And So They All Lived Happily Ever After (End of Part 1)
Incheon Airport.
A young man with a temper to match his talent saw off a Mexican-descent ballplayer alongside an Irish-descent one, both bound for the same flight.
"Cincinnati next year, huh... Yeah, honestly, if you pitched the way you did this season, you've earned the shot."
Caleb James was preparing to leave for the United States for one final challenge.
Cincinnati, Ohio. Home of the Reds.
One of the teams he'd passed through back when he was bouncing between Triple-A and various clubs' trade chips.
They'd been the fastest to reach out, promising to put Caleb on their 40-man roster next year. Once the Korean Series wrapped up, they locked in the contract quicker than anyone else, and today he was boarding a plane to go take it.
"Go throw well over there. And hold the fort until I show up."
"...Feels like you'll be along pretty quick, though? You said four years, didn't you? You really think no team's going to post you?"
At Noh In-seong's words, Caleb pulled a sour face — so he was supposed to grind it out for three or four years, was he?
"I'll be getting plenty more offers once this season ends, won't I? Must be nice."
"You could've come over too, you know. Ah, wait, right. You're holding out for your hometown."
"Can't exactly travel the country leaving my mother behind. Honestly... I suppose I'll have to pitch even better for these guys."
He clapped Andy on the shoulder, told him he'd be leaving soon enough, and that was that.
Pitch a little well next year, and he'd be a lottery ticket just waiting to be scratched.
"Alright, next time we meet, it'll be in the Majors. Take care, everyone."
"Well, hang in there at least until the pension starts paying out."
"...You just have to get one last word in, don't you? You damn punk."
Caleb James. Thirty-one years old.
To burn the final flame of his playing career, he was returning to his homeland.
Next, a guy headed somewhere a little closer packed his bags.
Dustin Springfield — Choon-sik — was off not to the Marines that couldn't, but to the Marines that could.
"...When you put it that way, it kind of feels like a lateral move?"
Meaning he was headed to a team in Chiba Prefecture, right next door to Tokyo.
Before heading to Busan Port, Noh In-seong — with nothing better to do and looking to kill some time — had come to Gimpo Airport to see Choon-sik off while the man waited for his flight to Busan.
"...Wait, why are you taking a boat?"
"I have a fear of flying. Honestly, I wanted to come to Korea by ship the first time too."
It wasn't as if there were no ships running from LA to Sydney, or Sydney to Korea.
But those are usually called cruises — and beyond not being fast, they're a whole different animal.
Traveling by cargo ship is a far more exhausting affair than riding a passenger liner.
"Your build would fit right in on a cargo ship. Should I get you mistaken for a container?"
"Damn it. What do you take me for? Anyway, I'm off to go make money."
"...But Alice and your wife are staying here. Doesn't really seem like you needed a send-off..."
Unlike those parting ways forever, this was a different case entirely.
Choon-sik was leaving his home in Korea and becoming a weekend-only father.
"What can I do? The kid's only two. You can't just keep uprooting her whole environment."
He'd be heading to Chiba, and had apparently already scouted out a residence for a one-year stay.
"It's not exactly my taste, but it's near the stadium and the facilities themselves seem clean enough."
Watching him so shamelessly assume the team would just hand him a place, the man clearly had some confidence he was worth the expense.
"...Right, well, go do well. If a Major League team comes calling, it's a scam — tell them to get lost."
"...Ugh, you ruining the mood right up to the very end — seriously, you should just get married already."
"...Sorry, what?"
--I heard the second-biggest shock a person can experience, right after death, is their wedding day.
Choon-sik hoped, truly hoped, that a nice big shock might finally make Noh In-seong act like an actual human being.
Not that it occurred to him that In-seong had already been shocked into exactly the state he was in now.
Where there are farewells, of course, new meetings are sure to follow.
Unlike the bullpen, which had already said its goodbyes, this time it was people they were genuinely seeing for the first time walking through the door.
"Hello! Rookie pitcher, Song Soo-ho!"
