Don't Fear Defeat
A moment ago I hadn't thought much of them at all. Maybe it was only that someone had called them our practice opponents, but they looked different now. As you'd expect of university men, they were plainly a class above in the physical department.
The one who stood out first was a Black man who looked a good two meters tall.
Is that a body, or a suit of armor?
He carried a pressure unlike Devon's. Beside him stood a white man about my own height. Did he hold some important place on the team?
"Set it up."
"Okay."
At the white man's word they all moved as one. My guess was that he was both leader and attacker, and that the big Black man was the heart of the defense.
Hm. Carl and Ralph from the second year, copied and pasted.
He must have read my face. Devon shrugged.
"Think I dragged in just anybody?"
"The washed-out one's Steve. Upper tier even among the pros. Dark one's Bob. Looks like a general, but he doesn't earn that size. Defense is decent enough, though."
Boiled down to a line, it meant there was no better opposition anywhere for getting ready for the second-years.
"How should we fight them?"
"Hm?"
"Strategy. You are our coach, at least in name..."
"You think strategy's going to work?"
"...?"
"Just go out there and thrash."
As if the match were a tape he'd already watched, Devon let a strange little smile slip. Fair enough. He had said that white man was upper-tier even among professionals, and it wasn't empty talk. The speed was one thing. Then came the change of direction—instant, absurd.
Practically Ronaldo.
I was an attacker myself, so I wouldn't have to mark him often. Tennessee, though, the heart of our defense, would be colliding with that man the whole way through. The boy was fiercely competitive as it was. If he got properly broken...
He'll be on about staying late to train every single day again.
Worry got there ahead of me. I scratched at a head that hadn't done anything to deserve it.
Just before the match, my year gathered of its own accord around Tennessee. We hadn't officially settled on a captain. Still, he was the only one among us who had actually been selected, and he led the defensive line, so it was only natural that he should become the center of the team.
The man himself seemed to see it very differently.
Park Jihoon. You built this stage.
That was the message Tennessee sent with his eyes.
Getting us ready for the second-years, even serializing the whole thing in a magazine so the effect would be squeezed dry—all of it is your work. The captaincy is obviously yours too!
He was only being lazy. The excuse, though...
Anyway. Perhaps because Tennessee's eyes stayed on me so long, the others' gazes drifted quietly my way as well. If I'd had no ability at all, that would have been one thing. I was the surest attacking option we had, and so they waited for me to speak with reasonably grave faces.
This feels awkward, in a way I can't quite name.
How could it not? My previous life had sat a long way from anything you'd call the in-crowd. Sweat, cooperation, that whole romance of youth...
Honestly, I'd never even imagined it.
The mercy was that this was a second life. Which was to say I could take the last one as raw material and change as much as I pleased.
"Don't be afraid of losing."
I had once heard a story about the Go player Lee Sedol. At the very height of his prime, when no one could stand as his rival, the younger professionals who faced him played with a miserable passivity. A loss was inevitable, they figured, so they might as well avoid the humiliation. Lee Sedol, it seemed, could not stand that.
"Why didn't you stake the game?"
"If I'd fought there, I might have been routed..."
"Lose by half a point or lose in a rout—you're losing either way, aren't you? If you're a gambler, gamble like one. You should have hunted for one decisive blow all the way to the end."
Hearing that story, I could take the measure of the man called Lee Sedol. Here was someone who did not fear defeat. No. More than that, he could never forgive himself for fearing it.
Turning the anecdote over, I went on slowly.
"If we're going to lose, then let's lose playing our game."
A jolt went through them.
"Don't run. Don't give ground. Play it the way rugby is meant to be played. Eyes forward, and nothing but forward."
I had barely finished.
"Haaaa!"
Jack exploded all at once, like a soldier waking his own spirit on the edge of a battlefield.
"Haaaaaaaa!"
He drove his voice higher still. Had it caught the others? No one waited to be first. Hands reached in.
"One."
"Two."
"Let's go!"
A moment later we spilled onto the pitch.
Devon's whistle split the air, and the match was on. The first attack was ours.
Bob, he had called him. I had distinctly heard that the Black man commanded the defensive line, and yet Bob was out in the front row. The very rear, by contrast, belonged to the attacker, Steve.
What is this?
The ball came to Jack with a soft thud, and he looked just as puzzled. Maybe that was why he used the moment to probe, breaking into a light, crisp start. Even by adult standards his sprint sat at the extremely fast end. That much was true. The other side was not flustered in the slightest. Two defenders first held a set gap and closed around him. Jack flicked a glance, pretending to check the wing, then accelerated between them instead, like a race car openly flooring it down a straight. He tore away as if he had decided to finish the thing.
Astonishingly, the winner was Jack. Fully grown men had opened a road for a boy years their junior.
And yet, why? They showed not a shade of alarm. By the time Jack sensed that something was wrong—
"Right side!"
