Chapter 2
My name is Choi Yo-han.
My father is an ordinary office worker, while my mother teaches English at a local academy.
I’m in my first year of middle school.
In just one year, I’d be at the age when eighth-grade syndrome and puberty were supposed to hit.
I was an optimistic middle schooler who occasionally wondered vaguely about what I would become when I grew up—but immediately forgot all about it whenever a friend invited me to the PC café, where I’d just play games and have fun.
That was me until just moments ago.
But now.
At this very moment…
I remembered my previous life.
“Jang Ik-deok.”
That’s right.
My previous life had been Jang Ik-deok.
The memories and personality of my past self came crashing into me like waves, wildly mixing with the current Choi Yo-han.
“Right. They said they’d reincarnate me.”
Having remembered everything up to the moment of my death, I could also recall the conversation I’d had with the angel.
It had said that I would be reincarnated and given the chance to become the greatest football player.
But what was this?
I had grown up as an ordinary middle school student with absolutely nothing to do with football.
Was it all just a crazy dream?
That couldn’t be it.
The memories of my previous life that had just returned to me were undeniably real.
But wait…
Was there even a football player named Jang Ik-deok in this world?
I didn’t play football myself, but my whole family loved the sport, so I enjoyed watching it.
A player like Jang Ik-deok could have been called the GOAT of Korean football, yet no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t find any trace of him.
At present, the person who could be called the GOAT of Korean football wasn’t Jang Ik-deok.
It was Son Hyung-min.
A Tottenham legend and a great player who held all sorts of records, including being the first Asian to become the Premier League’s top scorer.
[Of course he doesn’t exist.]
While I was standing there in confusion, wondering what the hell was going on, a voice suddenly rang out.
Startled, I looked around.
Then, remembering my previous life, I looked up.
“An… angel?”
Above my head floated a small football with a pair of wings and one large eye staring down at me.
[It’s been a long time, Jang Ik-deok. Or should I say, Choi Yo-han.]
“What the hell happened to your size…?”
In my memories of my previous life, the angel had been an enormous football with three pairs of wings.
[I cannot reveal my true form in the mortal world. You can think of my current appearance as an avatar.]
“I see.”
No, that wasn’t what mattered.
“Hey! You said you’d make me a football player! So what the hell have I been doing until now? I didn’t do anything and somehow became a middle schooler!”
To become a great player, I should have started playing football at around the age of ten at the latest.
From that age, I should have received systematic training and, by middle school, entered the youth academy of a professional club and followed the elite development path.
By Jang Ik-deok’s standards, that was the proper path to becoming an outstanding footballer.
But all of that had been skipped.
Worse, I hadn’t even become aware of my previous life until just now.
[I apologize. It took a great deal of time to transfer the memories of your previous life into this world.]
“What does that mean?”
[This is a different worldline from your previous life. Reincarnating you into your original world would have created too great a butterfly effect, making it impossible.]
A different worldline?
[Depending on chains of cause and effect, the future branches into countless paths. A single small action can create a butterfly effect, causing the future to split into more worldlines than can possibly be counted.]
I think I understood what it meant by cause and effect.
For example…
Wasn’t it something like this?
In the world of my previous life, the people who called themselves my parents gave birth to Jang Ik-deok and abandoned him.
But in this life, maybe those people never met each other or never had a child.
Meaning Jang Ik-deok was never born in this worldline.
So I didn’t originally exist in this world.
On the other hand, someone like Messi could still exist here, meaning some of the players I knew might exist exactly as I remembered them.
[Your example was crude, but more or less correct. In any case, you do not exist in this world. The important thing is that even God did not expect transferring your memories into a worldline where someone named Jang Ik-deok had never existed to take this long. Transferring your soul and placing it into a body personally fashioned by God before having you born into this dimension did not take long. That is why you became aware of your previous life so late—and why I only appeared before you now.]
I had died on April 5th, and my birthday in this life was December 9th.
So transferring my soul had taken around eight months?
[Correct.]
And transferring my memories had taken more than thirteen years?
[That is correct.]
Well, it wasn’t impossible to understand.
Installing a hard drive into a new computer didn’t take long.
But downloading all your old data from the cloud could take ages.
Maybe reincarnation worked in a similar way.
[I’m glad you see it that way.]
I nodded and examined my body.
I wasn’t particularly fond of exercising, but I had been born with exceptional athletic ability.
The teachers who coached the school’s sports teams had tried to recruit me several times after seeing me in gym class.
My body was flexible, I had a naturally strong core, and I was fast.
I was also pretty good with a ball.
I didn’t like running, but even without the memories of Jang Ik-deok, I was naturally good at kicking a football. My friends constantly tried to convince me to play with them.
But that wasn’t the important part.
I left my room, entered the bathroom, and looked into the mirror.
A face completely different from Jang Ik-deok’s.
That’s right.
This was what mattered.
[The most perfect face ever crafted by God.]
Exactly.
It went beyond simply being handsome or pretty.
It was a beautiful face.
Thanks to it, I had lived a life completely different from my previous one.
I’d been approached and asked several times whether I wanted to become a model or an idol.
I’d received countless confessions.
Even now, my DMs and KakaoTalk were overflowing with unread messages.
It was a life Jang Ik-deok could never have imagined.
“Ik-deok—no, Yo-han. You’ve really made it in life.”
[Give thanks to God.]
“Of course. I’d be willing to offer a prayer of thanks every single day.”
[As a matter of fact, you should.]
“…What?”
The angel circled around me as it spoke.
[You are the only creation personally made by the God of Football. The more you commune with God, the stronger you will become. One way of doing that is by offering prayers of gratitude to Him.]
