The freshman reluctantly decided on one of the sports. “Football,” he said.
Despite the toxic masculinity that he knew oozed out of the sport and offended his liberal tendencies, and the high contact and work that would need to be put in to become a good player, football was the one sport he knew the most about out of all of them.
The coach's eyes lit up at the sound of that. “Football. Really?”
Vincent felt instant regret at his choice, but felt that it was too late to backtrack. He slowly nodded. “Yeah. Football.”
Carter smirked. “Awesome bro.”
“That's it?” Vincent blinked.
“Yeah. You can go now,” Carter finished writing and slipped the slip of paper into a folder. He looked up and spoke to Vincent. “Again, don't forget to get one of those water bottles by the door. I got so many and I don't really need them now.”
“Alright then,” Vincent said quietly. He quickly got up, grabbed a water bottle, and sped off.
Once Vincent was out of sight, Carter felt relieved and excited. “I'm lucky that the football jock bottles we're by the door today. Vincent will be a great jock. He'll be perfect by the time construction's finished.”
Vincent didn't hear any of that of course, as he was already on his way to his dorm. When he walked in, he was tired and thirsty, and took a quick swig of the secretly tainted water.
Skylar was still there. “Where'd you go?”
“There was this posting for a new project by a new professor. He needed volunteers and stuff and I decided to join,” Vincent explained.
“New professor?”
“Yeah,” Vincent said. “His name's Carter Phelps. He's supposed to be the teacher for the new nutritional science major. Total jock kind of guy. And he's gonna be a new sports director for the school too.”
“Sports director?” Skylar sat straight up. “This is the first time I've heard of this.”
“Yeah. Apparently they're gonna have a sports program now. Anyway the project was super simple. He asked some weird questions about me and happened to involve sports at the end.”
“How was that?”
Feeling unusually thirsty, Vincent took another swig of water. “It was way better than expected. I thought it would've gone worse.”
“That's good.”
At that instant, Vincent felt a wave of sleepiness hit him. “I think all of that tired me out. I'mma hit the sack bro.” Not realizing what he said, he made his way towards his bed.
Skylar was struck by the strange language and took out his earphones. “Uh. What?”
“What?” Vincent asked, genuinely asking.
“What did you say?” Skylar asked, wondering if he heard right.
“Oh, I just said I'm tired and I'm gonna go to bed,” Vincent replied Still, the sudden change in vocabulary didn't seem to occur to him.
“Oh alright. Thought I misheard you.”
“You heard right,” Vincent muttered out before he laid down and started to sleep.
Changes start to happen while he sleeps. What happens when he wakes up from his nap?