A Friend You Shouldn't Casually Provoke
If you asked what Nayun and Yeoncheong had in common, games and physical activities would be the first things to come to mind. Add one more condition—a place perfect for blowing off steam—and only a single option remained.
As several candidates came to mind, the question was where they were actually headed.
Had the two friends never even been there before? After following their friends, who were leading the way with nothing but a map to rely on, for quite a long walk—
"Ta-da!"
Suyeon thrust her face forward, pointing at a screen baseball center on the second floor of a building.
"What do you think? Pretty fresh choice, right?"
"...I guess so."
Yeoncheong had been expecting, at most, an escape room café, and the fact that they'd picked a place typically frequented by young men was surprising.
Could it be a choice made with her—former man that she was—in mind?
"Oh! The escape room café. So that's where it was."
But judging by the two friends clapping their hands at each other, they'd simply forgotten it existed entirely.
When asked if they wanted to head there instead, everyone shook their heads.
They didn't want to rack their brains again on a day they'd already racked them just getting here, and nobody was so desperate for an escape room that they'd change destinations after arriving.
Even the two original proposers agreed to save it for another time.
Yeoncheong and her friends filed into the building, and Nayun muttered while reading a notice posted on the stairwell wall.
"...Don't you usually have to make a reservation for places like this?"
"Oh, yeah?"
When Suyeon—who had never even been near a screen baseball center—looked at her, Nayun just shrugged.
"I wouldn't know either. It's a weekday, so maybe we're fine."
"You've been here before?"
Yeoncheong looked at her too.
Hasol and Seoha went without saying—she'd never actually come here to play herself, so she had no idea.
Her friend, who had been grumbling just moments ago, seemed to ponder for a bit before her lips moved.
"With family, once or twice? My dad loves baseball."
So her fondness for basketball was partly the family influence, then.
Her anger seemed to have cooled somewhat with time—she was answering every question readily enough.
An unexpected variable either way.
Telling them to wait a moment, Suyeon went into the shop alone.
"Guys! We're in!"
A little later, her friend cracked open the glass door, poked her head out, and beckoned them inside eagerly.
***
The shop owner, too, stared at them with curious eyes, saying it was his first time seeing a group of girls come in together.
Nayun might have played once or twice, but the rest of them were practically beginners all the same, so the five of them followed the owner's recommendation into a long rectangular room.
They were just taking interest in the waiting area and batting cages divided by safety netting, and the giant screen filling the entire far wall, when—
At some point, Yeoncheong had already grabbed a bat, her lips moving.
"How are we splitting teams?"
Everything was great, except that with five people, this was the one thing that gave her a headache.
"Two and two. Random split is obviously the best."
"If you don't want random, play rock-paper-scissors with Nayun and divvy up the teams yourselves."
These two were the type to get competitive over everything in PE class anyway—maybe that's why, after their earlier bickering.
Naturally, Yeoncheong and Nayun ended up on opposite sides.
The moment their eyes met, both raised their fists on reflex—
"I'll sit out. Split the rest two and two."
Seoha's casual attempt to slip away threw the others off.
If that was the plan, she should've said so from the start. Who backs out after already coming inside? When her friends pressed her with worried questions—Are you feeling sick or something?
She offered only a vague excuse that it just wasn't her thing.
Watching her friend with a strange sense of déjà vu, Yeoncheong remembered the beach and her lips curled.
"Don't tell me... baseball is one of those things you can't do, like swimming?"
"What?"
As that pretty face scrunched up, Yeoncheong thought, so that's it.
It had seemed strange for Seoha to give up a golden opportunity to justifiably snap 'you can't play for your life' at someone—but if it was about skill, it made perfect sense.
She was avoiding it because she'd be the one hearing that kind of talk.
Perhaps delighted at finally catching her friend out, a smile bloomed on Yeoncheong's face as she tilted her bat, planted on the floor, this way and that.
"Ha... well, nothing I can do about it then. I'd feel bad forcing you to do something you can't."
"Did something happen to your ears? I said it's not my thing."
"It's fine, it's fine~ everyone has at least one thing they can't do. Ah, or is it two?"
A provocation delivered with the most saintly of smiles.
Finally, Seoha picked up a bat and pointed it at Yeoncheong.
"I'm on Nayun's team. The rest of you figure it out. Losing team does a penalty."
Watching her daengcheongi friend open up yet another front while already locked in conflict with Nayun, the others all shook their heads.