Bob had already thrown himself at him. Taking that huge tackle square on, Jack went flying, his body helpless in the air. He fought viciously to keep the ball, but Bob snatched it the way you rip the tape off a box.
In that instant Devon's verdict on Bob came back to me.
Looks like a general, but he doesn't earn his size.
That's not earning his size?
I turned my head, dumbfounded, and Devon winked at me.
Mm-hmm. By my standards.
Oh, for—
What else was there to do? First we had to kill the counter. I had been sure he would use that bulk and burst out on his own. Instead Bob bounced the ball off the turf, clenched his teeth, and smashed a kick.
Rugby does not allow a forward pass. Give the ball to someone already ahead of it, and that is a plain offside. You may, however, kick into empty space and let a teammate who was behind surge up and take it. Fine. In the rugby people only talk about, what couldn't you do? The astonishing part was that they actually attempted the play that ought to have lived only in talk.
The man shooting forward like a cheetah was none other than Steve. I had thought him nailed to the very back, and already he was ripping across our half.
How is he this fast?
The ball dropped into the corner of the wing. Gary went for it first.
"Nngh..."
Unsure of his own speed, he checked for an instant, and Steve took the ball anyway. Gary backpedaled and opened the distance. Better to give ground than to stick to him halfway and get turned inside out at a stroke. But in the moment the gap opened, Steve drove the ball in his hands down into the turf and planted his standing foot with everything he had.
He's shooting from there?
In soccer terms it was a spot with no angle at all, the kind of place you would strike a corner from. Even so, Steve laid the top of his foot into it as if he had meant to from the start.
Impossible.
As if to mock the thought, the ball bent in like a boomerang and crossed the H of the posts with room to spare.
Ha.
Kick a soccer ball that hard and the accuracy falls apart. And this was possible with a rugby ball?
In rugby, the team that scores keeps the ball. So once again we had no choice but to defend, their attack rolling on before we could even gather ourselves. Naturally, they funneled possession to Steve. Step by step, as if nothing were urgent, he came slowly into our half. Close in a hurry and he would beat you with pace. Hang off, afraid of the dribble, and he would shoot the way he just had. While we could do neither, Steve suddenly shifted up a gear.
Damn it. Seeing it coming didn't mean we had to stand there and take it.
"Stick to him!"
Jack and I went in one after the other. Seal him left and right, and even a Steve like that would run short of choices. In that instant he swayed his body from side to side.
A body feint.
By the time I read it, he had already burst toward Jack. Jack was the fastest man we had, and still there was no answering that sudden speed. Left with no choice, he tried to stop him even with a foul. Steve dropped the ball and threaded a ground pass between Jack's legs. Astonishingly, it arrived dead under Bob's foot out on the wing—technique you could not even dream of at schoolboy level. They say the players at the very peak play rugby the way other people play soccer. Steve was exactly that.
The one mercy was that Devon blew his whistle.
"Offside!"
Had he judged them level? Steve squinted one eye, looking as though he regretted it.
"Both teams—prepare the scrum!"
In soccer a foul changes who has the ball. Rugby is different. For a minor infringement both sides pack a scrum and have to fight the possession out of it. Three of us went in: Jack on the left, me in the center, Gary on the right. Hands on one another's shoulders, we braced.
A human bullfight, they call it—three bodies moving like one machine to overwhelm the pack opposite. The problem was that Bob stood on the other side. The other two looked at least a hundred and ninety centimeters themselves. Just facing them, the pressure came through.
"Ready!"
My head went against his shoulder, and his head against mine. There was a brief war of nerves, like fighters taking the first hold on the sash in Korean wrestling, and then the whistle cracked to start it.
"Gyaaaah!"
Jack's roar led us, and we took the first step. And what was this? Shove as we might, it was like pushing a wall. They did not yield so much as a tremor. Then they came forward, and our back feet slid without resistance. Drops of sweat fell onto the grass.
Damn it. We couldn't give ground without even getting our strength into it once.
"Get low!"
I bellowed, and Jack and Gary clamped hard onto my back.
"Legs!"
If we were losing for raw strength, the only answer was to move as truly one body.
"Now!"
Sadly, Gary's strength was spent, and he was a beat late. He dropped to one knee, and with a rush the scrum collapsed.
They had won the ball. Without a shred of hesitation they struck it at our posts, and of course it was Steve again. Last time he had put spin on it. This time, perhaps because he was square to the goal, it flew straight and crossed between the posts with room to spare.
Sir. You said you brought a side built with the second-years in mind. This is... right?
I looked back at Devon.
You know I've always had a generous hand.
He was smiling, brilliantly bright. For heaven's sake.
The complaint lasted only a moment.
Don't run. Don't give ground. Play it the way rugby is meant to be played. Eyes forward, and nothing but forward.
Quietly, I turned over the words I had given my classmates.