The Second Half Begins
The Star in Frisco.
The headquarters of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.
It was the winter season, and the Cowboys were in a brief bye period, so there should have been no reason for crowds to gather — yet today, somehow, the place was unusually packed.
Mostly football people.
College scouts, staff members, even reporters from the sports media.
A few NFL personnel had shown up as well.
What on earth is going on here...
Emily, a reporter for 248Sports who was watching the scene, found the area outside the field buzzing before she knew it.
The truth was, because the camp was run in a survival format, several of the most renowned elite prospects had already been eliminated.
In particular, even the prospects once hailed as superstars — Dakorien Moore, Raysheen Guillory, Dia Bell, Bryson Wright — had packed their bags and disappeared.
In the end, only a handful of superstars remained.
The rest were all 4- and 5-star players too, but their reputations were somewhat lesser.
But why on earth?
If they wanted to see something, they should have come early, before the eliminations — why show up after everyone had already packed up and left?
Granted, today was the final day of camp, the ceremonial close.
But this was no bowl game or championship — it was merely a skill camp, and one that only gathered prospects from the sophomore class and below, at that.
"Hey? Emily! You came all the way from Tennessee for this?"
"Oh! Hey, Bryan! I've been here since day one. What's going on, though? Why is everyone flooding in like this?"
"Beats me?"
Even as he said it, his eyes were sweeping the field.
The way he seemed to be searching for someone made Emily lean her head in slightly.
"Looking for something?"
"Huh? Oh! No, you know that Asian player over there? I'm curious about him."
Bryan was a journalist who worked for Rivals.com.
If a man like him had come looking for Jaehyuk, the answer was obvious.
The news leaked.
The previous day, after the game between Jaehyuk's Group C and the college players.
Alabama had asked the reporters for a favor.
Please stay silent about the college players' loss until the camp was over — the stated reason being that they couldn't allow harm to come to the college players who had come to help out, but everyone secretly knew the truth.
It was to hide Jaehyuk's performance.
That Alabama was courting Jaehyuk was something everyone already knew.
Which made it an all-too-obvious, transparently flimsy curtain.
"But is that team balance even right?"
Bryan tilted his head, watching the players lined up on the field.
As a football journalist himself, he had a solid grasp of the high school prospects' skill levels.
"It's way too lopsided. Mateo's team is overwhelmingly stronger."
"That's true, I suppose."
Honestly, Emily didn't understand it either.
Even though Jaehyuk had put on a monster performance the day before, the team balance hadn't collapsed like this back then.
This felt more like testing just how far Jaehyuk could go—
Could it be?
No way. No, surely not.
A thought flashed through her mind.
The thought that this entire game might exist purely to test Jaehyuk alone.
Nah, no way it's that extreme.
She pushed the thought firmly to the back of her mind and changed the subject.
"Anyway, you're really not going to tell me? It can't just be to see one player, Jaehyuk."
"Oh, that? There's a separate reason. You didn't hear?"
"Huh? What reason?"
Bryan glanced around.
Then, narrowing his brow, he spoke.
"Guess they haven't arrived yet."
"Who?"
"Oh, the celebrities collaborating with Nike and Under Armour — they're scheduled to show up today."
Wait, and nobody told us on-site about important news like that?
Emily frowned and let out a sigh.
"Not even a word to those of us actually here..."
"No, no. It went up on social media, so Nike and Under Armour are probably in a pretty awkward spot right now too."
"What are you talking about?"
"Early yesterday morning, Rachel Zegler posted on social media that she'd be making a surprise visit here. Said she just signed on to collaborate with Nike."
"Wow..."
Emily was left speechless.
The plan had been to reveal the collaborating celebrities only after the camp ended — and she'd blurted it out first.
"That actress is always a problem on social media."
"Tell me about it. At this point, with how stubborn she is, I wonder if her agency's just given up on managing her."
"Well, hard to blame them. Her star's riding about as high as it can get these days."
As they spoke.
The underground entrance began stirring.
Apparently, the brand-collaboration celebrities had arrived.
The crowd was already massive, and the number of people streaming in was no joke either.
If all those people piled in as well, then this game might have a bigger ripple effect than anyone expected.
**
"Red and Blue go right, Yellow and Green go left. Odd numbers on the inside zone, evens on the outside..."
The teams had been set, and a brief timeout followed.
We were memorizing the quarterback's call codes.
The signals weren't complicated.
The real problem lay elsewhere.
This isn't some test of willpower.
A football field holds eleven offensive players, eleven defenders, plus special teams like kickers — roughly twenty-five or more bodies at any given time.
But because it's such a brutal, stamina-draining sport, you need plenty of bench depth.
Most football teams carry upwards of fifty players.
Factor in the rotations made purely for stamina distribution and injury prevention, and you could count on twenty-five-plus stepping onto the field.
But right now, we were playing 11-on-11.
No alternating offense and defense — the same players had to keep running the whole way.
Yeah, honestly, even that much wasn't the problem.
The real problem was the game clock.
"Hoo."
Gulp.
"Think we can hold up?"
"We'll have to, won't we."
When the coordinator announced the game would run at full length with no shortened clock, every one of us had stared at him like he'd lost his mind.
Against the college players, they had at least slashed the game time dramatically — but now we had to burn through a full game among ourselves.
