The Princess's Warning
The afternoon after training ended.
"Huh?"
The moment I arrived at the dorm, I was hit with a bolt-from-the-blue piece of news.
I had originally been sharing a room with a senior from the pitching staff, but for some reason, my room number had been changed. My new roommate was Park Jin-mo.
This won't be easy.
Things had gotten a lot better these days, but I'd heard that back in the old days, seniors routinely made their roommates run all sorts of errands. Park Jin-mo had lived through that era himself, and as I'd seen in the earlier training sessions, he was a man with a real talent for putting people to work.
I took a deep breath, arranged my expression, and opened the door.
"Hello, sir."
"Oh, you're here?"
The senior was sprawled on his bed playing a game on his phone, glancing up at me only briefly.
"If you're going to share a room with me, there's one thing you absolutely have to do."
"And what would that be?"
"Wash my practice clothes."
He gave a little shrug of his shoulders.
"I'll handle everything else, so don't worry about it."
"Understood!"
A junior doing laundry was a perfectly ordinary arrangement in a sports team, after all. My face must have brightened at how simple the condition turned out to be, because the senior started snickering.
"You seem awfully pleased? Were you expecting me to ask for something weird?"
"No, sir."
"Having you fidget around me would be more uncomfortable. Just relax."
With that, he went right back to his phone game. Still, lying down completely felt like it would be pushing my luck, so I pulled out the materials my uncle had passed along.
The file contained brief profiles and characteristic notes on KBO players. Since my memories of the pro scene had grown hazy after all my time in the White Room, it was genuinely useful material.
I was deep in the file when—
"What are you doing?"
"Ah!"
I hadn't sensed the senior approaching until he was right in front of my face, and I jumped.
"I was reading the league players' guidebook."
"Mind if I take a look?"
"Of course not."
He skimmed through the document and handed it back.
"This from your agent?"
"Yes, sir."
"I've got something similar. Let's see here~"
Age couldn't hide everything, apparently. Humming a tune at the end of his sentence, the senior rummaged through his bag and pulled out a notebook, handing it over.
"Here. Copy what you need and give it back."
"What is this?"
"My observation journal on our team's pitchers."
As I carefully examined the notebook's contents, I found myself speechless.
"Wow…"
The pages held everything from the Hawks pitchers' habits to their routines, tendencies, and points of caution.
So there's a reason he's lasted this long.
He came across as a pretty easygoing guy on the surface, but it must have been this constant, invisible effort that had kept him surviving in the league all these years.
I immediately bowed to him at a full ninety degrees.
"Thank you, sir."
"Ah, enough of that."
He nudged me with his elbow, grinning warmly.
"You know what they say—catchers are beggars. Beggars have to look out for each other."
"Still, this can't have been easy to compile."
"You're not the only one I'm sharing it with. I gave it to Dong-hyuk too."
He joked that since he'd helped us both, one of us should hurry up and push him to the bench already.
"Since I'm at it, I'll teach you the team's basic signs too."
"I'll write them all down, sir."
"I don't do this for just anyone, you know. I'm telling you because you seem like you actually work hard."
The one-on-one lesson that began that way continued even after we came back from dinner.
"Most of the guys are decent, but there's an outfielder, Lee Won-taek. Don't get close to him. He's exhausting."
"Lee Won-taek, sir?"
He was our starting right fielder—not exactly a standout talent, but among the outfielders, he had a reputation as the only one who was remotely civil.
"Why not?"
"He's not a bad guy, but he loves his liquor… actually, never mind. Just don't hang around him."
It's not like we're getting married… but fine, he said stay away.
Questions cropped up, but I decided pressing further would be impolite, so I simply answered that I understood.
On the third day of spring camp, we held an intrasquad game.
I was paired with Kim Hyun-woo.
"Your repertoire is fastball, two-seamer, slider, knuckle curve, cutter, and changeup, correct?"
"Oh. You've got them all memorized?"
"I learned them with my own body."
It really was true that a big leaguer played by different standards—even throwing that many pitches, not a single one felt lacking in quality.
Blocking those breaking balls was brutal.
The only reason his fastball had lost velocity was the shoulder surgery. Had I faced him in his prime, I would have been in for a world of trouble at the plate.
I took out the PitchCom and handed it to him.
"I'll set my target wherever you call your pitches, sir."
"No, today you call it the way you want to."
"Excuse me?"
A rookie just barely making his debut, calling pitches for a veteran pitcher in his eighteenth pro season?
When I shook my head desperately, the senior smiled and said,
"Even if I gave up ten runs in one inning out here, the club isn't going to drop me from the starting rotation."
"……"
"But the experience of calling a game for a pitcher? That's not something you can pick up easily anywhere else."
He wasn't wrong. Whether I'd stay on the first team or get sent down to Seosan with the second team, I didn't know. But most of the pitchers I'd be working with would be my seniors.
"The catcher's the lady of the house. Do it just like you did in high school—make yourself comfortable."
"Understood."
"And if we botch the game, I'll just say I called the pitches. Don't worry about it."
I thanked him from the bottom of my heart.
I guess I was born lucky when it comes to people.
Back when I was trapped in the White Room, I'd thought I was the unluckiest person alive. But my uncle was like this, and now Park Jin-mo was too. Every one of them was doing their utmost to help me adjust to professional life.
No—it's because my skills grew in the White Room. That's the right way to see it.
Still, being surrounded by people like this was hardly a common blessing. Steeling my resolve to live up to their expectations, I finished the bullpen session with the senior and headed for home plate.
