Pohang
Thursday, October 10th 2002
21.45 p.m

The remote was in his hand.

It would've been a simple matter to merely push a button, any button, and not see what he was seeing. He could've easily switched to a commercial somewhere, or to a news bulletin somewhere else. Save himself from the pain, save himself from the agony.

But he couldn't. He had to see this. He was part of it.

It was too much. It hurt too much. It hurt to see all those faces, young and crushed and heartbroken, to see the tears staining their faces, to see them with their heads hanging and their knees buckling underneath them.

There was a hand on his shoulder, gentle yet trembling slightly.

"They lost?"

Hong Myung-Bo looked up to see his wife's face, beautiful and pale, shadows flitting across it from the television screen, her expression bearing the same disbelief and shock he felt inside of him.

"Yes, Sumi...they lost."

"But...how?"

"Penalty shootout."

Those words. The words he'd feared and hated throughout all his career. It was his luck that the last time he was involved in a penalty shootout, the results were to his favor. Not this time.

He reached up to squeeze his wife's hand gently as the scene unfolded on the television screen before him, second by painful second.

The miss.

Young-Pyo's miss. In slow-motion replay, as if the nation wanted to desperately know what went wrong, where did his feet strike the ball, how on earth could it not have gone in, how could this be happening to them. How, how, how...

Cut to where Young-Pyo was now.

He was on the ground. On all fours, shaking and trembling. Around him the others sat and cried and hung their heads low.

"Get up, Young-Pyo..." Hong muttered low.

His wife squeezed his hand tighter.

"Please, get up..."

But Young-Pyo didn't get up. His right hand reached, slowly, to where his right sleeve was, and he yanked the armband off it. That jerking motion, so sudden, that made Hong's stomach fold over itself.

When Young-Pyo finally got up, his face was pale, emotionless.

His eyes were dry.

Hong shook his head. This was not good. Not good at all. He saw Dong-Gook and Eun-Jung talking to each other, Dong-Gook looking very devastated. Ji-Sung was still staring at the goalposts in disbelief. Chun-Soo had his arms around Uke's shoulders, and Woon-Jae was with another group of players, trying to console them.

Young-Pyo was alone.

He took his wife's hand from his shoulder and brought it to his mouth, kissed it, and she began sniffling. He ran his fingers across the soft skin of her palm, drawing comfort from it, sharing his grief with her through the touch, for he didn't have the strength to speak.

"Are the kids asleep?" he asked finally.

"Yes."

Hong got off the couch and turned off the television. "I can't watch that anymore."

"Good. Neither can I." his wife said.

They walked together to their children's bedroom, where both boys now lay asleep in their cots. Hong stood leaning against the doorway of the darkened room and watched them, his wife's arms going around his waist and her head pillowed on his shoulder.

"Myung-Bo..." his wife's voice whispered.

"What?"

"Don't you want to go there? Be with them?"

"Where...to Busan?"

She nodded. "Who knows...they might need you."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. The place is guarded tighter than a military bunker these days."

"You carried the torch in the ceremony, right? You still have your access badge and all that...plus you know a lot of inside people. I'm sure you can get in there."

"But what would I do, Sumi?"

"What you've always done..." she smiled up at him. "Talk to them. Give them strength."

He shook his head. "I'm not their captain anymore."

"But you're still Hong Myung-Bo..." she said. "And nothing will ever change that."

He drew her head close and kissed her forehead gently, embracing her tightly against his body. "I love you."

Inside the room their children slept, protected and safe, their faces peaceful in slumber. Their children. Their two precious little joys, who meant more to him than any match, any trophy, any tournament, any other achievement in his life. Protected in their innocence, not knowing the perils of the outside world, the evils of mankind, or even the cruelty of penalty shootouts.

Park Hang-Seo took off his glasses, rubbed them slightly and put them back on again.

"I want to make it clear that I take full responsibility for our loss today, and no individual player should take the blame for what happened. Do I make myself clear?"

