Chapter Five

To say Yuta was filled with disappointment, would be the understatement of the year. His head was flooded with memories from his youth, the very youth that made him the person he was today. And no matter what he’d do, there was no way he could get those thoughts out of his mind. They were stuck in there for the entire game, ruining the outcome of his play.

He wasn’t normally like this. In fact, he wasn’t like this at all. The amount of times he missed the goal, the amount of times he blanked out, the amount of times he lost the ball, Yuta couldn’t believe his eyes. In all his years playing soccer, he has never seen himself play this severely.

No one has ever seen him play like this.

It was the first for the crowd to see Yuta out of his game, and it was the first for them to witness the only defeat of SM High’s Soccer Team in decades. They looked upon him and the team as if they didn’t know them anymore, like their star players were only beginners who were nervous for their first game.

There was only less than 5 minutes of the game left to go, and Yuta had the ball. He dribbled to the left then dribbled to the right, and as he was about to pass the ball he was stopped by a man twice his size. Yuta looked up at the guy. Though he was tall and muscular, the man had soft facial features, that to Yuta, resembled Ten. At that moment his head flooded with thoughts of what happened earlier that day. No matter what happened, everything was a trigger for his thoughts. As he couldn’t get his head straight, the man in front took the ball from him and ran the other way. Acting quick, Yuta shook his head and followed after.

Temporarily managing to push aside his thoughts, Yuta took advantage of his lean body and quick legs. He ran pass the bigger man and took the ball from him, running at lightning speed towards the goal.

Only 1 minute to go.

And just as he was about to shoot the ball, he saw the other team link arms from the side of his eyes. All those memories that he managed to hide, came crawling back again. Then before he realized what happened, he heard the screams of him teammates to kick the ball. Subconsciously listening to them, he did as he was told. But without any thought, Yuta kicked the ball with barely any strength, letting it fall to the goalie’s hands.

Game over.

On side of the bleachers, all that was heard was cheers and laughter, for it was the first time they had won a game in ages. However, on the side that actually carried any significance, not a single peep was heard.

Iseul was on that side of the bleachers.

The side that mattered.

It wasn’t the first game she had gone to, but it was the first time she had actually witnessed a game full on. She would’ve only gone to such games to find strategies or learn from the guys. But this time, she was focused on the players.

Her curiosity was raised when she saw how the boys acted back in the newfound clubroom. She knew each of them individually because all of them had their own titles.

Taeyong the Bad Boy. Jaehyun the Prince. Doyoung the President. Ten the Sweetheart. Yuta the Soccer King.

But she was surprised to find that they all knew each other before today. And by watching Yuta’s play on the game field, she knew that they had meant more to him than just rivals or enemies.

When the team came back from the field and the crowd began to leave, Iseul stayed behind. She ran over to Yuta who looked as if losing the game was no big deal to him. While the team was beating him up over it, he wouldn’t fight back. Whether it was calling him names or physically hurting him, he would let them do what