Even at the Ballpark with My Junior, I'm Still an Outsider
By the time I came to my senses, the movie was over.
No, seriously. It really was.
Maybe it was because Kim Hayun, locked arm in arm with me, had been making noises that were even scarier than the horror movie itself.
Honestly, I was terrible with scary stuff, but even so, blood spraying across the screen, screams pouring out, people dying—I barely felt a thing.
Even Kim Hayun, who’d been so smug about not being afraid of horror movies at all, had flinched here and there and clung to me tightly.
“Oppa. You really watched that horror movie fine…?”
That was probably why.
When we stepped outside after the movie ended, Kim Hayun was still linked to my right arm, looking up at me with an awed expression.
She must have thought I was putting on a tough front.
“...I was a little scared, though. ...Ugh.”
I was actually just bluffing.
She probably never would have guessed that I’d stopped being scared at all because of her saying she wanted us to cheer for Lotte.
The thought was kind of funny, so I let out a small snort. Kim Hayun must have taken it as mockery, because her face suddenly puffed up.
“...Hmph.”
And that wasn’t all—she even huffed through her nose.
Mm.
Maybe because she was still in her high school uniform, even her sulking looked cute.
Still, we had plenty of plans left for the day. If she got annoyed, that would be a problem, so I cleared my throat and glanced around for a moment before saying casually, “I’ll cheer for Lotte, too.”
This was a game between the LG Twins and Lotte Giants, and I was saying I’d support Lotte.
In other words, I was volunteering to join the side that was obviously going to lose.
But there were times when a man had to fight even knowing he’d be beaten, wasn’t there?
If taking a little damage from cheering for Lotte was enough to stop her from sulking, that was a bargain.
At my words, Kim Hayun spun around to look at me.
“Really?!”
“Yeah.”
“Like, really really, seriously seriously?!”
“Yeah. Seriously seriously.”
“...Heheh. Okay. You promised, you know?”
She asked me the same thing several times, then seemed to want a firm promise all over again.
As I nodded, I wondered what Lotte meant to her that she’d be this serious about it.
She’s not even from Seoul, is she?
Then why was she cheering for Lotte so earnestly?
Curious, I asked her while we headed toward Jamsil, LG’s home stadium not too far away. And then—
“I’m from Busan.”
Kim Hayun explained everything to me in one sentence.
If she was from Busan, then there was nothing to be done about it. Baseball fans could never switch teams, no matter how much they might want to, so love it or hate it, you had to cheer for your team.
“Really? If you’re from Busan, then you probably speak in dialect too, huh?”
“Uh… dialect?”
We were waiting for the subway, and since I had nothing else to do, I decided to make her do a little Busan dialect for me.
Kim Hayun protested that she’d lived in Busan when she was little, so she’d forgotten all of it now, and if she spoke dialect it would sound awkward and funny. She refused flat-out at first, but...
Having a girlfriend who speaks Busan dialect is every man’s dream, isn’t it?
Of course, it wasn’t like Kim Hayun was my girlfriend. Still, I could at least get a vicarious experience out of it.
After I used cheering for Lotte together as an excuse and asked a few times, she finally cleared her throat with an unwilling expression.
And then—
“O-oppaya, did ya eat yer meal…?”
Her Busan dialect shot out in the most awkward way imaginable.
...Wow.
It was cute, but funny.
Funny, but cute.
Before I knew it, I’d snorted with laughter, and Kim Hayun’s face turned red as she clenched her fist and started thumping my chest.
She probably meant it as punishment, but she hadn’t worked out, so her hand was tiny as a sprout and didn’t hurt at all.
“Agh, that’s why I said I couldn’t do it!! Why are you making me do this, seriously!!!”
“Why? It was cute.”
“......Damn it. Cute is the problem here, okay?!”
“Oh. The subway’s here.”
“You changed the subject so naturally…?!”
I wasn’t changing the subject; the subway had really arrived.
Laughing, we got on, and after only a few stops we reached the transfer station. In no time at all, the train filled up so tightly there was barely room to stand.
Well, somehow I managed to carve out space for the two of us.
The problem was how close we ended up standing.
I couldn’t leave Kim Hayun, still in her school skirt, squeezed into the crowd, so I put her in front of me and stood face-to-face with her, making myself into a wall.
That ended up bringing her face right up close to mine.
With that many people packed into such a small space, smells should have been the least of my worries.
But maybe because she’d eaten honey butter-flavored popcorn earlier...
Every time the train swayed and our faces drifted closer together, a strangely sweet scent kept wafting over to me.
So yes, nice as that was.
It was also incredibly oppressive...
“......”
“......”
Apparently Kim Hayun felt the pressure too.
She kept her gaze lowered by default, but every so often she’d timidly look up and steal glances at my face.
...Good grief.
If this was hard on me, I wondered how hard it had to be for her.
Just in case something terrible happened, I tightened my grip on the pole with one arm, shut my eyes, and waited for this ride to pass as quickly as possible.
“...Ahem.”
“......”
Maybe because there were so many people. Even with the air conditioning on, the car felt humid.
If Kim Hayun hadn’t told me to wear my contacts, my glasses would probably be fogged up by now, right?
