The Awards Ceremony and the Absurd

After the Noh In-seong massacre came to an end, the Korean Series awards ceremony was held.

Everyone was still terrified of his fists, as it turned out — they steered clear of any sidearm delivery and set their trophies down gently, which made it possible for Noh In-seong to show up and take his photos in peace.

Honestly, everyone had a rough idea of who would take the Korean Series MVP, but the prevailing expectation was that today's Daily MVP would go to someone else.

"Ahh... this is what it's about."

And that was exactly how it played out.

Even though Noh In-seong had thrown 7.1 scoreless innings, the team had only scraped together 3 runs today. The man who'd blasted the lone home run and swallowed up every single point on the board — Jo In-soo — raised the plaque overhead.

People might ask what the big deal was, him being the team captain and all, but when you weren't expecting a single won to hit your account and two million won of sweet, unexpected cash comes raining down, that is sweetness in its purest, most concentrated form.

"Well, you were the only one who scored today."

"Captain, you're buying dinner. Meat sounds good."

Everyone crowded around him spouting shameless nonsense, but it was never going to work.

"Hey, the bastard standing in front of you is going to be making the most money out of any of us soon enough. Why the hell would I pay?"

The same man whose MVP payout alone was ten times theirs, whose championship bonus rating was a foregone A-grade.

Noh In-seong's series stats were scrolling across the jumbotron.

"...Two at-bats is just sad."

Noh In-seong, who had collected a hit in one of them, had barely a moment to mourn his own stat line.

"You never even got any chances, huh. If you're that salty, go massage your numbers a whole lot harder next year."

Song Jin-wook splashed a generous dose of vinegar into this solemn moment.

"Want me to punch your face in with this fist?! Has this guy lost his goddamn mind..."

Noh In-seong raised his fist at the not-even-remotely-comforting bullshit —

— but that fist very quickly had to shoot upward in triumph instead.

"Congratulations! Presenting the cash prize and commemorative gift!"

"Honestly, this is sweeter than any single line on my career record. Damn it, though — what the hell am I supposed to do with this bonus?"

"......"

The announcer's face, which clearly read what kind of bullshit is this, was breezily ignored.

He had no license, so setting aside the utterly useless car, the prize money itself was pretty sweet. Twenty-five million won, in keeping with the times. Half his annual salary — now that was sweetness.

After taxes carve out their share a good chunk of it will vanish, but hey, money's money.

Noh In-seong's mood improved slightly. As the face that had been scrunched up like some demon's death mask relaxed, Song Jin-wook read the room... sort of... and crept closer.

"At the team dinner I'm gonna make him puke back up every one of those ribs he fucking hammered. Just let him get drunk. Just try it."

"Ack! No!"

That was that, and this was this — a murder threat against Song Jin-wook rang out across the ceremony hall.

"KWAHAHAHA--!! Pour it! Drink it! Grill it! This is the table of CHAMPIONS, baby--!!"

"Goddamn it, Song Jin-wook. Hammered again! How much has that bastard had?!"

A BBQ joint near Seoul, roaring with the chaotic warmth of a championship banquet — the only thing missing was chopsticks shoved straight up Song Jin-wook's nose.

"...He chugged three pitchers in one breath? Fuck, is that guy even human?"

In the loud, crashing chaos of the Doubles' steakhouse celebration, the single most conspicuous presence was Song Jin-wook.

These days, the meta for baseball players was pretty much mandatory asceticism during the season. It says something that Noh In-seong's biggest dietary transgression of the year had been a zero-calorie cola.

Song Jin-wook, currently in a state of 'if I don't drink I will DIE', had snapped clean off his leash today.

I should've realized it the moment he downed an entire bottle of champagne the second we clinched.

The mad whale was vacuuming up beer like it was plankton.

"...Wow. I thought I was a pretty big eater myself, but I never even imagined something like that."

"In-seong, you're surprisingly good at grilling meat. Damn. Look at that beautiful sear."

