He Thought I Was a Joke
Every so often it happened — that sharp, unmistakable sense that the man on the mound was looking at him like he was nothing. The moment Do Kang-hyun stepped into the batter's box, the feeling hit harder than usual.
Ryunosuke Murakami was twenty-three, an orthodox left-hander, a fireballer whose fastball touched ninety-seven miles an hour. More than that, he still trusted a pitch the modern game was slowly abandoning, and he threw his forkball as a putaway. The second Kang-hyun dug in, Murakami let a sneer show, plain as day.
He'd tried, in his own way, to hide it behind the glove. It didn't matter. Once Kang-hyun was in the box he refused to miss a single twitch from a pitcher, and Murakami's little performance was no exception. Objectively, too, the kid had the goods to look down on a man who'd been cut off from baseball for twelve years after high school. That much was fair.
The forkball's break was something else.
Kim Tae-san, hitting ahead of him, had been stripped of his timing so cleanly he'd taken a huge empty cut, and the forkball Murakami had opened with against Kang-hyun himself had looked plenty dangerous.
Dangerous meaning this: no matter how quick Kang-hyun's reactions were, squaring up a ball with that much late dive in the middle of a swing was close to impossible. You'd be lucky just to foul it off. That was how nasty Ryunosuke Murakami's forkball was.
Except.
That only holds if you swing without knowing it's a forkball.
Drawing that swing, of course, was Murakami's greatest weapon. You live on a fastball north of ninety-three, then suddenly drop in a forkball that doesn't even reach eighty-one, and a hitter still carrying the heater in his head is going to be late every single time. A hundred times out of a hundred, the timing is gone and the bat finds air.
The way not to get beaten was simple, once you thought about it that way. Throw the forkball out entirely.
Pitchers were abandoning it for a reason. The command was difficult, yes, but the real problem was the injury risk. Which meant a pitcher couldn't spray forkballs around without paying for it in his arm. And with the bases loaded like this — or even with a man on third alone — the pitch was liable to bounce, and if the catcher couldn't block, it stopped being an easy putaway. For all of those reasons, Do Kang-hyun wiped Ryunosuke Murakami's devastating forkball clean out of his head.
Didn't think he'd give me a high fastball I could turn on as early as the second pitch, though.
It was a measure of how little the pitcher thought of him. Kang-hyun didn't mind in the slightest. It was only natural, and that very natural contempt was why he was out here now, touching the bases one after another at an easy trot.
"You were sitting on it? You were, weren't you? God, you are unbelievable!"
The first man to meet him as he stepped on home plate was Park Jung-wan, the Phoenix captain, the veteran who held the heart of the lineup together.
"Senior Kang-hyun! That bat is filthy! Keep launching them just like that!"
Oh Hyun-woo looked thoroughly satisfied, firing off a double thumbs-up as he congratulated him. Last came Clay Bryan, eyes bright, with a short burst of English.
"Hell of a swing!"
Kang-hyun's English wasn't much, but he caught the gist of the admiration well enough. He thanked him and met the high five.
Back in the dugout, Manager Lee Man-jae wore a satisfied smile, clapped, and slapped palms with him, and the coaches and the rest of the club roared him in.
"Hoo."
It was only an exhibition, but a homer in his first at-bat — a grand slam, no less — and the moment Do Kang-hyun sat down, the delayed rush finally set his heart hammering.
"Senior Kang-hyun, that was incredible! Want some water?"
Same as in Arizona, Baek Young-joon had no objection to playing the loyal puppy in Okinawa, glued faithfully to the seat beside Kang-hyun in the dugout. Kang-hyun didn't refuse the bottle he held out. That pounding in his chest needed settling, one way or another.
"Thank you."
"Senior, I'm telling you, you can talk to me like a normal person now."
"Mm... should I?"
They'd been around each other long enough by now that Kang-hyun finally let the formal speech go with Baek, who was so much younger.
"So you were sitting on a high fastball for the second pitch, right?"
"Didn't figure he'd go forkball back-to-back, at least. Got lucky with the location."
"I knew it! Watching you hit, I finally understand what a guess hitter even is. You are a complete master of the mind game!"
It had been instinct more than a calculated guess, but Kang-hyun didn't bother saying so. Shaman-grade prediction was already hard to sell. Barreling a ball on nothing but reflex was harder still. Even so, he knew that as time went on, the way he hit would draw suspicion from everyone. A divine gift could fade whenever it liked. Instinct wouldn't dull.
He let Baek's excited chatter, pouring out from the next seat, go in one ear and out the other while he turned over how he'd answer when that day came, and somewhere in the middle of it the inning ended.
"Ha... four forkballs in a row? How is that even a thing?"
Park Sang-min came back into the dugout with his face crumpled like a man about to lose his mind, having struck out swinging on forkballs thrown one after another.
Four forkballs in a row... whether that's him pitching angry or an arm that just holds up, I couldn't say.
Watching Ryunosuke Murakami walk toward his dugout with a face set hard as stone, Kang-hyun found himself looking forward to the next at-bat.
"Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!"
The inning was barely over before Ryunosuke Murakami planted himself alone in a corner, biting his lip over and over, fighting to keep the rage down. He had written Korean baseball off as second-rate, and he had never once imagined surrendering a grand slam to a rookie who'd debuted at thirty-three.
That bastard was sitting on it. He had to be!