Good thing I hadn’t worn them. Really.
* * *
Twenty minutes that felt like two hours later, we arrived.
Lee Sunwoo, who had nearly died from how nice and yet how suffocating the trip had been the entire way here.
And Kim Hayun, who didn’t know the meaning of pressure and had been perfectly happy just staring at Lee Sunwoo’s eyelashes while he kept his eyes closed.
Just like at the movie theater, we naturally linked arms and went into Jamsil Baseball Stadium.
Since this was ticketing on-site, all the best seats were already gone, and we settled into a decent outfield section where we could cheer for the visiting team, Lotte, then plopped down.
“Hayun, do you want anything to eat?”
We’d entered with plenty of time to spare, so the main game hadn’t started yet.
It was also about the right time to start feeling hungry, so Lee Sunwoo glanced around at the people sitting nearby and asked casually.
“Hmm... what about you, Oppa?”
“I’m fine with anything. I’ll eat whatever you get.”
“Then I want tteok-twi-sun.”
“Tteok-twi-sun? Can they even deliver that to a baseball stadium?”
“Of course they can. These days, there are probably more stadiums that don’t allow delivery.”
“Really? The world’s gotten amazing.”
That mutter from Lee Sunwoo, who hadn’t been to a live baseball game in ages.
Kim Hayun snickered at the words, which sounded like something a guy in his forties would say.
“Oppa. Do you know you just sounded exactly like my dad?”
“......Men all turn like this after the military.”
That had maybe worked back in the day. These days, since you could use your phone in the military too, it wasn’t even a convincing excuse.
“Ah~ you said you were discharged not too long ago, right?”
Kim Hayun had only ever heard stories about the military from her father, so her idea of it was stuck about twenty years in the past, and she took me at face value.
“Well, then I guess that makes sense.”
“......”
Was she making fun of me?
As Lee Sunwoo sat there uneasily, plagued by an odd sense of persecution, Kim Hayun opened a delivery app and showed me the screen.
“Tteok-twi-sun and two drinks. Is that okay?”
“Yeah. Order it. I’ll send you the money later.”
With that said, Lee Sunwoo got up a little.
Kim Hayun looked up, wondering where he was going right after sitting down, and he cleared his throat with a slightly embarrassed expression.
“I’m gonna use the restroom for a second.”
Ah.
He had to go.
“Okay. Go ahead, Oppa.”
“Yeah. I’ll be back soon, so...”
“But you know where the restroom is, right?”
“......”
Did she seriously think I was an old man?
That line, like she was picturing me as someone who couldn’t even find the restroom, made Lee Sunwoo narrow his eyes, and Kim Hayun smiled while giving a little wave with her right hand.
“Heheh. Hurry up and come back. I’ll wait.”
“......Right.”
And then, right after that—
The moment Lee Sunwoo left his seat, Kim Hayun, who had finished placing the delivery order, suddenly had a thought.
Ah. I should’ve just gone with him.
Thinking about it now, she didn’t really have anything to do sitting here anyway. She should’ve just gone after Oppa and chatted with him.
But regrets came too late, and just as Kim Hayun was pouting and about to stare at her phone—
“Excuse me.”
Someone beside her spoke.
She turned and saw a man who looked to be in his mid-forties, give or take.
“Are you a student, by any chance?”
Kim Hayun didn’t answer right away.
Usually when someone started with a question like that, their motives were obvious.
So she was in the middle of growing more and more guarded when the other person suddenly gave her a warm smile.
“Ah. It’s nothing like that. I’m actually one of the camera directors here at Jamsil Baseball Stadium.”
And then he continued.
“You were sitting with your boyfriend a little while ago, right?”
“......”
Her lips twitched before she could help it.
He’d just come right out and asked something carrying that kind of misunderstanding.
“......Ah. ...Yes. ...Well.”
She didn’t exactly deny it and answered hesitantly instead.
Then the person who’d introduced himself as a camera director said, “You two looked so good sitting together that I thought I’d catch you on camera for a bit during the cleaning-time event. Would that be all right?”
He said something completely out of the blue.
An event...?
What kind of event was he talking about?
“Normally we don’t do any advance scouting or anything like that, we just catch people on the spot. But you two look so good together that I personally wanted to get a shot of you. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it.”
The words kept coming, and she didn’t fully understand any of it.
But in the middle of all that, the part that landed clearly in Kim Hayun’s ears was the two of you look so good together that I really wanted to get a shot of you.
“......Ah. ...Yes, okay. Then please do.”
Without even fully understanding what the camera director’s offer meant, she simply felt happy. She nodded slowly and agreed.
Then he thanked her several times, said he’d even give them a prize if she did well, and left.
But what am I supposed to do?
Kim Hayun chewed over those words for a while, and then—
“Sorry. I’m a little late.”
She saw Lee Sunwoo coming back to his seat.
And suddenly realized it.
“Ah, why are there so many people in the restroom?”
...Wait a second.
Could this be...
With Oppa and...
“The delivery hasn’t come yet, right?”
“......”
...Did that mean they were going to catch us for Kiss Time?!