I Want to Stop Him
It was the first time I had watched a second-year match, and it was nothing like the bore I had expected.
"Bind!"
"Break!"
"Pass!"
The tempo was brutal. A flash, a crack, a body flung to the turf and sent rolling — and not one player spared the fallen a glance. A vicious, kinetic sport. Was there a better way on earth to vent raw masculinity?
The one who stood out, of course, was Carl Bernstein. Once he started to run, no one could stop him. Cleats hammered the grass. Faster than Jack, I thought. In a counter, before the line had time to reset, you could barely get a hand on him.
And even with the defense set, it hardly helped.
First he shaped to go left. A shift of the shoulders, a fake. Then a hard cut the other way.
"Hngh—!"
The defender bought the dummy and sat straight down on his backside. In soccer terms, he was a dribbler with explosiveness and suppleness both.
"Stop him!"
"Cut off his retreat!"
Once Carl had scored on them again, the other side went looking for an answer. Even individual skill needs space. Perhaps that was why the defense came thundering in, one man after another, and boxed him tight. No room to move. That was the idea.
Carl was not flustered in the slightest. His face stayed terribly calm, as if a defense of this quality were an old acquaintance. He shaped as if to break the line, shoved — or pretended to — and then knifed a pass the other way entirely.
The ball climbed higher than it looked like it should. A body a full head taller than the rest plucked it out of the air.
They had said the vice-captain was built on Devon's scale. He is big.
I had assumed a man that size would simply bull straight ahead. He didn't. Instead of forcing it, he slipped the ball back to Carl — a two-on-one, if you were thinking in soccer. Carl took the return and tore away, cleared the lunging tackler the way you clear a vaulting horse, and planted the score anyway.
There was a gap in class to begin with, and no one wanted an injury, so there was probably a measure of courtesy in the tackling whenever Carl had the ball. Even granting all of that—
He's disgustingly good.
A collision to decide who owned the stronger body, and underneath it a chess match that never paused. Ordinarily the worry would have come first. Can first-years even take the field against monsters like that? That would have been the sane thought.
What filled my head instead was exactly one idea.
I want to stop him.
I wanted to kill that sprint with the tackle Devon had taught me. However enormous the man was, what was he next to Devon? The vice-captain — I wanted to lock shoulders with that bulk.
A pleasant thrum started in my chest, and the corner of my mouth was just climbing when a shout came from behind me.
"Second years, attention!"
I turned, startled, and a huge shadow fell across me. Why is Mr. Devon here?
He bellowed toward the pitch again.
"Who's the second-year captain?"
"I am."
"The first-year representative here says he's got a proposal for you."
What? I looked at Devon, entirely lost, and he winked. Then, low enough that only I would hear:
"You said you wanted a selection match. For the representatives."
Ah.
"What, getting cold feet now?"
"Of course not."
"Then?"
"It's a little sudden."
"Life was never something you could see an inch ahead of."
I let out a short breath.
"All right. If you're setting the stage, I'll step onto it."
Sure enough, Carl was already coming toward me, one deliberate step after another. Sweat had drawn his silhouette clean out of the kit. From a distance he had looked slight. Up close he was remarkably solid, and his lower body in particular was astonishing.
He swept his blond hair back again and asked me,
"You wanted to say something?"
"The national tournament."
His face went blank.
"First years against second years. The winners go. How about it?"
"You're talking about rugby?"
I nodded. Carl's eyes went straight to Devon. Does the teacher know about this?
"Sort it out yourselves."
The moment Devon gave his leave, Carl's face turned strange — a mask laid over another mask. He smoothed it away almost at once.
"This is unexpected."
I said nothing.
"I imagine there's been some misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding?"
"If you're nursing a grudge because the rugby boys were discourteous..."
He meant the day Jack had fought them, seven against one. I almost laughed.
"What grudge would I be nursing?"
"What?"
"Your side's the one that got beaten. Why would I be the one holding a grudge?"
A clean provocation. Bait, tossed so he couldn't refuse the offer. The reaction, though, came from the wrong place.
"Well, well."
Devon looked thoroughly pleased with himself for having set the stage.
Carl, by contrast, had slipped back behind that mask of a face. He took his time before he answered.
"I appreciate the proposal, but it isn't mine alone to decide."
Oh, so we're playing at democracy.
"Then talk it over with your teammates and give me an answer."
"How soon do you need it?"
"The sooner, the better."
At that, Carl nodded, quiet. He must have believed he had buried every feeling. He hadn't. Those eyes, sunk and waiting like a snake's, and the strange light in them — I didn't miss either.
Venomous.
Not my problem.
"I'll be going."
I bowed to Devon and walked, unhurried, toward the classroom.
Thirty minutes later, in the second-year student council room, Vice-Captain Ralph was smug enough to burst. Carl had snarled at him to push a friendly between the first and second years, and the thing had come together on the spot.
He was grinning with his whole face.
"The captain was so hard about it, I couldn't just sit still. Screw it, I thought — today's the day we settle this for good! I went to the teacher and kicked up a whole—"
"You're scrambling my head. Shut your mouth."
