Personal Training
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
"Nice! Hyung-nim, you've already mastered this, haven't you?"
Ho-min gushed as he watched Ko Mandeok cleanly snag another string of well-placed knuckleballs.
"Hey. We've been doing this crap for two weeks straight already. Of course I should be able to handle this much. I'm not even looking at any other pitches—just catching knuckleballs."
He grumbled the words, but the expression visible behind his mask looked pretty bright. Almost proud, even.
It had already been two full weeks since we'd started personal training and fallen into the same daily schedule. From morning until night, the four of us lived nearly identical routines.
Our day looked roughly like this.
Wake up, eat breakfast, head to the contracted training center for weights. After lunch and a short rest, we moved over to the practice field to work with the ball.
That was where Taeseong hyung had driven a stake into the ground: no pitches except the knuckleball for me.
This was the time of year to let a body that had been ground through an entire season recover, he said, so he restricted me to the knuckleball—the pitch that put far less stress on the arm than anything else.
Still, worried that throwing nothing but knuckleballs might dull the feel for my other pitches, he allowed me thirty total pitches of everything else.
So for two weeks I had thrown knuckleball after knuckleball, and Ko Mandeok had caught every one of them.
Thanks to that, the misses on my knuckleball had dropped dramatically. Almost nonexistent, really.
And Ko Mandeok's receiving had improved just as dramatically. He could now handle the knuckleball's signature sharp breaks with real composure. Unless a pitch took a truly ridiculous dive, he at least blocked it.
At this level, I figured we could throw it in a real game tomorrow and be fine.
Anyway, once we finished training and the cool-down, the day was done.
After that came dinner and free time.
At first we'd treated free time as pure rest and just lounged around, but lately we'd started using those hours for something else.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Batting practice.
It started when Ko Mandeok asked if I'd toss for him because he wanted to hit. After watching him throw his whole body around catching balls all day, that much was the least I could do.
A few days of that, and then he said, "You wanna take a few cuts too?" So I picked up a bat for the first time in a long while.
CRACK!
"Whoa! Still a pitcher who's hit a home run before."
The clean, lively sound of contact sparked something, and the next day, and the day after that, I kept grabbing the bat until it became a daily part of the routine.
One unfortunate thing: nobody around to watch our swings and give feedback. Taeseong hyung was about as far from a hitter as a person could get, so asking him for advice was pointless.
If Taeseong hyung could have hit even .200 in the pros, he would still be playing. All his talent had poured straight into defense.
Ho-min kept insisting he would explain the hitting theory he knew, but after listening once I realized it was pure noise and passed.
In the end, Ko Mandeok and I were stuck doing endless soft-toss with no other options.
Taeseong hyung said he'd look into finding someone later, but I wasn't holding my breath.
Today, after wrapping batting practice and heading back to the dorms, we finally cracked open a can of beer each for the first time in a while. We'd decided to take tomorrow off after two straight weeks of nonstop training, so the beer we'd been avoiding was back on the table.
We spread newspaper on the floor, set out the chicken we'd ordered, and it actually looked pretty decent.
The four of us sat in a circle around that chicken.
"We're going next week, right?"
Just like Taeseong hyung said, we had to stop by the team next week.
"Yeah."
"How much do you think they'll give you?"
Ho-min's eyes lit up as he asked.
We were heading in for one of the most important things a pro does: salary negotiations.
"Who knows?"
"This guy's gotta be getting into the hundreds of millions, right?"
"…That would be more than double."
"You showed them what you can do as a closer this year, and next year you're starting. They'll take care of you at least that much."
Ko Mandeok tossed out the nine-figure number like it was obvious.
A nine-figure salary…
If I really landed that kind of money the way Ko Mandeok said, it would be more than double what I'd made this year.
I'd gone through salary talks with the Dragons too. But back then just sticking on the first team was a miracle, so the only option was to take whatever they offered.
If I'd even looked unhappy, I might have actually gotten cut, so I just sat there and shrank.
"Hyung, how do you handle salary negotiations?"
"Me? I just take what they give me."
"What?"
I'd asked thinking a starting catcher would have some real leverage at the table, but the answer was way too empty.
"You don't push and pull, ask for more, any of that?"
"I dunno? Other guys seem to do that kind of thing… Not me, though. They take good care of me already. Why bother fighting over it?"
"Whoa… Hyung, how much is your salary?"