If he hadn't been sitting on it, none of this made sense. Murakami lifted his head, eyes full of fury, and glared out at the field — at center field, to be exact, where the man who'd taken him deep was standing. Even after a swing people would remember for a lifetime, Do Kang-hyun wasn't showing so much as a flicker of excitement on defense. Was he forcing himself to hold it in? The thought crossed Murakami's mind.
Crack!
A clean, sharp drive leapt off the bat, and Kang-hyun chased it into a hip slide and came up with the ball. Murakami's pupils blew wide.
Calm. Room to spare. The web gem he'd just watched didn't look like a player riding a high. It felt calculated, the practiced movement of a seasoned veteran. Which meant the man was an absurd center fielder on defense, too. Maybe that glove was the reason he was starting.
Luis Cardoso was roaring on the mound and pounding his glove without mercy, as if he'd trusted the catch all along, and the sight was more than enough to plant the misunderstanding. The misunderstandings kept coming.
"Yes!"
"Nice hitting!"
Down by four, the Chunichi Dragons' farmhands threw both arms in the air for their number-two hitter. The ball was a chopper well past the second-base bag, in front of the center fielder, and they believed this hit would set the table for a run. The batter himself had an arm up, smug, and was already heading for first.
Do Kang-hyun, playing so shallow you had to wonder when he'd crept in, closed on it fast, barely bent at the waist, and swallowed the ball in his glove. Ordinary, up to there. After that, it wasn't. He should have throttled down and taken a steady look toward second. Instead he looked at first, stayed on the dead run, planted once, and let it fly.
"Huh?!"
"Oh no!!"
The throw went straight to the first baseman, faster than anyone wanted to believe, and the accuracy was just as absurd — a line into the mitt of the man standing on the bag. The runner had been coasting, yes, but a ground ball to center becoming a play at first had never once entered his head. He startled and lunged, foot stretching for the base.
Pop. Thud.
The first-base umpire hesitated a beat, then punched him out. The batter-runner ripped off his helmet and shouted as if he'd been robbed.
"You've gotta be kidding me!!"
In the Chunichi Dragons' farm dugout the runner kept spreading both arms, insisting he was safe, and in the end they went to replay. It took a little time. The review upheld the call on the field. Out. Heads dropped in the dugout, hollow with disbelief. A few of them stared at Do Kang-hyun as if they couldn't accept the absurd out he'd just hung on the board — a groundout from center field. Ryunosuke Murakami was no different.
That was a hit. A hundred percent a hit! Turning a ball like that into an out... how does that make any sense?!
A grand slam at the plate. A hustle play on defense that could pull a roar out of a crowd. And now a superhuman assist that turned a hit into an out.
Why... why did a player like that debut at thirty-three??
Murakami couldn't make the file on Do Kang-hyun sit still as the truth. Either the Daejeon Phoenix had deliberately scrambled the scouting report, or — and this was the wilder suspicion — Kang-hyun had been starring somewhere in another league, the kind that didn't bother leaving a record.
"Senior Kang-hyuuun!"
The moment he came in from defense, Baek Young-joon was first to him again, fawning hard enough to be embarrassing.
"I'll pledge my loyalty from this day on! So when I get up on that mound, you have to make me another one of those fantastic Super-General-King-God-Emperor assists you just showed!"
"It's not as easy as you're making it sound..."
"No! Senior Kang-hyun can do it! I believe! Today I received that belief, clear as day!"
If he didn't give the kid a yes, this was never going to stop. Kang-hyun gave in and said he'd do his best.
"Heh heh heh heh heh."
"You little punk. What's got you grinning all creepy like that?"
Joo Min-ho came over, took the open seat on Kang-hyun's other side, and scolded Baek. Baek didn't care. Just picturing himself on the mound, with Kang-hyun standing guard behind him, was enough to split his face into a grin.
"What'd you say to the kid to get him like this?"
"Search me."
Kang-hyun answered with a short laugh, and Min-ho thought of the two of them stuck together like something unpleasant since Arizona and shook his head.
"Anyway. I've played this game my whole career and I've never seen a center-field groundout in person. Caught one on some rare clip once in a while... didn't think it was actually possible. You monster."
"Got lucky, that's all."
"Listen to this guy. Every single time I look, he got lucky. What, did the luck of the whole universe decide to pile up on you?"
"Must have."
From Min-ho's side it was nonsense, easy to wave off. In truth, Kang-hyun sometimes wondered if the luck of the universe really had gathered on him.
Getting an ability this impossible overnight is reason enough.
It wasn't something he could say to anyone, so he only thought it to himself — that he might be the luckiest man on earth.
"Anyway, you see the Japanese kids after that groundout? Eyes about to pop out of their heads. Pfft—hah!"
He couldn't speak for the rest of them, but he'd caught Ryunosuke Murakami, who'd been staring a hole through him. Arrogant and full of pride at first; after the grand slam, nothing but rage; and when the ground ball to center turned into an out, just as Min-ho said, his mouth had hung open and he'd finished with the face of a man who'd seen something he wasn't supposed to see.
He still looked that way. A pitcher who ought to have been worrying about the hitter kept touching the rosin bag, taking his cap off and putting it back on, and every time he snuck a glance at the Daejeon Phoenix dugout — at Do Kang-hyun, specifically.
"Why's that guy keep looking over here? Eyes like a damn flounder, and he won't stop side-eyeing us. Creeps me out. Kang-hyun, next time up, park one and get that bastard off the mound."
"Why? Forkball got you scared?"
Joo Min-ho didn't answer.