There was a subded murmur of agreement. The dressing room was packed full of players, coaches, trainers and officials, but it was as silent as a graveyard. The head coach let out a long, heavy sigh and took sight of his players' faces, all of them looking devastated.

"We still have one more match to play. This tournament's not over yet. Now I want everybody to pack up and head back to the bus. Tomorrow's your night off, so I'll let you enjoy it anyway you want to. I want everybody physically and mentally fit again for the playoffs, understood?"

Another murmur and a collection of nodding heads.

The coaching staff left the room, followed by the officials. That was the signal for the players to start packing up their things. Few words were spoken, just the workmanlike shuffling of empty bodies dragging their broken souls across the floor.

The air was dead.

Lee Young-Pyo sat motionless on the bench as the others moved about around him, his hands set on his knees. His eyes were still dry. He couldn't hear what the others were saying, almost couldn't see what they were doing. Walled within himself, wanting to just find a secluded little corner within him where he could just lay down and die.

Nobody takes the blame, he kept repeating to himself. Nobody takes the blame.

But it was his missed penalty, his mistake that cost them the finals. He knew that. He knew that coach Park would shield him from blame. He knew that the others would not say they blamed him. But within themselves, he knew how they must have felt.

Dong-Gook didn't miss. Ji-Sung didn't miss. Uke didn't miss. But he did.

And it had to happen when he had the captain's armband around his arm. While everybody was busy criticising their defensive lapses, pointing out the inexperience of the young squad, it was he, Lee Young-Pyo, a wild card, a World Cup veteran, who cost them their place in the finals.

It wasn't the type of loss that they had feared. It wasn't the embarrassment of losing to a regulation time goal due to their weak defense. It was the merciless pain of losing to a penalty shootout, more of a game of luck than it was a game of football, and South Korea's luck had run out.

As an afterthought, he considered the possiblity that by tomorrow news of this defeat would be featured in several newspapers in Spain, relegated to a small corner of the sports page or in the humour column, even, with snide remarks about bad karma and 'what goes around, comes around', and perhaps then, a young Spanish player named Joaquin Sanchez would be smiling.

Young-Pyo tried to picture Joaquin's face in his mind. Tried to picture the coy little smile on that face. Tried to picture his hand, slapping that face around.

Didn't work. The smile came back bigger and more obnoxious each time.

Despite his religious convictions, he allowed himself to think that whoever came up with the concept of the penalty shootout should be booked on a one-way-trip to Hell.

Or worse, be condemned to a lifetime of managing the finances of a club in the Serie-A.

It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered now. And why were his eyes so dry? Was the guilt too great that tears became obsolete? Was he in so much pain that he actually went numb? Had he completely gone insane?

"Young-Pyo..."

He didn't want to look at Uke's face. He knew it was his voice, sullen and whispered.

"Go on ahead, Uke. Wait for me on the bus..." he said.

One by one they left, as silent as they had been when they walked in after the match, swollen eyes and runny noses, until Young-Pyo was left alone. Or at least, he thought he was alone.

Dong-Gook sat beside him, in pretty much the same manner, and Young-Pyo waited for him to speak. Waited for the first words of consolation, however futile, to roll out of the other man's mouth. He wanted to just get this polite obligation over with, so he could just go home and be miserable. He waited. And waited.

"I'm sorry, Young-Pyo..."

Young-Pyo looked to where Dong-Gook sat, a little surprised. Did he hear correctly? Dong-Gook was apologizing? To him?

"It happened again..." the other man continued. "The balls came in so perfectly, but I just couldn't finish them off...I couldn't..."

"Dong-Gook, stop it." Young-Pyo said. "Nobody takes the blame, remember?"

"Nobody takes the blame in penalty shootouts, I know." Dong-Gook remarked bitterly. "But somebody should take the blame for missed chances - for far too many of them."

"Dong-Gook..." Young-Pyo's words caught halfway in his throat. Was this the same Lee Dong-Gook whom he'd thought of as just another prima donna hungry for the spotlight, not caring too much what wearing the captain's armband meant?

"You should be captain again when we go against Thailand." Dong-Gook said. "You did a far better job than I did all tournament long."

