The Freshman Who Stripped Ryan's Hoodie
Horton bolted out of his room before he even realized what he was doing. How had he forgotten? Today was the day Jaehyuk arrived!
A one-on-one with Ryan, of all people.
And apparently, the very first thing the freshman had done after checking in was throw down against Ryan — the top-performing junior receiver on the entire roster. What on earth had happened to make that come about?
"Hup! Hup!"
"Hey, Horton! Heading to watch? What's the rush?"
A few teammates who happened to be making their way over to spectate called out with laughs as Horton sprinted past them. He threw up a hand in a lazy wave without breaking stride and kept running.
When he burst through the doors of the indoor field, a crowd had already gathered — all of them staff and program personnel. The training center sat right next door, so the cluster was mostly strength coaches and athletic trainers.
No players yet, huh. So the group he'd just passed had been the first to move after all. Aside from Horton, nobody from the team was here.
Out on the field, Jaehyuk and Ryan stood squared off against each other, catching their breath — they'd apparently already run a few reps. And between the two of them, a strange energy was simmering, half-smiles creeping across their faces.
"Wh-what's going on? What happened here?"
Horton hurried over to Luke, the teammate he was closest with, and Luke greeted him with a delighted holler.
"Whoa, I! SA! YA! Horton! That little squirt you've been raving about all this time — that's him, right?"
"I'm asking what's happening right now!"
"Man, now I get why you couldn't stop singing his praises. It's 1–0 right now."
"1–0? Who's got the one?"
"C'mon, Ryan, obviously. What, you disrespecting our senior like that?"
"Ah. Right. Of course."
So it was true — the college level really was a different beast. Well, sure. Ryan Williams wasn't just any college receiver; he was a monster classified as the ace even at Alabama, a top-tier program. The idea of Jaehyuk actually beating a guy like that had always been a stretch.
"By the way, they're already on their sixth rep."
"Huh?"
Horton tilted his head, and Luke broke into a wide grin, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him.
"They've gone head-to-head five times already! And the score is only 1–0. You get what that means?"
"Th-that means..."
Horton's eyes went wide. At the same instant, Luke shouted, worked up all over again.
"Exactly! That little squirt has STONED Ryan twice! A kid who was in high school until yesterday — an Asian freshman, playing the running back position!!"
Horton had been on an upswing himself lately, but the truth was he still fell well short of Ryan. For Jaehyuk to shut Ryan down twice was a genuinely remarkable thing.
No wonder he looked so chipper, considering how much he'd whined about being stuck with Jaehyuk as a roommate.
Luke Metz had grumbled about it for a good while, all while vowing to whip the early enrollee into shape the moment he arrived. And no wonder — the news that a kid had gotten early enrollment and a guaranteed shot at a starting job must have stung a fair number of players on the team.
Every single person who made it into Alabama had once been the ace of his own high school. Even for those guys, cracking the starting lineup was brutally hard — and here was a freshman handed all of it the day he walked in.
"Oh, they're going!"
At that moment, Jaehyuk and Ryan launched into motion. Looking closer, it was a conditioning coach feeding them the balls.
Just as the coach released the throw, Jaehyuk cut hard, flipping his direction in a single beat. And with it came an unbelievable gear change — a dead stop, then an explosive burst of acceleration.
"Whoa!"
"Not bad at all."
"He's fast, isn't he?"
Gasps rippled through the watching staff. A few of them looked genuinely stunned.
"Who is that kid?"
"Well, no wonder he was the #2 running back in the nation."
"Then what does that make Raysheen Guillory, the #1?"
"No, no, hold on. From what I heard, Jaehyuk actually beat Guillory head-to-head. He probably lost the #1 slot on paper just for lack of career credentials."
The ball flew. It arced down toward Jaehyuk—
Peeeew!
But Ryan Williams was no pushover either. Just when it looked like he'd been shaken loose, he clawed back onto Jaehyuk's hip, closing the gap in a heartbeat.
The ball arrived — and in the final instant, a short, brutal body battle broke out. A grunt, a shove. Jaehyuk's balance wavered; he strained, arm stretching desperately for the ball, and missed it by a fingertip.
"Wow."
"That's Ryan for you."
"But that freshman's something else, no? Matching Ryan to that level the day he walks in?"
And with that, six one-on-one reps were in the books. The tally: 1–0. Ryan had won — technically — but it hardly felt like a win, an ambiguous scoreline if there ever was one. To be fair, his opponent was a freshman running back. For Alabama's ace receiver, the result left a lot to be desired.
Yet Ryan's face showed not a trace of disappointment. If anything, he was simply in awe.
"MAN!! Now I get why they guaranteed you a starting job before you even enrolled!! That was so much fun!"
Ryan seized Jaehyuk's hand and shook it enthusiastically. Jaehyuk, by contrast, looked far from pleased.
"What's wrong? Don't tell me you didn't enjoy it?"
"No."
"Then why do you look like you're chewing on a lemon?!"
Jaehyuk answered Ryan's outburst flatly. "I've never lost a body battle in my life. Today was the first time. I'm not thrilled about it."
"Haha, well, you do need to put on a bit more size. But for a body that's still growing, your strength is crazy, you know? Honestly, you shocked me!"
"You're skinny too."
