Jealousy
"Hah... what the hell do I even say?"
It was seven in the morning.
The problem was that I’d fallen asleep in bed with Seol-ah last night.
I had woken up at five, though. I should’ve come back then. If I had, none of this would’ve happened.
Unfortunately, Seol-ah woke up too, and that made things a little complicated.
Two naked men and women—actually, the same man and woman who’d been enthusiastically matching each other just a few hours earlier—ran into each other again with both eyes open.
The rest was obvious.
After another round of fooling around, I came back after washing up, and now here I was.
Something small had happened while I was with Seol-ah.
No... maybe small wasn’t the right word.
When I woke up, the mask on my face was gone.
I must have taken it off in my sleep because it was bothering me.
That meant Seol-ah had seen my face... but thankfully, she didn’t recognize me.
It turned out she didn’t know the first thing about baseball.
She didn’t even know how many players were on a baseball team, so there was no way she’d have recognized me.
I’d never felt so relieved in my life.
Still, remembering how shocked I’d been made me think I really shouldn’t ever fall asleep again.
Thinking back to the moment I’d dozed off, something had definitely felt off.
I’d fallen asleep way too suddenly.
I’d clearly resolved not to sleep, and then I just went down in one shot.
I suspected Jumi had pulled some kind of stunt, but without proof, I couldn’t exactly accuse her.
Anyway, back to the present.
What excuse was I supposed to use when I opened this door and walked in?
This was an important moment, with a shot at the wild card right in front of us.
My teammates were holding back even from having a single beer, afraid it might cause trouble.
If I’d gone out and stayed the night under these circumstances, there’d be plenty of room for criticism.
The only thing I could really count on was that the guy in this room didn’t seem to care much what other people did.
Maybe he wouldn’t give a damn whether I’d stayed out all night or not.
"Phew... let’s just go in first."
Hoping it would all blow over, I opened the door and stepped inside.
And then...
"Huh?"
He wasn’t there.
No one was.
I even checked the bathroom, but there was nobody.
It was way too early to think he’d gone out to exercise or anything like that.
And it was the same if I assumed he’d gone to get breakfast.
We had a night game later, so there was no way he’d be moving around this early.
"Where’d he go?"
No idea.
But still...
"Nice."
Worked out perfectly.
As long as nothing happened right now, I was fine.
I changed clothes first.
The shirt I’d worn yesterday was soaked through with sweat, so staying in it felt disgusting.
At least I’d already washed up, so all I had to do was change and that was it.
Once I put on clean clothes and lay down on the bed, I felt my whole body sink into the mattress.
"Man... I really am tired."
I hadn’t slept properly, and I’d just been running wild until a moment ago, so the exhaustion came crashing down on me.
If it hadn’t been for the second round, I probably wouldn’t have been this wrecked... but the damage had been pretty serious.
I needed to sleep fast. In this state, I couldn’t do anything.
I fell asleep in an instant.
But how long had it been when the phone I’d left beside my head started ringing loudly?
"Ah, shit, what now?"
I checked the clock. Eight o’clock.
I’d only been asleep for an hour before getting dragged back awake.
I looked to see who the hell was ruining my sleep, and it was the guy who was supposed to be in this room.
"Yeah, hyung."
"Jun-young."
"Yeah?"
"If anyone asks where I went, tell them I went out for a morning lap, okay?"
"Huh?"
"A friend came by yesterday, so I met up with him for a bit... and, well, that happened."
"Ah... okay."
"Do me a favor, all right?"
"Yes, got it."
What the hell?
So this hyung hadn’t been in the room either yesterday?
He wasn’t even asking when I’d gotten back, so maybe he’d gone out not long after I left.
"Hahahaha."
There was no reason for anyone to yell at me now.
Thanks to that, I’d been able to sleep in real comfort.
* * *
Miju, who was getting ready to go live, saw that the caller was Seol-ah and answered right away.
It was a call she’d been waiting for, after all.
Since Seol-ah had been the first person Miju had introduced to him, she was pretty curious about how it had gone.
So she picked up immediately, and...
"Unnie? Calm down and say it slower, okay?"
For some reason, Seol-ah was way more hyped up than usual.
It was too much to simply chalk up to the massage being really good.
So Miju wanted a more detailed explanation.
Seol-ah didn’t seem eager to go into details.
Even Miju could imagine it being a little embarrassing.
How was she supposed to say things like she’d almost cum at a man’s slightest gesture?
They weren’t close enough for that kind of talk, either.
But as the conversation went on, Miju started sensing something strange.
"How long did you say it took?"
- About two hours? Maybe a little more?
"What were you doing that made it take that long...?"
- Huh? I-I mean, it just kind of happened?
"Unnie, were you okay?"
Miju asked sincerely whether she was all right.
She herself had collapsed after only an hour, so she’d just been worried because Seol-ah said it had taken over two hours.
But then—
- It was so good!!
"......Wow, unnie. That’s amazing."
She meant it.
It was incredible that she’d felt those things for over two hours.
- How long did it take you?
"Me? I... it was, um, about an hour?"
- Huh? Ah...
