The Sport That Looks Forward
"Get him!"
The shout landed as if someone besides Devon had already run me down. I wasn't taken in. The footsteps coming up behind me still had slack in them.
When I didn't panic, a thin thread of curiosity rose in his eyes. Oh-ho. Not bad.
I glanced left as if I meant to pass, then burst out the other way. One feint like that would never fool a national-team defender, so at the very moment when sprinting straight was the obvious play, I cut again. A little psychological warfare, such as it was. Not even close. His shift of balance was nearly animal—that huge frame changing its center of gravity in an instant, like one of the great cats.
"Hand over the ball."
"......"
"I tackle you, and you get hurt."
I made as if to give it up and tried to take off again.
"And where do you think you're going."
He had me by the scruff at once.
Ngh. This wasn't a gap in size that effort could close.
You know the feeling. There was a professor from a Korean college of physical education I'd met while training in wrestling, and when I locked arms with him it had felt exactly like this—the sense that I could be born again a hundred times and still never be his match.
But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Fight a monster head-on and the prospect is truly bleak. Take that same man as your master, though? Nothing in the world would feel more solid. Hot-blooded the way athletes are, no grudge left to linger, and a loyalty that could kill a man. I was off in thoughts like those when a thick voice hauled me back to the present.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I asked what you're doing, drifting off in the middle of a match."
"Your shirt's pretty."
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
"What did you say?"
"I said your shirt's pretty."
"It's expensive."
It was a long-sleeve tee out of Ultimate. The release price had been ordinary, so if he was calling it expensive, he'd almost certainly bought it on Resale.
Anyway!
We never scored a single point before the match was over. Devon's own ability was tremendous, yes. But with nothing more than a few simple directions, the whole team's defense had changed.
"Wait! Don't burst out—watch it all the way through! Now! What are you doing! I said now!"
Right. So that's how it is.
A little later, around the time the bell rang to mark the break, the students gathered quickly on the field and offered their teacher a deep bow. Devon answered with a slight nod of the head.
Then, as they all headed for the classroom to change out of sweat-soaked kits—
"Teacher."
"......?"
At the sound of my voice Devon flicked a glance back. Those enormous trapezius muscles seemed to keep a mere turn of the head from securing much of a view; he had to pivot in a half circle before he found me.
"You again?"
"Could I have a word? Just a short meeting."
"You want a meeting, you find your class teacher. Why are you honoring me with this?"
"It's about PE."
"Then use class time, kid."
His face said he wanted the break for himself. But he seemed to remember he had no class next, and the look soon loosened.
"Long?"
"No."
"Then do it over there."
Devon pointed at the bench in front of the café.
"You drink coffee?"
"Are you buying?"
"What, you think I'm going to mooch one off you?"
He was back before long with two cups. A big tree laid a long shade over the bench, and the spot was handsome enough that it may have been why he said what he said next.
"A place like this, you're supposed to be on a date."
He knocked the coffee back in gulps, as if something inside him were on fire.
"So what is it you want to say?"
I asked about the tryouts for the inter-year representative side—whether the regulations posed any problem, and where he stood as the rugby club's coach.
And what do you know. Devon came out with an answer I hadn't expected.
"You want to use sacred rugby as a tool for revenge. That it?"
"......!"
"You're not about to team up with the bastards who haul freshmen in and chew them up. You just want to stamp them flat. Something like that, yeah?"
What else was there to do but nod, obediently.
"That's the revenge you're dreaming of?"
"Yes."
"So in the end, sacred rugby gets used as a means of revenge. That's right, isn't it?"
"It is."
"This brat's honest past all necessity."
"......"
"No wonder you were heaving that bench like a brute."
For a second I wondered why bench press had suddenly entered the conversation. Anyway, it was at this point that Devon's face broke wide open. Even so, letting my guard down was out of the question. I was watching him with a level gaze when he went on, brow drawn tight.
"Watching a revenge is fun, I'll give you that. I'm not against it. But can you even pull it off?"
"Knock down a few second-years and you think the rest is nothing, I bet. Rugby's different. The captain's practically pro level, and the vice-captain's about as big as I am. They've spent a year breathing together on top of that—the teamwork's solid—and a freshman dares to dream of revolt?"
He shook his head, skeptical to the bone.
"Forget revenge. You'll just work yourself sick on bottled rage."
"That's why I came to you, Teacher."
Devon tried to cross his legs, but there was perhaps too much muscle for it; he soon diverted into a wide straddle.
"You come find me, and then what?"
"I want private instruction."
"Instruction in what?"
"Rugby, obviously."
The instant the answer landed, Devon scowled.
"And why would I?"
"Does a master need a reason to teach his pupil?"
"Since when were we that thick with each other?"
"You're my teacher."
Devon didn't give an inch.
"I'm a teacher while I'm at the school. Clock out, and then what? Am I still a teacher?"
Private lessons ordinarily had to happen after school. And that was quitting time, so he wasn't a teacher? He's got a point. Even so, I wasn't about to back off.