Old man Nick must have wanted to create an absolute physical extreme for us.
The camp was ending anyway; why pull this now?
I addressed the worried players.
"Our opponents are in exactly the same boat we are."
"Right. True."
"Hoo. Okay. Let's do this."
As expected of a team assembled from guys with real street reputations, the mental fortitude was solid.
Every one of them was treated as an ace at his own school. Their mindset was on a different level from your average player.
All right then. What do I need to watch out for...
Looking over at the opposing side, the lineup was formidable.
First, Mateo — that bastard needs no discussion.
Hopkins, who'd shown well the day before, had gone to their side too.
Beyond them, most of the roster was filled out with 5-star players. Our team, on the other hand, was more than half 4-stars.
But what could you do.
I'd just have to carry it somehow.
At the end of the day, there were only two people to think about.
Mateo and Hopkins.
And I knew those two very, very well.
Beep!
"Ready for the game."
The coordinator, serving as referee, called us together with his whistle.
The instant he did, the crowd outside the field — which somehow felt thicker than ever today — began to murmur.
"Heads up. Stay locked in."
My words must have reached them, because everyone took a deep breath.
Thankfully, the first possession was theirs.
We could at least claim the second half.
All right, let's see what you've got.
Our team's quarterback was a skilled player too.
But he couldn't hold a candle to Mateo.
And that Mateo, right now.
Was glaring at me with cold, composed eyes that swore he would not lose.
"Hut! Hike!"
Thud!
With Mateo's cadence, the game finally began.
First, I watched Mateo's form.
Despite the correction yesterday, he was back to his original throwing motion today.
Fine, then. Today you're just gonna throw, huh?
A mindset of winning at all costs today.
Apparently, for this game, he intended to throw with the familiar form rather than the awkward corrected one.
But you, my friend.
You've got that exactly wrong.
Right!
I instantly read the direction from Mateo's form and sprinted right.
Once again, my role was safety.
Orchestrating the defense from the rearmost position.
At the same time, the dark red lines rippled.
Hnn!
The lines couldn't predict where the ball would go.
They merely guided me along the optimal path to run.
But what if I could extract the direction in advance from the opponent's movements myself?
The truth was, yesterday's correction.
It hadn't ended as a simple correction.
I had absorbed every one of the habits embedded in Mateo's throwing motion.
No matter how trivial those habits might be.
Fwoosh!
I kicked off across the field and scanned for a likely target.
Two receivers were running on the right.
And inside, a tight end.
Three total.
Which of them would Mateo throw to?
Swish—
The dark red lines pulsed faster.
Guess they caught the scent of the ball.
Whoosh!
The ball was thrown.
And it landed squarely in the arms of one receiver.
A perfect pass.
But.
Thud!
"Kghk!"
The receiver collapsed straight into the turf under my tackle.
He gained yardage — just nowhere near as much as he'd hoped.
"Wow! Nice tackle!"
"That's it, Jaehyuk!"
The teammates beside me pounded my back and let out cheers.
Mm, but not good enough.
If I refined it a little more, I felt like I could shut down Mateo's passing entirely.
As long as he throws with the uncorrected form, I can keep reading him.
I turned my head to find Mateo staring back with an expressionless face.
I flashed him a beaming grin and served him a potato.
How's that, you bastard?
Pfft.
But the bastard actually smirked at my potato.
That funny to you? Fine, we do this the hard way.
Starting now, I'm drilling you until that smirk freezes solid.
**
Touchup!
"TOUCHDOWN!"
Mateo's team versus Jaehyuk's team.
The first points belonged to Mateo's team.
They made the most of their opening possession and drove it all the way to a touchdown.
Yet for some reason, even after putting points on the board, Mateo's team didn't look happy.
"That... it's being read, isn't it?"
"How? What's he even seeing?"
"Hoo. Remarkable."
The staff watching from outside the field were all murmuring too.
The reason Mateo's team wore sour expressions, and the reason the onlookers buzzed, was the same: Jaehyuk's defense, growing more and more precise by the play.
He moved as if he already knew exactly where Mateo would throw the ball, and that movement grew steadily more accurate — until, by the end, it produced heart-stopping moments.
"That player — wasn't he originally a running back?"
"Correct. And I just looked him up — his résumé is staggering. He swept every MVP award Kansas has to offer."
"Still, he's clearly raw. It doesn't look like he's been taught the safety position — more like he just has great instincts..."
"Mateo is the only 5-star freshman in the country right now. Not just 5-star — ranked near the top of the 5-stars. There's no way a player like that gets read."
"Can't say that for sure. The way Jaehyuk moves is far too precise to write it off as coincidence."
Debate raged on-site.
With more staff gathered than usual, the air was that much hotter.
It was proof that they, too, had stopped viewing this as a mere exhibition and were absorbing it like a real game.
"What the hell is that? Emily, what is this player? Where did something like him even—"
Bryan, visibly unable to process it, asked Emily.
She answered with a faint smile.
"And that's not even the best part yet, is it?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Jaehyuk's a running back. And he just finished playing defense."
"Wha—?"
Leaving the flustered Bryan behind, Emily fixed her eyes on the field, brimming with anticipation.
"Now's the moment his true worth comes to light."