slave trader Park Jeong-a.
‘Should I stop studying here?’
After finishing my studying, I started training alone at a nearby park.
Because after I was selected as the overseas student, the coach threw a fit and I couldn’t go to the soccer team.
Well. I never intended to go in the first place.
You dodge shit because it’s dirty, not because you’re scared.
I wanted to throw a ‘life is the real deal, you little shit’ at the coach, but.
Even if I reported it to the police, the chance of an actual investigation was low.
Unfortunately, this was that kind of time.
In the future, weak teacher authority would be the problem; now, it was weak student rights.
I figured I could just use the coach as an excuse when I retired as a player later.
‘Wouldn’t the coach be thrilled if I said I was retiring because the injury from being hit by him had gotten worse?’
I didn’t know when that would be, but I was looking forward to that day.
***
While I was busy preparing to study abroad in Germany.
“The winning numbers for first prize in the lottery are 6, 30, 38, 39, 40, 43.”
Our family finally won the lottery.
The prize money we were going to receive was a whopping 14 billion won.
Thanks to the jackpot rolling over. This was still before the lottery was revised, and one game cost 2,000 won.
It would have been nice to buy several entries, but we happened to be out of allowance, so we could only buy one.
Even though one game cost 2,000 won, the value of that 2,000 won was bigger than I’d expected.
It was a time when the minimum hourly wage was 2,275 won.
In effect, you had to work an hour just to buy one lottery entry.
We had escaped poverty to some extent, but given our family’s still not exactly comfortable circumstances, it was hard to pour 10,000 won a week into a lottery whose winnings might never come.
Well. I did regret not buying all five entries after winning first prize.
Still, hadn’t a huge 14 billion won fallen into our hands?
‘14 billion…!’
Unlike me, who was overjoyed and hugging my younger sibling over the astronomical winnings.
My younger sibling’s face was dark, as if afraid of something.
‘Was my younger sibling scared that our family would change?’
Since we’d talked about my younger sibling’s past life, I quietly hugged them.
“Ah! I can’t breathe!”
My younger sibling, embarrassed by the mushy atmosphere, snapped at me for no reason.
“Hng! Choke!”
I responded with an armbar.
***
“What are we going to tell our parents? Younger sibling, got any good ideas?”
“…How about saying the deceased grandfather told us?”
“He’s not dead yet, you brat.”
“….”
“You just roasted me, didn’t you?”
“Hehe, busted.”
We were worrying about how to explain the first-prize lottery win before our parents came home.
“K-kids. W-what should we do?”
But our worries were resolved more easily than expected.
Mother came home with her hands shaking.
Because she had been bothered by my bringing up Grandpa, Mom had been buying a lottery ticket every day using the numbers we’d written down.
Ah. For reference, Mom eventually thought it was a waste of money too, so she only bought one entry, just like us.
‘O-oppa?’
‘What in the world have we been doing all this time?’
I quickly exchanged looks with my younger sibling.
Then, with an awkward expression, I took the winning lottery slip from my pocket and handed it over. There was no need to explain.
“I’d have to discuss it with your father, but you two should use this.”
Mother awkwardly smiled and handed the lottery slip back to us.
“By the way, how did you buy the lottery? You shouldn’t have been able to because you’re minors.”
“…I’ll explain it to you at dinner.”
And that evening.
“Seriously….”
“I’m sorry!”
My younger sibling and I knelt and apologized to our father, who had come home after working overtime at the company.
“…So that’s why the people in the neighborhood were looking at me like that. I see.”
To be fair, I hadn’t expected Dad’s reputation to sink this low.
It was the early 2000s, when barbarism and intelligence coexisted.
It was an age when teachers would smack students around if they were in a bad mood, and a parent getting drunk and beating a child was considered discipline rather than abuse—the romantic era.
In fact, didn’t you sometimes hear the screams from next door along with the sound of kids crying?
Honestly, Dad’s image shouldn’t have sunk this far.
What my younger sibling and I hadn’t considered, however, was our parents’ reputation.
Our parents were known around the neighborhood as a loving couple, and people liked watching a couple’s misfortune more than you’d think.
“…Yeah, it was already over, so there was nothing we could do.”
Anyway, after hearing the story, Dad forgave our mistake readily because we were his children.
And the next day.
Dad came back carrying a wooden box.
‘Here it comes.’