“Good heavens…”
Even in my previous life, I’d hidden from the nun who ran the orphanage because I didn’t want to pray.
And now prayer was mandatory?
[It is not particularly complicated. Simply place a football before you, rest one hand on it, look toward the sky, and offer a brief expression of thanks.]
“Fortunately, the God of Football seems pretty flexible.”
[That statement is irreverent, but our God is young.]
That made sense.
The angel had said He had existed since the first ball came into existence.
Compared to gods who had been born at the creation of the universe itself, He was relatively young.
[Correct.]
Well, whatever.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t do something that simple.
After giving me a face like this, how could I refuse?
I looked at myself in the mirror again, and the prayer that had seemed annoying moments earlier suddenly didn’t seem like a big deal at all.
You think I’d become this generous just because of my face?
Try living for decades with a face that makes women run away and children have seizures.
Then we’ll talk.
“Thank you.”
It was the perfect life.
A loving family.
A perfect face.
And even natural talent.
How could I not be grateful to the God of Football?
[It is good that you feel gratitude. However, none of this comes for free.]
“Really? Right, of course. There was no way it would all be free.”
I’d forgotten.
Nothing in this world was free.
Everything came with a price.
“So what’s the price?”
[Your greatest task is to become the best football player.]
“Isn’t that basically my goal anyway? Doesn’t that just benefit me?”
[If all you had to do was become the greatest football player, you could see it that way.]
“Then what else is there?”
The angel immediately answered my question.
[You must spread the existence of the God of Football far and wide. Through football, you must make it known that your existence comes from the God of Football and lead people to feel gratitude toward Him.]
“Isn’t that basically telling me to become the leader of a cult while playing football?”
[As long as football is involved, it does not matter what you do. You need only make God’s existence known.]
“…Is this why you brought me back to life?”
[Yes. You were able to be reborn as an apostle of the God of Football for that very reason. Of course, the intense desire for football you displayed at the moment of your death was why God chose you as His apostle.]
Wait.
What did it just say?
“An apostle of God…?”
[Correct, Apostle John. The one and only apostle chosen by the great God of Football. That is who you are.]
To think I’d live long enough to hear someone call me an apostle of God.
As someone who had once resented God, I couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable with the idea.
[The God you are thinking of and our God are fundamentally different.]
That was true, but…
[Besides, this will benefit you as well. The more you pray, and the more other people become aware of the God of Football, the stronger you will become.]
“Stronger?”
[Of course. You are God’s apostle.]
“Hmm… What if I refuse to be an apostle?”
At that, the angel stared at me silently before answering.
[Then your existence will disappear.]
That…
That wasn’t acceptable.
I’d already lived this life for far too long.
Thirteen whole years.
Someone else might find that laughable.
You’ve only lived thirteen years. What’s the big deal?
But for someone like me, who had spent his previous life as an orphan abandoned by his parents, the life of Choi Yo-han—a boy who had grown up with his parents—was more precious than anything.
“Then I can’t go back…”
A life without this family was impossible for me now.
Before remembering my previous life, I’d taken this life for granted.
As I’d said earlier, I was reaching the age of adolescence, and I had a little rebelliousness in me.
The age of storm and stress.
The age when you started wondering what your parents had ever done for you, while taking everything they had given you for granted and never realizing how grateful you should be.
Honestly, most kids my age were probably like that.
Some grown adults might deny it and claim they had never been that way.
But if you asked them one question, they’d probably be speechless.
Have you truly never once driven a nail into your parents’ hearts?
After hearing that, how many dutiful sons and daughters of this generation could proudly answer, “That’s right. Never!”
There were probably some.
But I could say with certainty that they were a minority.
And I wasn’t one of them.
I was just an ordinary middle school student who spent his time going to PC cafés and didn’t even care about studying.
No…
If anything, I was a little delinquent.
I had an absurdly handsome face and excellent athletic ability, so I wasn’t the type to get pushed around wherever I went.
That didn’t mean I went around looking for fights or acted like the king of the school.
But troublemakers naturally gathered around me.
And the immature Choi Yo-han didn’t reject them.
They were fun to hang around with, so I did.
Of course, I hadn’t yet been influenced enough to start drinking, smoking, or going around causing serious trouble.
But if my rebelliousness continued to grow and I gave in to temptation, it would only be a matter of time before I became a genuine delinquent.
I was an immature idiot.
Still, I couldn’t exactly curse my past self for it.
I hadn’t caused any serious trouble yet, and I’d never bullied anyone.
Maybe I would have if I hadn’t remembered my previous life.
Fortunately, I hadn’t reached that point yet.
Thank God.
I was still at the stage where I could call myself immature and turn everything back to normal.
And that wasn’t all.
I now had the chance to repay my family, who had given me endless love without asking for anything in return.
Because through my previous life, I understood better than anyone just how precious family was.
That was why I could never regress.
“You’re saying I have to become the best?”
The current me was Choi Yo-han, a boy who possessed the memories of Jang Ik-deok.
I was the one who, sick of watching the older boys at the orphanage beat up people my age and younger, had charged at boys several years older than myself.
I was the one who got beaten half to death but kept fighting, biting until my front teeth were knocked out, and still somehow won.
I was the one who endured until the end and scored a hat trick even while my head was split open, blood pouring down my face, and dizziness threatening to overwhelm me.
I was the one who kept going even with a broken arm.
I was the one who charged forward and scored even after tearing a ligament.
People called me a mad dog.
“Then I’ll become the best.”
Even if I had to grit my teeth until my soul burned away, I’d endure.
I’d fight.
I’d climb my way to the top.
And I’d become the greatest.
Because I could never regress.