"Hello! Rookie pitcher-hitter, Jeon Sung-min!"
If you were strictly grading potential, these were the two who caught Noh In-seong's eye.
One of them would presumably be developed into a right-handed sidearm starter, so no issues there...
The other one, though. What the hell was this.
"What's this? His high school stats look a little odd."
"Right? I think that's exactly what the front office liked about him."
Two-way play. A second two-way player had crawled its way into the Doubles.
With one difference: he was an endlessly cheaper, minor-league copy of Noh In-seong.
Specifically — yes. He hadn't been drafted for his hitting potential.
"Capable of playing defense anywhere in the outfield, key bullpen arm for a championship team... His hitting is just sort of there?"
"Think of him as an unusual puzzle piece you can use on both the defensive and relief fronts."
The outfield defense evaluations were already polished (a 65 on the 20/80 scale).
The consensus was that only his fastball was any good, but by relief-pitching standards, his arsenal held up fine.
"Four-seam fastball, 60. Slider 30, changeup 40. Hmm."
No telling how much the slider might improve down the line, but it was more than enough to pitch out of a bullpen.
At the end of the day, a player with a four-seamer that good only needs side dishes to complement it once the pitch itself is further developed.
"This is more than enough for a candidate player. They brought in someone already fairly finished because they plan to use him right away."
From Jung Im-taek's perspective, he actually preferred the finished product to plug in early and develop quickly.
He'd rather take the rawer player and give him a long, patient apprenticeship as a starter in the minors.
"And this kid only barely cracked the starting rotation as a high school senior anyway..."
"His arm must be nice and fresh. Good news."
Every single pitcher coming in behind him was precious, so this was hardly a bad thing.
"Spring camp's going to be busy for everyone, huh."
Noh In-seong watched the manager and pitching coach practically drooling over the new rookies and winced.
"Ah, right. In-seong. On that note — the strength and conditioning coach wants you to come in and put on some size."
"...I can already see it. You all just want to upgrade me."
It dawned on him that he was only in his second year himself, and that he had homework of his own.
Over the winter, the plan would be to pack on weight and then build up the muscle buried underneath it.
'This spring camp is going to be exhausting as hell...'
And so the moment Noh In-seong's training regimen was decided: it was time to get intimately acquainted with heavy weights.
With those two sent off, Noh In-seong had planned to while away the offseason in leisurely idleness.
"On that note — Teacher, the only reason you've been so free until now is the fall classic, no?"
"...Son of a— how the hell did YOU manage to wedge your way into the baseball association's merchandise business!?"
As if that weren't possible. A once-in-a-generation lunatic who'd claimed every record in the books is always busier around this time.
Thanks to the blockbuster, explosive success of two ad campaigns,
Noh In-seong's friend Deok Jin-man had become the owner of a solidly mid-cap powerhouse company.
And now Deok Jin-man had boarded the final rail to elevating that mid-cap food company into a cornerstone enterprise.
The Korea Baseball Association, riding the wave of fervor Noh In-seong had burned so furiously into the sport,
was planning to revive it — of all things — in time for next year's Opening Day.
"Holy shit, isn't that the thing they discontinued when we were kids? They're bringing it back?"
"We're putting out the Doubles Bread, you see. And wouldn't you know it — there's a food company with ties to you."
A bidding war for a snack bread built around the Doubles' signature two main loaves — true to the team, boasting a generous portion.
Deok Jin-man's rice cake company — already making and selling rice-cake castella — had won that bid.
"You're the advertising model, after all. So naturally, you'll be the model for this 'Doubles Bread' too... right?"
Too much money had been shoved into his mouth to refuse, and besides, this was official merchandise.
From the Doubles' standpoint, it was an awkward deal to turn down.
The general manager genuinely believed the bread would sell, and clasped Deok Jin-man's hand firmly.
"You'll make the bread well, I trust. I enjoyed your mungttek myself."
