Where Did You Pick Up That Gorilla?
The training field, usually quiet as a ghost town, was packed shoulder to shoulder with reporters and strangers. I stared at my uncle in sheer disbelief.
"You said it would be a simple test."
"Well, things kind of snowballed."
He shrugged and looked anywhere but at me.
"Why not think of this as part of the test? Plenty of guys tear it up in the Futures League, then step onto a big-league stage packed with people and turn into scared little birds."
"...I suppose I'll let it slide."
I decided not to press the matter. Getting Kim Hyun-woo out here must have taken some real pulling of strings on his part. A favor like that deserved something in return.
Scanning the crowd, I pointed at Kim Hyun-woo, who was surrounded by onlookers craning their necks for a look.
"By the way, is this even okay? Can a guy with a price tag like Kim Hyun-woo's just wander around because the season's over?"
"Ah, it's fine."
My uncle waved a hand dismissively.
"People think baseball players just coast once the season ends, but you have to keep up light exercise to bring down all that muscle you built up during the year."
Then he winked at me.
"Besides, we owe the fans some love, don't we? Developing the juniors and all that. Things like this."
"Yes. Yes, sir."
Having fully appreciated the spectacle of a middle-aged man's wink, I turned my gaze away. Kim Hyun-woo's corner of the field was jammed with people, Yoon Tae-yang among them.
A major leaguer...
To be fair, the man standing there was far removed from his prime. His fastball, which had once touched 150 km/h, had dropped to the low 140s, and repeated surgeries had made full-effort pitching a gamble.
But the sheer presence of a major league veteran didn't simply evaporate. The baseball world's consensus was that he'd converted that lost velocity into an even more refined version of his greatest strength—command. Working the ABS strike zone corner to corner, he was still proving he had plenty left in the tank.
Can I actually get to him?
This would be my first live action since coming out of the White Room. A rebuilt body, a rebuilt swing mechanics. I took pride in the countless hours of training behind them, but worry crept in all the same.
I stared down at my callus-covered palms, then clenched them into tight fists. Today was the day to find out what all that effort was worth.
"I cleared it with the head coach. First we run an intrasquad game, Hyun-woo gives the boys some pointers, and then you two play a mini-game."
"Understood."
The intrasquad game mixed starters with reserves. If the alumni had fielded a full squad of graduated players, the outcome for the underdeveloped junior team would have been obvious to anyone, so they'd split things up. That said, it produced some awkward moments.
"Let's go, sunbae!"
"Pride of our school! Kang Hyuk, first-round draft pick, fighting!"
Amid the cheerful dugout chatter, I grabbed a bat and headed for the plate. The leadoff hitter had gone down on three pitches, so there was one out and nobody on.
Stepping into the box, I caught sight of Yoon Tae-yang on the mound. He was glaring at me like he was staring down his sworn enemy, eyes practically spitting fire. Having spent years crouched behind the plate catching Tae-yang's pitches, I found the view from this side deeply strange.
Fwoom—
I didn't bother with any particular routine. Every second saved on ceremony was a second more for swings in the White Room. A few practice cuts, then into the box.
Yoon Tae-yang, still eyeing me with that uncomfortable intensity, wound up hard and fired.
Tak—
"Foul."
My timing had arrived a beat late. I clicked my tongue.
He really is quick. Good deception, too.
Befitting a near-certain first-round pick, Yoon Tae-yang's stuff was no joke. On average, a pitcher's ball reaches the plate in about 0.4 seconds. Unlike a broadcast camera, which traces the ball's path as a clean line, a batter sees nothing but a dot hurtling toward him—he has to predict that trajectory and commit to a decision and a swing within 0.3 seconds.
A rare handful of genius hitters like to say they "see the ball, then hit the ball," but for an ordinary guy like me, that was fantasy.
Still, I refused to be discouraged. I had watched millions upon millions of pitches while manufacturing five million hits in the White Room.
Fwoom—
I replayed the trajectory of the pitch that had just blown past and took another practice swing.
Yoon Tae-yang throws three pitches. Fastball, slider, and a two-seamer that still needs work.
The guy on the mound was an aggressive pitcher by nature. If I'd been the one catching him, I'd have called for a fastball running off the outside edge, or gone back to him for another look. But the catcher handling Tae-yang right now was a second-year junior, which meant the pitcher would likely be calling his own game.
Yoon Tae-yang wound up and drove his arm through.
Which means, if he throws something predictable...
I geared my swing to fastball timing. A slight toe-tap with the front foot to set my rhythm and center my weight. Drive the hips through with a full hip hinge. Separate upper and lower body to maximize the coil and create launch angle. Rotation flowing up from the knee to the hip, through the ribcage, into the shoulders.
The bat traced the exact path through the zone that my body had carved out behind it. The swing I had taken thousands upon thousands of times in the White Room, reproduced perfectly.
THWACK—!
With a sound like the ball splitting in half, it rocketed into the distance. Yoon Tae-yang stood frozen, staring blankly after it.
...So this is how it feels to put him away.
I flipped the bat aside without ceremony and jogged down the line.
Kim Hyun-woo, popcorn in hand, watched the game with half an eye before his gaze slid over to Park Sungho.
"Where'd you dig up the gorilla?"
"...He wasn't like that before?"
Kim Hyun-woo studied Kang Hyuk with a bewildered expression. Park Sungho wasn't a former player, but he had been an agent for a long time—and even he could tell that the swing mechanics Kang Hyuk had just shown were a cut above anything you'd see in high school ball.
Kim Hyun-woo gestured toward the plate with his chin.
"What's his profile say?"
