Beyond the Baseline

We make monsters out of thoughts.

ONE summer in his 5th grade, Raymond Kim played basketball for the first time.

Some kid had called him out of nowhere and asked him to fill in the missing quota to play a proper game. To be honest, Ray was in the middle of running away, really had no time to waste. But the offer was tempting, and he was curious, never having played the sport. He said sure.

His bodyguards failed to catch him that day, not expecting him to be on the downtown playing basketball with strangers.

After that one little game, Ray came to a new conclusion for his life: he just wanted to play basketball. It was probably an impulse, but it was the kind that had made him kick his blanket off in the middle of the night to turn his computer on and watch a bunch of basketball tutorials. He started to visit a particular part of the downtown regularly and joined the basketball club on the next trimester.

True to his words, he had been dedicating his life to the sport. So much that at the moment, when people his age were fretting over the possibility of ruined college life, he had the guts to trouble himself with the minutiae of basketball matches from several years prior in front of his own lunch. The loud bustling of the food court was long ignored.

“I bet he’s a freshman or worse, a newbie -- damn, he must be. That’s why he palmed a lot. How could they take a newbie to a conference game?” Ray asserted with incredulity, tossing his spoon onto his tray of food like it just burned his hand. The new discovery had shattered the grand scenarios he imagined for a conference -- or as he liked to rephrase it to his friends, regionals but fancier. He scowled to the girl studiously checking a pile of papers beside him before mumbling, “Alex, your lunch is crying.”

The girl, Alex, knew better. The guy paid no heed to her lunch. It was just a trick he employed to lure her into the topic with which, at the moment, was the last thing she wanted to bother.

Any team could pick whoever they wanted to play for all she cared. The newbie was incompetent -- fine, big deal -- so what? She didn’t even understand why palming could be much of an issue, never really educated herself concerning the sport’s rules. She chose to keep her silence but offhandedly reaching out for her spoon to feed herself.

“Alex, come on,” Ray groaned, recognizing her attempt to ignore him, “you can’t do this to me.”

“You’re not the only one who’ll be stuck in a conference, okay?” She rebuked eventually. It wasn’t like she could concentrate with Ray’s loud, constant whining in her ears anyway. “Look, you don’t have to teach ANOVA the day after tomorrow, then present the research you co-authored later in the evening.” Her left hand created a long scratch with a red marker on a graph. “These kids can’t even do f-test, and I can’t believe Mr. Roth only asked me yesterday -- yesterday! -- to present the new framework for inventory management involving the blockchain! What if they ask me about the internet of things?” Now she was the one tossing things -- the marker -- to the table. “And I know that dumb look -- you don’t understand half the things I just said, and I’m generous enough not to drag you into my problem. So if you don’t thank me, kindly shut yourself up.”

Ray first saw Alexisis Kedrova sitting unmoving on the bleacher when his team was having a time-out. He didn’t mean to glance at the audience, but the piercing gaze the girl had at the moment was like a sore thumb in between the ecstatic faces. She watched the whole court with a look full of judgment as if she was running a mental checklist. Some of his teammates had caught him staring and told him that she was a sophomore with the same major as his. Days after, when his friends were nowhere to be found, he had spotted the Alexis girl sitting alone in the courtyard and considered it as harmless to approach her.

She was a half-Russian ginger with porcelain skin, doe eyes, and small lips. Her friends dragged her into basketball games sometimes, but she still couldn’t grasp the hype (Ray had stubbornly argued that it wasn’t just a hype). Talking wasn’t exactly her favorite department, and Ray had to squint so hard to double-check that she wasn’t joking when she said she was exclusively focusing on world domination (he wasn’t even sure what she meant by it).

They had grown close, with him ranting about basketball while her about social constructs. After some time, she still didn’t understand much about basketball, but he could see a nice girl trying not to wreck her plans too much. Besides, Alexis created the best notes. They were disturbingly neat and painfully detailed, which was easy for his sometimes slow brain to digest.

Ray supposed there was a legit reason why she didn’t talk much in the first place. This. Alexis could be scary when she opened that mouth of hers. “Thank you, but the day after tomorrow?!”