"If I'd done my job, we would've won." Young-Pyo said.

"And if I'd done mine, we would've won, too." Dong-Gook replied.

Young-Pyo closed his eyes. He can't let this go on for too long. One of them had to at least try and be positive, fake it even, so they could just end this conversation and walk out of that door. That's the unspoken rule: When one teammate is down, another has to pick him up. He was the captain. This was his job.

"It's not the end of the world..." he began, despite feeling deep inside of him that this, in fact, was.

"I know."

"We still have, you know, other tournaments...the Confederations Cup, the Olympics."

Dong-Gook nodded and stood off the bench, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "I think by then you'd be a permanent fix for the armband, Young-Pyo. You deserve it."

Young-Pyo watched as the other man walked towards the door. "Dong-Gook..." he called after him. "Don't say that. You still have a shot at being captain, you know."

Dong-Gook paused at the door and glanced over his shoulder. "No...I don't. Not anytime soon, anyway."

"Why?"

Dong-Gook smiled, but the light of his eyes became dim. "I'm going off to basic training, Young-Pyo...you know, to start my military service."

Right at that moment, Young-Pyo would've given everything he had to be somewhere else. Or to be dead. Or both.

Dong-Gook disappeared out of the doorway, leaving him alone feeling like the entire stadium had crashed down on his head.

Military service. Twenty-six months of military service.

"No..."

He realized, for the first time, that not only had he cost them their place in the finals, he'd also cost most of the players in the team a sizeable portion of their future.

"No..."

A gold medal would've meant exemption from military service. That was the long-running government policy in South Korea. Young-Pyo's entire body trembled. How could he have forgotten? Of all the players in the team, only he, Uke, and Chun-Soo had bee exempted, thanks to their participation in the World Cup. But the rest of them...

The rest of them were young players who wanted to win gold and secure the future of their careers. And that goal had been well within sight until tonight.

Until his miss.

Until his shot hit the crossbar and destroyed their hopes.

His shot, his miss, his fault.

Nobody takes the blame, he reminded himself again. Nobody takes the blame.

But how could he not, when the blame was so clearly his?

The bus ride back to the athlete's village had the atmosphere of a bunch of people on their way to attend a funeral. The silence was such that Uke could here the rustle of individual pebbles underneath the tires when they drove through the occasional pothole or two.

The seat beside him, where Young-Pyo usually sat, was empty. Young-Pyo was at the back of the bus, sitting alone in the corner, and clearly wanting to be left alone.

Uke held his cell phone to his ears and spoke quietly.

"I'm okay..."

Across the line, Nam-Il's voice answered. "How about Young-Pyo?"

"I'm not sure. He's at the back right now, all by himself."

"Has anybody talked to him?"

"We tried. He just walled himself in. He...he looks so hurt, Nam-Il..."

"I know. I saw it."

Uke tried to draw comfort from that voice, broken as it was through the static of the connection.

"Do you want me to go there?" Nam-Il offered.

"They beefed up security leading up to the closing ceremony. You won't get in as easily as you did last time."

"I can try..."

Uke smiled. "No, I'm fine, Nam-Il. Really. Besides it's really late."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure..." he whispered. "Thank you, though."

"No problem."

"Nam-Il..."

"What?"

"I...I'm sorry." Uke said, his voice croaking. "I couldn't win that gold medal for you."

"Uke, don't say that."

"I tried, but..."

"I know you did. That's more than enough. Now please, stop it."

Uke swallowed hard. Should he say it now? His other hand reached up to his neck again, fingering the necklace he wore.

"Nam-Il..." he gritted his teeth hard. Why was it so hard for him to say? "I..."

"Uke, you need to rest." the voice cut him off. "You still have one more match to play, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Just calm yourself down. I'll call you tomorrow if I can, okay?"

"Okay."

"Good night. Sleep well..."

"Good night."

On the other end, Nam-Il hung up. Uke shook his head in dismay. He should've said it. Should've taken his chance.

"I love you..." he whispered against the receiver for nobody but himself to hear.