161. Because It's Fun?
Noh In-seong's refusal of the MVP was not a shockwave. It was a tsunami — a monster wave that didn't just swallow Korean baseball whole, but crashed on into other countries as well.
In countries where baseball was a major sport — Japan, the United States — the earthquake's aftershocks were being felt too.
After all, the Children's Day bench clearing had already turned the entire league's attention to this one game.
- If he pulls off 40 steals on May 5th, that's practically the fastest 40-steal mark in history — and he can actually do it!
- And he does it while layering on outrageous provocation like he's toying with them — of course a bench clearing broke out!
With the fallout grown this enormous, the question of who was actually at fault had become a genuinely serious one.
- How many games will the association suspend him for this time?
Just as countless people were busy predicting the association's punishment and its ripple effects, Noh In-seong's assault on the press threw everything into chaos.
He had declared: 'Almost every award reporters vote on is garbage, and I'm not taking any of them!'
Monthly MVP, Golden Glove, Korean Series MVP, season MVP, all the way to the year-end awards ceremony — every single one, cancelled.
"This is insane. He just blew up the entire year-end."
The association hadn't the faintest idea what to do about it.
The awards were meaningless without Noh In-seong anyway, but at his current pace, a WAR higher than last year's was already a foregone conclusion. Steel themselves and pass him over? That was the worst possible move.
"Someone clearly better is out there, and somebody else pockets the award? That's just begging to get torn apart."
With Noh In-seong refusing, did anyone honestly believe another player would joyfully accept it? Professionals — especially any professional who has ever finished second in their field — have egos that scrape the heavens. Nobody celebrates picking up an award its rightful owner threw away as filthy.
So naturally, a senior figure at the association, anxious sick, gathered the reporters and tore into them.
"You've turned the awards ceremony into a public execution! What are you going to do about it? Apologize, at the very least!"
"...B-but. We believe Noh In-seong simply went off the rails on his own..."
Even then, those reporter bastards — apparently still failing to grasp reality — picked a fight with the association itself.
"You lunatics want to watch the association blow its top?! Press box — cleared out!"
"Wha—"
When the choice is between a guaranteed box-office draw and a good-for-nothing parasite, you take the check. The association, resorting to hard-line measures it almost never used, began rallying public opinion.
"What do you think about stripping the reporters of their votes? Frankly, using experts would serve us better."
"Oh my, look at Mr. Noh watching out for the sabermetricians' meal tickets too."
They floated a points-based system of expert panels, statistical metrics, and record-breaking achievements, and the declaration followed: if it came to it, they would exclude the press entirely.
"Y-you're actually going to do that?!"
"Yeah, we really are. Can you guarantee that some other lunatic studying under Noh In-seong won't show up next?"
The mad ox wasn't just busting out of the barn anymore — it was demolishing the whole house. Time to start repairs, even now.
The association was resolute.
The reporters were backed into a corner. A few among them did, in fact, decide to offer an apology.
"Apology? The only apology you could ever give me is the funeral offerings on your ancestral table."
"W-we don't hold ancestral rites, we pray..."
"Then go back to God's side and apologize by telepathy."
Noh In-seong simply refused to accept it. At this point, of course people were saying he was the one dragging out the conflict.
"Yeah? That much is obvious. So tell me — why exactly do you people need to be involved in deciding the year-end awards?"
"..."
And baseball fans certainly weren't going to shield the reporters. If anything, they'd have bludgeoned them with the shields.
It was an era overflowing with reckless slander, wild flourishes, and every variety of useless imagination-piece article. AI filtering had only recently made things feel somewhat navigable — reporters with diehard-fan handles were as shameless as ever.
So dire was it that even Incheon and Busan — teams with long, painful histories of being beaten bloody by Noh In-seong — felt this way.
Posts like these topping the upvote charts said everything that needed saying.
"Damn it, what the hell is wrong with this board's public opinion...?!"
Mutual destruction. The mainstream sentiment was a wish for both sides to gleefully beat each other bloody. The reporters' situation — now dragged down to Noh In-seong's level — was pitiful. Their image was so toxic that even when they fought one, it was the reporter who had to roll around in the mud.
"Damn it, this bastard's got us by the ankle and just keeps dragging us under!"
The reporters and Noh In-seong were wrestling in a swamp together — and he was steadily shoving their side deeper into the mire.
Meanwhile, as the reporters locked in all-out war with Noh In-seong thrashed helplessly in the swamp, shedding tears of blood, the Grizzlies who had endured the bench clearing paid their dues for getting angry on Children's Day — cleanly and simply. If there was such a thing as a winning idiot, these bears were it.
"You threw an elbow at someone while surrounded, so you're getting a suspension."