Ho-min ambushed him with the question. He probably didn't even expect an answer.
Ko Mandeok casually held up two fingers.
"F-for real? Hyung, you've been the starter for three years already, right?"
"Yeah."
"And they give you that much?"
"That's what I keep telling you. They take good care of me."
"…No way."
"Heh heh."
"You hit barely .250 and don't even get to ten home runs, and they still—"
"You little shit?"
Honestly, I was surprised too.
Our team didn't have anyone who could replace Ko Mandeok behind the plate, sure. But I never imagined he was making two hundred million.
"But I don't think it's going up this year. Like you said, Ho-min—my numbers… Sigh. I should've hit a few more homers."
"So they'll cut it?"
"Who knows? Freezing it would be nice, but…"
Ko Mandeok's sigh grew heavier.
The next morning I woke up to an alarm on my phone. Monday. Pill day.
Without thinking I pulled out the medicine I'd brought, tore open the packaging, and was carefully lifting it toward my mouth when the door suddenly slammed open and a head poked in.
"Hey! Breakfast—what are you eating?"
"Huh? Uh? Yeah?"
Startled by Ho-min's head, I quickly shoved the pill into my mouth and clamped my lips shut, but he'd already seen it.
"……What are you eating all by yourself in secret?"
"Huh? Ch-chocolate?"
"……Cheap bastard. Hiding it so I won't steal any?"
"N-no, it's not that."
"Whatever, man. I'm not stealing it. That girl gave it to you, right?"
"…Huh? Wh-what girl?"
"That girl. The one I saw you meeting right out front on the first day we got here? Do you have any idea how shocked I was when she showed up all the way out here?"
I had met the Hooded Woman after arriving here. On the very first day, no less. That happened to be a day I needed to receive the pills, so I'd gone out in front of the dorms at night and met her.
I'd figured no one would know, but of course Ho-min had seen the whole thing.
"That was the same girl from before, right? At the Stars road trip? The one who gave you a present. Said she was some longtime fan or whatever."
Since when was this guy's memory so sharp?
"You remember that?"
"Of course. She was way too cute to match with a guy like you—stuck in my head instantly. But is she really a fan? What kind of fan tracks you down to the training facility? All the way out to this remote place?"
"Ah, just… it just happened that way."
"…Are you dating?"
"What?"
"You are dating! Wow—total betrayal. How could you not even tell me…"
"What the hell are you talking about? It's not like that."
"Not dating, but she comes all the way out here to give you presents? I saw you take something this time too. That chocolate you just ate was from her last time, right?"
"……"
He was stabbing so precisely I had nothing to say. Except for the girlfriend misunderstanding, everything else was dead-on.
"Anyway, it's not that. Just… ugh! You don't need to know!"
"……If you're bringing her home, give me a heads-up first. Don't make me walk in clueless and end up in an awkward situation."
"It's not like that!!"
"Lucky bastard."
"……"
There was no way to clear up the misunderstanding.
A week later, Ko Mandeok and I headed to Seoul. Taeseong hyung and Ho-min decided the trip was too much hassle and stayed at the dorms, so just the two of us went up.
Ko Mandeok went into negotiations first. He walked out with a signed contract after only ten minutes.
Result: freeze at this year's number.
He said he was grateful enough for that and signed the second he saw it.
The next day I went to the office at the scheduled time with the club.
"This is the figure the club has in mind."
He showed me the document and pointed to the salary line. The unit was completely different from any salary I'd ever seen.
"……"
"Not to your liking?"
Ho-min had coached me never to look happy in front of the staff… but the moment I saw the number, the corners of my mouth kept twitching.
Trying to hold that back made my face stiffen a little, and the staffer carefully asked about it.
"Huh? Ah… no, it's fine."
"Given our team's standing this year…"
From there the staffer launched into the reasons for the number and the club's circumstances, and I started feeling weirdly guilty.
Honestly the amount was more than enough for me, and now it felt like I was tormenting an innocent person for no reason.
"I'll sign."
"So from our side… wait, what did you just say…"
"I'll sign. This is more than enough. Thank you for setting it so well."
"Ah! Ah, not at all. Then please sign here, and here, and here."
Just like that, the salary negotiation wrapped up fast.
Ko Mandeok had finished in ten minutes yesterday; I wasn't far behind.
Kang Hajin's 2028 salary… one hundred fifteen million won.