NHL 64

To lose to a hockey team from that hot region, of all places! And to top it off, they are considered championship contenders every single year!

This fact always managed to touch a nerve with Canadians. For a country that considers hockey its national sport to lose to Florida!

Although today was neither a playoff game nor a team-versus-team match, and the opposing player was only affiliated with Florida but was actually a Canadian-born Canadian player, Dylan summoned his focus as seriously as an athlete competing in the Winter Olympics.

He had completely forgotten that he had bumped into Kevin before leaving the hotel, who had tapped his shoulder and said, “Have fun!”

Alison, the host, said:

“Alright, Dylan. This is your final attempt. The clock starts when you hit the puck!”

As soon as she finished speaking, Dylan swung his stick. The sensor-equipped pucks began to go into the four goal nets one by one. The lights of the sensors connected to the nets changed from red to green one by one.

When he succeeded in making the shot on the smallest and therefore highest-difficulty goal net in one go without a mistake, cheers erupted from the crowd. Reclaiming his focus which had almost faltered for a moment, Dylan hit the final puck toward the center goal net.

The timer stopped, and a round of applause burst forth.

“Congratulations, Dylan! That’s a new record!”

Only then was Dylan able to turn his body to face the people cheering for him and the cameras with their red tally lights on.

A broadcast aired live nationwide. For some reason, those words suddenly crossed his mind.

Looking at the camera, Dylan made a ‘dazzling, intoxicating smile’ that he had never consciously made before. He even added a cheesy gesture toward the camera.

If people found his smile attractive, he was willing to show it as much as they wanted. He only needed one person watching this broadcast to fall for him. He didn’t need anyone else.

The spectators surrounding the stage cheered. As if to celebrate the end of the event game and the new record, the fountain show began. Standing there in his uniform against the backdrop of the hotel’s splendid landscaping and lighting, Dylan was an unreal subject, as if painted into a picture. The composition was so perfect that it could be mistaken for a scene from an advertisement pictorial.

The camera focused on the winner of the event game for a very long time.

And that night, upon returning to his hotel room, Dylan began to regret it intensely.

This was because he had received countless short videos made by his friends as well as everyone he knew, capturing his smile and pointing out the cheesy scene from the broadcast. His phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

Not all the messages he received were praising his cinematic scene. Most of his friends had reached out just to tease him.

Some guys sent emojis of people vomiting, saying it was cringey, while most were laughing until they cried, asking what on earth that was. There was even a guy who gave a critique that was half-serious and half-joking, asking if he had finally been devoured by a ‘capitalist smile’ after shooting a few pictorials. Some guy even sent a video with a playful caption like, ‘Call me, advertiser.’

“To think these idiots are my lifelong friends.”

Those who knew Dylan’s personality knew that he wasn’t a person who tried to look cool in a genuine way. That was why his artificial smile and gestures, which looked as if he had caught a ‘celebrity disease,’ had turned into an object of mockery.

“It’s obvious that the person who needed to see it didn’t, and only useless people saw it.”

Dylan let out his frustration while sending a reply that was friendly yet blunt, telling them to shut up.

The person he actually wanted to hear from was someone else, but there was no contact from him. He felt unfairly wronged for no reason.

Dylan, who had flopped onto the hotel bed, forced his hair, which was still wet from having just finished a shower, back and rested the back of his hand on his forehead.

He was in the middle of some useless imagination about what Joeon might be doing right now.

‘Did he see it?’

It didn’t matter even if it had only bought him ridicule instead of looking cool. He would rather have him see the video and laugh at how absurd it was. He wasn’t a teenager experiencing first love. It was pathetic to the extreme, but he was thinking to that extent. It was a thought that even the real teenage Dylan, who had fallen in love for the first time, hadn’t had.

“Ah, ah. Let’s get a grip.”

It was then, as Dylan got up from the bed to dry his hair and was heading toward the bathroom while still in his bathrobe, that—

Knock, knock.

It was the sound of someone knocking on the hotel room door.

Dylan, who looked out through the door’s peephole, tilted his head with a puzzled expression. There was no one in the hallway. Just as he was about to ignore it and turn away, thinking he had misheard, the sound of knocking came once more.

“Who is it?”

Someone outside the door mumbled in a low voice. However, there were no clearly understandable words. After much deliberation, Dylan engaged the safety chain and opened the door. His eyes, which had widened with suspicion, soon turned round upon confirming the visitor.

“Lucas!”

Taking care not to get Lucas’s fingers caught between the doors, Dylan unlocked the safety chain and ran out into the hallway in his bathrobe as soon as he opened the door. He bent his knees to meet the eye level of his small, cute guest, and then picked him up.

“Surprise!”

A little further away in the middle of the hallway, his sister and her husband, Lucas’s parents, were standing while holding Riley. Behind them, his parents were there as well.

“What is this, everyone? Hello, baby girl.”

Though bewildered because he didn’t know how things were unfolding, Dylan first greeted his second niece, Riley, who had just turned two years old. He soon relaxed his tension, reached out one arm, and shared a light hug with the rest of his family.

“Ashley, Rob, Mom, Dad, welcome. How have you all been?”

“What would be any different for your mother or me? We’ve been doing well, just as always.”

“That’s right, I heard you took first place in the event today? Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“Was there prize money? How much is it?”

“Hmm, maybe about $30,000?”

“What?”

“How much?”

Ashley and Rob, the couple, exclaimed in surprise at the same time. Riley, who was being held in Rob’s arms, covered both ears with the hand that had been holding her attachment doll.

“Oh, sorry, sweetie.”

“Wow… what are you going to use that for?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

To be precise, he didn’t have time to think about such things. Because Dylan had been busy with other thoughts the whole time.

“That was an amazing event. It would have been better if we could have watched it by cheering on-site in person. But to do that, we would have had to take a morning flight, but the schedule didn’t work out, you see.”

Rob felt genuinely regretful. However, since it was Friday, the late flights must have been much more expensive. Considering that point, it was presumed that there must have been an unavoidable reason they couldn’t match the schedule.

Fortunately, Dylan, who had been in his professional career for over three years, was already accustomed to situations where his family couldn’t consistently come to watch his games. Instead, if there was one thing he felt newly these days, it was that he wished someone else could fill the space that his parents, sister, and nieces and nephews used to fill.

“It’s alright, Rob. It’s a relief that you arrived today. At least you won’t miss the real game tomorrow. Anyway, what about your hotel?”

“We got a hotel right next door. There weren’t any rooms available here, you see?”

“Still, it was a relief that it was a short walk away.”

Ashley and Rob continued the conversation one after another, as a married couple does. Thanks to that, Dylan was busy looking at Ashley, then Rob, then Riley, and was completely flustered. His parents, who were watching the family reunion behind Ashley and Rob with satisfied smiles, checked their wristwatches and signaled with their fingers as if to remind them not to forget.

“Wait, first of all, I think you need to do something about those clothes. It’s not polite to other people.”

“Oh, sorry. I’ll go change.”

Dylan, who looked down at his bathrobe at his father’s remark, smiled while holding Lucas and moved his steps toward the bedroom.

“Wow, the room is really huge! Is it a suite?”

Dylan shrugged his shoulders as if embarrassed and left it at that.

“Hmm? You look different today?”

“Rob, honey. Look at that Strip night view over there. Isn’t it cool?”

“It’s beautiful. Shall we swap keys in secret?”

“Shall we?”