"Me? C'mon, I've been at Alabama for over two years. I've trained my body systematically this whole time."
Without warning, Ryan yanked his hoodie up and off — and the lean, densely chiseled muscle hidden underneath came into view. His physique was clearly a different caliber. Only after taking it in did Jaehyuk nod, finally satisfied.
Well, if I'd been training with facilities like these, I suppose...
And this place had dedicated, personalized trainers on staff. Jaehyuk had been promised his own one-on-one strength coach as well, so building up his frame was nothing to worry about.
"Huh? It's over already?"
"Man, we came for nothing."
Just then, two players trudged in through the entrance of the indoor field, muttering — juniors Danny Lewis Jr. and Sean Murphy. Ryan waved cheerfully at their arrival.
"Yo! What's up!"
"We came to watch and it's already done?"
"Just finished. Should've gotten here a little faster."
Ryan beamed as he said it, and Danny chuckled along — until his smile stiffened.
"Huh?"
"What?"
Sean cocked his head, and Danny's voice came out in disbelief.
"Dude — why aren't you wearing your hoodie?"
"Huh? HUH?"
Sean's eyes went wide. And Horton, who hadn't registered it either, jolted in spite of himself. Ryan took off his hoodie?
"Ahh, he was just too good. No way I could keep it on. That's the only reason he squeaked out one point on me. Heh heh."
Ryan said it all with an easy, cheerful laugh — but Danny and Sean froze dead in their tracks.
"He made you take off your hoodie?"
"Squeaked out one point?"
Only then did their eyes turn to the unfamiliar Asian player. Jaehyuk paid them no attention at all, working through his cooldown stretches.
A wiry Asian kid. He barely looked 180 centimeters. That guy held Ryan to a single point?
"So that's one. Two left now."
Amid the commotion, Jaehyuk was murmuring something cryptic to himself, and Horton approached him.
"Jaehyuk. It's been a while."
"Hm?"
Jaehyuk stared at him blankly. Horton asked, a dread creeping into his voice.
"You don't remember me?"
"You sang his praises nonstop, and he doesn't even remember your face? PWAHAHAHA!"
Luke beside them burst out laughing. Jaehyuk, finishing his stretches, gave an easy shrug.
"Sorry. I'm bad with faces."
"I'm Isaiah Horton."
"...Camp?"
"Yeah. We saw each other at the beginning of last year, remember?"
It clicked at last. Jaehyuk nodded. "Oh, right. You went to Alabama, huh?"
"...Yeah."
Reading the team chat, Alabama freshman Noah Smith scowled. This early enrollee who'd appeared out of nowhere — his junior, Kim Jaehyuk — was a thorn in his side in every possible way.
Noisy little brat, making waves on day one.
By the official roster, the current freshmen were technically his seniors. Jaehyuk's formal class was the same as the incoming freshmen enrolling in the fall semester, which meant Noah — a current first-year — counted as his upperclassman.
"Hey, hey. Spring practice starts the day after tomorrow, right?"
One of his classmates asked around a mouthful of pancakes. Noah nodded.
"Yeah."
"Then the early enrollee will be practicing with us too. I'm curious, honestly. Just how good does a guy have to be to get early enrollment AND a guaranteed starting nod?"
"Bullshit."
A guaranteed starting job. For a guy who'd only just set foot on campus.
Noah couldn't wrap his head around it, no matter how many times he turned it over. In the six months he'd spent at Alabama, he'd come face to face with players of monstrous, almost inhuman ability — a level above and beyond anything he'd seen in high school, the sky above the sky. And even those monsters hadn't earned starting jobs. The actual starters felt like beings beyond the human category altogether.
And yet this freshman, who at most had toyed around in a high school league, was going to run with the ones? In his position, of all things?
There are nine running backs on this roster. NINE. And he's going to leapfrog every last one of them, just like that?
Spring training was organized by class year by default. From there, players were re-sorted by performance, with the top group training together again. After that, a ferocious battle for the starting jobs raged on until the regular season opened in the fall. The results of exhibition scrimmages against other college teams factored into that competition as well.
"Well, we'll see him soon enough. Let's just wait and find out."
"Gotta humble the kid."
"The way I see it, he's all hype. Tsk."
His classmates clearly found Jaehyuk just as grating, and each tossed in a jab of his own. But in the middle of it all, one person sat in silence, quietly eating his meal — a Black player wolfing down a hamburger as if he existed in a world of his own.
Noah turned to him.
"Hey. You're from Kansas too, aren't you?"
The guy turned his head and looked Noah over. Same class year, but his presence was on another level entirely.
"You blind? I'm eating."
"You can still manage an answer, come on. If you're from Kansas, you've definitely heard about this Asian kid."
Noah said it, dialing his tone down a notch. The rough-featured player broke into a slow, wolfish grin.
"Oh, I know him. I know him alright."
"You do?"
"Mm-hm."
By then he'd finished his burger and was rising from his seat.
"Give that skull of yours a good hard think sometime. Who knows — maybe you'll figure out whether there's anything of yours worth rubbing up against his level."
"What?! What did you just say, Marcus?!"
At somebody's shout, Marcus Thornton gave a short snort of laughter — then walked off as if the question weren't even worth his breath.