While Noh In-seong wore a look of pure disbelief watching Song Jin-wook's beer-chugging performance, he grilled and plated meat with one hand, and Jo In-soo and the team veterans received it with gratified faces, again and again.

"Eat fast, clear the grill, or the next batch can't go on."

Unexpectedly, it was Noh In-seong holding the tongs. Not because he was the youngest — he simply hated eating bad meat.

If grabbing the tongs is the most delicious way to eat, then grab them I must.

And naturally, the tastiest cuts kept finding their way into his own mouth, quick as a flash. Ping-ponging endlessly between public interest and private gain — now that was a guy who knew exactly where the line was, and stood precisely on it.

Round two: those who would keep drinking drank, and everyone else peeled off. Instead of joining round two, Noh In-seong hoisted the man who, left alone, would have vanished into some back alley like a messenger who never returns.

"Aargh, motherf—. Why is he so heavy? Hyung, give me some support here."

"Wow, this crazy bastard is pure muscle. Is this weight-to-frame ratio even legal?"

Because Song Jin-wook had drained every drop of alcohol the establishment possessed and was now completely incoherent.

"Hnngh... dunno... gonna... eat..."

"Speak like a human being, damn it. This guy's a walking liquor barrel."

Out of options, Noh In-seong pressed the drunk barrel of the Song clan's emergency ejection button.

THWACK--!

"Emergency ejection button" was a polite way of saying he drove a fist into the man's side.

"HUUOOORRGH--!!"

The next morning, the street-cleaning drones and their operators would have witnessed a scene that made them want to resign on the spot — but that came and went.

After Cho Hyo-jin, Kim Jin-hong, and Noh In-seong groaned their way through stuffing him into a taxi, and after they collapsed onto a bench outside, utterly spent as payment for transporting a human liquor barrel, they finally caught their breath — and talked about what they had in common.

"Hey, Jin-hong's in the same boat as me... we don't get much of a break, do we?"

"Guess not. You, hyung, and me — we're all national team reserves. They'll be calling us up again to get ready for next year, won't they?"

Incidentally, the guy who puked again in the taxi home and got slapped with a cleaning surcharge was also a national teamer — but since he wasn't here, that story could wait.

Come the middle of next month, the reserves would gather once for a simple intrasquad blue-white game, and then a promise had been made to go a round against the rest of Korean baseball...

"Fuck, they just want to squeeze money out of us, don't they?"

"In-seong, that is a promise you're not supposed to say out loud."

From where Noh In-seong stood, the whole thing just looked like a useless chore designed to inconvenience him.

"Well, whatever — decent enough as a next goal, I guess. Everybody go grinding, then. Dismissed!"

"Watching this kid, I swear I feel like I'm the young one. The boy's reached total enlightenment."

"Excitement and honor about the national team? Dead and buried, both. The man is 'real' personified."

Whatever the two old-timers behind him were muttering, Noh In-seong, feeling the fatigue creep in, headed home.

He'd gotten through the next year well enough — this time, the goal would be to actually win something with the national team.

Setting his next target, the pre-dawn hours of the morning after a championship slowly brightened.

Morning came, and the internet was still happily detonating.

When a team wins it all, even an unpopular one, its fans inevitably colonize every "concept post" slot for days — but this was Seoul's half-and-half rivalry, one half of Seoul claiming the crown with the other half as its victim.

The victorious Doubles fans taunted the defeated Grizzlies fans over drinks, and far from being found as corpses the next morning, they kept drinking, kept taunting, and kept going.

From the other teams' ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fans' perspective it was infuriating, but for the most part they took it quietly. If their team had won, they'd have made at least that much of a spectacle of themselves.

Of course, being angry, they did vent that anger on their own team boards.

The direct rival team, on the other hand, had gotten their own board thoroughly pillaged. Some had sworn off baseball entirely after the loss, declaring the sport too filthy to watch, and had cut off their board usage for a while — and the veterans, anticipating the incoming spam flood, had fled to other hobbies, leaving the board's firepower in a sorry state.

