Double Team.
Watching my opponent block me in broad daylight, I felt something closer to exhilaration than irritation.
Yeah, you should've done this from the start.
How long were they planning to just take a beating?
Honestly, one-sidedly pummeling someone never suited my temperament anyway. It took at least two opponents stuck to me for the demolition to feel satisfying.
"Set!!"
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The players collided the instant the snap signal rang out.
At the same moment, a black line drew itself, straight and true.
"Hoo."
Let's run.
As I took off along the line, an extra kick surged into my speed. I pantomimed taking the quarterback's handoff, then burst out on a fake— and immediately the double-team coverage clamped onto me like glue.
Having confirmed the ball wasn't in my hands, the other team left one man on me and sent the other chasing after the ball.
Smart. They're using their heads.
Neither of them budging showed just how hard they were working to cover every angle with only seven bodies.
"You really think you can afford that?"
"......"
If you stay on me, you're covering with six. Can six stop a pass? I don't think so.
The defender didn't waver an inch at my words.
For the record, Horton had gone chasing the receivers.
Whish—!
The throw sailed out and very nearly connected with our receiver before falling incomplete. A running route just a little off the mark.
Still, we had three more downs to work with.
And unlike before, with the double team glued to me, the quarterback's expression looked far more relaxed. He probably wasn't letting it show, but every single player on our team had glimpsed the possibility.
"We might actually pull this off?"
"Next one's mine."
"Just throw it! Keep throwing!"
Even so, the opposing team showed no sign of breaking up the double team. Apparently they'd decided that conceding a pass was the lesser evil.
Our strategies crossed swords—and slid past each other.
Then the game resumed.
Thud!
"Run!"
With no coach or director commanding the plays, we screamed and shouted ourselves hoarse at each other.
And then, at last—
Thwip!
Our first completion.
A twenty-yard pass, no less.
"That's it!!"
"That's exactly what I'm talking about!"
"We're top-tier national players too, remember!"
Cheers erupted from everyone.
I kept an eye on the college team to see whether they'd adjust their scheme, but nothing changed.
"Jaehyuk, we just keep doing this, right?"
Hopkins came over, still buzzing, having just hauled in that pass.
"Yeah, no problem. Just don't get careless."
"Okay!"
And so the game rolled on.
Before I knew it, staff and officials on the sidelines were shouting encouragement.
"Wow, keep it up! Just a little more!"
"Let's win one!"
"Go, go, go!"
Maybe the earlier games had simply left too strong an impression—but somewhere along the way, everyone watching had started rooting for Group C to take a single win.
"Set!!"
Whish!
Thwip!
Five completions before we knew it.
Nothing as flashy as that first long strike, but we ground out yardage, chunk by chunk.
The numerical disadvantage of five against ten was proving every bit as brutal as it looked on paper.
"Yes! Just a little more!"
Suddenly we were knocking on the end zone's door.
All the stoppages had chewed up the clock, too—barely any time left now.
Score here, and we could button up, play it safe, and seal the win.
"Whew. Whew."
"Hoo-hah."
Everyone knew it, apparently—we were all more careful than usual.
And the ball started moving again.
Ping!
"Ahh, pass miscue. Incomplete."
Ting!
"That's college talent for you. Shut that down perfectly."
Just like that, two downs evaporated right in front of the end zone. That's how vicious the back-and-forth had become at the goal line.
I was starting to think we needed a run, but the quarterback, clearly spooked by the double team glaring daggers at me, refused to call one.
And if I made a scene demanding a run, the opposition would read it instantly.
This is suffocating.
Two chances left. Come on, at least one run call.
And then, as if he'd read my mind—
The quarterback finally spoke the words I'd been waiting for.
"Purple 8, Phoenix. Purple 8, Phoenix."
A bold, almost reckless run call.
A dead-straight run. No sleight of hand, nothing fancy.
But—
It was also the route I trusted most in the world.
Thump!
My Gift rippled before I'd even taken the handoff. The lines that should have been straight and black were already twitching, straining to bleed red at any moment.
"If we get stuffed here, we're in serious trouble."
"We've got the numbers—somebody make it happen!"
"Come on, boys! Come on!"
The roar from the sidelines had grown thick and hot without my noticing.
It meant they were this absorbed in watching us.
But we were matching them—locked into this game harder than we'd ever been.
"Set!"
The snap call rang out.
The moment the ball moved, I ran without so much as glancing around me.
Only where the Gift led.
