The Rolling Stone vs. the Settled Stones (1)
"Put today's newcomer on the opposing team as catcher."
At that declaration of war from Kang Dongsik — the oldest player in the second squad and its catcher — the manager glanced back and forth between Pi Anta and the veteran, then cracked an awkward smile and tried to laugh it off.
"Why are you taking a scrimmage so seriously? What does a fresh-faced rookie who just walked in today even know about wearing a mask?"
The manager's discomfort was understandable. Pi Anta was a fine player, no question — but catcher was the backbone of a team. And since the second squad still had other catchers competing for the job even without Kang Dongsik, handing the position to a brand-new recruit felt like a risk he wasn't ready to take.
Kang Dongsik, however, had his own reasons.
"She plays every position except pitcher, doesn't she?"
"Come on, that's just something people say—"
"This isn't about protecting my rice bowl, Manager. I'll be forty next year. I'm past the age of fretting over meal tickets."
Kang Dongsik turned his gaze toward Pi Anta as he spoke.
"If your skill isn't enough, you step aside. That's the professional world, isn't it?"
The easygoing atmosphere that had filled the room before the scrimmage froze solid in an instant.
Junior players, unsettled by the veteran's deadly serious tone, rushed to intervene.
"Hey, Senior, what's this about? It's her first day — you're going to crush the rookie's spirit."
"You're really going to get worked up over some amateur who just happened to put up a few numbers?"
"Yeah. She even played shortstop in training today."
Most of them seemed to think the old catcher was just throwing a pointless tantrum at a clueless junior. But to Pi Anta's eyes, it looked different.
The line about stepping aside if your skill wasn't enough wasn't aimed at her. It was aimed at Kang Dongsik himself. Whether you were a first-year or a first-day player, if skill put you behind, even a long-tenured veteran had to yield — and he wanted to show that principle to the younger players, starting with himself.
She didn't know the full story, but one thing was certain: he had staked a man's pride on this fight.
On the outside she was a pretty young woman, but inside Pi Anta burned with a warrior's fighting spirit. She could not refuse the challenge. Dodging it, or treating him with polite, half-hearted encouragement, would have been a far greater insult and humiliation to him.
Man to man — or rather, man to former man. A clean, fair contest.
She still had a man's pride, but more than that, Pi Anta had a much bigger reason for accepting the fight.
If I throw down with this much swagger in front of all these people, how much am I going to stand out?
Master tier in a single month. A record-breaking signing bonus and a flashy entrance. Declaring a .400 batting average as her first-year goal in the majors. She was already drowning in the spotlight — and now she was going to square off against the most senior player in a scrimmage over a catcher's spot that wasn't even her main position?
She could already see the headlines.
Sports reporters couldn't exactly show up to cover a practice game held inside virtual reality, but fishing for a story through players or coaching staff was the same in that world as it was in this one. Even if she stayed quiet, someone among the nearly forty people here would leak today's events. That much was guaranteed.
So Pi Anta made her decision.
She had to take this. She had to keep manufacturing issues so no one would forget her while she was stuck in the second squad.
"My skills may be lacking, but if the manager permits it — I'll wear the mask."
Let's go!!
Her words sent a ripple through the room. Ha Jiyun sidled up beside her, jabbing her in the ribs and whispering urgently.
"Hey, what are you doing?! You're making the whole mood weird!"
"Leave it. This is a man's fight."
"You're not a man!"
"You clearly don't understand yet. When I was a man, I was more than a genius — I was a monster hitter who once swept eight batting titles in a single season—"
"What is this crazy girl even saying?!"
Jiyun seemed to have decided that Pi Anta was a screw-loose chatterbox who just happened to be good at baseball. And right now, that wasn't the point anyway. At least Kang Dongsik, the one who had thrown down the gauntlet, looked satisfied — he gave a grim, resolute nod.
Isn't this a win-win?
She didn't know the full backstory, but the other side had gotten what he wanted. And Pi Anta herself could stoke the team's competitive fire while generating more buzz around her own name.
"Manager. Let us do it."
"If the manager is fine with it, I'll give it a try as well. Opportunities are precious, after all."
That "opportunity" meant a chance to grab attention more than a chance to start, but still.
After some deliberation, the manager finally nodded.
"All right. Our rookie needs a chance to feel the wall of the pros at least once."
"I'm still far from ready, but I'll take it on as a challenger."
At Pi Anta's words the manager still seemed unsure whether he'd done the right thing, letting out a low "Ugh…," and the players' mood turned uneasy. It was hard to blame them — the whole scene now looked uncomfortably close to the team's most senior player putting his catcher's job on the line in a high-stakes bet.