"189 centimeters, 85 kilos, I think?"
"85? He looks a good deal heavier than that."
"Right? I'll have to check after the game."
Park Sungho quietly kicked himself. He'd treated the connection as a casual favor arranged through family ties, and let his information-gathering slide. Now, watching Kang Hyuk closely, he caught the unmistakable scent of a big fish.
And they say you never really know anyone in this business.
Steadying himself, he scanned the area—and spotted a few familiar faces. He nudged Kim Hyun-woo with his elbow.
"Look over there."
"Hmm?"
"Isn't that the Hawks' scouting staff?"
"Huh? That is the scouting director."
The draft was already over, so there was no reason to come watch Yoon Tae-yang. Which meant they'd been sitting there watching Kang Hyuk's at-bat too. Park Sungho brightened at the thought of sharing such contract-friendly footage—but Kim Hyun-woo's face had gone serious as he replayed the swing in his head.
"I'd love to know the launch angle and exit velocity on that. Shame there's no tracking system here."
"That would've been out of Jamsil, right?"
Kim Hyun-woo nodded. The ball had died in the safety netting, but anyone who knew anything about baseball could feel it. That ball was a monster home run.
"You sure he's actually a high schooler? He didn't hold back a few years somewhere, did he?"
"I told you, that's my team's first-round pick."
"Was he always a slugger type?"
"No. Until now, people rated him as a catcher with decent bat. More scouts had him tagged as a defensive catcher, honestly."
Kim Hyun-woo nodded thoughtfully.
"Fair enough. If he'd shown this kind of performance before, the rumors would've exploded ages ago."
It was an axiom of the baseball world that hitting couldn't be built overnight. Ever since aluminum bats gave way to wood, high school players clearing ten home runs had become nearly nonexistent—a living proof of it. Most hitters took the long road through the minors before their professional debut.
And yet here was Kang Hyuk, flaunting monstrous hitting technique as if to mock all of it.
"One at-bat is a small sample... but that was way too easy for him."
It wasn't as if the opposition was soft, either. The pitcher, visibly shaken after the home run, had lost the strike zone entirely—while every other hitter couldn't so much as graze his pitches.
Why does this look so familiar?
Turning the scene over slowly in his mind, Kim Hyun-woo found a flicker of nostalgia in Kang Hyuk's swing form. His own glory days, when he'd devoured the KBO whole and walked around brimming with confidence. The league that taught him humility. The place crawling with monsters for whom "one in a million" was an understatement.
Major League Baseball. That was what he saw.
Kim Hyun-woo forced himself to shake his head.
Probably just my imagination.
But one thing was certain: the kid named Kang Hyuk had made him curious. Somewhere along the way he'd stopped eating popcorn altogether, and when he caught himself leaning forward, glued to the game, a small laugh escaped him.
After my home run, the white team failed to manufacture another real scoring chance. Hitters took tentative pokes at the wobbling Yoon Tae-yang and beat routine grounders into the infield.
Having strapped on catcher's gear for the first time in a while, I headed for home plate.
"Let's go, Woocheol."
This time my battery partner was Shim Woocheol, the junior rated as our school's next ace. Mainly a two-pitch pitcher working off his four-seamer and curveball—honestly a step below Yoon Tae-yang.
But more than enough for the high school level.
It didn't take long for that assumption to get corrected.
"Ball."
"Ball."
Perhaps the sizable crowd of outsiders had rattled him. Shim Woocheol's command deserted him, and the balls piled up. After two straight walks put runners on, I called time and jogged to the mound.
"Woocheol. What's going on?"
"Nothing, sir."
The kid's face was frozen solid with tension.
Seriously? This isn't a tournament final.
It was almost funny, watching a kid's nerves crumble over an exhibition game—but steadying spooked pitchers was part of a catcher's job too. I clapped him on the shoulder.
"Hey. You've got absolutely nothing to be nervous about."
"...Yes, sir."
"See all those people sitting out there?"
"Yes, sir."
"Say you give up a hit. You think any of them are going to bad-mouth you for it?"
"......"
The kid flinched at that. But I kept going, matter-of-fact.
"No. They'll just think, huh, that hitter was pretty good. That's it. But what if you keep walking guys? Then everybody starts watching you. You get me?"
I used to obsess over every single mistake myself. What if I'd done this instead, would that have fixed it? — that question is just part of being human.
But grinding through millions of swings and batted balls in the White Room taught me something: baseball cannot be perfect.
A .300 average is the gold standard for a hitter. That means in baseball, you can fail seven times out of ten and still be called excellent. So what happens if you fixate on those seven failures and try to erase them? Odds are you lose what made you good in the first place and fade into blandness.
I knew from experience—back in "that space," I'd tried overcorrecting my swing form and slumped for it.
Pitchers were no exception. What mattered was accepting the mistake and giving your best with what you had right now.
"You've noticed your arm side's leaking everything to the left, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"So what do you do about it?"
"...I'll aim my target a little further right."
"Don't worry about command or painting corners. Just tell yourself you're throwing it straight into the strike zone."
"Understood, sir."
"And the curveball goes low, no exceptions. Don't sweat the movement—I'll haul down whatever moves."
"...I never doubted the first-round pick, sir."
The tension had loosened enough for the kid to crack a joke. I gave Woocheol's shoulder a light punch.
"How about spotting me a run or two? Trust our hitters. And if all else fails, I'll just hit another homer."
"So you're saying you'll go back-to-back, sir?"
"Look at you, getting cocky."
The trembling in his hands had visibly subsided. I bumped fists with Woocheol and headed back to my spot behind the plate.