Our Outcast Sends a Middle Finger to Your Outcast
Truth be told, Kim Seong-ju had never planned to dose himself again.
He was human, after all. Psyching yourself up to potentially lose everything in one gulp isn't the kind of feat an ordinary mind can pull off twice.
I already did it once, when the frustration got so unbearable I had no other choice... That was the rationalization he'd built for himself.
Had Noh In-seong overheard him, he'd have heaved a massive sigh first, then said something like, You absolute son of a bitch. I threw my arm halfway off and rolled around in the dirt as an infielder for years, and you're complaining about WHAT?
But there was no voice of reason waiting outside the bedroom door of a man who hadn't left his bed since the game ended.
"...It's not too late even now. Maybe I should just... quit?"
And the moment Kim Seong-ju hesitated, the sneer from Game 1 came echoing back.
You gutless bastard.
...In reality it had been far more elaborate than that, but the gist was the same.
...I was already on edge, and thinking about this son of a bitch just makes my blood BOIL!
The bulk of the hate comments attacked him along exactly those lines — and with him having gone silent through Games 1 and 2 on top of it —
Comments like these — expertly calibrated itches, all of them driving home how washed up he was — piled up without end.
It was the kind of writing that poked so precisely at his raw spots he could almost hear himself yelp, Ooh, hot hot hot! What IS this filial devotion?!
"Damn it. Even if I wanted to snap back at one of them, that'd just earn me more abuse. What am I supposed to do?"
All this time, he'd had no choice but to swallow wounds like these.
Original sin. A scarlet letter. Call it whatever you like — but a doping record carried a weight that was no joke.
His image was already rotten, and one ill-considered word was all it would take to get hammered with a fresh charge of guilt-by-association.
So no matter what venom someone spat at him, the law of survival was to chuckle along while cursing them seven ways to Sunday inside.
"...Damn it all. Better to die of the disease than live like this."
A capsule slid down his throat along with his sports drink.
Strangely, once he'd become the genuine article — a real son of a bitch — the guilt had gotten easier to carry.
The sensation of the capsule slipping down the back of his throat had always turned his stomach, but these days, that very feeling was what soothed him.
It's simply human nature that you cannot bear to watch the bastards who mocked you sitting there giggling.
"Let's ride this to the end. Let's see if I can get my brains batted in tomorrow and still come up laughing."
Spinning with dizziness, Kim Seong-ju swayed on his feet — and wore a smile every bit as crooked as his trembling body.
He intended to show them something in the upcoming Game 3.
Game 3, as ever, would be played at Jamsil. There was no reason to move home — this entire series belonged there.
It was an ocean of information, where fans of the two teams were fighting tooth and nail over tickets.
Even while furious curses and board invasions (not the dancing kind) flew back and forth across the internet, the Grizzlies fans, down 2-0, had nothing left to say.
You didn't need some old comic's immortal line about how losers get nothing but piss to understand it — one glance at their own board being razed in real time told the whole story.
"Yeah, and that's why we stomped you dogs flat, right? First game was a pitchers' duel, and in the second you got stripped bare by sacrifice bunts, right?"
"What? You lost? Then you should've stayed up top. What happened to that?"
It is an eternal truth that among any five human beings, at least one is garbage. So what, then, must the ratio be among the lunatics who induce their own psychotic episodes live, while watching baseball?
One in one? That's far too naive. The correct answer is: one sane person.
As a rule, no matter how many games you play against the opposing team, you are obligated to display rejection and hatred at all times.
And being on friendly terms with someone grants absolutely no exemption.
Confiscate their face, start cursing immediately — the abyss itself, made manifest.
They're a rival, you say? Ah, "they're dead to me" — crop a meme, crush the opposing gallery's owner, upload memes to their board until you get banned, then go quiet once it's time for the next game.
"Ugh, those bastards finally logged off..."
Right, it's game time... sigh, I just hope we win today and raid those bastards' board in return.
← For real... if we lose today too, we might as well just get flattened and call it a series. Next up is that bastard, after all.
