It's Showtime
Wichita North's first offensive drive.
And Jaehyuk's touchdown that came immediately on its heels.
Teammates sitting on the bench watched the play and remembered what Jaehyuk had said just moments ago.
Three-star, four-star, five-star—it didn't matter.
Before him, they were all just players, nothing more.
"Damn, he actually meant it."
"Wow······."
"Even Jordan Watts can't handle our Jaehyuk! Jaehyuk is a god!"
If even his own team was left flabbergasted, one could only imagine how the other side felt.
Sanders watched Blue Valley's coach wear a dumbfounded expression on the sideline and let out a small chuckle.
"Our kid hasn't even gotten started yet."
It felt strange to say it about someone else, but as far as high school careers went, Jaehyuk was even better than Sanders himself had been.
That was something Sanders could say with total confidence, having trained beside him and played in every game alongside him, day after day.
And that statement meant exactly one thing.
At the high school level, there was no one who could stand against him.
"Whoa, holy crap!"
"What? What happened?"
"Look at the live stream viewer count and Deestroying's live numbers right now! It's insane!"
Someone shouted, thrusting a smartphone forward. On the screen, the online broadcast had blown past twenty thousand viewers, and beside it, Deestroying's live stream had topped twenty thousand as well.
Forty thousand in total.
Some of that could have been double-counted, but even accounting for that, it was a number that defied belief.
"L-look at the chat scrolling by······."
"It's all about us!"
"Technically it's all about Jaehyuk, but same thing!"
The excitement was impossible to contain.
Somewhere along the way, the tension of the championship game had completely evaporated.
Right now, the entire field was burning white-hot with nothing but the madness and heat radiating from a single superstar.
"OOOOH SH—"!
And that heat reached Donald, who was in the middle of livestreaming at full throttle.
With over six million subscribers, the world's biggest football YouTuber thrust his face into the camera, vibrating with excitement.
"Did you see that, bros? DID YOU SEE THAT!! WHOOOAAAA!"
Donald was bouncing off the walls, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Then he launched into a machine-gun barrage, still riding the adrenaline high.
"Wichita North—dead last in the league LAST YEAR! This year, led by that Redline, they haven't lost ONCE! An undefeated march of invincibility! And you think the opponent's weak? Not even close! You guys thought, oh, it's just Kansas, right? Well, guess what? Blue Valley has not one but TWO five-star players!"
The audience's reactions were just as feverish.
Donald's gift for entertainment at sky-high energy levels, colliding with a genuinely spine-tingling game—perfection.
Soon the extra point kick went through, and the teams switched sides on defense and offense.
- Now's the time!
- Grab an interview with Redline, bro!
But despite the crowd's fervent expectations, Donald held his ground.
As important as the channel was, interviewing players right now would shatter their focus—and that was a line he refused to cross.
"Hey, bros! Coming up now for Blue Valley is their five-star wide receiver, Marcus Thornton! Most of you probably already know the name—this kid made 248Sports' Top 10 in the entire NATION!"
Not the Top 10 of his position.
Tenth among every high school player in the country, period.
A prospect of truly monstrous caliber.
At that very moment, the Marcus Donald was hyping up stood on the sideline, double-checking the gloves on his hands as he prepared to take the field.
The defense was just filtering back to the bench.
Jordan Watts came stalking over, his face twisted beyond recognition.
"DAMN IT!!"
CRACK!
Unable to hold it in, Jordan hurled his helmet to the ground.
And yet not a single person said a word to him.
"Just watch! Next time, he doesn't get past me. Not EVER!"
"Tsk tsk. Already got yourself all riled up, huh, Jordan."
Marcus tossed the words at the fuming Jordan, who whipped around and glared at him with eyes gone ice-blue with rage.
"What did you just say?"
"I said you're riled up. That's exactly what Redline was going for. He wasn't just thinking about scoring."
"What?"
Marcus, feeling the competitive fire stoking hotter inside him, laid out his thoughts with deliberate calm.
"You were locked in on the field, so you couldn't see it, but Redline could've attacked the sideline too. I caught it—the instant his eyes flicked left and right."
In truth, no one but Marcus had noticed. But then, only Marcus—with his elite vision and his attention fixed entirely on Redline—could have made that observation.
