One More Rep
After finishing my batting training, I headed to the weight room.
Maybe it was the aftereffect of visiting that white space — if I skipped my cooldown workout, my body felt oddly heavy and sluggish.
Well, I'd need it if I wanted to play as a pro.
You couldn't overstate the importance of weight training in modern baseball. It was a sport that demanded explosive bursts of power, whether you were swinging a bat or throwing off a mound.
So as I was making my way there at a leisurely pace, I noticed Yoon Tae-yang trailing behind me at a careful distance.
"What do you want?"
"I need to find out."
"Find out what?"
"Why the Hawks scouts picked you first overall."
"…So your plan is to follow me around while I train?"
I shot him a weary look. Tae-yang had always been an old-school type — the kind who swore by flexibility work and core stretching over lifting weights. Supposedly his favorite legend pitcher trained that way.
But if he was tagging along all the way to the weight room, failing to go to the Hawks must have been gnawing at him badly.
"…Do whatever you want."
"By the way, I thought you hated lifting?"
The question caught me off guard, and I fumbled out an excuse.
"The equipment's pretty scarce around here, so I usually trained at a gym near my house."
"Can I work out with you?"
"Sure, whatever."
And that's how I walked into the weight room with a lug of muscle tagging at my heels.
"Let's start with lower body today."
I set a light weight to warm up and knocked out a set.
"Your turn."
"…"
He stared at the plates with a distinctly hesitant expression. Taking pity on him, I offered some practical advice.
"Don't push it. Adjust the weight if you need to — that's how you get hurt."
"This is nothing!"
Maybe it was just hot-blooded teenage bravado. Fired up, Tae-yang planted himself on the machine and barely managed to grind out a set.
He looked back at me with a face full of pride, as if to say, well, what do you think?
"Shall we bump the weight up a bit now?"
"We're going heavier?"
"What are you talking about? That was just the warm-up."
"…Actually, I just remembered I have somewhere to be. I should probably head out."
"You may enter as you please, but you may not leave as you please."
I grabbed Yoon Tae-yang by the shoulder as he tried to stand. I'd been needing a spotter anyway — there was no way I was letting him go.
"I'm not going to ask you to lift what I lift. Set it to whatever's right for you."
"…Ugh, fine."
Tae-yang swallowed his pride on the spot. That didn't mean I intended to go easy on him, of course.
"One more."
"Nngh!"
"One more."
"I can't!"
"You're screaming, which means you've still got something left. Just one final rep."
He barely finished the set and slumped over like a wet rag. I hauled him back to his feet.
"Have mercy…"
"If you're done, spot me."
"…This isn't the end?"
"For me, the real work starts now."
In the white room, I'd always trained alone, which made lifting heavy weights difficult — one slip and I'd be crushed under the bar. But now, with a spotter right beside me?
There was nothing stopping me from reaching for something heavier.
I cinched my lifting belt tight and braced my core.
Watching Kang Hyuk work out from the side, Yoon Tae-yang's jaw hung wide open.
Is this guy even human?
At first he'd dismissed it as the usual swagger teenage boys put on.
"Hey. Aren't you the one overdoing it?"
"Nah. This is the minimum you need for the stimulus to land. It's my first day, so I'll just test my 3RM lightly."
"Lightly…?"
Where exactly was the "light" in this? He'd dragged together every single plate in the entire weight room.
Climbing steadily higher in weight, Kang Hyuk eventually posted a staggering total — three reps at 670 kilograms.
What frightened Tae-yang even more was how easy it looked. At this point, a stray thought crossed his mind: was this really a human being, or some kind of ape?
And along with that shock came another realization.
So this is why the Hawks took him first overall.
While Tae-yang had been resting on the laurels of his high school tournament results and slacking off in training, his rival had been quietly putting in the work where no one could see.
It was more than likely that the Hawks scouts had noticed exactly that. The KBO's finest franchise — the Daejeon Hawks' eye for talent was never wrong.
Tae-yang clenched his fist.