"Huh?"
"Can't you see I'm thinking?"
"Ah. Sorry."
Carl's expression was a difficult thing. On the face of it, he had gotten exactly what he wanted: a rugby match between the years. Except the friendly had been rewritten as a selection match. And for some scheme of his own, Park Jihoon had walked up and offered it himself.
Of course, if they settled it on a rugby pitch, the result was already written.
A handful of businesses go well and you think you can play rugby too? Does the whole world belong to you?
A match he could not lose even if the sky split in two. His heart knew that. Still, Park Jihoon's unreadable face sat wrong with him, a bone caught in the throat that would not stop nagging.
He wanted to accept on the spot, but there was nothing to lose by being careful. He turned to Ralph.
"Find out why he's doing this."
Ralph didn't answer.
"Why aren't you answering?"
"Huh? Ah — y-you told me to keep my mouth shut..."
Useless idiot.
Carl shook his head, as if there were no point in saying anything at all.
After school, the day's training was in the weight room. Maybe his head was already halfway home, the workday behind him. Devon didn't bother with a hello. He went straight for the bar.
"You know the deadlift?"
Jack and I were decent enough with the weights.
"I'll show you first."
Hm. Was I seeing this wrong? Devon loaded every plate in reach until the bar sat at 260 kilograms. Then, as if it were nothing, he checked the mirror once, shoved his sleeves up, and took hold of it.
A moment later—
"Hup!"
That was all. Truly. One hup, and the bar rose.
Still holding it, he said,
"How did I lift it?"
Like a brute. Like something that isn't even human. I kept my mouth shut.
"Why no answer? I ripped it."
Sir, could you at least put that down before you lecture.
Maybe he read my eyes.
"Ah. Forgot."
Devon set the bar back in the rack.
"Rugby, listen. You have to put out explosive force all at once. So even on a deadlift, lifting it nice and slow does you no good. One shot. Bam!"
He went to show us again. Warmed up now, maybe. This time there wasn't even a shout. The bar flashed up.
"See? Rip it off the floor. Lower it slow."
The rest of the session was the same. Take a drill where you held about a hundred kilograms, stepped up one stair, and came back down.
"On the way up! Like you're kicking — pak!"
Again he crushed the force into a single instant.
"Say in a match the other guy comes at me. I've got to explode out in the same breath, don't I? That's when this training shows what it's for."
The whole program, in other words, was built to grow explosiveness. Jack and I looked at each other. Until now we had only known how to move iron. We had never trained like this.
Heh. I can see the suffering from here.
Two hours later, my prediction had come true with interest. To put it with only a little exaggeration, I didn't have the strength left to twitch a finger. Jack and I were flat on our backs in the middle of the weight room.
Where the teacher had gone, I did wonder. Does that matter right now? Rest while you can. That was all there was to it.
We were staring wordlessly at the ceiling when footsteps came in.
"These brats, flat on the floor again? Get up."
Devon bellowed it. Sitting up dragged a groan out of me, and another out of Jack. He didn't care.
"Get over here and take this."
"Yes?"
"Take it. Now."
I turned. Devon was stacked three pizza boxes high. No wonder he had vanished. He had gone to buy dinner.
"One each."
American pizza. The largest size they made. Today, though, I had a feeling I might actually finish one.
"From tomorrow, I'll eat before I come."
"Why? Worried about the money?"
I didn't answer.
"If I were the sort to begrudge feeding you, would I be teaching you at all? Hm?"
What did I say. Sportsmen only look frightening on the outside. The moment they open their hearts, they're practically silken tofu. The thought was appreciated. Even so—
"We can't do this every day."
"Don't get cute."
"Sorry?"
"Where's a student got money?"
Because I'm not exactly just a student. Ahem.
Jack, never one to stand on ceremony, finished thanking him and was already inhaling his second slice.
Right. Eat first.
Maybe because the teacher had bought it, it tasted better than it had any right to. I ate. By the time I reached for a fourth slice, the other two had nearly demolished a whole pie between their appetites. Full now, Devon dropped into a chair, slung one arm over the back, and looked out the window.
A rude thing to think about a man who had just bought us dinner, but he looked like a brown bear that had wandered down into the village and decided to rest a moment. Ahem.
Then—
"Hey. Park Jihoon."
"Yes, sir."
"You had some nerve this morning."
"Sorry?"
"What was it you said in front of the second years? 'Look at the guy who got his ass kicked, running his filthy mouth.' Was that it?"
When did I ever say that?
Your side's the one that got beaten. Why would I be the one holding a grudge?
Those were my exact words.
He must have read my face.
"Eh. Close enough, if the meaning lands. How am I supposed to remember every word?"
I had nothing to say to that.
"Anyway. What are those clothes?"
"Ah, this? It's Ultimate. The label you wore, too..."
"Why do you own every kind of that thing?"
At the teacher's sudden question, Jack — mid-swallow of his cola — choked on absolutely nothing.