If They Score One, We Score Two
After school, in the strength room, Devon talked and Jack and I listened.
"Listen while you work."
Fine. We were doing it anyway, and I didn't mind taking the lecture mid-set. The problem was the weight of the set.
"You saw that defense, didn't you? A complete mess."
"Gyaaah—"
"Nngh—!"
"Can't you hear your teacher? Mouth shut and lift."
This is not a weight a person can lift in silence, sir...
He carried on whether we could or not.
"Not a single call. You herd one way, then you herd the other. What exactly is that supposed to become?"
How a tactic ought to be built. How team play was supposed to happen.
"Gyaaaah!"
"Good grief, you're loud."
The moment we finished a set and tried to sprawl, the lecture broke over us like a storm that had been waiting for the chance.
"The situation changes every time. Taking in all the information and calling the right order isn't easy. So what are you going to do? If you want to win, you do it. Isn't that right?"
Proper leadership, Devon said, required a wide field of vision and quick arithmetic.
"The most comfortable thing would be for the two of you to learn it from me. Trouble is, that creates a problem of its own."
Jack and I were the left and right attackers. Take one of us off and plant him on the last line?
"That's a wing already broken. The other side will thank you for it. From then on they'll set out to wreck the one you've got left, and they'll mean it."
"Couldn't one of us drop into defense, and we stand up a new attacker?"
"Who?"
"Leo, maybe. He played well today..."
"Good enough, and that's the end of it. Passable as a sub. Put him on as a starter and they'll carve him up inside five minutes."
That was as far as comfortable listening went. We picked the barbells up again.
Gyaaah!
"Best case, the two of you run as the left and right wings. One attacking option and two aren't even the same game."
"Nnnnngh—!"
Then what about the defense? The question never cleared my throat. Fortunately, Devon seemed to read it off my face.
"A half-baked leader is worse than none. And forcing one into shape won't make him real. If that's the choice..."
"...?"
And if we put in two, and they put in three?
"That's your fate."
Nnngh!
The tactics talk went on for a good while after that, which was why, even with training technically over, we still had extra work to do.
Gyaaah!
No more. I can't.
"Haaah. Haaaaah."
Jack and I had just collapsed when Devon's grinning face shoved itself into view.
"Pizza, chicken, or a hamburger. Pick."
Dinner was pizza again. We didn't have the strength to choose, only to gasp, and the usual order came back around. What did it matter? I went for the cola first.
Glug.
Only then did I feel as if I might live. Devon folded two slices into one and opened his mouth enormously.
Chomp. Chomp.
He made the pizza vanish the way a crab tucks itself out of sight, then turned my way.
"Why aren't you eating?"
"I— I am."
Munch.
"You two. I'm the PE teacher, so I make you train. That's as far as it goes."
"...?"
"Just because you've decided to play rugby doesn't mean you get to forget what a student is for."
"Of course not. Whenever I can scrape together a spare minute..."
"Good. Split time you don't have, and date."
Huh?
Not studying. Dating?
We had nothing to say to that.
"Why isn't anyone answering?"
That was when Jack stepped in.
"Jihoon's popular, sir."
"Is he?"
"Yes. I bet quite a few people like him."
News to me. Even if it were true, I couldn't have cared less. Devon, plainly, felt otherwise.
"You. What's with that dried-out face?"
"Sorry?"
"Your teacher is buying you dinner and delivering a lecture on how to live, and you can't even take it down. You think it helps to sit there looking like you've already seen through the world?"
Not quite seen through it. This is just my second life.
Whatever my face was doing, Devon said only what he had come to say.
"Breathing and dating. You don't take a break from either."
"And you, sir..."
"I've been holding my breath for half a year."
He looked as if the next breath might be the one that dropped him. I almost laughed.
Still. Day after day of sweating through the work, and a meal together when it was done.
Not bad.
I smiled, pleased, and kept it to myself.
Meanwhile, in the second-year student council room.
"Pass it to the left."
Carl had gathered his classmates from the rugby side and was sending a magazine around the room. Queensman was causing such a stir that he had gone and produced a personal magazine of his own, and now that a sample had finally come off the press, he had spread it through them the moment it was delivered. They started from the last page. Carl's face went sour as he opened his mouth.
"W-well... as expected..."
Awkward laughs rose here and there before he tried again.
"So? What do you think?"
He had only just handed it out, and already he wanted a verdict. Answers came anyway, squeezed out of them.
"The... the finish is on another level."
"You can tell from the table of contents. It's different. Obviously different."
Even soulless murmuring has a limit. They were just running out of things to say, and an awkward silence was settling in, when a voice came flying through the door.
"Captain!"
We turned, and there stood the vice-captain, Ralph.
"Found it."
"What's all the noise?"