"And yet he insisted on going straight at you. He chose the path with the higher chance of failure."
"······."
"If he fails, no harm done. If he succeeds, he splits Blue Valley apart. That had to be what he was thinking. And the result?"
Marcus smirked and rose from the bench.
Jordan, whose anger had somehow already drained away, let out one long breath and turned to his teammates.
"I took my frustration out on all of you. I'm sorry."
"No, no—you had every right to be. I'd have been seething if it were me."
"Yeah, yeah! Next time we crush Redline together!"
"OOOH!"
In a matter of seconds, their aces had rebuilt the team's unity.
They were proving they weren't merely talented—they were leaders, too.
Seeing him up close, he's even worse. That monster of a bastard.
Marcus walked out onto the field, sweeping his gaze across the opposing sideline. There sat Redline, watching the field with an air of supreme arrogance.
And then, suddenly—
Their eyes met.
Grin.
Marcus flashed Redline his brightest smile, then took his place in the formation.
You showed them once, so now it's my turn, huh?
He was almost glad the legend of Redline turned out to be true.
Otherwise, he would have been deeply, terribly disappointed.
"IT'S SHOWTIME!"
"LET'S GO! MARCUS! GO!"
"CATCH THAT PASS! SHOWTIME MARCUS!"
Blue Valley's student section and cheerleaders erupted in dazzling chants as Marcus took the field.
Wichita North's fans were cheering their hearts out too, but the support of Blue Valley—a powerhouse that had written decades of high school football history—was on another plane entirely.
In an instant, the momentum of the crowd began tipping toward Blue Valley's side.
Wichita North scrambled to counter, but against Blue Valley's unified wall of sound, their efforts wilted fast.
"Showtime."
Marcus's smile deepened.
"Whoa, their crowd is no joke."
Tony sat beside Jaehyuk, gawking up at the opposing stands.
Compared to their own hastily assembled cheering section, it was truly a different world.
"Jaehyuk, you heard? The stream viewer count. They said it's exploding!"
"Nope."
It was all just an illusion anyway.
No matter how many thousands of eyes were watching, if he couldn't win, that crowd would collapse like a sandcastle the moment he fell.
Winning came first. Always.
This game had to be won. Absolutely, unconditionally.
FWIP—!
"Huh?!"
"WHAAAT?!!"
The sudden crack of a pass being thrown.
Blue Valley's first offensive drive.
The Blue Valley quarterback unleashed a monstrous bomb downfield—and the target, of course, was the five-star Marcus.
"No—no way······."
Wichita North's cornerback and safety scrambled after Marcus with everything they had.
TWUP!
"WHOOOAAA!!"
"HOLY SH—!"
With a staggering vertical leap, Marcus pinned both of their defenders beneath him and plucked the ball out of the air all by himself, cool as you please.
James and Tony, watching from the sideline, clutched their heads and screamed.
Honestly? Jaehyuk was a little shocked too.
A perfectly timed jump to the ball's highest point at the exact moment of arrival. To think the timing could look that effortless.
And since catching passes was personally his weakest skill, the comparison stung all the more.
Five-star is five-star, huh.
Even for a moment there, that guy had outshone Jordan Watts, whom James had been bottling up all game.
THUD.
Fortunately, the two defenders who'd stuck to him managed to drag Marcus down. But off a single pass, Blue Valley was already inside Wichita North's twenty-yard line.
"A sixty-yard completion! Are you kidding me!"
"Ugh."
Tony shrank under James's cheer.
As far as Jaehyuk could tell, it was a garbage ball that Marcus had simply bailed out—and apparently that thought was eating at Tony.
"Be honest—do you think anyone else catches that? Receiver's five-star, so the QB just chucks it up like it's nothing."
"WAHAHA! True, true! Any ordinary receiver and that ball sails into the stands!"
James, blissfully clueless, just nodded along.
But at least a little color had returned to Tony's face.
What a pain in the ass.
Were all quarterbacks this high-strung?
Either way, he required constant maintenance.
Then the second play began almost immediately.
Perhaps still rattled by Marcus's showcase, Wichita North's defense stacked a double team on him this time.
Which meant someone on Blue Valley's offense was going to be wide open—so what would they do?
