A Truly In-Seong Man (Part 2)
Song Jin-wook was the first to notice that the approach toward him had changed — for the simple reason that he'd already had two pitches come screaming at his body.
"Ugh! You son of a—...!!"
It was a pitch that all but announced stay the hell out of the strike zone, so blatant that the profanity spilled out of him on pure reflex.
[Whoa, another pitch well off the mark. Song Jin-wook flinches and dodges again. Two balls, no strikes.]
After the lineup had cycled through once, it was the Doubles' turn at bat again. In the bottom of the third, Noh In-seong led off by reaching base on another bout of wild control — and then the batter after him, Song Jin-wook, was subjected to a merciless baptism of pitches aimed at his body.
In any halfway normal league, this was the kind of situation where the intent would already be obvious enough that a hitter would raise hell for his own protection. In other words, the starting pitcher should have been turning green in the face by now, or both benches should have been merrily trading fists.
But this was Korean baseball, and the man on the mound today, Cho Ho-soo, was in his fifth year.
"Oh, sorry! The ball slipped!"
He'd taken off his cap and even bowed his head — by the unwritten code, a third-year junior like Song Jin-wook was supposed to let his anger die right there.
And Song Jin-wook simply didn't have it in him to say anything to a senior who apologized first.
[Ah, yes. The pitcher's apologizing again. Still insisting the ball just got away from him.]
[Still... come on. Two pitches in a row at a hitter's body. Somebody needs to be careful here.]
Good-natured Song Jin-wook took the apology at face value.
'...Hmm. Is this bastard actually losing his command, or what?'
Foul-tempered Noh In-seong, on the other hand, saw the apology as a smiling face delivering a fresh pile of crap.
He was a grand master of the art of deliberately scattering his own command to tattoo an opponent's backside with baseballs. Whether a guy was picking a fight or not was something he could tell at a glance.
The third pitch was a strike on the outside corner. With two pitches buried deep inside, Song Jin-wook had naturally backed off the plate, and he couldn't react in time to the outside strike that normally worked in his favor.
The moment a frustrated Song Jin-wook edged back toward the inside of the batter's box...
WHUMP-!
He flinched and yanked himself backward again. Another pitch at his body.
[Oh, another one buried deep inside. Three balls, one strike.]
[And again — well, of course, right? Manager Jung Im-taek of the Doubles is out arguing.]
"He's throwing right at his body, out in the open! That's a brush ball if I've ever seen one!"
Watching the spectacle from second base, Noh In-seong was certain now.
'These bastards brought up a pitcher with good command specifically to pull this crap.'
Daegu's intention — to plant a trauma of inside pitches in Song Jin-wook — had been laid bare. Whether the manager's protest actually changed anything, or whether the pitcher was simply committed to the plan, was impossible to tell.
Even after the protest, no honest strike came; Song Jin-wook swung at what would have been ball four and fouled it off. With the count full, a pitch came boring in deep again, and Song Jin-wook twisted his body to take it — straight off his back.
WHACK-!
"Agh...!!"
[Hit by pitch! Song Jin-wook takes one off the back! First and second with one out — the Doubles have their chance!]
[This is... that wasn't a ball slipping, that was command... ha, I really hope this game doesn't keep boiling over like this.]
It ended the way it always did: Cho Ho-soo plunking Song Jin-wook and lifting his cap in apology. And when Jo In-soo followed by grounding into a double play, ending the inning—
"Hey. Hosu? Puddle? Whatever-the-hell your name is. Get over here."
"...H-hey... hey?"
The legendary mad dog who, instead of senior treatment, poured a brimming cup of poison tea and forced it down your throat in one go — Noh In-seong had begun his threat disguised as a warning as he headed into the dugout.
"Throw one more intentional pitch at my teammates' bodies. Try me.
--That old man held himself back just now, which is the only reason he didn't charge the mound. I am not him."
The killing intent radiating from that slow, deliberate slash of a finger across his own throat was unmistakable.