"A pupil is asking to be taught. Send me away like this and you'll feel off about it too, won't you?"
"What's with you. I'm a man with neither blood nor tears."
"Don't be like that. Try teaching me just once? No more, no less—exactly one session. I might be the one who washes out first."
I slipped him the bait. Sure enough, Devon's ears pricked. From the look of him, he figured I'd keep being a nuisance if he didn't; better, then, to grind me just hard enough that I fell away on my own. That must have been the thought.
"Just you?"
"Sorry?"
"The one who wants to learn. Is it only you?"
"There's Jack, too. Jack 'Tiger' Grylls."
"That guy's a knucklehead, isn't he?"
I had no proper answer, so I only scratched my head.
Meanwhile, the moment the Ultimate × Guccio collaboration was confirmed, Paver flew straight to New York. Marketing he left entirely in the Director's hands. For now, he meant to devote himself to fashion alone.
Yes. Fashion. If all he wanted was to watch rugby matches, staying in Britain would have been a hundred times better. But to look at the things rugby had spun off into clothing, the right move was to head for the center of fashion.
He spent the whole day walking the streets that mattered, and by the end of it he seemed to have examined nearly every rugby item that existed in New York. Perhaps because this was America, the aristocratic notes had largely fallen away, and what remained leaned hard on the practical. All the better. It was so exactly the opposite of Britain that he almost felt glad he'd come all this way.
So he would close out today's schedule here. From tomorrow, luxury fashion.
Paver pulled out his notebook. Let's see. There was an appointment in the afternoon. Where had the place been, again? Fortunately, it wasn't far. A meal with someone he was meeting for the first time—awkward, a little. But the man was also something like the Director's right hand, and a professor of art at the most famous university in Korea. Surely a conversation would go well enough.
As Paver kept up his steady walk, an East Asian man in a beige coat caught his eye in the distance. Sure enough, the other seemed to have spotted him as well, and came striding over.
"Professor Jo Sudeok?"
"Mr. James Paver."
"It's a pleasure to meet you."
Paver dipped his head, and Jo Sudeok bowed with him as he spoke.
"There was a time I turned the earth over looking for you."
"So I heard. And along the way, Lukashi..."
"Even so, we've met like this in the end. Fortune enough, isn't it?"
Jo Sudeok brushed it off with a salesman's little flourish, and then—
"You've come all the way to New York, so I'd like to play host, if I may."
Wasn't that ordinarily a line for people who actually belonged to New York? By all accounts Jo Sudeok was a Seoul man, whereas Paver was the one who had lived here for years. Jo Sudeok, however, seemed to see it differently.
"Oh, me? I might as well be a born-and-bred New Yorker. Alley by alley—I doubt there's a corner I haven't walked."
"Looking for me, by any chance?"
"Let us agree to bury the sore memories."
"......"
"Today I shall see you through the full course."
"The—the full course?"
"You've come to New York. Naturally one must do the full course."
At that, Paver managed an awkward smile.
After school, on the school field, I brought Jack out as promised. From Devon's point of view it was hardly different from overtime, and his face showed it.
"You know the rules?"
"Yes!"
Jack answered clean and bright. I only nodded, lightly.
"What? You don't know the rules either?"
I knew them. I pretended I didn't. Why? Talk a man into explaining the rules of any sport, and the philosophy he carries is bound to leak out. In other words, a chance to see exactly how Devon understood rugby. How was I supposed to let that go?
"If you don't even know the rules, how were you running out there earlier?"
"You told us to run, so I grabbed the ball and just ran. That was the whole of it."
"A long road. A very long road."
Devon thumped his chest like a gorilla, and then—
"Listen up. Rugby is a sport that looks forward."
"......"
"American football's got the forward pass, yeah? Rugby doesn't. You want to go forward, you do it on your own two feet. No exceptions. You hear me?"
Look at that. Out it came, smooth as anything.
"Fast feet, holding your ground in the contact, calling a teammate—end of the day, the point is moving the ball forward. You don't need anything else. You go forward. Unconditionally."
At first he had seemed to find the whole thing a bother, but his voice kept swelling.
"The greener you are, the more speed feels like the greatest thing alive. Then you get stopped. Doesn't matter how fast the attacker is—the defense is already waiting. And they can stick out an arm, or throw the whole body."
So fast feet weren't the whole of it? Devon's eyes flashed, as if the true lesson were only now beginning.
"And a collision, set next to that? In a war, that's the hand-to-hand. Slow, but the surest way forward there is. Call it flattening a man outright with your weight class!"
"So the orthodox way in rugby is the body fight?"
"Obviously! Straight at him! Infighting!"
As if to prove the point with his own person, he flung his jacket aside.
"I'm coming forward. Try and put me down."
"What?"
"Whatever it takes. Stop me where I stand."
He meant to show, in the flesh, just how efficient it was to advance through contact. A clash of bodies with a man who had come in on a rugby scholarship and even been taken in the NFL draft!
"I'd be honored."
"You're honored if you put me down, kid."
The words had barely hit the ground.
Flash.
I hurled myself at Devon.