Hand firmly clasped with the general manager, and for the flabbergasted Noh In-seong, a running guarantee would smooth everything over.
It was a super play by Deok Jin-man, who had no intention of letting a slave who'd once fallen into his hands slip away.
"Son of a bitch. I was a slave all along."
"Oh, right. Player Noh In-seong, you'll also need to model our parent company's laptops next."
--A rugged new model just came out, so we're thinking 'lightweight but built to last'...
"Gah! God damn it, there was more than ONE!?"
And so, drowning in incoming work, Noh In-seong screamed — not with joy, but with pure irritation.
In truth, the only reason Noh In-seong had enjoyed any breathing room until now was that he'd been busy playing baseball.
With the fall classic over, the work came flooding in at rates that were genuinely staggering.
"Well, I mean, look at what Player Noh In-seong did this year. 'The ruler of Korean baseball' — his own words, mind you."
"Ah, damn it. I never should have said that."
And baseball is the most popular sport in Korea.
Unlike soccer, where the national team essentially operates as the country's only true 'club team'...
"Over here, it's not a club team so much as a... a stress-dispensing machine people just can't quit."
Sure, the advertisers and everyone who'd bought stock grumbled every time he pulled one of his stunts.
But when they handed him the ads, they all trusted in Noh In-seong's fundamental rationality — the kind that never quite crossed into criminal territory in everyday life.
"And honestly, his craziness is the kind you can understand."
"Excuse me?"
"People who hate getting filmed by reporters stop at moral appeals. That guy actually blows up their drones."
While an ordinary person says 'Please don't do that!', Noh In-seong says 'Then I'll destroy it.' Extreme thinking, through and through.
In other words, it's a flaw that can be repackaged as 'an utter absence of hypocrisy.'
"So imagine this brutally honest person goes, 'Hmm. Looks like it'd take about ten full swings of my bat to break this. Damn thing's sturdy as hell.' What then?"
"...That'd be one infuriatingly durable product. At the very least, you'd have way fewer mechanical failures, no?"
"Exactly that."
A negative image, so long as it could be leveraged positively, could become a blue chip.
And so Noh In-seong landed contracts for every kind of 'unbreakable product' ad, and every ad promising 'confidence backed by skill.'
"...By the way, this bread is surprisingly good. Well made, huh? But there's way too much chocolate. Let's cut it back a bit."
"Now that YOU'VE said that, we're going to deliberately add even more chocolate and build the image of us shovel-feeding it to people by the fistful."
Should we put it in the ad too? 'The Honest Noh In-seong'... — at which point In-seong filed a formal protest.
The chocolate flavor was drowning out the bread itself, so this was hardly a welcome addition.
"Ah, hell, damn it. Then make one of them with the chocolate stripped out entirely, and pack the other one absolutely chock-full of it."
"...Son of a bitch, you're a goddamn genius! Come test prototypes at our company any time you like!"
Noh In-seong flipped the middle finger at Boss Deok Jin-man and crammed the rest of the bread into his mouth.
And conveniently — it was the Doubles. Striped uniforms, so just make them long and squeeze the filling in — and just like that, an added concept was born.
On the association's side, a handful of prototypes had been seeded out early to YouTubers for review, kicking off the viral campaign.
"Mmm! This is seriously delicious! But the chocolate flavor's not for me!"
"Mmm! They packed in so much chocolate! So good!"
And it earned the highest ratings of all.
"Let's sell them in the original Doubles Bread size — one chocolate-only, one plain-only."
"There are always people who don't want to eat them together, so if we sell the split ourselves, we get to skim some cream off the top too."
Once again. He'd nailed a mind-boggling positioning play and ridden it straight to the top of the charts.
"...This bastard. Wouldn't he have found success even faster if he'd just skipped baseball and gone into business early?"
Noh In-seong stared at the hologram with an expression of utter disbelief.
A vision of his friend, hugging the 'Brand of the Year' trophy to his chest, beaming with delight.
It was exactly one year before that future would come to pass.
"The groom enters in one minute! Please get ready!"