"...Uh... the guy I happened to hit was our own coach, though. And it was an accident."
"You hit him all the same."
Case drew a four-game suspension and a nine-million-won fine — but as a starting pitcher, it hardly mattered. Thanks to the Grizzlies' pitching coach, who desperately reined in a man rampaging in fury and hell-bent on walking to his own funeral, it all ended with a minor suspension and a somewhat steep fine.
A defensible punishment. He'd absorbed plenty of provocation, so a hefty fine closed the matter. The rest of them were likewise slapped with aggressive fines for brawling on such a lovely Children's Day, but—
"There are no suspensions, though?"
"Well, nobody got carted off on a stretcher, did they?"
Hadn't they all watched Noh In-seong send two men to the hospital just recently? Measured against that, all this shoving and pulling apart was practically conversation.
Granted, there was some controversy over the instigator, Noh In-seong, getting off with nothing but a fine.
"Why wasn't Noh In-seong suspended for pulling the base out of the ground?"
"Forty steals in 27 games played is a world record, isn't it? That much earns a celebration."
In the world of stolen bases, he had set a feat never once accomplished — the ceremony was justified.
"In fact, we weren't even planning to fine him..."
"What?!"
"The problem is that the man in question failed to observe the single most basic rule of all."
That thing the baseball world never tired of emphasizing. A ceremony of absolutely zero use to anyone, one that stretched out play time — that was the offense.
Because his crawl to first base in that at-bat dragged things out to a frankly serious degree, Noh In-seong escaped a fine for pulling the base — and picked one up for the crawling instead.
"You extended game time. Fine: three million won."
Deliberate, intentional delay of game is, in fact, subject to sanction under the actual rules. Whether he'd made baseball a delight for the kids watching was beside the point. The provocation was judged intentional as well, so the fine got inflated on top of it.
"...Ugh, these people are terrifyingly strict."
He should have pumped his salary up to 1.5 billion instead of 1 billion, then demanded a fine cap of 500 million while he was at it. Such were Noh In-seong's regrets about his own contract negotiation.
Meanwhile, the reporters were battered and bleeding on every front. With no idea how things were going to shake out, they'd gone to Jackson to hear his side of it — and the answer that came back was contempt and cold-hearted dismissal in equal measure.
"That is already between me and No. It is personal, and digging into it is a privacy violation."
Nothing changed, and the days kept crawling by, suffocatingly. The next series was already underway — the third game against the Superstars had come and gone. The instant Noh In-seong spotted a reporter, he'd spit on the ground and order them to get lost. Even the sliver of information about whether he and Jackson had reached some settlement, offered some apology, had been cut off completely. They couldn't scrape together the nerve to publish a follow-up article, and the association was screaming itself hoarse at them to resolve it.
"All-Star voting starts soon — what are you people even doing!!"
"Uuuugh...!!"
The ones being crushed in the middle scrambled desperately, kicking however they could to stay afloat. First, they tried to mobilize the players inside the Doubles organization.
Of course that was never going to work. In a team that revolved around its high performers, interviews were flatly ignored. Other reporters scratched their heads — Why can't they manage this? These guys normally take interviews just fine. But the reporters whose names sat on the in-house blacklist could only stare at their rejected requests and blink back tears. The Doubles organization itself was walling them off.
They were left with nothing but fragmentary scraps passed between journalists on friendly terms. And that was exactly what Noh In-seong had set out to learn, taking his sweet time about it.
"I wanted to find out precisely which reporters were getting their information through which channels. That's all."
"Why would you want to do such a thing, No-Humanity."
"...You're deliberately not updating that translator app, aren't you, you bastard."
Jackson, Reporter Jung, and Noh In-seong — the three of them had gathered at Noh In-seong's neighborhood pub, hatching their scheme.
As for going after the reporters, the key point was this:
"Let them off once, and these bastards come crawling back and do the exact same thing."
"Excuse me, I am a reporter too, you know."
"And you keep latching onto my leg because I let you off every single time, you lunatic."
From fly-by-night hit-and-run journalists to the shameless types who drop a quick 'hehe..lol..sowwy!' and go right back to work — one 'we settled it!' later, they'd come swaggering back to hunt for the next day's story. It wasn't for nothing that he refused to settle.
But he couldn't just ignore them forever, either. Public opinion kept shifting; they might slowly recast him as an insufferably stubborn jerk who refused every olive branch.
"So right now, I have to blow it all up at once and raze the main base to scorched earth."
Even now, with a 'We're on great terms, right? I just filmed you to screw you over?' angle, he could finish off a handful of reporters. But the effect was temporary — it wouldn't last three months. Kill the first reporter, and they'd simply bring in the second to do the same thing all over again.