Sensing the opening, the eternal tradition of UFC-style board raids began.

Being on the receiving end, there was no way it felt good ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— but from the Grizzlies' standpoint, it genuinely felt unjust.

The Korean Series itself had never felt like it ended in a fair fight. No, we were holding our own, weren't we? We only lost to that heaven-sent agent of chaos Noh In-seong — it's nobody's fault but his!

A situation where you could cry We lost to external malice! without ever having to admit your own shortcomings!

To be fair, the various incidents that erupted over the course of the Doubles' championship run were incidents in their own right — but above all, there was the fact that their starting pitcher had been taken out in the second inning by the opposing starter's "Power Charge" (it wasn't), knocked cold with a career-threatening injury and ruled out for the season. The complaints poured out.

He threw at him on purpose, didn't he?!

It absolutely had been on purpose — but at least the umpires had ruled it unintentional, so that particular grievance could be shrugged off fairly easily.

Then what are you going to do about THIS one?

Because the biggest injury of the championship run, the greatest loss — belonged to one more man.

Beep... beep... beep...

In the middle of the intensive care unit lay a man, his body wired into banks of machinery.

"A cerebral hemorrhage — intracerebral, specifically. The intracranial pressure spiked far too rapidly..."

A man who had blown clean past mere anger into the realm where every drop of his blood boiled in a single instant — Kim Seong-ju — was hospitalized.

By the time he reached the hospital, the doping compounds inside him had, by the narrowest of margins, completely broken down. The doping was never detected, and what little honor he had left was preserved — barely. But his brain, whose functions had already betrayed him once, could not be protected in full.

The small comfort was that hitting the golden time meant his brain function hadn't died catastrophically. But a brain already pushed to its limit by brain doping and the drugs mixed with it had then been slammed into a state of rage at its absolute extreme — and the athletic ability and reaction speed networked into it would now degrade, permanently.

Even this was something he should have thanked heaven, or God, or whoever was on duty. The ride to the hospital after the hemorrhage had been short — drag it out a little longer, and brain death was on the table.

As a player, Kim Seong-ju had lost. But as a human being, Kim Seong-ju had, at this point in time, tasted the very limits of good fortune. Depending on how successfully the surgery went, the whole thing could still end at partial cognitive decline.

Besides, his name was already carved in scarlet letters and dragged through the mud daily, so the public felt not a shred of sympathy for him.

That was the caption on the photo of the collapsed Kim Seong-ju. It made sense.

Mind you, Noh In-seong was also the man who had enraged him and put a ball into him, and the words brain hemorrhage hung off that incident — the image of the man who almost killed somebody could easily have attached itself to him.

But a doctor's interview muddied that picture beautifully.

"There was almost certainly already minor bleeding occurring in his cerebral vessels."

What the news report meant was that some degree of bleeding had been present for a while.

What the public didn't know was that Kim Seong-ju had already been experiencing side effects for some time. The true identity of the headaches he'd suffered since Game 2 — the whole era of stacking brain doping on top of his regular doping regimen. He had been dying slowly, and patiently.

Then, in the middle of all that, Noh In-seong had spent an entire game seasoning him, the bleeding volume had spiked violently — and the moment that volume hit its peak had been the ball to the body and the face going Hongik-red with fury.

Collapsing inside the stadium was the only reason the golden time was caught at all.

He had started doping in the first place out of a thirst for revenge on Noh In-seong — and so it was Noh In-seong who nearly killed him, and Noh In-seong who saved him. A bizarre, grotesque little farce. But the public knew only the second half, and so this was how it all shook out.

"...So this is how it turned out?"

Noh In-seong, wearing a face of pure incredulity as he read the paper, folded the screen in half and hurled it.

Thanks to this stunning display of throwing etiquette in place of table manners, his mother's spoon locked onto his head —

"Too slow."

— but he dodged every spoon with a dazzling display of headbanging and fled into the bathroom, escaping her nagging along with it.

Today was the day he'd go lay eyes on the faces of those damned national team bastards who put people to work in the offseason.