"Liam! Smash 'em!"
"Ah—he's throwing again!"
The quarterback released the ball.
And the route—straight toward Marcus, double-teamed as he was.
Why did it feel like that side was a one-man team too?
TWUP!
"TOUCHDOWN!"
"Ah, son of a—"
Through the double team, Marcus hauled the ball in again. Blue Valley was scoring touchdowns with insulting ease.
"This game is not gonna be easy."
As Tony muttered, Wichita North's offense began getting ready to take the field again.
But then—
"They're going for two!"
What?
Everyone turned to look at the field.
Just as the shout promised: the quarterback and Marcus were standing still, refusing to line up for a kick.
They watched the two-point conversion with bated breath. The play began.
TWUP!
TRRRILL—!
The very instant it started, the ball was sucked straight into Marcus's hands.
"······Yeah. This game is really not gonna be easy."
Tony muttered it one more time.
"Ohhhhh no······."
"Ugh······."
Wichita's stands poured out nothing but groans of dismay.
The game had barely begun, but they had just confirmed one thing for certain: their opponents were anything but a pushover.
The score: 8–7.
Viewers tuning in on the broadcast were probably loving the razor-thin tension—but for the fans who had come to cheer, it felt like a fist slowly closing around their hearts.
"They're no pushover, are they."
"Your son's going to have his work cut out for him."
Jaehyuk's father, Kim Kyungtae, simply smiled at the worried words of his acquaintances.
"Well, a close game like this is great to watch, isn't it? If we blow everyone out every time, it does get a little boring."
That was what he said.
Inside, Kim Kyungtae was burning alive.
But there was no need to let his acquaintances see that.
"By the way, the other side's stands even matched their outfits. It looks like a wave of blue."
"The chants, the cheerleaders' skill level—everything about them is on another level."
Truthfully, in places like Texas, what Blue Valley was doing would have been a perfectly ordinary sight. But in Wichita, it was rare enough to feel alien.
A sudden wave of embarrassment washed over Jaehyuk's parents. Here they were, with nothing they could do for their son but sit in the bleachers and cheer.
We should've prepared something like that in advance too!
What if they'd gathered the parents early and organized a proper section? The football roster alone ran to nearly fifty players, so it wasn't as though it would've been impossible.
And Wichita North was a full twelve-grade school, elementary through senior year. If they'd put their minds to it, there was plenty of manpower available.
"Mm."
But regret was regret, and there was no use wallowing in it now.
All they could do was cheer for Jaehyuk with everything they had.
"Dad, don't worry."
"Hm?"
"Big brother never loses. Ever."
Minhyuk said it with a grave face, his eyes never leaving the field.
"He's not a man who gets swallowed up by something as small as a cheering section."
"'That man,' Minhyukie? Really."
Mrs. Park Heewon couldn't let it slide.
Ignoring her entirely, Minhyuk clenched his fist and stared down at the field, more tense than anyone in the stadium.
His brother had looked magnificent as a track athlete.
But the brother on that field now was shining more brilliantly than he ever had in his life.
Show them! Show them you're stronger than anyone alive!
Prove, prove, prove.
How many more times did a person have to prove himself?
If it had been Minhyuk, he would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago.
But that man was different.
A god of victory consumed by pure ego—a man for whom the only phrase in the language that could describe him was the word first.
He loved to prove himself.
No—he actively went looking for battlefields that would let him.
So this time, too—
"PROVE IT, KIM JAEHYUK!!"
Could he have heard it?
Jaehyuk abruptly turned and looked up toward the stands.
Then, as if answering the crowd's roar, he thrust one fist powerfully into the air.
WHUMP!
The stands exploded at the rare display of showmanship.
"WHOOOOOAAAA!!!"
"REDLINE 21!!!"
"WE BELIEVE IN YOU! SHOW THEM YOU'VE GOT THIS ONE TOO!"
"DEMOLISH THEM! EVERY ENEMY IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES!"
"RUN, REDLINE! NOBODY ON THIS EARTH CAN STOP YOU!"
A frenzy of cheers that instantly buried Blue Valley's entire cheering section.
It was as if Jaehyuk's ego had infected the entire stadium.
And Jaehyuk—
—as if to repay that madness, proved it immediately.