← Take your one at-bat, you sons of bitches, and stop fouling off pitches that hang... ugh, I'm getting angry again...
6:30 PM. Time for baseball.
For the winning team, it was that magical hour of "Serve the chicken and beer! This is the hour of heroes on the eve of a championship!"
For the losing team, it was the magical hour of chanting "Disband the damn franchise, you..."
Countless ads flickered past — one last chance, they claimed, for anyone who hadn't yet ordered the food they'd eat while watching the game — before the broadcast cut to the stadium, where the final notes of the national anthem rang out loud and clear.
The time had come for Korean Series Game 3 to begin.
The moment the game started — a swing so hot you'd never guess it was autumn.
A genuinely enormous fire had been lit under one Grizzlies batter's bat.
CRACK—!!
"And this ball leaves the park as well! Kim Seong-ju will not be stopped! A hit in consecutive at-bats! CONSECUTIVE AT-BATS!"
"Has it finally come? Has the man who stayed silent in Sung Ji-chang's shadow all this time finally erupted?"
"...Whoa. Look at the distance on that."
The druggie who'd been quiet for so long was loosening up now — either his body had warmed into rhythm, or he'd taken something else entirely.
Jeong In-woo stared up at the stands with a hollow expression.
"Hey, you cremated that sinker. What are you crying about?"
"...Don't give me that crap. Was that ball actually leaving the yard?"
A sinker, tucked down and in, located with exquisite precision — and he'd still squared it up dead-center and lifted it over.
How should I put it? Precise is the word, I suppose.
"...That wasn't his usual all-or-nothing funeral-pyre hack, was it? That was a sharp swing."
"True enough. Wasn't he the guy who used to trust his raw strength and muscle cheap home runs out of nowhere?"
"If you're so curious, hand the ball over already. How long am I supposed to keep standing here?"
The pitching coach was looking at Jeong In-woo with a face that said his patience was wearing thin.
"...I'm sorry. I'll come down. In-young's up after me, right?"
"Yeah."
The game was already badly tilted — we'd handed that one lunatic six RBIs all by himself.
8-4. To think yesterday's script would be replayed against us today, beat for beat.
The slap-hitter legion would set the table for Kim Seong-ju, and Kim Seong-ju would clear the plate down to the last crumb.
Meanwhile, the other side was running out bullpen arms they hadn't shown in Games 1 and 2, and their starter was grinding through innings on grit alone.
Me? I never gave him a thing to hit from the start. Walked him every single time.
But there's only so much Song and Choon-sik, or In-soo hyung and Sung Hyun-tak, can carry in through the front door.
When the run supply is that lopsided, you get dragged along whether you like it or not.
"Hnn."
"...This son of a...!!"
Watching that drugged-up punk flash me a smug grin with his chest puffed out had my blood boiling.
Jeong In-young fought hard after that, but stopping a Kim Seong-ju whose engine had finally caught fire was no simple task.
He didn't get sacrificed three times in a row, but a leadoff double — one that clipped the fence and ricocheted off an outfielder's glove — got through. That it stayed a double and not a triple was small mercy indeed.
Eventually, So Dong-yeop and Yeom Dong-goo picked up the remaining innings one careful bite at a time, and in the meantime the Doubles clawed runs back to stay within reach.
But the opposition was riding the wave now. They tacked on insurance runs and slipped away, and when the save situation arrived, Cho Hoon came out and slammed the door.
10-7. They'd wounded each other — but the Doubles, bleeding deeper, took the loss.
Much like the Grizzlies squad itself — dead and buried, then miraculously revived for a single game — the Grizzlies fandom began clawing its way back to life too.
It's a strange thing, how one solitary win resurrected all hope for Game 4. But then, that's what baseball fans are.
Show them even the slimmest sliver of hope, and they'll wire their entire nervous system into it and draw power.
Right now it was 2-1. The people telling themselves that if they just took tomorrow's game too, the series would be all square — they were in a good mood.
The Grizzlies fans' hope circuit had started to spin.
It did not take long for the Grizzlies fans' faces — beaming with confidence right up until first pitch — to change into faces that needed a doctor and a long convalescence.