The batter stepping in was outfielder Lee Won-taek. Having been warned about him by Jin-mo just days before, I kept my guard up as subtly as I could manage.
He greeted the coach watching from behind the umpire with a lazy, slouching posture, then settled into the batter's box at his own leisurely pace. The relaxed air of a man whose starting job was never in question.
"Hyuk, was it?"
"Yes, senior."
"Give me one right down the middle."
The trash talk rolled out of him so naturally that I played the part of an intimidated rookie.
"Well… I'm not the one calling the pitches…"
"Hmm. So Hyun-woo hyung's calling them, huh?"
He grinned like a man who'd just extracted valuable intelligence. I asked the pitcher for a fastball right through the heart of the zone. The batter surely wouldn't expect the pitch I'd just been offered up to actually come.
Whoosh—
"Strike!"
True to his leadoff-hitter instincts, he'd been trying to take a long look at the pitch. Staring at a fastball that had cut straight through the middle of the zone, he turned to me with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"Hyun-woo hyung really is calling these, right?"
"Senior, what power would I have?"
"Right? Tsk… guess hyung took me lightly."
The moment I sold out Kim Hyun-woo's name without a flicker of hesitation, the man licked his lips.
The next pitch, I called for a two-seamer clipping the bottom of the zone. Partly because I trusted Kim Hyun-woo's command—and partly because a batter who'd gotten greedy on the last pitch might just let his bat drift after a similar-looking course.
Crack—
Sure enough, a bat he couldn't hold back swung at a ball on a trajectory nearly identical to the first. But the two-seamer sank in front of the plate, and the batter was retired on a groundout.
"Ha."
Lee Won-taek shook his head as if I'd reined him in. The batters who came up after him didn't give me much trouble either. The pitchers were still building up their arms just the same, but the hitters' timing, rusted after the long layoff, wasn't fully back yet.
And so the top of the first ended, and the teams changed sides. As I waited near the front of the dugout, the senior coming down from the mound gave my backside a light tap with his glove.
"Good pitch-calling."
"No, sir. I just got lucky."
"Your pitch mix is solid. Keep doing exactly this the rest of the way."
"Understood."
Suddenly, my days in that white space came back to me. The height of my grind, filling out tens of millions of repetitions. Once, I'd actually studied the pitching machine's pitch-sequence patterns, desperate to hit my numbers faster. In the end the sequences had been random and the pattern-hunting failed, but it was also true that all that effort ended up helping my pitch-mix studies.
While I was busy feigning modesty in front of the senior, someone had been eavesdropping on our conversation.
"So it wasn't hyung calling the pitches?"
"Nope. Hyuk here's got some real talent for it."
"Oh-ho…"
Lee Won-taek stared at me with a face that plainly said, Now look at this guy.
I bowed my head at once.
"I'm sorry."
"Huh? Sorry for what?"
"It's nothing, hyung."
To the puzzled Kim Hyun-woo, Lee Won-taek just answered with a broad, knowing grin.
Back in the dugout, it's proper etiquette not to talk to a pitcher mid-start, but the unease was gnawing at me, so I sidled up to Kim Hyun-woo.
"Sir?"
"Yeah?"
"Jin-mo told me to stay away from Lee Won-taek and not get close to him. Do you know why?"
"Ah, Jin-mo said that, did he?"
He burst out laughing.
"Won-taek's nickname is the Princess."
"The Princess?"
He doesn't look particularly pretty to me…
Smirking at my confusion, the senior explained.
"It's short for the Maw of Terror."
"Ah."
"Get caught by him and you're in for it. The man talks all day long, and if you get friendly, the chatter only doubles."
In that instant, my eyes met Lee Won-taek's across the right field grass.
"……"
The shiver running down my spine despite the warm weather—surely that was just my imagination.
The coaches watching the game let out sigh after sigh.
"Looks like a full pitcher's duel out there."
"Should we schedule some special hitting drills or something?"
"I'll have to crack down soon. These kids' game feel is all gone."
"What's wrong with Hyun-seo? Why is he so wound up?"
"If he's this tense already, what's he going to do once the season starts…"
One coach noticed the sound of the manager's gum-chewing speeding up and hastily changed the subject.
"Hyun-woo really is a crafty veteran, huh? Pitching to contact, saving his pitch count."
"I heard it's the catcher calling the game, actually?"
"Huh? Kang Hyuk?"
"Yes. Calm beyond his years, honestly."
"A gamer type, then."
"Seems like it. They said his blocking was shaky, but you'd never know watching him."
The manager had been listening quietly. Finally, Eom Tae-hoon spoke up.
"The pitchers were capped at three innings, right?"
"Yes. There's an exhibition game in four days, so we're keeping them under fifty pitches."
"Let's keep watching Kang Hyuk for now. Once Hyun-woo comes out, things might get shaky."
It was only because Hyun-woo was famous for his pinpoint command that nothing had shown. With a different pitcher on the mound, today's stability could easily waver.
More than anything, what Eom Tae-hoon was curious about was Kang Hyuk's bat.
If he can show even half of what he showed in training at the plate…
This season, his goal wasn't the standings. It was sifting the promising wheat from the chaff within the roster and feeding the keepers experience. Once that foundation was laid, the general manager had promised to fill the remaining holes through trades and free agency.
In that light, the catching position mattered enormously. Kang Hyuk or Choi Dong-hyuk—if even one of the two panned out, he could pour his resources into every other position on the field.
And so the bottom of the third began. Watching Kang Hyuk step into the batter's box as the number-eight hitter, the manager's eyes lit up.