I'm not going to sit still either.
True, he'd been edged out by Kang Hyuk and was now locked in with the Marines. But there was still a path: dominate there, then come back as a free agent.
A kind of triumphant homecoming. A single step back to gain two forward.
As he gripped his trembling legs and chewed over this new resolve, he felt Kang Hyuk's gaze on him.
"Upper body tomorrow."
"Huh? Me too?"
"Obviously. From now on, you show up here at this time every day."
"…I think I'd rather do it old-school. Running, you know."
"Then you can lift and run. Problem solved."
It didn't take long for that resolve to crumble.
After that day, a strange rumor began circulating among the students of Bomun High School — about baseball players who crawled around on all fours.
"Team Leader. Is this right?"
Kim, Assistant Manager of the Hawks' scouting staff, fixed his boss with a resentful glare.
"The first pick should obviously be Yoon Tae-yang!"
"…"
When the Team Leader met his outburst with stony silence, Kim pounded his own chest in frustration.
This draft class — hailed as a golden generation — was stuffed to the brim with promising talent. And at its heart, no matter what anyone said, were the three pitchers.
Unlike the hitters, who would need seasoning in the minors, these were arms you could throw straight into the bullpen or deploy immediately at the big-league level.
Of the three, the Hawks' scouts had zeroed in on Yoon Tae-yang. Not only had he posted excellent numbers in the high school league, but his delivery carried a low injury risk — and then there was the added factor of him being a hometown boy.
Last season, when the Hawks had finished dead last, some scouts had quietly cheered. Now it had all gone sideways.
"We even hinted to Tae-yang beforehand that we'd take him. And then suddenly it's Kang Hyuk?"
To be fair, Kang Hyuk wasn't a bad player. The consensus was that high school batting averages meant little, but he'd shown solid contact ability in the late-.300s, and as for his defense — the prevailing assessment was that he was already ready for professional baseball.
Still, he's no Yoon Tae-yang.
As Kim's grumbling dragged on, the Team Leader finally snapped back in irritation.
"Then what do you want me to do, huh? The order came down from the very top. You think I'm going to ignore it?"
"From the top?"
"Yes. There's a new person at the club, you know."
"…The GM?"
The Team Leader nodded, then glanced around to make sure no one was nearby before lowering his voice.
"You know how things are at the club right now?"
"…Yes, sir."
The man originally slated to be the next GM had been the head of the player-development division — a longtime front-office veteran with rumored connections to the parent company's upper echelons.
Then, out of nowhere, came the appointment. Whether you called it a parachute hire or a heavyweight hire was anyone's guess — a new GM installed directly from an MLB front office, someone who'd spent years making his living off foreign soil.
And so a quiet power struggle had erupted within the Hawks' front office, the old guard against the new king.
"In times like these, the smart move is to stand in the middle and watch."
"…"
Kim didn't particularly like the head of player development, either. The man was notorious for his poor character, and widely criticized for his outdated, old-school thinking — three consecutive last-place finishes spoke for themselves.
But he couldn't deny his own resentment either, at a GM who had brushed aside the scouting department's unanimous opinion.
The Team Leader, however, was clearly done with the subject.
"Is the Kang Hyuk report ready to submit to the front office?"
"Well… there is one."
Kim's voice shrank.
His focus on Yoon Tae-yang didn't mean he'd gathered nothing on Kang Hyuk. The two were from the same school — watching their games meant logging Kang Hyuk's plays as well.
"But compared to Tae-yang, he got considerably less attention. We figured he wouldn't last past the second round."
"And you're telling me that like it's something to be proud of?"
The Team Leader seized on the slip and exploded.
"You're going to submit that to the new GM?"
The draft was over. The club now had to present contracts to its new draftees.
Technically, the negotiating leverage with rookie players belonged to the team — but these were first-round picks. Surely the front office deserved accurate, thorough information?
"Let's find time to visit Bomun High School. We'll pay our respects to the head coach while we're at it."