The man who saves lives with his mouth — Hwa-ta himself, Noh In-seong — set off for Goyang.

"All familiar faces, huh."

Noh In-seong strolled in, nearly last, and surveyed the crowd already assembled.

What, you say a rookie shouldn't be late? Then try wanting to clock out the moment roll call ends. Go ahead.

"...Hey, shouldn't you show up a little earlier? You're a rookie, aren't you?"

"Shut your mouth, national team rookie number two."

Noh In-seong greeted Song Jin-wook — still flat on his back recovering from his alcohol-sick bender — with a raised middle finger, and over yonder, Jeong Han-sol sent him a nod.

"Oh, Han-sol. Been a while."

"...This one really has no concept of treating a senior, does he. Honestly."

The most senior member of the national team greeted him with a face that had aged ten years from sheer disbelief. That Noh In-seong could toss out a breezy hi there to men they'd once tried to kill each other over — it never stopped being remarkable.

"Haah, well, things should be quiet for a while anyway, so fine."

Half in surrender, Jeong Han-sol's gaze fell on the faces of those who'd crawled in even later than he had.

"Wow. The MLB bastards crawled in after ME."

"Shh! They're still your seniors!"

"What nonsense. Since when does a baseball field have seniors and juniors?"

You're either getting beaten by me, or you're a teammate. One of the two.

So which one are you three?

Noh In-seong flashed a wide grin and watched the three men walk slowly in.

Major League Baseball.

The final tech tree a baseball player can reach, at least for now. A collection of the biggest bastards at playing baseball on the face of the Earth.

Naturally, the three men grinding away in that league formed the backbone of the national team.

Starting center fielder for the Philadelphia Phillies — Song Jung-gu. Third baseman and first baseman for the Boston Red Sox — Seong Ha-jin. And the man currently glaring at Noh In-seong like they wanted to kill each other —

"I'm asking you — why exactly should I speak politely to you?"

"...Who the hell raised this kid? Doesn't he know what a senior IS?"

"Nope, sure don't, you bastard. If it bothers you so much, shall we have this conversation in baseball or with our fists? Right now, pick one."

Houston Astros' number four starter Jin Jung-jae had grabbed Noh In-seong by the collar on the very first day of national team camp.

The reason for the fight was simple. Jin Jung-jae had looked at Noh In-seong, the youngest man present, and immediately attempted to initiate rookie hazing.

"Hey, rookie, carry my bags. You know where my locker is, right? Drop them and you're dead."

Truth be told, hazing rookies was accepted practice even in the Majors. Jin Jung-jae had fully expected Noh In-seong to bow and scrape.

"You crazy bastard, are your hands and feet on strike? Want me to carry your arm up on the mound for you too?"

The tossed luggage was roundly returned via kick, landing squarely in front of Jin Jung-jae. The outstretched hand, every finger curled except the thumb and middle finger, was the reply.

Naturally, Jin Jung-jae — now thoroughly enraged — grabbed him by the collar, and the conversation at the top of this scene took place. But Noh In-seong was a player whose violence matched his temperament.

Fluid, unhesitating motion flowed one move into the next. A knee into the gut bent the man into a suitably respectful posture —

"Khhh—!"

"J-Jung-jae!"

— followed by an axe kick, delivered cleanly onto the field. Then, seizing the arm of the man sprawled face-down on the floor, came the legendary Kimura lock.

"Agh... AAAAHH!! AGH!! I yield! I YIELD!"

"Shut up! Then die!"

Jin Jung-jae's national team debut — the story of a man who'd tangled with the wrong maniac — was, at that moment, rewritten into a torture memoir.

On Noh In-seong's first day with the national team, unlike the veterans steeped in the ways of Korean baseball, the three MLB men greeted him with shock and awe.

"AGH!! AGHH!! Please!! Please let GO!!"

"Hey! You two! Break it up RIGHT NOW!"

Ah, yes — and the national team coaching staff, watching their own starting pitcher's arm being folded the moment they walked in, were included in that count.