Alexis wiped imaginary sweats off her forehead. Of course, he just had to stress on the most crucial part. She scooped another spoonful of mashed potato violently, making the other wince after retorting, “did I stutter?”

“You said you were gonna watch my match!”

This year’s tournament for their conference would be started tomorrow in Vegas. Their first match was scheduled later in the evening, and Ray had been anticipating his first collegiate game. They were aiming for the national championship. If his team won the conference, they would receive an automatic right to play in the nationals. He had made Alexis take an oath that she would watch his game whatever it took. But alas, the plan was tragically going down the drain, it seemed.

Well, Alexis didn’t plan to grade the quiz for another week either. But, the notice for substitution just came an hour ago, and she wasn’t going to teach some human children how to quantify the significance of things unprepared.

She massaged her nape in exasperation. “And I said if you made it into the quarterfinals.”

That was the problem. The quarterfinals were scheduled the day after the first round. The media would cover all the updates, but televisions would only broadcast the evening ones.

"If. Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Ray rolled his eyes dramatically. He watched as she fished for her phone and proceeded to fumble with it. “You’re the worst.”

“I know, so let me succumb in self-hatred alone.”

Before he could retaliate, his phone vibrated in his pocket suddenly. He took it out only to sigh at the number flashing on the screen. He then scanned his surroundings, a little bad habit he couldn’t seem to abandon -- done too often to become muscle memory. The more second he wasted not answering the call, the more possibility someone might show up and corner him with another incoming call from the same caller.

He murmured, “be right back,” to the girl distractedly before going somewhere more private.

“You don’t live there so you can betray me like this, young man.” The voice on the other end of the line was bitter.

Ray chuckled.

“Hello, father. I’m good, thanks for asking.” It felt like consoling a mad girlfriend all over again. Except, he had never had one. “What did I do?”

“You still play basketball.”

Ray had to put away his phone before spouting anything accidentally. He internally cursed at how fast news had traveled. The regular season would end soon, and who was put into the roster was a great deal, especially if they were freshmen. The media would inherently try to dig into the players’ background.

Despite his almond-shaped eyes and dark hair, Ray was born and raised in the States. He was loud when it came to basketball, but if there was anything he didn’t talk about, it was the fact that his father was the president of KS Group, the leading energy and telecommunications company in South Korea. Brian Kim had let his son live in the States with the intention to prepare him to be the next successor, plus shield the boy away from unwanted public attention.

Brian knew about Ray’s interest in basketball -- people must be blind if they didn’t notice. But he only regarded it as a mere hobby, a child’s crush. Hence, he let the boy indulge himself in the sport as long as Ray kept his records clean as the next successor.

On the other hand, the supposed child’s crush had bloomed into a dream in no time. Ray wanted to become a professional athlete at the same time he knew what his old man was capable of. His father had numberless connections. It was a walk in the park for his father to interfere and make a 180 to his life. He thought, however, if he showed his father that it wasn’t all for naught, he would make it eventually.

Ray just had to be careful with his response.

“I didn’t know I shouldn’t. Is there a problem, father?”

“Putting up a defense only to strike it down with an offense,” he could hear Adam mocking him inside his head.

When his father didn’t respond immediately, Ray knew he would survive this. He was active in the court, yes, but that wasn’t the only game he played. Steadily, he had been keeping his position at the top 10 percent of his class. Except for the fact that balancing his life between classes and practices was disorienting, there was nothing about which his father should worry. Ray was doing more than fine.

“Start doing internships, son. It would be good to improve your experience in business later.”

Ray inaudibly sighed. Sometimes he wished his father would just straight up forbid him to play basketball, so he didn’t have to play nice anymore. “I barely start my first year, father. I don’t think I’m adequate for any job now.”

“That’s nonsense, young man.” Of course. Anyone could start doing an internship since their first year. But for an obvious reason, he had no time for an internship, nor planned of having one. “I can ask my connection to --”

“You said it’s for my experience.” Jeez, too quick. He cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t it be part of the experience? Me, landing a job by my own effort. Besides, we don’t want the public to know about me yet, do we?”

“You’re right, son. I know I can always rely on you.”

Ray blinked. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He was positive he wouldn’t see anything, yet when the call ended, there was a chill creeping on his back.