The Monster in the Batting Cage
Crack!
Kraaang!
Kraaaaang!!
"Whoa... holy shit. That's insane."
"Who is that guy? A former pro?"
"Did you see that bat speed just now?"
"He's barreling it dead-on every time! How is he spraying the ball to both fields like that?"
"He's even timing the breaking balls perfectly!"
"Guys, you know what? That ajusshi's been hitting the dead-center home run target five times in a row."
"...The fuck? That's possible?"
A monster had appeared at the batting center.
He didn't look like a man who'd ever trained a day in his life—just an ordinary, unremarkable guy—and yet the moment he stepped into the cage, he was squaring up every single ball.
It started with a lazy fifty-mile-an-hour pitch. He took a few empty swings to settle in, then turned on the ball coming straight at him with ridiculous ease, and the sound alone was different.
From there he climbed through fifty-six, sixty-two, sixty-eight, seventy-five, and even eighty-one miles an hour, and not once did he miss. Every pitch met the sweet spot of the barrel, a display of hitting so precise it barely seemed real.
Next came the breaking balls. The cage let you choose curves and sliders, and those were no different: curve or slider, dropping or darting, he tracked the bend and drove it the instant it arrived.
Last of all, he started mixing fastballs and breaking balls together. The moment the pitcher on the screen went into his motion, the ball spat out of the machine.
Thwump!
An eighty-one-mile-an-hour fastball—the hardest the cage could throw—came boring in on his hands. He met it as if eighty-one were slow enough to make a man yawn, found the hitting point with absurd comfort, and drove it.
Kraaaaaang!!
The ball, struck with real force behind it, slammed into the home run target dead center.
"Whoa! Did you see that inside swing?"
"It looked like a painting."
"Is he some kind of hitting master?"
"What is he, a batting-cage savant or something?"
"Dong-su, you're getting this, right?"
"Relax. I haven't missed a single swing. But he's just a regular guy—think this'll even get views?"
"Views are views, but look at that form. This is something you rewind and study. It's educational. Educational!"
Behind the batter's box, spectators had gathered like a cloud, each of them letting out some fresh gasp of disbelief and shaking their heads. A few even had their phones up, recording him. He paid them no mind. A sixty-eight-mile-an-hour curve dropped out of the air, and he squared it up just as cleanly, drilling the home run target once again.
Kraaaang!
"Jin-woo, you see that? Even on a curve, you can't let your upper body collapse like that. The lower half! You've got to match the height with your lower half, like he does."
"Last time Suyeong-hyung said you've got to control it with your wrists. And come on—if I could just do that whenever I felt like it, I'd already be a pro."
"What the hell does that asshole Suyeong know! Look! There's a perfect textbook standing right in front of us! So watch the man's swing and learn something."
His hitting was a textbook all by itself. This is how you swing at a fastball; this is how you swing at a breaking ball—he seemed to be teaching it with his body, and more than a few of the onlookers were scrambling to copy the motion. The man they were practically worshiping, though, was Do Kang-hyun, and it had taken him days to accept the situation he was in.
Seriously... should I try?
Ever since the night he'd drunk himself into a stupor, fallen asleep, and dreamed, Do Kang-hyun had known his body was different.
At first he told himself it was nothing. Maybe it was just in his head. But the feeling was too distinct for that—something moving through him, waking his cells one by one.
The first time he truly experienced it was after he got to work.
"Good morning! Grab a coffee and get to it!"
"Assistant Manager Lee's buying coffee? Something good happen?"
"Something good? Well, maybe!"
"Yeah? What is it? Is it the kind of good news you can't share?"
"Oh, Manager, honestly!"
Assistant Manager Lee, who was gentle with everyone on an ordinary day, was treating the office to coffee first thing in the morning, clearly riding some private piece of good fortune. She was smiling as she handed cups out of the carrier one by one when her foot caught on a cable duct that had been knocked crooked.
"Kyaaah!"
She lost her balance completely and pitched forward, and the office let out a collective yelp at the disaster that was already certain.
"Whoa, whoa—!"
"Assistant Manager Lee!"
That was when it happened. Do Kang-hyun, standing about three steps away, moved so fast he barely seemed to decide to. His right hand caught her shoulder as her torso tipped forward and shoved her back upright, and his left hand snatched the coffee carrier out of the air as it went flying.
"—!!!"
His body had simply reacted, faster than he himself could understand.
"M-Mr. Do?"
"What? How did he just— Assistant Manager Lee..."
"Whoa! Mr. Do was insanely fast!"
"Those reflexes are so— ...they're sharp, huh? Because he played baseball?"
"Didn't it look like he just whooshed past?"
Every eye in the office had gone round, fixed on Do Kang-hyun.
"Mr. Do, th-thank you."
"Not at all."
He was just as startled as they were. He hurried back to his desk and turned the moment over again and again, trying to make sense of it.
The instant Assistant Manager Lee started to fall, it felt so slow. The coffee carrier looked like it was hanging in the air, drifting in slow motion. What... is this?
