The Man Who Would Change NFL History
I am rotting.
From the very roots, deep in my heart.
Not that that makes me a criminal.
And that's exactly what makes it worse.
#. New York City, New York
#-1. Waldorf Astoria New York
This is my favorite place in the world.
The most famous luxury hotel on the planet. I've met quite a few women here, in this suite.
"…"
Through a haze of cigarette smoke, a woman was watching me. Her eyes were knowing and hungry all at once, and I knew exactly what that look meant. Normally I would have played along, pretending to be helpless against the lure of it.
But tonight, I couldn't be bothered.
I rose from the bed I'd been sprawled across, threw a robe over my shoulders, grabbed a cigarette, and stepped out onto the terrace.
"Hoo—"
From the outside, my life didn't look bad at all.
No. You could call it a roaring success.
The first Asian head coach in NFL history.
And I hadn't stopped there. Over the past six years, I had won four championships. So yes, I knew I was good. A dangerously sharp mind, an even sharper instinct. The schemes I built were revolutionary. I had an eye for talent, too — finding it, then shaping it into something that could shine. I took a quarterback nobody believed in and made him the biggest star in the league. I sent wide receivers and tight ends into free agency with contracts so fat they could retire the day they signed and never work again.
At some point, everyone wanted a piece of me.
It meant nothing to me.
It never had.
Tap.
I flicked the stub of my cigarette off the terrace and pulled out another, pressing it between my lips.
"Hoo—"
Watching the smoke curl into the night always quieted something in me.
"I don't even know who you are anymore."
"What do you actually feel? Anything?"
"Have you ever meant a single word you've said to me?"
"You bastard."
Five marriages. Four divorces. Every woman who ever shared my life ended up miserable. They all said the same thing — that I didn't love them. I never gave them a proper answer, but they were right. Imagine staring into a void that nothing could ever fill. It must have been unbearable.
"You're going to die alone."
"No one will ever truly be with you."
I remembered those parting words as vividly as if they'd been spoken last night. After cutting four ex-wives loose with their settlements, I poured every dollar I had left into liquor and women.
I knew it was pathetic. There were moments I'd told myself to stop.
But I couldn't. I don't know why. If I'd known the reason, I would have stopped long ago.
Weak willpower? Maybe.
Could be.
Psssshh—
Standing at the edge of the Waldorf Astoria's rooftop terrace, pissing into the Manhattan night, I felt a flicker of something like exhilaration.
Then the darkness rolled right back in.
I never wanted to live like this.
Really, I didn't.
An ordinary home. An ordinary day. And when the weekend finally came, a warm dinner with a family I loved — that was the dream. Instead, what I had left was…
"Fuck it."
Without warning, I raised my middle finger to the sky.
That's right. I have always hated that sky. Ever since I was five, ever since my parents died in an accident and I was shuffled off to relatives, I hated whatever was up there.
The woman who just wanted money. The man whose interest in me ran far too deep. On the day of my sixth birthday, I suffered the terrible act that became the starting point of everything I am now. I can still remember the nauseating stench of that man's breath.
Come to think of it — I wonder if my own mouth smells the same way now. Him and me. Maybe we're not so different after all.
Anyway.
I have never once been loved. It was abuse, followed by more abuse. While I was bowing under that violence, drifting through days of numbness, I met the person who changed my life entirely.
"Have you ever thought about playing football?"
"What?"
"Football. It'll make you strong."
Sophia.
My only love. And my first wife.
She was a year older than me. We met in elementary school. Sophia had lost her parents young too, been handed off to relatives just like me — but unlike me, she'd landed with good people. That alone made her someone I admired endlessly. She became the one ray of light in a life that was nothing but darkness. With her there, I survived those terrible years.
Sophia, who dreamed of becoming a lawyer, entered Columbia University a year ahead of me, and the following year I followed her there on a football scholarship.
At last, I was free.
And two years later—
"I swear it."
"I promise."
Surrounded by the congratulations of our college classmates, we held a small, modest wedding at a church near the apartment we'd just moved into together.
The happiest day of my life. The happiest years of my life.
They lasted exactly three.
The winter I turned twenty-four, Sophia was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Even then, she fought hard. She was strong like that.
But a year later, she closed her eyes right in front of me.
That was when it started — clinging to football like a madman.
As an Asian player, I'd never have made it to the NFL myself, so instead I took a job at the bottom rung of the New York Jets' staff. Football and work were the only moments I could forget her. Slowly, the organization began to notice me. Year by year, I moved into more and more important positions. After about four years, everyone in the franchise knew my name.