"Understood."
"Oh, right. Do you know who the kid's father is?"
"Who?"
Cupping a hand over his mouth as though sharing a precious secret, the Team Leader leaned in.
"YouTuber Kang Min-jun."
"Huh? Seriously?"
"That's right, you fool."
He wasn't exactly a household name, but Kang Min-jun had been broadcasting Hawks games on YouTube since the platform's early days, and he'd built up a solid following among the fanbase. He'd even once been invited to throw out a ceremonial first pitch.
"No need to roll out any special treatment, but the man has connections everywhere. Handle it tactfully — I don't want anything ugly said about the club."
"Yes, sir."
When I got home from training, a stranger was sitting in our living room.
My father spotted me stepping through the front door and waved a hand.
"Oh, Kang Hyuk! You're home!"
"I'm back."
"Come say hi. You've met a few times, haven't you? This is Park Sungho, sports agent."
"Long time no see, Kang Hyuk."
"Good evening, sir."
I bowed on reflex, then dug through my memory until the information surfaced.
Ah — he's the one who used to sponsor me with baseball bats.
From an agent's perspective, rookie players weren't exactly attractive merchandise. The negotiating leverage on signing bonuses and salaries sat entirely with the club.
But for players like me — likely first-rounders — an agent who'd read the potential would naturally come sniffing around.
Still, even he couldn't have predicted this. In a KBO draft where the top of the first round belonged to pitchers, nobody saw me going first overall.
"Congratulations on the first pick. Truly."
"Thank you."
Agent Park Sungho clapped me on the shoulder, his face glowing with excitement.
"You and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other from now on. Relax, relax. Feel free to call me hyung if you like."
"…"
However much time I'd spent in that white space, I was not about to call a man who was, at best, old enough to be my uncle, "hyung."
"…I'll call you Uncle."
"Sure, sure. So, Kang Hyuk — do you have any particular contract terms in mind?"
My uncle looked at me with a warm, easygoing smile. By my father's account, he had a good reputation in the industry.
Loyal and honest, was it?
The word honest seemed an odd fit for an agent, but in the KBO — where you'd be running into the same faces for years — it counted as a genuine virtue. He was well-connected, too, and had a knack for finding agreements that satisfied both player and club.
"Hmm…"
After a moment of theatrical deliberation, I spoke.
"I'd like to have a trainer assigned to me."
"Oh! Planning to train hard through the winter, are we? Excellent."
My uncle looked at me with evident approval. It took him no time at all for that expression to turn troubled.
"I'll reach out to the Hawks' front office. The club has affiliated training centers in the States and Australia, so—"
"No. Not anyone affiliated with the club. I'd prefer someone who can guarantee my confidentiality."
"So you want to hire a private trainer, then. That won't be cheap to justify on the books. Is there a particular reason?"
"…"
It wasn't simply distrust of the club's training system. I turned my gaze inward and took stock of my own body.
The muscles were unmistakably different from before the white room. It was only in there that I'd been able to endure such punishing training without serious injury — whether the same held true in reality was an open question.
More than that, I had no intention of handing the club free access to information about my overhauled swing mechanics or my body. Which was why I needed a trainer with real expertise in physical conditioning who could also keep his mouth shut.
Since I couldn't exactly explain the truth, I agonized over my answer for a long moment — until my uncle spoke first.
"An agent stands on the player's side. If your father agrees, let's do it that way."
With the ball now in his court, my father nodded.
"This kid… the head's a different story, but when it comes to baseball, his passion is the real deal."
"Father!"
Had he seriously just called me an idiot to my face? As I rounded on him in protest, my uncle burst out laughing.
"Hahaha! Well then — besides the private trainer, anything else?"
"I don't mind a smaller signing bonus if it means growing the total through incentives. Things like a bonus for first-team debut, per-game appearance pay, home-run bonuses — that kind of structure."
"Hmm?"
In that instant, a flicker of genuine interest lit up in Agent Park Sungho's eyes as he looked at me.