That was why the exposé video contained a detailed walkthrough of exactly what process they'd gone through to screw them over. Of course, if they fell properly into the trap, the video wouldn't be needed at all...
"Surely they can't be stupid enough to fall for it that badly."
Noh In-seong, who never underestimated human intelligence, had bought insurance. That said, if the timing of the exposé video was misjudged, it amounted to nothing but a lump of scrap metal.
"The timing where you fire it, it lands right beside the guy, and the shrapnel carries all the way back to his company."
The exposé video worked best of all when they dug their own graves.
That was why Noh In-seong had been letting information leak out, little by little, ever since that day.
"If they're going to dig a grave, you have to at least issue them a shovel. Thank you for your hard work, Reporter Jung."
"We are sworn partners in crime, after all. Just as you say."
"WHAT? Korea has such custom?! Truly frightening. No."
"If you don't show up with that translator updated before your next start, I'm throwing it in the trash. I mean it."
To shut down Jackson's nonsense, Noh In-seong stuffed a chicken drumstick into his mouth.
Quite a bit of time had passed since Noh In-seong blacked out the press. Roaming through Suwon, Gwangju, and Incheon, the Doubles were demonstrating, team by team, exactly why they sat atop the standings. Countless fans suffered stress and pain because of baseball — so this was their mercy: administering the treatment personally.
"How does one treat the stress and hypertension of watching baseball? Trepanation, of course!"
Vrrrrrriiiiing...!!
"GRAAAAGH--!!"
Drilling into opposing teams' skulls to relieve cranial pressure, they had bestowed 'treatment' upon multitudes. The method of curing by actually drilling holes in the head was in active service in 1952 — and in 2052 alike. Watching the Doubles ride an unorthodox twelve-game winning drill that lowered the league's collective blood pressure, even Daegu, the next opponent, was breaking out in a cold sweat.
And there were people who could do nothing but watch this surging Doubles side from the outside: the reporters banned from the team.
"Man, if we could just squeeze a single mention out of this, the view counts would be delicious..."
They stared at a picture of a rice cake they couldn't eat — and couldn't even take refuge in declaring it stale. But among the banned reporters, a rumor had slowly begun to circulate.
"What? Someone inside the Doubles drank and drove their own car home? Is that for real?"
"That's what I'm hearing. Apparently after wrapping the Incheon road trip, someone said they'd rest the next day and had a drink or two..."
A drunk-driving scandal — just the thing to dump cold water on a team riding a hot streak. In 2052, drunk driving was still a social issue, but was it still the career-ending, one-strike-and-out stigma of the old days? That had, ambiguously, shifted.
And for good reason: if you were seriously drunk, even starting the engine was a struggle.
"Aw hell, hitting this hologram is no joke..."
The car key was nothing more than a backup these days; this was the era of unlocking your door with an app. Try to scan your body and drive as usual, and it locks you out with 'You're a drunk bastard. Get lost!' So you had to override it manually, punching in the passcode by hand...
"To prevent drunk driving, ALL passcodes must be STRONG!"
This was Korea, after all — a land where idiotic laws that missed the point entirely were alive and well. The bureaucratic red tape, in exchange for everyday inconvenience, did at least make drunk driving genuinely difficult for anyone properly sloshed.
But drive anyway, half-drunk, carefully tapping out the passcode? Yank the wheel hard while pleasantly buzzed, and—
"Are you insane, Human? Did you believe that crossing the centerline also meant crossing the centerline of your own brain?"
"..."
SCREEEEEECH--!!
The car's AI automatically cut off anything truly deranged. What remained was the symbolic weight — and the heavy responsibility and legal consequences, since the law itself still hadn't been revised. The era of people dying in drunk-driving crashes was over.
But it was still perfectly suited for feeding a one-two punch to those haughty Doubles bastards.
"Ah, such a shame. If only it had been that bastard Noh In-seong himself who drank and drove. Front page of the society section, that."
"...Give up on him. He still walks everywhere."
Naturally, Noh In-seong — a lifelong walker, and a relatively infrequent drinker to boot — was ruled out as a candidate. But when the next piece of information arrived, the picture turned murky again.
"Noh In-seong was at the drinking party?"
"Yes, apparently confirmed. Word is it was a pub near Noh In-seong's place."
Piece those two together, and it painted a portrait of Noh In-seong's unlicensed drunk driving. But—
"He's not that kind of bastard. One of the guys he walked home must have been the drunk driver."
In that case, Noh In-seong would be liable as an accessory — abetting drunk driving.
"...Don't do anything rash. Verify that this tip is actually solid first!"