He had no explanation for it. Assistant Manager Lee tipping over, the carrier leaping from her hand—it had all played out like a slow-motion shot in a movie. He had never experienced anything like it in his life, and he was still tilting his head over the strangeness of it when she came back.
"Mr. Do, your coffee! If it hadn't been for you, today would've been a real disaster. Thank you for helping. I was going to give you one anyway, but think of it as a thank-you."
She thanked him once more, left him with the bright smile that had always set the men in the office fluttering, and returned to her seat. Do Kang-hyun took a sip of the warm coffee she'd set down and thought it sweeter, better, than any coffee he'd ever had.
After that, the same kind of thing kept happening. If something came flying at him and his body decided it was a threat, his senses snapped taut on their own and the path drew itself in his head. When he focused, his dynamic vision had sharpened until a falling drop of water showed its shape with perfect clarity.
If someone bumped the phone on his desk and it tumbled toward the floor, his hand shot out and caught it before he'd made a choice. Things that, any other day, would have earned him a startled huh?! and then a headache and a foul mood were cut off at the root—the thought and the reaction arriving together, the disaster never quite landing.
"I'm sure of it. This is..."
He understood then that it was the ability he had chosen in the dream. At the very end of it, the words had been these.
You have selected Spider Sense and Armored Cannon.
May your dream come true.
Spider Sense and Armored Cannon. Do Kang-hyun was certain the change in him came from Spider Sense.
"Did I actually become Spider-Man?"
The movie hero's superhuman senses and reflexes were famous, after all. Just in case, he glanced around, stared at his own hand, and flung it forward with everything he had.
A flick. Nothing. He tried again. And again.
"Damn it."
No webbing. A quiet disappointment settled in, and he let out a short, helpless laugh. Then he studied his fingertips, set them on the documents in front of him, and peeled them off again, over and over. When that wasn't enough, he stole another look around, drifted quietly over to the office wall, and pressed his palm to it.
It slid right off.
"...What kind of dumbass thing am I doing."
He couldn't climb walls like Spider-Man. Abashed, he scratched his head and went back to his seat. So that was the conclusion: all he'd been given were the superhuman senses, and reflexes past the limit of an ordinary man.
"Still an incredible ability, though."
Even so, something about it felt lacking. What, exactly, could he do with a power like this? Becoming a hero who beat up criminals, the way they did in the movies, was obviously out of reach with a half-finished ability, and using it for the sake of humanity felt just as small.
"With great power comes great responsibility—but mine's a small power, so I only have a small responsibility, right? Maybe I don't even have to carry that much."
He decided, coolly, to use the ability for himself. Once he narrowed it down that way, it didn't seem so extraordinary after all: better athletic instincts, and not much else. Thinking of it like that left him more disappointed than he'd expected.
"Would've been so much better if it were a genius memory that never forgot anything I'd seen once. I could start studying tomorrow and pick up some high-paying certification."
He was thirty-two, deep enough into the working world that even a hero's power, to him, had to be a way out of how tight and grinding real life had become. He wrote superhuman senses and reflexes on a sheet of A4 and sat there drawing blank circles around them, staring at nothing. What could he do? What should he do? How did he use this to live better than he was living now, without having to worry about money?
Then he remembered the other ability.
"What was Armored Cannon again?"
He dredged up the description he'd only half-registered in the dream. Armored Cannon was superhuman strength and pinpoint throwing accuracy—though, unfortunately, not every muscle had been made superhuman. The power was concentrated in the shoulder alone. His reason for choosing it had been simple. In high school his position had been center field, and every time he watched those cannon arms fire a laser home from the outfield, he had envied them.
"This is... exactly the kind of ability a baseball player would kill for."
A hollow little laugh slipped out of him. How good would it have been to get abilities like these back in high school? At thirty-two, he had a power ballplayers would drool over and not the faintest idea what to do with it.
"All right! Everybody, clock out!!"
He had shoved his actual work aside all day, and unlike the others, who brightened at once and started packing up, he was stuck. Overtime, with no way out of it.
"Hmm..."
Only after he'd hit so many balls that his shirt was soaked through did Do Kang-hyun finally step out of the batting center. The night wind, past cool and into outright cold, said winter had come a long step closer.
"Hoo... that feels good."
The pitches themselves had been easy, but the repeated swings had left his body flushed, and the air felt cleaner than it had in a long time. Sweat-soaked as he was, he worried for a moment about catching a cold—then almost laughed at himself. He'd been given abilities on the level of a superhuman. Was he really going to go down to something as petty as a cold?
"What am I actually supposed to do?"
All the way home, he turned it over: whether he truly had to play baseball with the power he'd been given. Thirty-two was an enormous obstacle, and he couldn't stop doubting whether picking the game back up at that age was even sane.
"If I were just five years younger."
Twenty-seven wasn't young either, but it wasn't an age that would have forced him into a dilemma like this. The regret was as large as the frustration.
Back home, he stood under hot water and let it thaw a body that sweat had soaked and the cold wind had chilled. And while Do Kang-hyun showered, someone else was uploading that day's footage of his swing.