Dressing Rugby in a Story
I talked with James Faber late into the night. Naturally, nearly all of it was about work.
"Fifty thousand units. I'll admit it—the weight of that is real."
Slap an Ultimate logo on the thing and fifty thousand pieces would sell out in a breath. A collaboration with Guccio was another matter. A hoodie in the hundred-dollar range could be aimed at every buyer who walked through the door, but a jacket that commanded three thousand dollars apiece had to hunt one class and one class only. The concept, the design, the way we sold it—all of it would have to leave the track we had been running.
"The very top of society still wears a classic suit, as a rule. Designing formalwear at this stage feels wrong, though..."
I let him talk and held my peace.
"If I'm to keep a color of my own, something a person can actually move in would be better, don't you think?"
I nodded.
"Even so, I can hardly march up to aristocrats and order them to try a skateboard just because it suits my style..."
He said it like that, but his eyes had the look of a man who had already thought of something.
"If we're speaking of a culture the uppermost class actually longs for, nothing comes to mind but rugby."
Rugby? Not a bad thought. When I had traced the ones who took a shot at me, most of them had belonged to the rugby club.
By the time I had sorted that much, Faber went on.
"You know those rugby shirts people wear almost like uniforms? The ones with the dense horizontal stripes. Embroider a mark into that, play with the logo a little, and I suspect it would look genuinely refined..."
"I like it."
"You—truly? It appeals to you?"
I nodded again. Perhaps I was becoming a businessman after all. The moment I heard the item, marketing ideas lined up in a queue.
"Shall we dress rugby in a story?"
"A story?"
"A freshman at the Royal School puts a team together and enters a rugby tournament."
We had a magazine. Use it properly, and the publicity would be as good as publicity got.
"From recruiting teammates, through the training, all the way to the match itself—we serialize every step."
Do that, and the story would make itself.
"Will people actually join?"
"Of course they will."
Around here, the day your face landed in the magazine you were a celebrity by sundown. And this would not be a single spread. It would run every week, in more pages than anyone could finish. Who wouldn't scramble to get on the roster?
"The idea is excellent, but if the only readers are students of the Royal School, I can't see us expecting much of a promotional effect..."
"It's about time we put it in ordinary bookstores as well. The work is already finished."
"Oh—did you foresee this entire picture and move first? Did you make the magazine in advance for today?"
Hardly. I was not Chairman Park Yonghak. Obviously it was improvisation, live and off the cuff, a little quick thinking—ahem! Call it the privilege of living a second life, and leave it at that.
"If they take the field before the match in full Ultimate × Guccio kit—the shirt, the shoes, the bag—that will make a picture."
"Then you're preparing for a national tournament?"
It was only a piece of marketing. A national tournament would be overdoing it. The first and second years would play a qualifier for the right to represent the school! Serialized in the magazine, that much would be more than enough.
And as it happened, we had a cause. That absurd old custom of summoning the first-year representative and grinding him underfoot. Jack and Peter had been dragged into the mess, hadn't they? On top of that, the second years had a prior offense: deciding, all on their own authority, to ban Queensman from the grounds. Reasons for the two years to clash were past overflowing.
"Hearing you say it, if the aim is publicity, concentrating on a single match would indeed be more effective."
Even so, one thing seemed to snag him.
"But will you be able to beat the second years?"
"...?"
"At your age, a difference of a year is still considerable, isn't it? What's more, the second years will have spent the whole year tuning their teamwork. For freshmen to take that on..."
If we absolutely had to win, that would be a gamble, not marketing. Give people something to enjoy in the preparing, and that was enough. Of course a victory would land harder. Contrary to the thought, my face must have looked thoroughly sure of itself.
"Then, for now, I'll trust you, sir, and get to work."
Meanwhile, at the Royal School, the playing field was still clamorous deep into the night. Carl Bernstein had called an emergency gathering of the rugby club.
"Stick to him!"
"Fight! Don't dodge!"
Sure enough, a match was in full swing. Carl alone was sunk in thought. One scene would not leave his head: shopping bags shoved down into filth.
He had been told his mother herself sent the invitation to the ducal house. That was, quite literally, as good as an official visit. And they had taken what they had just bought and crammed it into a trash can?
Why?
Thinking the product must have been poor, he had already swept out every designer. Turn it over as he might, it did not seem to be the clothes.
Then what unbearable grudge could there be? In case some hidden slight was lurking, he even dragged up memories from years ago, and damn it all, he still could not tell what was what. Frankly, a man might guess if the things worth resenting numbered one or two! He had been committing madness on every front there was, so of course—
That was when it happened.
"Carl!"
Vice-captain Ralph fired him a lateral pass. Carl had been lost in thought for a long while even so. With reflexes that startled, he snatched the ball as if hooking it out of the air, and then he exploded forward.
Not that he was concentrating on the match. His head was nothing but clutter.
