Awakening Quest (1)
— Ring, ring, ring…
— The call could not be connected. After a beep, you will be redirected to voicemail…
"Hmm… must be busy."
"G-geez, you scared me! When did you get here?"
"Just now. But what were you looking at so intently?"
"It's nothing. Let me show you around first."
"That document Team Leader Cheon was looking at yesterday… I'm sure it has something to do with this."
There was no other explanation for why she would jump out of her skin the moment I so much as stepped up beside her.
My head was growing more tangled by the second.
Thinking it over carefully, even the manager's words had something off about them.
If the organization truly saw me as their future ace and had genuinely decided my mechanics needed fixing—
The normal thing would have been to say, "Sit out while we make the adjustments, and once they're done, we'll get you back on the schedule."
Unlike an injury, where the recovery timeline is relatively predictable, a mechanical overhaul is nearly impossible to estimate. Every player absorbs instruction differently, and finishing one adjustment can easily create a brand-new problem.
That was precisely what made "mechanical adjustment" so hard to forecast and so hard to declare with any certainty.
So why draw such a hard line — that I wouldn't pitch at all this year, that there would be absolutely no early return?
There had to be a reason they weren't telling me. The thought refused to leave my head.
And on top of that—
The one person who might actually unravel this for me wasn't answering either.
A sigh slipped out on its own.
If I could just get ahold of Cheon Sojin, I felt like I could grab some kind of lead. As it stood, I had nothing.
I sat on the edge of the bed staring blankly at my phone screen, then finally shoved myself to my feet.
"…When things are like this, moving your body is better than sitting still."
I set the unsolvable problem aside for now. A player had things he was supposed to do, and those came first.
I changed into my training gear and headed for the weight room.
The moment I reached the weight room on the first floor of the dormitory, Cheon Sojin's words from yesterday came floating back.
"I'm honestly worried the players hate lifting so much. They say baseball isn't that kind of sport, that too much muscle makes your body stiff and ruins everything — complete nonsense. Weight training is critical in baseball. Doyoon, you absolutely have to put in the work, okay?"
As if to prove she'd been telling the truth, the weight room was deserted — even accounting for the early hour.
…Truth be told, when she'd told me to lift hard yesterday, I'd just mumbled something noncommittal and moved on. I wasn't much of a weight-room guy myself.
It was absolutely, positively not because I found it annoying. If that were the case, I wouldn't have shown up first thing in the morning. This was the most annoying thing in the world, after all.
"Pitchers shouldn't lift too heavy."
I'd heard that line so many times since middle school that it had grown calluses on my eardrums.
Position players were one thing, but I had never once met a coach who told a pitcher to hit the weights.
Overdo it and your muscles lost their snap; your balance went to pieces. That was the reasoning. Cardio, on the other hand, was the more the better.
So I stuck mostly to cardio. Yesterday had been the day after a start, which meant a run was part of my routine — but I'd been too wiped out, so I'd pushed it off. That was why I was here this morning.
…And, well, to put my face in front of the seniors while I was at it.
I tapped my key card and stepped inside. A cool blast of air-conditioning washed over me in a pleasant rush. After a quick stretch, I climbed straight onto a treadmill.
I'd been running for maybe ten minutes when—
— Beep-beep.
Someone walked into the weight room.
Who is that…?
I'd spent three years in the league and seen countless players, but this face was one I'd never laid eyes on before.
A sprawling frame, upper body packed thick with muscle. His forearms were as thick as my thighs, and his neck was so massive it almost looked like his head was bolted straight onto his torso.
And those sharp eyes — a permanent glare, lids pulled tight even when he was standing still.
If I'd crossed paths with him on the street, my first instinct would have been to look away.
For a second I wondered if he was a trainer, but the clothes said player. Still, no matter how hard I searched my memory, nothing came up.
There's no way I'd forget a face like that…
I was staring at the newcomer, fishing through my recollections, when he seemed to notice the attention and flicked a glance my way.
Crap!
A player who'd just joined yesterday, spotting a senior and just gawking without so much as a greeting.
I was about to trash my image on day one.
I killed the treadmill immediately and bowed at a full ninety degrees.
"Good morning, sir! I'm Han Doyoon — I joined the Wonju Flyers on a trade yesterday!"
But then—
"A-ah, y-yes?! M-me?"