I instinctively realized the box was a grain chest.
“…Oppa, what are you doing?”
I put my younger sibling into the box.
Since it was too small for me to fit in, I figured it was meant for my younger sibling.
“…Son, what are you doing?”
At my bewildered father’s voice, I asked with a puzzled look.
“Isn’t it common sense to lock a child who messed up in the grain chest?”
“This isn’t a grain chest.”
I quietly took my younger sibling back out of the box I’d put them in.
“….”
And I desperately averted my younger sibling’s icy stare.
***
Our family went into emergency meeting mode.
Because when a huge sum of money suddenly comes in, some people can go straight to ruin.
There were two main items on the agenda.
First was the issue of how to divide up the lottery ticket we had bought and won.
Our family approved that unanimously.
After collecting the first-prize winnings, my parents decided to give them to me and my younger sibling.
There had also been opinions that, since my younger sibling was far too young, my parents should manage it. But following my younger sibling’s wishes, it was decided that I would manage it.
Well, I said I’d manage it, but in reality my younger sibling would invest it. They knew the future better than I did.
And the other was where our family would live.
This one split into two opinions.
“Still, we have friends and jobs here, so isn’t it a little much to go overseas?”
Because they had jobs and acquaintances in Korea, my parents wanted to live in Korea.
“You’d probably have a hard time working in Korea, though.”
But my younger sibling and I, knowing that first-prize lottery winners were viciously hounded by the media and people around them, wanted to go abroad.
Or at the very least, wait until things quieted down and then come back to Korea.
‘How long can we keep the lottery win a secret?’
The early 2000s.
Of course, personal information wasn’t protected.
Reporters would stake out the bank where first-prize lottery winnings could be collected, then rush over and turn it into an article if someone who looked like the winner showed up.
No matter how thoroughly we hid our identities, it wouldn’t take more than five days for our family’s information to spread across the country.
In fact, didn’t reporters often even show up at lottery winners’ homes? Not only that, they would call acquaintances and coworkers to get interviews.
And a few days later.
Just as my younger sibling and I had predicted, the moment our family collected the first-prize winnings, all kinds of people came to our house.
‘What kind of nerve do you need to have to say you bought the same numbers as us until then and demand a share of the winnings?’
Honestly, even charity groups demanding donations as if the money were being held in trust, and religious groups saying we’d go to hell if we didn’t give, looked like angels by comparison.
Anyway, that evening, my parents finally realized it would no longer be possible to live in Korea.
“Let’s go to Germany together.”
Our family’s move to Germany was decided.
***
Dad quit his job too and began preparing to immigrate in earnest.
More precisely, because reporters had swarmed the place, it wasn’t a situation where he could go to work.
The boss apparently even suggested he invest in the company, and while my father was known as a nice man, he wasn’t such a pushover. The moment he heard that offer, he submitted his resignation right away.
[An angel at work, a tyrant at home?]
The newspaper articles spewed all kinds of rumor-mill stories about our family every day.
The media and people around us tore into the first-prize lottery winner like winning the lottery was some death-penalty-level crime.
[Mr. Park’s son, Park So-and-so, does he really need to go study soccer abroad with taxpayer money?]
And the one marked as media prey was none other than me.
[High school coach Mr. Kim’s shocking assessment of Park Chan-hyuk: “That kid has zero manners….”]
Because I was a fairly notable high school prospect, it was less of a hassle than dragging a complete civilian into the article.
[The Football Association on Park Chan-hyuk’s selection… “He was selected fairly before the lottery win.”]
While Korea was in an uproar over my soccer study-abroad issue.
Time passed quickly.
The day I had to leave for Germany drew near.
There was more to prepare for immigration than I’d expected, like finding a school for my younger sibling in Germany, so my parents and sibling decided to come next year.
If we were settling in Stuttgart, we could have asked the club for help.
Unfortunately, my parents chose Berlin.
What, are people supposed to go to Seoul—the capital—no matter what?
Since my sibling and I had sins toward our father, we decided to quietly follow our parents’ wishes this time.
Anyway.
“Oppa. Take care on your way.”
“Son, make sure you eat well.”
I left my tearful mother behind and walked over to my younger sister to say something.
“Younger sister, from now on you’re the head of the family.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about me, oppa. I’ll take good care of Mom and Dad.”
“…Kids, the head of the family is right here.”