***
Nayun's team: Nayun, Hasol, Seoha.
Yeoncheong's team: Yeoncheong, Suyeon.
With the teams settled by rock-paper-scissors, the game began at once.
And it unfolded exactly as predicted(?)—Yeoncheong's team dominated.
Balls struck squarely on the fat of the bat flew like bullets, streaking across the screen and sailing over the fence as the word HOME RUN flashed in huge letters.
"Nice!"
After taking a few practice swings to find her rhythm—
This time too, she proved her own words right: Yeoncheong simply excelled at every ball sport that involved using your hands.
"Whoa! Yeoncheong, you're amazing!"
"Seriously... the balls are practically flying in begging to be hit. I wish they'd throw us some like that, too."
Suyeon had transformed into a one-woman cheering squad, while Nayun cursed the pitching machine for no reason at all.
Nayun's team, on the other hand—even with the sole veteran Nayun getting on base, the rallies kept dying during Hasol and Seoha's at-bats.
None of her friends had bad athleticism by any means, but baseball was new to all of them, and their bodies kept getting dragged along by the bats.
"Nice pop fly!"
Seoha in particular was a walking black hole.
No matter how earnestly she swung, trying her hardest to make contact, every at-bat ended in a pop fly, and any lingering resentment from her tussle with Nayun had long since evaporated in the scramble to tease her instead.
As Seoha stared blankly at the ball's trajectory on the screen, Yeoncheong spoke up.
"Admit it now and I might go easy on you? Last offer."
As it happened, the venue was a screen baseball center with nice, featherlight bats, so she'd set getting whacked on the butt as the penalty.
The game had already turned on its heel around the fifth inning anyway.
With victory half-settled, she was extending one last act of mercy—
"Don't you know the saying? It ain't over till it's over."
Seoha trotted back to the waiting area, a famous baseball maxim on her lips.
Hasol went in for her turn, and Nayun sidled up beside Yeoncheong, tapping her side and cautiously parting her lips.
She too had been so focused on the game that the earlier squabble was ancient history.
"Hey, ease up on the teasing. What's your plan if you lose because of it?"
"There's barely anything left before the ninth. And it's not like the game has to go nine, right? If there's no hope after the regulation innings are up, she'll give up."
Glancing carefully at Seoha, Yeoncheong lowered her voice even further to a whisper.
"Besides, I almost never get chances to mess with her."
Leaving behind her snickering friend as she watched Hasol's at-bat—
'She's only saying that because the mood feels dangerous right now. That daengcheongi.'
Nayun stole a glance at Seoha, sitting alone in the corner of the waiting area.
"The sensors aren't all that precise. I can't hit like Yeoncheong does, so I'm focusing on accuracy. Going by how many of her long hits roll down the line, that zone calls generously for her. We're down eight, so chasing on offense is doable. The problem's the defense... Yeoncheong hits like she's deciding where the ball goes, which makes it hard to shift the fielders... so I'll have to target Suyeon, and then..."
There sat Hwaryeong High's finest academic prodigy, muttering darkly as she calculated the formula for victory.
***
Though no actual wind blew into the sealed room, the southeast gale arrived remarkably quickly.
"Ah..."
"Suyeon. It's okay. It's okay."
It was a perfectly squared-up hit, but the ball unfortunately flew straight at a fielder.
Building on the defensive positioning Seoha had adjusted, the brakes went on Yeoncheong's team's offense, and—
Tok.
"Seoha, nice!"
"Wait, are you not fielding? How does that ball roll all the way out there and turn into a triple?!"
With Nayun playing the role of setter, Hasol steadily finding her footing, and Seoha producing bizarre results through ruthless analysis—
The gap between the two teams began to close fast.
Now the game showed real potential for a comeback.
Suyeon, too, glanced at her teammate as the penalty started flashing before her eyes.
"Yeoncheong. Are you sure this is okay?"
Yeoncheong, meanwhile, had at some point started waiting for the venue's basic rental time to run out. She planned to end the game early—paying extra fees to play to the end was simply too expensive.
Even if she got called spineless and pathetic, surviving came first.
Maybe the midterms had worn them out after all—not just Seoha, but Nayun and Hasol alike were channeling superhuman concentration in pursuit of the comeback.
Just as the seventh of nine innings was beginning, the message she'd been waiting for arrived.
