The Name That Comforts Everyone Else
We started by loosening up in the scrum. It was me, Tennessee, and Jack, and across from us, same as last time, stood two giants well over six-foot-three, Bob among them. We lost five in a row.
But the sixth bout, the one we thought would be the last—that was where it turned. We tore into them with a will like wildfire, and with a thud and a heavy crash we finally brought them down.
Looking back, I couldn't say for certain whether we had won on real ability, or whether, with the match coming tomorrow, they had quietly let us have it to lift our spirits. There was no way to know their true intent. This much, though, was certain. The lift in morale was real. Not only the three of us who had gone into the scrum—even the four preparing for the match had spirits high enough to stab the sky.
While the mood was ours, we went straight into a practice match. Maybe we got too excited. By the end of the first half alone it was 0–5, and we were staring at a miserable score. So we gritted our teeth, hauled our focus up for the second half, and in the end we pulled two back.
Imagine losing 2–5 in soccer. A defeat, no question. But we had been smashed something like 0–9 last time, and the other side might as well have been Brazil. Set against that, we had come away with something.
And it wasn't only our imagination. After the match, Steve's reaction was nothing like before.
"Well, look at this. That kick's no joke."
I had been kicking myself half to death every night, so of course it showed. I wasn't the only one who had changed, either.
"Tennessee's come into his body, too."
I grinned. He had been running with me every single day, so—well. All that remained was to reap what the work had sown.
"Rest up with the time you've got left. Looking after your condition is a skill, too."
"Will you be coming tomorrow?"
"Course. I've got to see that Bob get smashed."
I laughed, pleased at that, and then remembered.
"Oh—right. I forgot to mention it earlier..."
"...?"
"The new Ultimate line. I hear it's being issued to the first-years."
His eyes went round for an instant. A car, perhaps, he might have wanted. Clothes, though—Steve was not the type to covet those. If the thing in question was a rugby shirt, the story changed. Knowing that, I asked it lightly.
"If you need one, shall I give you mine?"
"What?"
"I'll play the match in it, have it washed clean, and hand it over. From what I hear, it's a special make, not for sale. You couldn't buy it for money."
"...!"
His eyes wavered, but only for a moment. Perhaps he decided he had no business coveting a student's things. He shook his head, firm.
"Come on. How could I take yours? It's fi—"
"Why couldn't you take mine?"
"Huh?"
"You've seen my car."
"I—I've seen it. The Bugatti."
I drove around in a car worth more than eight million dollars. Was I going to fixate on a single rugby shirt? Put it plainly: he played the match for us, taught me how to kick, and came in person the day before the tournament to fire us up. Did he think I couldn't do even that much for a man like him? Steve read it in my eyes.
"......"
He couldn't find an answer. All he managed was to scratch at his innocent head.
An hour later, perhaps because he had heard the reporters were packing up, Carl made straight for the field. He ran the ground as if he were only warming up, and the shutters followed—click, click—every camera locked on him alone.
If I'm going to be on the news anyway...
He ran with his chest thrust as far forward as it would go, so the brand logo would read. The whole country would be watching.
The advertising is going to be murderous. You're all treating me like the villain right now, aren't you? The wicked villain, out to stamp the noble Grosvenor house into the ground. But you know what? That's how life goes. The bad guys are the ones who eat well and live well.
Carl circled the pitch as if he were shooting a fashion spread, then strolled back to the dormitory. He walked without dropping his guard, in case some reporter was still hiding somewhere.
Tch. Nobody.
He had to swallow his disappointment at the empty corridor. It was in that moment, as attention-starved Carl stepped into his room, that a paper envelope dropped to the floor with a soft tap.
What's this?
Someone had wedged a letter in the door. He opened it thinking it might be fan mail, and damn it, a name he had never expected jumped out at him.
Gilbert McGill?
The lawyer who had made a mess of every job he touched, and been thrown out ages ago. Why now? Had he brought something actually useful? Looking for work again, late as it was? Carl snorted.
Rehired. Don't make me laugh.
Trash belonged stuffed in a trash can. Once the juice was sucked out of it, the thing to do was wait for collection day. He was reading on, a thin and unpleasant smile on his mouth, when it happened all at once. He had barely managed a few lines before his face crumpled completely.
There is a matter I set aside while I was still in your employ, for fear you would raise hell if I reported it. Fortunately, I now have nothing left to answer for, so I will speak freely.
The Queensman shop; the magazine that stirs a sensation with every issue; and Ultimate, which has led the trends for months. Every result you must have wished to achieve, young master, was in fact Park Jihoon's accomplishment.
In other words, your every footstep has amounted to nothing but chasing after Park Jihoon's tail.
— Gilbert McGill
What the hell is this bullshit? The shop, the magazine, Ultimate—all of that was Tennessee, doing it because he had his eye on me!
But the documents enclosed with the letter said otherwise.
"...!"
They refuted him to his face.
Im—impossible. A kid younger than me... no help from his family... and he did all of that? And I'm supposed to believe it?
Believe it or not, the papers proved it past argument. From the first item to the last, every one of them showed that it had all been Park Jihoon's design.
"No—fuck! What the hell is that bastard!"