They'd been burned once already; the credibility of this tip had to be nailed down beyond doubt. The credibility the reporters latched onto was the first home game against Daegu the following week.
Crack—!
"NICEEEEE!!"
After Noh In-seong pulled off a diving catch and traded a ferocious high-five with a flushed-cheeked Jackson — that day was the postgame interview with the player of the game.
Naturally, the caster brought up the rumored feud with Jackson that had been circulating for some time.
"You two looked so friendly during that high-five today... Could it be a reconciliation...?"
"Hm? Did I make up with Jackson? Yes. We did."
As if to say 'why would you even ask something like that?', Noh In-seong didn't bother hiding his irritation.
"After the Incheon series wrapped up, 'Jackson and I decided we wouldn't waste any more time.'"
'Jackson and I went to a pub for drinks.' 'We talked about a lot of things...'
The reporters, piecing together the words that flowed so readily from Noh In-seong's mouth, arrived at certainty.
"Got him. Jackson's the drunk driver, and Noh In-seong qualifies as the abettor."
The final check was whether Noh In-seong and Jackson had actually been at that pub. The pub owner had already hung up a signed photograph taken together with the two of them. Upon confirming the picture of the pair with the owner, the reporters declared their deduction complete.
"Confirmed! This bastard is finished now! What a long, humiliating era of suffering it's been!"
Convinced that this time would be different, the reporters waited for the third game of the Incheon road trip. The mere thought of sticking a leg out to trip up that man on the day of his start was enough to make them giddy.
True to form for a Noh In-seong start, his outing ended at seven innings with one run allowed. Unable to hold back at the plate of Ji Yong-jae — the center fielder newly back from the injured list — he'd inked a fastball tattoo on the man, then surrendered a hit to Seong Hyun-jae in the next at-bat, and that came home as the lone run.
"Ugh. Maybe I should've held my temper."
He sighed and headed to the player-of-the-game interview. And there, seeing the very reporters he disdained gathered in a triumphant huddle, Noh In-seong allowed himself a smirk.
"Noh In-seong! There's no escaping today!"
"Squawking and swarming in a mob — clearly you people heard some nonsense somewhere again."
Even facing Noh In-seong's open contempt, they stood their ground, chests out.
"We will report Noh In-seong for abetting drunk driving, and Jackson for drunk driving itself!"
Say that inside the interview room, and of course it goes on the record. As the other reporters — who hadn't heard so much as a whisper of any of this — reeled in shock, Noh In-seong spoke.
"...Drunk 'driving'...?"
"That's right! You drank after the Incheon road trip!"
"I did."
He'd said so himself, so that much was fact.
"And you got into your personally owned vehicle and went home!"
"I did, didn't I."
That, too, was a 'fact' Noh In-seong had planted with his own hands. That day, Noh In-seong had indeed ridden home in Jackson's car.
"Then who was driving?!"
"Someone you know."
The problem was that the person behind the wheel, courtesy of insurance that covered driving by others, was Reporter Jung.
"...What?"
"You never asked the owner how many people drank at that party, did you? You idiots."
Only two names on the signed photo, a handshake with the owner as the shutter clicked — a picture featuring exactly the two of them, cultivating the impression that only Noh In-seong and Jackson had been drinking. Noh In-seong was utterly delighted at how precisely they'd stepped on this elementary-grade trap.
Just in case? He had prepared a Plan B — a 'morons who turn rumors into articles!' framing — but never even got the chance to use it.
If the reporters had simply asked whether three people had been there that night, it would have ended as a mere suspicion piece — and to rebut that suspicion piece, he'd already filmed the rumor-dispersal video in advance. The one with Jackson, too: 'We're actually great friends, and the whole thing was bait for you lot!' He'd planned to hand the online press over to the netizens to be torn limb from limb, cutting off even their view-count livelihoods.
But thanks to the morons who'd tripped over a trick this simple, all that effort went to waste. With the reporters having so spectacularly self-detonated, there was no need for such parlor tricks.
"Now then — a false report is criminal defamation, and since I happen to shoot commercials for a certain corporation, this counts as an attack on our club owner, doesn't it?"
"N-Noh In-seong. We..."
"You can say the rest in court. As you know all too well — you're used to going all the way to the Supreme Court, aren't you?"
Only recently they'd been singing his praises for the fastest 40 steals by games played, after all. Probably.
"Oh, and if your news outlet runs small, I'd recommend filing for bankruptcy preemptively."
It would probably be cheaper that way.
Noh In-seong looked around at the reporters lying utterly ruined and grinned.
"...W-why are you doing this to us?!"
"...Why, you ask?"
—Because it's fun?
A man who treasured another person's ruin more dearly than his own gain. It was an answer only Noh In-seong could give.