They had gone to the trouble of assembling for a critique—if you could call it that. Ralph pressed on with a face that had not a scrap of shame in it.
"Park Jihoon. You told me to find out why that punk won't stop showing off."
"And?"
"Looked into it. He's been taking private lessons from a teacher."
"Lessons?"
"Every day after school, learning rugby, from what I hear. Stuck himself right onto Devon. Means to take us on for real."
The moment Ralph finished, a scene rose in Carl's head.
The first-year representative says he has a proposal for you.
The day Park Jihoon had run his mouth, the one who called Carl out had been none other than Mr. Devon. And when the disciplinary committee convened, Devon wouldn't even write an opinion... So they thought they were being clever. That was all.
"You think rugby turns into something just because you study it?"
"That's what I'm saying."
Well, Park Jihoon was the sort who gushed as if the world belonged to him.
"...?"
"Says they're set to play the second years, so he's picking a squad."
There it was. They hadn't even given a straight answer on whether there would be trials, and he was already out front choosing a team?
"Obvious."
Yes. Already out recruiting, was he?
"Shall we get in the way?"
"Get in the way? How?"
Ralph asked. Carl gave him no answer, only a peculiar smile.
That night I took an outing pass and headed for the shop. What else was there to do? There was work, so I had to go out.
Nnngh.
A welcome face was waiting. Faber, back from the business trip.
"You're home from New York already?"
"Professor Jo Sudeok looked after me on the full course."
Even remembering it, Faber looked cowed. Jo Sudeok's full course was famous. The day you arrived, he fed you properly through dinner. From the next day on it was work, work, and more work. He called in that particular network of his, booked the schedule down to the minute, and you tore through appointment after appointment in taxis that never stopped. One hard week of that, and anyone started looking back over their own life. You cut your sleep. You thought you had been living hard... and then, what was this man? An actual monster?
Heh.
My closest man wasn't just anyone.
While I smiled a mean little smile, Faber shook his head as if he were trying to drive off an evil spirit.
"I didn't think I could afford to delay any longer, so I came straight back."
"And there were results?"
"Of course there were."
He drew a single garment out of a large box.
"The rugby shirt. The sample's in."
"How is it done already?"
"It... just got done."
Best to leave it there. Another word and he would cry.
"May I try it on?"
"I had it made to your measurements, Boss."
Wow. It really was exact. The cloth was good, too, and it held close against the body.
"A classic rugby shirt. I mixed the red that stands for Ultimate with the green that stands for Guccio."
Red and green were rarely used together, which was probably why he had set black at both ends and let that govern the tone.
Add one black, and it turns this beautiful?
That wasn't all.
"If you look at the back, there's embroidery. We matched the tone as closely as we could, so it would feel expensive."
"I like it."
"It's only a sample, so there's still room to revise..."
At that point Faber gave a small shudder.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm sorry. A bad memory came over me all at once."
"...?"
From what I gathered, Jo Sudeok had gone in hard with the mental conditioning. Along these lines.
If you are about to show the Boss anything, it must be perfect upon perfect!
Even a sample has to arrive at a quality indistinguishable from the finished piece!
That is the courtesy owed to the Boss!
The aftereffects, perhaps. Faber shook all over again.
In any case.
"Good. As design, there's nothing at all to fix."
"Y-you like it?"
"Does what I think matter? It's your work, Faber. It ought to please you."
"That's true, but... aah..."
Heh.
"While we're at it, shall we send Lukashi on a trip as well?"
"I am entirely in favor. That guy ought to take a hit too— ah, not a hit. He n-needs hard training."
I snorted. The Guccio collaboration seemed about settled.
"Designer, there's something I'd like to ask you personally."
My tone must have been different from usual. Faber cocked his head and looked at me.
"The clothes we've released so far."
"Yes, Boss."
"Thinking it over, we've only been putting out standard sizes."
"Sorry? We did try to make the range as wide as we could."
"I know. But."
"...?"
"Regrettably, the giants can't wear our clothes."
"Gi... ants?"
"So here's what I'm proposing. What if we reissued everything we've put out so far, just the big sizes, as their own run?"
"If that's what you want, Boss, we should proceed. Why ask for my opinion..."
"You designed them. Of course I should get your agreement."
"No. From now on, you don't even have to say so."
"Sorry?"
And right then, Jo Sudeok's face seemed to lay itself over Faber's. Absolute. Unquestioning. Faith, aimed at the boss. Faber, the very icon of talking back and digging in his heels, and somehow he had come to this...
Anyway. I talked it through with him, and we settled it: even a small quantity, made and reissued.
On the way out of the shop, I turned the thought over.
Big sizes.
I pictured Mr. Devon queued outside the store, and smiled, thoroughly pleased.