Tennessee Grosvenor...
Let revenge blaze as it liked; there was nothing Carl could do. The instant he made an enemy of a ducal house, his mother would smash him to pieces. Damn it! Then what was he supposed to do with this rage?
Right then, a hand reached up from below and tried to steal the ball.
Where do you get the nerve!
On an ordinary day he would have turned with grace and kept possession. Now his temper had blown clean off its hinge over Tennessee. Perhaps that was why he only feigned a turn—and drove his elbow, with everything he had, into the other boy's jaw.
A crack so foul it lifted every hair on the body. Naturally, everyone on the pitch froze like a pane of ice. Then the opponent dropped as if he had fainted.
Carl might as well not have noticed. The same words kept looping through his head like a broken tape.
Then what am I supposed to do with this rage?
Boys flocked in, making a fuss.
"You all right?"
"He didn't pass out, did he?"
And among them, one offered a convenient defense.
"Yeah—why play so recklessly..."
Only then did Carl's gaze reach the unconscious defender. The heavy impact still lived in his elbow. Yes. This. A lawful chance to knock a man flat. If he could not lay a hand on Tennessee, then he at least had to grind down someone of comparable standing, or the heat in his chest would never break.
A name surfaced as if it had been waiting.
Park Jihoon.
Think it through, and hadn't all of this begun because of that bastard? Carl turned at once to Vice-captain Ralph.
"Huh? Ah, well... because of the trouble between the first and second years, it's still a bit..."
"So? You're just going to keep sitting on your hands?"
"N-no."
"Make it happen. However you have to!"
At Carl's growl, Ralph answered only by dropping his eyes.
The next day, the weekend behind me, I was out on the streets from before dawn. Depending how things fell, I was going to be playing rugby. Fortunately I had been building my stamina all along. Mm. Lately, though, I had let work become an excuse to slack.
I meant to run lightly and see what kind of condition I was in. Rain. True to London, the weather was sullen. Dawn, the sun not up, a drizzle coming down besides—how many people would be out exercising? Today I might have the whole neighborhood for a private ground. I cinched my laces and opened my lungs first.
"Hoo. Hooo."
For the first ten minutes I spent only half my strength. Once the body felt loose, I ran as if I meant to drive the breath up against my teeth. Falling rain, breath breaking out in a steady measure, and after that the strike of feet leaving the ground. In this dawn, exactly three sounds existed.
Of course, the moment I stopped, the heartbeat I had been forcibly ignoring arrived late and distinct, all the way out to my fingers and the ends of my toes. Yes. This. A feeling I had never once tasted in my previous life. Perhaps that was why, even before a heart pounding as if to warn me never to get cocky again, I could grin and mean it.
The stamina was sufficient. I was a stranger to rugby, but it was not a solo event in any case. I had a corner I could trust. What mattered right now was getting the second years to accept the match. I raised my left hand and checked the time. About time I started making calls.
An hour later, my dormitory room had company from the morning on. My roommate Peter, of course; my partner, Olivia Warren; and Jack Grylls, devotee of all things military.
Peter and Olivia had been working with me, so they were all right. Jack's progress—if one could call it that—had fallen rather far behind. I had to walk him through everything that had happened: the Queensman shop, the magazine, and Ultimate.
"I see."
When Jack nodded, Peter asked in surprise.
"You knew?"
"No."
"Then why aren't you shocked?"
Jack turned his head slightly my way as he answered.
"I've been to Korea. After that, nothing Park Jihoon does surprises me."
"What's in Korea that could do that?"
"A house like a royal palace, a private office of goodness knows how many floors, and when we came back to Britain he produced first-class seats like it was nothing..."
Enough of the useless talk. Jack seemed to have caught the thread well enough, so I explained the Ultimate × Guccio collaboration to all of them. The moment I told them we would stage a rugby match for the project, and that it would be serialized in the magazine, the three of them answered in three different ways.
First, Jack Grylls.
"Hup-two! Hup-two!"
As if he could not contain the testosterone detonating in him, he went straight into calisthenics. He had the look of a warrior just given the order to deploy, ready to bolt onto the field that very moment.
Next came Olivia. True to a rich man's daughter, her sense of scale was enormous.
"You'll need someone to practice against if you're going to play, won't you? Shall I phone America and book a team? Ask my dad and it'll be settled in a minute."
Last was Peter.
"We should get a fix on their strength first."
Quick in the head, as expected of him; the next step seemed to occur to him at once.
"The rugby club trains nearly every day, you know. I'll spy on them quietly and write up an analysis."
I had not gathered them to receive their help. Sharing the plan ahead with my own people was enough. Even so. They're stepping in as if it were their own work. I'm grateful, I'll give them that.
It was a project that did not depend on winning or losing. But if we're doing it, why not hit them properly? Plausible plans kept surfacing, and because of that I quietly lifted the corner of my mouth.