His eyes went round. Both hands flailed in a frantic wave. Panic was written all over him.
"N-no, uh… g-good morning, sir!"
Huh…?
"Ahh… so you joined this year— wait, you joined this year?"
"Yes, sir! I signed on this year as a developmental player!"
I genuinely could not get used to it. That face, speaking to me with that much deference.
I hadn't even bothered wondering how old he was. I'd assumed without question that he was my senior.
And yet… he was a fresh-faced twenty-year-old who'd joined this year and hadn't even debuted yet. A total rookie.
"C-can you maybe talk a little more casually? I'm only in my third year myself. If you're that formal with me, it's going to look weird to the other seniors, and honestly I'm a little — just a tiny bit — uncomfortable…"
Uncomfortable. Uncomfortably uncomfortable.
So this was why the seniors kept telling me to loosen up my speech.
The politeness was nice, sure, but this wasn't the military. Having someone freeze up that hard was just too much pressure.
"I-I'm… sorry…"
He seemed to catch my meaning, because his whole face drooped in an instant.
"N-no, it's fine! Being polite is a good thing. But, uh, what's your name…?"
"Ah — I'm O. Dae. Sik, sir!"
Don't lie to me. There is no way you're twenty.
"Oh… so you're a catcher. No wonder. That build is no joke."
"Hehe. Thank you, sir. I've been working hard in the weight room."
"Yeah, catchers should be big. From a pitcher's point of view, the catcher is the target. Helps if the target's easy to see. You lift every day?"
I paused the treadmill and talked with O Daesik, and only then did he start to feel like an actual twenty-year-old.
The way he hung on every word I said, the earnest reactions — textbook model of a well-liked rookie.
"Being a developmental guy, I figured I had to work harder than everyone else if I wanted to catch the manager's eye. That's how I started, but now I just do it because I like it."
"Whoa. Dedicated. The manager's gotta like that. Mmhmm."
Look at those massive muscles. They didn't just appear out of nowhere. That kind of diligence was exactly how you built them. The more I talked to him, the more I liked the kid — polite, hardworking, serious about baseball.
"Where'd you go to high school?"
"Ah— I went to Hanwol High, sir."
"Huh? That's right next to mine. I went to Cheongmyeong High."
What a ridiculous coincidence. Same neighborhood.
"Who won more back in your day? You guys must've played a ton of practice games."
"Uh… out of ten games, I think we took about seven."
"Tsk tsk. Unthinkable when I was there. I ought to pay them a visit sometime."
Useless bunch. Lose to anyone else if you have to — just never lose to Hanwol High.
"Ah, now that it comes up — when I got to the pros, I really wanted to meet you at least once, sunbae-nim."
"Huh? Me?"
I tilted my head at the sudden remark and looked at Daesik. Between those sharp, narrowed lids, his eyes were shining bright. It didn't sound like empty flattery.
It definitely wasn't because I'd been crushing it in the pros. If I'd been good, I wouldn't have gotten dumped in a trade like this. Had to be something else.
"In high school, my coach talked about you all the time, sir. Feels like it was almost once a week."
"Which coach?"
"Coach Kim Taehwan, sir."
My high school coach. I already had a pretty good idea what he'd said.
"What'd he tell you?"
"I'm serious — no joke — he said that of every player he'd ever coached, you were the most talented one, sunbae-nim."
…Yeah. That talk.
"…That coach always exaggerates. You've seen my pro numbers, right? I'm not that guy."
It used to be nice to hear. These days, not so much.
"N-no, sir! You were good even in your first year, and, uh, and also…"
"Drop it, drop it. This is just getting awkward for both of us. Look, practically speaking — who in this league was bad in high school? Everyone who made it here was good back then."
Honestly, Coach. It's not like he was teasing me. He knew full well how kids would look at my record and still went around saying that stuff.
"But looking at your high school numbers, I could see why he said it. A career ERA under one over three years — I'd never seen that before."
"I was good then, sure. But so what? Those aren't pro numbers. What matters is being good now."
"Come on. If you're in the first team, you're already good. That means you're one of the top three hundred baseball players in the country."
Hearing that right after being told I wouldn't pitch this season left a strange taste in my mouth. While I was thinking of it, maybe I should try calling again.
"Daesik, give me a second — I need to make a call."
— Ring, ring…
— Click.
"Yes, Doyoon? What is it?"