"Hey, we can't treat this like a regular scrimmage."
"Obviously. You think we're going to let a rolling stone knock out a settled one?"
"We've got to show her that the pros aren't soft enough for a wet-behind-the-ears pup to mess with."
Thanks to one cocky rookie, today's blue-and-white scrimmage was shaping up to have all the bloodthirsty intensity of a Korean Series.
…Not that everyone was taking it that seriously.
"Speaking of wet-behind-the-ears pups, doesn't Pi Anta kind of look like a puppy?"
"More cat than dog, don't you think?"
"Either way, she's ridiculously pretty. I should ask her for a photo later."
Pi Anta, somehow catching that last bit, broke into a pleased little smile.
A photo, huh… That's excellent material for another article.
Issues multiplied on their own! Already she was getting excited at the thought of lying in bed after training and searching her own name on the portal sites.
The atmosphere of a blue-and-white scrimmage varied wildly depending on the team and the situation. Some clubs treated it as nothing more and nothing less than a practice game. Others turned it into a blood-draining competition where losing meant you couldn't even sit in the dugout.
Originally, Goraniz's scrimmages fell into the former category. They used the games to pick out stronger players for real matches, but the ones who lost out still got their chances. As a result, most players didn't throw themselves into the games with desperate intensity. They mostly used the time to try out plays they wanted to practice, or occasionally made weird side bets over late-night snacks.
You might wonder whether a player who coasted like that in the professional world would get cut. But almost no amateurs were lining up to join a team that had finished last for over four years straight — a franchise that hadn't won a championship in more than forty. With the team's record in the gutter, the players had somehow become the ones with the upper hand. A ridiculous situation.
Today, though, the mood was different.
"All right — we've got to protect Big Bro's pride. Let's go all out!"
"Been a while since we really showed what we can do~!"
"Time to show the difference between an amateur and a pro!"
Watching the players log into virtual reality and steel their resolve, Pi Anta prepared herself to take the game seriously as well. She couldn't approach this the same way she did ranked matches. Even if they looked like they were playing casually, these players were Master tier at minimum. Half-assing it would only get her publicly humiliated.
Being talkative is only charming if you're good. If you suck, you're just annoying.
Pi Anta, who had never stopped running her mouth for a single moment of her life, knew that truth well.
No. 1 Batter — Shortstop Ha Jiyun
After the top of the first inning ended, Pi Anta pulled on the mask and settled into her crouch. Jiyun stepped slowly into the batter's box. Today the two of them were on opposite teams, and it was the bottom half for Jiyun and Kang Dongsik's side.
"Anta, I'm not going easy on you either, so you'd better be ready."
Jiyun planted herself in the right-handed batter's box, scuffing the dirt and throwing out a warning. A twenty-year-old orange-haired kid saying "You'd better be ready!" was about as intimidating as a red panda rearing up on its hind legs — Pi Anta found it more funny than frightening, and a laugh slipped out.
But funny was funny, and business was business.
"With that level of skill, what exactly do you think you're going to do?"
"What…?"
The words, dropped before Jiyun had even finished her batting routine, left her looking dazed and flustered. But that was only the beginning.
"Earlier you asked me for the secret to making defense look easy, right? You're too impatient. Before the ball even arrives you're already fretting over how to handle it, overthinking everything — so even easy plays slip through your fingers in the dumbest ways."
THWACK!
"Strike!"
"See? You were off in your own head again and never even saw the pitch coming. That's exactly what I'm talking about. A leaky bucket leaks outside just like it does inside — if your head's full of noise on defense, you think grabbing a bat is suddenly going to make you focus?"
"Hey, you're talking way too—"
THWACK!
"Strike!"
Under a relentless barrage of spicy trash talk, Ha Jiyun had no time to collect herself. Two straight fastballs and she was already sitting on two strikes. Pi Anta had zero intention of stopping.
"If it were just a skill problem, you could cover it with hard work. But the real issue is your mindset, and that means there's no fixing this. You're never playing shortstop again. You think that level of play is enough to compete with me? Not a chance. As long as I'm on this team, the shortstop job is gone."
"Hey!!"
Furious, Jiyun swung at the incoming pitch — and completely missed the slider that ran away outside. Her bat carved a huge empty arc through the air.
"Whoa?!"
The force of the whiff sent her tumbling over. She scrambled up with a wounded look and rounded on Pi Anta.
"That was so mean! How can a person say something that harsh three times in a row?!"
Even watching her teeter on the edge of tears, clearly hurt, Pi Anta only answered with cool indifference.
"I figured once you turned pro, you'd at least do something by the third time."