Why do you think they call it a hope circuit in the first place? It's called that precisely because it shorts out and burns up instead of running properly.
"...Our starting pitcher today will be Ho Geun-woo..."
The Grizzlies' pitching staff had absorbed far more damage across Games 1 through 3 than anyone had reckoned.
And the arm they ultimately sent to the mound was a starting pitcher drafted just this year.
Damn it, you think I WANT to hand a rookie his first taste of fall baseball like this?!
He'd chosen the kid as a desperate stopgap because there was simply nothing else — but then, a manager's job description has always included being cursed at.
He'd taken a heaping serving of abuse, enough to extend his survival by twenty years or so. But then —
CRACK—!!
"He got it! A two-run RBI single off the bat of Jo In-soo! The ball deflects off the fence — and he's not hustling!"
"His knee must be acting up. He isn't pushing his luck."
It seemed he'd be eating one more serving of abuse on top of everything he'd already swallowed — because the rookie he had put on the mound had failed to locate his pitches and gotten hammered right over the middle of the plate.
"Well hit. Nice."
Needless to say, fantasy scenarios where a pitcher suddenly handed a chance performs brilliantly are rare in real life.
Jo In-soo — the owner of the lowest average in the cleanup spot — dug the ball out without much trouble.
After that, it was all downhill. An ugly 4-0 hole by the end of the first inning.
But Kim Seong-ju had himself. The me of right now can do this.
We can still catch up. Yesterday only fell apart because of a couple of home runs — that's all it was.
So thinking, his pre-game mind-doping now complete, Kim Seong-ju stepped into the batter's box with a wide grin —
"...? What are you doing. Go sit down. You've got no at-bat here."
Just like Noh In-seong, he was banished.
The catcher had stood up, declaring that with numbers that disgusting, there was simply no way he could give him anything to hit.
"...Whoa whoa whoa, hold on. You're doing this to ME too?!"
"What do you mean, 'too'? You get to walk our guys, but we can't walk you? Against yesterday's line — three for four, two homers, eight RBIs?"
From the perspective of an opposing manager who'd believed Kim Seong-ju had resurrected himself and was poised to deliver something — there was no despair quite like this.
A batter's face crumpled like tin foil, and a manager's face crumpled to match.
Unlike Noh In-seong, Kim Seong-ju had not a single point of WAR earned on the basepaths to his name.
If anything, if you tallied it up, he'd done more to subtract value than add it.
No matter how diligently you doped, if nobody gave you the chance to use it, the whole enterprise was worthless.
Even with a runner standing on first — once the pitcher made up his mind to walk you, that was that.
"We're issuing an intentional pass with the runner aboard!"
Walked without a flicker of hesitation.
And the umpire, this time, issued the forced-advance order in the Grizzlies' direction.
"Kim Seong-ju, to first base!"
"Nnngghh..."
And so, hollowly, the Grizzlies' Game 4 strategy fell apart to the sound of a bat snapping over a knee.
In the end, in that fourth game, the Grizzlies went down drowned in the very same outcast strategy.
The plan that severed an offense at its single artery proved every bit as effective against them.
"...No — we don't know that yet. Depending on who starts tomorrow, it might be very winnable!"
Still clinging to that hollow hope, the Grizzlies manager leaned in to hear who'd be starting the next day.
"...? It's Noh In-seong. Obviously."
What filled the air was nothing but despair.
"...Ah. So this year's title is out of reach."
Hearing the opposing manager's reaction, Noh In-seong broke into an all-around smile.
Watching grown men cower at the mere sight of him — well, there was less and less reason to fear them in advance.
Separate from all that, though —
What to do about this man's situation — that was the first order of business.
He was practically broadcasting duel me from every pore, pressing me with all his might.
So he wanted to force a showdown, get a piece of my pitching, and declare a moral victory, did he?
"This man has lost his mind. He's angling to take one swing off me and go straight to the Lord's side."
Heaven is chronically short on bastards like this. The sooner he's shipped off, the better.
And so Noh In-seong set about preparing an outsourcing arrangement with heaven's hiring desk.