Squeezing out the maximum acceleration, the maximum speed!
Pababababak!
The noise around me vanished.
Nothing remained but the drumbeat of feet tearing at the earth.
A wall of humanity filled my vision through the helmet bars.
And dead center in it, the quarterback and the ball.
Swooosh—.
I took it.
Thump thump thump!
So—could I actually do it?
Could I break through a D1 college double team?
"Obviously!"
GGGGGRRRK—PAANG!
The ground beneath my feet compressed and blasted outward like a whirlpool. The wind's resistance wrapped around my whole body like a vortex—
And the world bled red.
Scarlet lines rioted in from every direction, howling at me to choose them.
Four ahead. Two behind. One on the flank.
The count of enemies and allies flooded in in an instant.
No. No. No. Not the time to take inventory.
Krkrkrk.
What I needed now was overwhelming power.
Speed enough to punch through everything—double team, triple team, didn't matter!
Thump!
In that instant, every red line fused into one.
A single path, chosen the moment I decided.
The straight course.
The center lane, where the bodies were thickest.
But precisely because of that—
Space with no room for finesse, only for force. If the power was there, it would open.
BANG!
A starting gun's crack echoed through my skull like an auditory hallucination.
And I hurled myself into that narrow gap along the red line.
"Eeek!"
"Ggaaagh."
"Khh."
The wall warped and buckled the instant I hit it. Hands clamped onto my arm, my shoulder, my waist.
Let go, you trash.
Tududuk!
The grips that thought they'd caught me tore away, unable to match my strength and speed.
Hands kept lunging for me after that, too—but you don't stop a hunk of iron sprinting with the ball tucked against its chest.
"Huk! Huk! Huk!"
The instant I burst through the wall, the second line of the double team hit me.
Their ragged breathing carried all the way to my ears.
Two defenders charging head-on. No way I could just let them slide past.
"Hmp!"
"Kkuk!"
I shot out a hand and stoned one of them cold—spending the strength boost I'd been hoarding this whole game. But Horton was still lurking on my other side.
"Hooo-up!"
A tackle lunged at my waist.
Desperate. Do-or-die.
And the red line told me the way.
Kaduk!
I gritted my teeth, planted my outstretched arm on the man's helmet, and stomped down.
Pat!
Hurdle.
With a monstrous leap, I cleared Horton mid-tackle.
Pukeok!
Horton crashed straight into the player I'd stepped on. The double team collapsed into a tangled heap.
Ta-ak.
I landed off-balance, but caught myself on one hand and barely stayed upright.
Knee off the ground—the play lives.
I exploded forward again.
Ten yards. That's all I'd covered so far.
But with nothing left standing between me and the end zone, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred yards were seconds away.
A few figures belatedly chased me down.
The ones who'd been out covering receivers when the pass was defended.
Too late.
The last ten yards, with nobody to stop me, needed all of a second or two.
"TOUCHDOOOOOWN!!"
"WAAAAAH!!"
"Th-that's not even possible? Ha! Hahaha!"
"That guy is completely insane!"
"You got that on film, right? Tell me you got that?!"
Score: 35–28.
Twenty seconds on the clock.
The win was all but sealed.
"He's just insane. Genuinely insane."
"No, seriously—since when has he played football?"
"Why'd he have to go to Kansas? Come to Texas."
"He could play in the college leagues right now!"
After Jaehyuk's super play, Group C turned into a festival.
Strictly speaking, there'd been no need to beat the college team at all—but nobody here lacked the will to win.
These weren't ordinary players, either. They were kids ranked among the best in the nation, and competitors like that carry a hunger for victory far fiercer than any ordinary person's.
So of course they were moved—beating college players, even with the numbers advantage, felt like something worth savoring.
"Hahaha......"
While a handful of them laughed and carried on, Hopkins—who'd been mixing in with the celebration—suddenly felt a prickle at the back of his neck and glanced over at the college team.
"Maybe something like this......"
"Yeah, it's really the only option."
A cluster of them, heads together, whispering.
The moment Hopkins saw it, an alarm shrieked through his skull.
The game isn't over yet.
Twenty seconds left, sure. But they hadn't given up. Not even close.
"Guys...... it's not over yet."
"Huh? What?"
Someone tilted their head at Hopkins. At the same time, Jaehyuk—still ringed by his group—was already sweeping cold eyes across the other side.
"Defense. Set up. Don't get sloppy just because it's the last play."
"Right!"
"Let's stop them properly, just once!"