A wedding hall staffer poked his head into the groom's waiting room to deliver the message.
Song Jin-wook, who'd been sitting there staring blankly at the ceiling as if locked in a staring contest with the heavens, let out a long sigh.
"...Ugh, In-seong. I'm nervous as hell, you know that?"
"You lunatic. Your mouth, hands, and feet are all about to go off in three different directions at once."
Noh In-seong — wearing a suit for the first time since the draft introductions, no less — kicked Song Jin-wook square in the rear with his dress shoe.
"...Oof. You didn't even scream? This bastard is seriously, impossibly terrified..."
The plan had been simple: show up as a groomsman, congratulate his fresh start, lay waste to the wedding buffet, and go home.
He'd come with a perfectly clear conscience — only to find this bastard shivering in his boots, more nervous than anyone in the building.
"Damn it, the bride is standing there with a face calm as still water. Wasn't SHE supposed to be the bride here?"
Having completely lost it, Noh In-seong began physically shoving Song Jin-wook forward.
"Out! Go out there and walk! Trust me, the moment your entrance music starts, everyone's jaws will already be on the floor — so relax after that!"
"Ah! AH!! Stop shoving! Stop shoving...!!"
Song Jin-wook was dragged along by the seat of his pants until he stood before the door where his destiny awaited.
As the staff straightened out the creases in his rumpled tuxedo and stiffened him back into shape—
The groom. Enters.
The officiant's voice rang out, and Song Jin-wook's walk-up anthem thundered through the entire wedding hall.
"...Huh? I'm actually calm now. In-seong, here I go."
"...This bastard's genuinely a game-day player. Unbelievable."
The water deer that had been trembling moments ago had vanished without a trace; in its place stood a batter with murderous fire in his eyes.
Once again, Noh In-seong took his place at the very back of the groom's party as the bride, Jung Soo-jung, entered in her wedding dress.
"You may kiss the bride."
The proud officiant had spent a solid fifteen minutes dispensing utterly useless fluff before delivering those words.
Only after confirming that the drones had captured proof positive of the two being bound together—
"...Well, that means it's over, right? I'm heading to the buffet..."
Noh In-seong attempted a stealthy exit to attend to the single greatest reason he'd come here at all.
"In-seong. Cut the crap and get over to the photo zone."
Busted instantly, without so much as half a chance of escape, he sheepishly trudged toward the groom's guest seating.
"So the whole Doubles crew was here. Good to see you, In-soo hyung."
"Lim Jae-min came with the Jung brothers, huh. You prepping a coup for next season or what?"
"Seong-tak hyung... that IS you, right? Damn, how much weight did you put on your face?"
The Doubles contingent, packed in shoulder to shoulder, dragged the average quality of the groom's guests way, way down.
But the moment the man responsible for dragging it down the most raised his fist, everyone found their manners again.
"Ahem... AHEM! Alright, we're taking photos, so everyone act civilized for a few minutes."
"Ho ho, thank you, Player Noh In-seong."
Was it his peculiar talent for getting people to obey with a single raised fist, without a word spoken?
Or perhaps, in one way or another, the fact that he'd earned everyone's grudging respect?
Beaming from ear to ear, they all cheered on the bright future of Song Jin-wook and Jung Soo-jung.
Click—!!
And in that photograph, Noh In-seong was smiling too.
Not his usual scowl, nor one of those smirks where only the corner of his mouth curled upward.
A genuine smile lived inside that frame.
"Alright, great work, everyone! To the buffet—!!"
"You— where the hell did all that touching, heartfelt atmosphere from thirty seconds ago GO, you animal?!"
No matter what Song Jin-wook said. Noh In-seong was Noh In-seong.
He booted the groom square in the backside and issued his proclamation.
"Get excited. The moment spring camp starts next season, I'm stringing you up by the ankles and fanning you with a shoe horn."
And so Noh In-seong planned to hang the groom upside down in place of a foot sole, and deliver his trademark kickoff.