Carl tore Gilbert's letter to shreds.
"So what if he diiiid!"
He thinks he can beat me at real rugby? This arrogant little shit.
"Go on! Try it!"
Rage had climbed to the very top of his head.
"Aaaagh!"
He seized an innocent chair and hurled it. Crack. A perfectly good door smashed to pieces.
That night I finished my shower and lay down in my room. It was about time to sleep, and still the thoughts would not leave. Maybe because the match was tomorrow.
Rugby is only the beginning.
If the Guccio collaboration succeeded, the street Tennessee had lent me would grow into an entirely new commercial district. The hippest street in London, most likely. And once the notion began to spread among the young—that a department store was an outdated kind of space—the Harris family would feel the blow. No question of it. The trouble was how to set that first step right. The thoughts chased their own tails and arrived, inevitably, at tomorrow's match.
I had prepared hard enough that I needn't be ashamed. That much was true. But the man across from me was Carl Bernstein, someone who could debut as a professional tomorrow and no one would blink. How was I supposed to stop him? Patterns rose, one after another.
I need to sleep, and my head won't quit. At this rate I would see the dawn. I was tossing, trying to force my eyes shut, when the phone went off—rrrring.
Who is it at this hour?
I lifted the receiver, and the most welcome voice in the world came through.
"Boss, this is Jo Sudeok. I was waiting on my flight and found a moment to call."
"A flight?"
"You have a match tomorrow, don't you? Of course I have to come and cheer."
You don't have to go that far.
"I'll watch your match—and I'll get Faber's discipline back in line while I'm at it!"
Ah, Faber. I couldn't help a quiet laugh. If you had to name a single natural enemy of James Faber, it would be Jo Sudeok, no contest. After the trip to New York, the man had spent days frozen stiff.
"By now that friend of ours is about due to loosen up. And with an advertisement on the front page of the London Times, it wouldn't be strange if he went soft on the spot."
He could talk like that, and still he would look after his junior like mad. For about five minutes after that, we spoke of this and that.
"Boss, you can't sleep, can you?"
"And how did you know that?"
"Come now. Our Boss is a tremendous perfectionist, isn't he? If it's something you do with your head, you'll run the numbers again and again and close every gap... but sport, in itself, is nothing but variables..."
Given a personality like mine, it would have been strange if I could sleep. I grinned. It felt as if he knew me better than I knew myself.
"Boss."
"...?"
"Do you know how much peace of mind your name gives other people?"
It wasn't a question that needed an answer.
"......"
I waited, quiet, for whatever came next.
"I am the first example. Even when I don't understand what you're doing, I tell myself you must have your reasons, and I follow without a word. Because it's your work."
Every trace of laughter had been stripped out of it. In that moment, Jo Sudeok's voice was as serious as I had ever heard it.
"But sometimes a thought comes to me. I can be anxious, and it's enough that I trust you... but you? How on earth do you put your own mind at ease? The moment I thought that, something in my chest went tight."
"......"
"It grieves me. Even while the name Park Jihoon is giving everyone else reason to trust, there is exactly one person—only you, Boss—who takes no comfort from that name at all. Isn't that so?"
"Shall I change my name?"
I offered it as a joke, to turn the mood. At that, Jo Sudeok let out a short, empty laugh.
"You're always this way, Boss. Even in the lonely moments, when you have nowhere to lean, you simply laugh it off."
"You haven't been drinking, have you?"
And I was doing it again, even now. Rather than sit with a question that had no answer, I laughed it aside. At that, Jo Sudeok met me in kind.
"Now that you say it, I do want a drink. Do you know what that airfare cost? I'll have to get my money's worth on the plane."
A brief silence followed.
"Thank you. For calling, and for not forgetting."
The words were short, and they were sincere. After that I can't even remember what we talked about. We were both awkward; we must have rambled about anything at all. Ahem.
Anyway, I turned Jo Sudeok's words over for a good while. In short, as much as other people leaned on me, he was telling me to believe in myself as well. Warm advice I had never once heard in my previous life.
Right. Rugby or not—what did a man on his second life have to worry about?
Once I've smashed every last second-year...
Tomorrow night I would raise a glass with Jo Sudeok. Cola, if it had to be cola. I was going to. I slipped under the covers with a pleasant smile, and a little later—
"......"
I fell asleep, easy as a lie.
The morning of the match. The bathroom.
Cold water hammered from the shower, and under that stream Tennessee had been standing perfectly still for five minutes. Waking his head with cold water before a match was his routine.
To think I'd be doing this again.
It had been a year since he left the pitch. He had thought there would never be a reason to come back. That didn't mean he regretted it. As a child he had been dragged out by his tutor's hand and made to run whether he wanted to or not.
But now there's a guy with me who's something like (?) a friend. Maybe that's why.
It was definitely more fun than before.
"Hmm."
Tennessee stared hard at his body in the mirror. He had never quite got his competitive streak under control, and because he had multiplied his training in so short a span, the slim silhouette was gone without a trace. His body had changed—bulging, ridged, almost frightening.
Once the match is over, the muscle comes off first.
He pushed his lip out, as if the sight did not please him at all.