"Oooh!"
Morale was soaring, high enough to scrape the sky.
And yet Hopkins couldn't shake a creeping unease.
What is it?
His gut was screaming at him.
Right now. This is the most dangerous moment.
But with no idea what was causing it, he simply took his defensive position like everyone else.
What is it? What could it be?
What the hell is making me this uneasy?
"......"
In football, even when the clock hits zero, if the snap has already happened, the play runs until its end. That's why dramatic, impossible comebacks occasionally exist—but they were vanishingly rare.
No. I can't just stand here.
Somehow, Hopkins had a premonition. One of those plays was coming.
So unlike everyone around him, he stayed ice-cold and studied the opposition.
There weren't many plays they could run.
Either they grind everyone down with a run like Jaehyuk had—or they throw some deranged pass covering half the field.
But the college team had no running back.
Someone had filled in at the position as a temporary stand-in, but he wasn't a real running back—and short of being a lunatic like Jaehyuk, no one was scoring a touchdown in twenty seconds.
Which left exactly one option......
"Jaehyuk! Jaehyuk! Watch out for the Hail Mary!"
"What? What's a Hail Mary?"
"You don't know what a Hail Mary is? It's—!"
Before Hopkins could even finish explaining—
The other team's cadence was already ringing out.
"Ready, ready!!"
Thwip!!
The ball snapped, and the college receivers exploded off the line.
Hopkins tore after them.
If it's a Hail Mary, it's Horton. One hundred percent Horton.
The Hail Mary.
A final, desperate long pass thrown when the clock is nearly dead—so named, originally, from a Catholic prayer.
"Uuugh!"
"Yahk!"
"Kkuuuh!"
The side of the field with the opposing quarterback had dissolved into chaos.
And Hopkins's read was right—the quarterback wasn't throwing. He kept scrambling, fleeing for his life, buying time for the pass.
Try getting through me first!
Group C's players hunted him frantically, and the quarterback bolted for all he was worth.
And then—
"Ah!"
The quarterback threw.
And in the instant Hopkins locked onto the release point, he lost track of Horton entirely.
It's over. It's done.
The moment that thought landed—
'Trust your instincts.'
Someone's advice surfaced from nowhere.
Hopkins made his call in a heartbeat and moved.
The pass he'd just seen—the quarterback's release, the angle of it.
Hopkins traced the ball's flight path through his mind, smooth and automatic.
And his instinct sharpened onto a single point.
The end zone—and the line, caught on the raggedest edge of it!
"Hmp!"
Just run. Don't think—just run!
Hopkins sprinted without weighing the defenders or anything else on the field.
And then, right on cue—
Tadadat!
There he was: Isaiah Horton, running a route toward exactly the spot Hopkins had guessed.
I wasn't wrong. This is it!
But the hard part started here.
Hopkins calculated on pure instinct.
The moment the pass left the quarterback's hand. The time it had taken him to get here......
Which meant—the ball arrives now!
Whip!
He spun around, and the ball was already closing in.
His position overlapped with Horton's.
Tudak.
Their bodies collided.
The ball arrived.
"Hmp!"
"Hoo!"
Both leaping at once.
The ball clipped someone's hand—whose, nobody could say—
Tang!
And ricocheted away.
But it was still swimming loose in the air. Well within reach.
No!
Yet cruelly—
The ball bounced toward Horton, not Hopkins.
For a receiver of Horton's caliber, hauling in a loose ball like that was no tall order. Left alone, Horton would take it. Guaranteed.
"No, no way......"
Before Hopkins could even flail a hand out—
Horton stretched his fingers toward the ball.
The gap between ball and hand shrank, shrank, shrank.
The moment they were all but touching—
Fwoop.
Another hand shot up out of nowhere.
From even closer than Horton's.
"!!"
"?!!"
Horton's face, contorted with shock and disbelief, burned itself into Hopkins's eyes as vividly as slow motion.
Not Horton. Then whose hand is that?
Hopkins swiveled his eyes over, slowly—
Grin.
When the hell did he even get there?
Inside the helmet, Jaehyuk's face was wearing the same savage smile it always did.
Thwip.
Jaehyuk ripped the ball out of the air.
Then tucked it in and took off.
"You......!!"
God, what a lunatic.
Funny how reassuring that lunatic is when he's on my team.
Hopkins couldn't hold it in anymore. He screamed with everything he had:
"INTERCEPTIOOOOON!!!! WAAAAAAAH!!"