Putting on her most tragically apologetic expression, she suggested they call it quits now—but Seoha stepped up to the plate, lips curling.
"I'll pay for everything."
"...Huh?"
"Tell them we're playing to the end. Money is something I have rotting in piles."
A devastating, heart-stopping line.
Yeoncheong's heart did skip—but that was exactly the problem.
'...We're screwed...'
Because the meaning behind it was a little different.
***
A fierce, one-run affair.
While Hasol and Nayun threw their arms around each other in celebration, Seoha—having closed out the game with her own hands—wiped her sweat and stepped out of the batter's box.
And then—
"Yeoncheong. Hands on the wall, butt out. Now."
Penalty time had arrived.
Thwip. Thwip.
Light as it was, the bat's speed made it all the more menacing, and before its threatening whistle, Yeoncheong knelt down meekly.
"Um... if you'd just spare my life..."
"Pfft. Yeoncheong, anyone watching would think I'm about to kill you. It's just a penalty swat on the butt."
Seoha smiled, swinging with a crisp, clean arc completely unlike anything she'd shown during the game.
Aren't you the one looking at me like you're about to kill me right now...? Yeoncheong swallowed the words and gazed up at her friend with wounded eyes.
Buried as she was in memories of the beach—
It had never once crossed her mind that 'not my thing' really meant not my thing.
"N-not a full swing, right?"
"Who knows?"
This was absolutely going to be a full swing.
She'd always known she'd pay it back someday, but she hadn't expected the debt to come due with this much interest, and now she fretted over how to survive the crisis.
"Maybe a full swing with a bat really is too harsh?"
Then Seoha, just as Yeoncheong had done before her, extended mercy.
Instantly sensing this was her final chance, Yeoncheong shook her head hard.
"Y-yes! Of course. No matter how light the bat, taking a full swing to the butt is a problem."
"Right. That's what I thought too."
Crouching down to meet her at eye level, Seoha raised the hand that wasn't holding the bat.
"Then choose. The bat, or my hand?"
"Huh?"
"I'm not asking twice. Bat or hand. Pick one."
What Seoha meant was perfectly clear.
Pure physical pain. Or layered, shame-infused pain. Choose one of the two.
Yeoncheong agonized over this diabolical dilemma, a torture on par with choosing between spicy rice cakes and malatang.
She doubted Seoha would actually go full swing with the bat, but considering how she'd been teased earlier, it would be stranger if she didn't.
But taking it by hand—beyond the pain, there was the other problem, the one that mattered.
"Decided?"
Being granted the right to choose was, truly, the cruelest part.
"The bat is a guaranteed full swing... right?"
To her final question, Seoha only smiled sweetly.
After a long stretch of whimpering and groaning—
In the end, Yeoncheong batted her friend's bat far away and planted both hands on the wall.
"It's over the instant my hand lands. Understood?"
"Got it. Go on and stick that butt out nice and far for me."
The blushing loser squeezed her eyes shut and thrust her hips back.
Seoha calmly straightened her clothes, even smoothing down Yeoncheong's rumpled outfit, remarking that a skirt would have at least cushioned the blow a little.
A moment later, a faint breeze from behind.
Realizing the hand was winding back and forth, Yeoncheong held her breath—and Seoha, catching on, whispered in a voice only her friend could hear.
"Yeoncheong. Don't get any lewd ideas. Because you provoked me so carelessly, I'm hitting you for real."
"What's that supposed to mea—hngk—!"
CRACK!
With a final syllable cut short, Yeoncheong crumpled to the floor, and Seoha declared her turn over, passing the baton on.
Nayun giggled down at her, sprawled out clutching her backside.
"Hey, should we make the rest of us pick between hand and bat too?"
"You're dead..."
Nayun, following Seoha's lead, forced everyone into the same impossible choice, while Hasol administered her penalties with light little taps of the bat—and as all this unfolded, Seoha approached Suyeon, who had been watching everything from the side.
"Suyeon. You have to take your penalty too."
"What?"
Having just witnessed her friend collapse the instant she was hit with that dangerous sound, Suyeon instinctively backed away.
"Penalties have to be done properly. You're on the same team, aren't you? Don't worry, I'll hit you more gently than I hit Yeoncheong."
"No, wait—AAAAH!"
That day, once the penalties were duly paid and they emerged back onto the street—
Neither Yeoncheong nor Suyeong would sit on anything that wasn't a chair with a nice plush cushion.