And at thirty, I became a coach of the New York Jets.
Living each brutal, grinding day, the ache of remembering Sophia dulled little by little. Looking back now, I understand — I hadn't healed. I'd simply buried the pain under the work.
Unaware of that, I went looking for women like Sophia.
But none of them were her. And they were wounded, too, by a man who claimed to love them while secretly longing for someone else — projecting a ghost onto their skin.
My emptiness came from losing the one person I loved most.
Clatter-rattle—
An empty bottle of liquor rolled across the terrace floor until it thudded against the wall and stopped.
Watching it go, the alcohol surged up through me all at once. Out of nowhere, I thought the moon looked beautiful. I reached for it — and in that instant, there was no floor beneath my feet.
Slowly, the world began to tilt.
The wind rushing past my body grew fiercer and fiercer.
Huh.
Am I… falling?
Feeling gravity take hold, I closed my eyes.
Sophia. If you had been with me — would I have been happy? Could I have become an ordinary man? Lived an ordinary life by your side, grown old with you, ordinary and slow?
The instant I felt a tear slip from my closed eyes, an agony beyond any words flooded through my entire body.
And as violently as it came, it vanished.
So did my consciousness.
Finally.
I had ended this godforsaken life.
…
Tap tap.
…?
…!
-! …
What… is this?
Ah. I see. That's what happened.
I fell, clearly. From the top of the Waldorf.
More than that, though — so the afterlife really does exist.
But wait a moment.
Why won't my eyes open…?
"~~~. ~~~ ~ ~~~~~~."
"~~~~"
Something was making sound. I just couldn't hear it — like listening to voices from underwater. I strained with everything I had, and slowly, fragments began to surface.
"…to… be… ful."
What?
"Tomorrow a… your paren…"
What?!
Hold on. That was English I just heard. I didn't catch the whole sentences, but a few words came through loud and clear. Parents. They definitely said parents.
What on earth is going on? And why can't I speak? I tried with everything in me to force out a voice, but all that escaped my lips was something like a feeble whimper.
Before long, something warm wrapped around me. A soft, cozy feeling — and a good smell, too.
And then, sound again.
"Ha aheo ka ua i nā pali."
Now what on earth…
"Ke nihi aʻela i ka nahele."
I knew, instinctively, that I had never heard this language in my life. And I knew this was a song. There was a melody.
But strangely — miraculously — the moment that unknown language reached me, my heart went calm, and sleep came pressing down.
I'm already dead, and I'm going to sleep again?
Well. They do say death is an eternal sleep.
So is this it, then? Just closing my eyes like this? Forever? If so, maybe right now I'm in some final stage before being cast down into hell.
How cruel. To feel this softness on the way to hell — so achingly nostalgic, so warm, so moving. A feeling that stirs memories of some far-off time I can't even remember. I never expected to feel that right before damnation.
"Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe."
Huh? Aloha?
That's Hawaiian.
Interesting. So the language of the afterlife has aloha in it too.
"Until we meet again."
What?
That sudden English made me want to snap my eyes open — but my will was far too small and frail to fight back the sleep flooding in. In the end, I surrendered to instinct.
Even in death, I'm still the same. Honestly.
God, I hate this about myself.
#. December 26, 2001
#-1. Hawaii, USA
#-2. Maui Memorial Medical Center
"How is it possible for someone to look so much like you?"
"Well, he is mine."
"Oh, honey…"
"I love you, honey. I'm going to live even harder from now on. For all of us."
"Yes. Together. Let's work hard together."
At 12:07 in the morning on December 26th, just past Christmas, a healthy baby boy was born to Noah Stone and Jessica Stone.
The child was the spitting image of his father — the Korean-Samoan mixed-heritage Noah Stone — and at the sight of him, Jessica Stone, a second-generation Korean immigrant, wept tears of joy.
Gently pushing his wife's wheelchair into the hospital room, Noah Stone announced the baby's name before the crowd of family gathered inside, his booming, jovial voice filling every corner. His face was shining with pride.
"Dwayne Moi Stone! That's right! My son's gonna carry the Hawaiian word for king — Moi — as his middle name!"
Dwayne Moi Stone.
The man who would change the history of the NFL.
And, at the same time, a man reborn.
This is the story of a former legendary NFL head coach — a man who once built four championships with his own hands — who will live his second life carrying fragments of his past memories and emotions.
The protagonist knows nothing of it yet.
"Ohhh, our beautiful baby. Look at him sleeping."
"Honey, come here. Get in the picture."
Click.
But soon enough, he too will understand everything.