"Why?"
- Um, no, it’s nothing.
"Then what is it?"
In the end, Seol-ah never said what she’d been about to say.
But Miju had a pretty good guess.
If something that should’ve taken an hour stretched to two, then maybe—unlike her—there had been something else involved.
"Unnie. You didn’t... do it, did you?"
- Huh? W-what? What are you talking about?
"......"
She did. She absolutely did.
That answered everything.
Seol-ah, realizing Miju had figured it out, went quiet for a moment too.
Their conversation ended with Seol-ah practically fleeing from the call.
And then Miju...
"Why am I so pissed off?"
An irritation she couldn’t explain came boiling up inside her.
At this rate, there was no way she could focus on her broadcast.
So she canceled everything and paced around, huffing in frustration, when...
She got an alert that Seol-ah’s broadcast had started.
She hurried to her computer and turned it on.
"Her face... is glowing?"
It was the same face, and yet somehow it looked like a completely different person.
Before, it had been a face that made people say she was cute, but now her whole atmosphere had changed.
There was even a hint of sex appeal there. It felt strangely magnetic, like she could pull you right in.
It was an even bigger change than Miju’s own.
"Shit... so I’m just the only one who didn’t get this good thing done for me?"
Jealousy?
No.
She just wanted to get prettier like that too.
That was all, she told herself.
"He said he’d be back tomorrow, right?"
He was still on an away game until today.
Since he’d said he’d be in Seoul starting tomorrow... she resolved to go see him right away.
* * *
The final away game.
Today, the pitcher the Jaguars sent out was a second-year rookie who had spent the whole season bouncing between the majors and minors.
For the Jaguars, this game had no particular must-win value, so it seemed they were planning to let the rookie gain some experience.
But we were too busy chasing our own goals to politely let some rookie gather experience at our expense.
We jumped all over him from the start and chased him after just three innings.
The pitcher who followed held us down for a bit, but we didn’t allow a run either, and we reached the seventh inning leading 7-1.
Bottom of the seventh.
I was on the mound.
Even though it wasn’t strictly a situation where I needed to go in, our manager seemed to want this game ended decisively.
The fact that he was even preparing the closer made that pretty clear.
My body felt great.
Maybe because I’d gone back to the room and slept soundly, I felt light as air.
Even when I rolled my shoulders, nothing felt tight or off.
With the season almost over, it almost felt too good to be true that my body could still feel this perfect.
Hyung Tae-hwa wanted a sinker again today.
He thought I was a two-pitch guy, so it wasn’t anything new.
I set my grip and went into my windup, then whipped my arm forward with all my strength.
"Huh?"
Something felt wrong.
My arm seemed to extend farther out in front of me.
It was as if someone had grabbed it and pulled it forward, stretching it longer.
And the ball...
Vwoooom!
"Strike."
"W-what the hell was that?"
That wasn’t my sinker.
My sinker didn’t move like that.
Mine only dropped and broke a little in front of the batter. It didn’t dart around like a right-hander throwing a slider.
And on top of that—
"Wooaaah!!"
150 km/h
Did I just throw a four-seamer?
Why the hell was my sinker coming in at that speed?
I’d thrown a pitch I couldn’t understand at all.
Hyung Tae-hwa looked shocked, too.
He pointed at me, then called for another sinker.
He wanted me to throw the exact same thing again.
Vwoooom!
"Strike."
149 km/h
The ball broke in hard again, just like before.
"Holy shit... what the hell is going on?"
Only one explanation came to mind.
That night with Seol-ah.
Last night, the two of us had only passionately joined together.
"Guess I’m definitely doing that from now on."
There was no way I was passing up something like this once I knew about it.
From now on, I was absolutely going to make it happen.
Hyung Tae-hwa went with a changeup next.
That was genuinely unexpected. He’d never once asked for one before, and suddenly he wanted a changeup here?
I hurried into the pitch before he could change his mind.
Whoosh.
"Strikeout!"
131 km/h
Almost 20 km/h slower, but the batter’s bat snapped around at a pitch with a movement that was close to my sinker.
I stole his timing perfectly and struck him out on three pitches.
"Ha... this is fun."
Watching batters get helplessly worked over by my pitches felt incredible.
Hyung Tae-hwa had me keep throwing sinkers to the next batter, and I struck him out too.
And then the final batter as well.
Three straight strikeouts.
"What the hell happened to you, you punk!"
"No kidding. Haha."
"You should’ve been doing this from the start. Nice. Really nice, asshole."
Hyung Tae-hwa looked even happier than I did.
My stuff must have really been that good.
Still, my sinker had suddenly gotten this much better.
But my changeup hadn’t really changed much at all from before.
Did only one pitch improve at a time? Would the other pitches get better next time if I did it again?
If that was really how it worked... then maybe even my goal of becoming a closer was possible.
I’d have to test it.
After today’s game, I needed to contact Miju.
We added two more runs in the top of the eighth.
Even with the lead stretched that far, our manager didn’t relax, and in the ninth he brought in the closer to finish the game off for good.
"We made it up!!"
I got to play baseball in autumn.