It was the moment the Nuclear Umbrella transformed into a nuclear umbrella of an entirely different kind.
Daegu's starting pitcher today, Cho Ho-soo, was in a foul mood.
"Seriously? This world. Some punk years younger than me, telling me how to do my job."
For him, taming his command had been an era of blood, sweat, and hardship. While he'd been buried in Sangmu and the minors, he'd gotten his shot late — and now some junior who debuted first was spitting double curses just because he'd taken a couple of inside pitches.
"And the other one's flat-out threatening to kill somebody. Baseball's gone completely insane."
Looking at the scouting reports on that kid that had piled up over the years, he'd known he was a terrifying hitter. He just never imagined he'd be terrifying in an entirely different sense.
"Leaning on his own talent and strutting around like that. Disgusting."
Cho Ho-soo was the type of pitcher who played baseball with his head — a control artist who used data to attack a hitter's weaknesses. Naturally, he built each day's pitching plan on heavy reference to data and scouting analysis.
"If I go after him head-on, all I get to watch is that son of a bitch launching my baseball into the clouds."
And so the concept he'd settled on for today was, first of all, taking Noh In-seong out of the game entirely.
No matter how proud the men who became pitchers tended to be, they read the room well. The most dangerous man on that lineup was this one.
Threaten him with a brush pitch? The moment it registered as a threat, he'd come charging out and break your jaw — how exactly were you supposed to intimidate a guy like that?
What if I just drilled one into his skull? — he'd actually considered it. But the data on a hitter who could literally see and hit a 160 km/h fastball laughed in his face: you think that's gonna work? All he'd do was inflame the man's temper while the ball sailed harmlessly by, and he'd end up pounded into paste himself. That plan was automatically scrapped.
But if he simply changed the target of that strategy, the story shifted a little.
The inside pitches at Song Jin-wook had been a kind of reconnaissance. Song Jin-wook was no pushover either, but he'd confirmed something: apologize claiming your command wavered, and the kid would let it go.
'Good. He's the one I go after.'
That was the moment today's strategy pivoted to Kill Song Jin-wook.
Judging by how he reacted even when the pitches were driven in deep with intent to hit him, it looked like a weakness that would keep paying dividends for a while.
'Even if he takes one off the body, as long as I plant a trauma response to inside pitches, I can keep exploiting that weakness for years.'
The intelligent starter, Cho Ho-soo, stuck to the same approach in the next at-bat as well.
Completely unaware that he was shortening his own lifespan in real time.
Until now, the inside pitches Song Jin-wook had received rarely went so far as to actually hit him.
For one thing, handing a team with Noh In-seong on it a pretext for a bench-clearing brawl was no easy feat. Song Jin-wook had never once picked a fight with anyone, and his numbers had climbed comfortably in the shadow of the great mountain called Noh In-seong.
Which was why, when he first claimed the title of "a hitter scarier than Noh In-seong" this June, every dirty, chicken-hearted tactic Noh In-seong had been shielding him from came crashing down on his head at once.
"Gyaaaah...!!"
BOOOOOO----!!!
[Oh my--!! Another one buried deep inside--!! The fans have started booing.]
[This is Jamsil. The Doubles' home park. Cho Ho-soo — this is turning into a very poor choice.]
"Cho Ho-soo! You're warned! You're throwing at hitters on purpose right now!"
Even the umpire, sensing the game slipping toward a boil, issued an official warning. And then, with shameless audacity, the very next pitch went sailing straight for the deepest part of Song Jin-wook's body — into the frame of a man who had hugged the plate, trusting that warning meant no more inside heat was coming.
WHAM--!!
"Ghhk...!!"
147 km/h. The fastest pitch Cho Ho-soo had thrown all day buried itself squarely in his ribs.
"Ah! My side! My side...!!"
Song Jin-wook collapsed where he stood, writhing on the ground in agony.
Planting a trauma deep in a hitter's body with the future in mind. That way, the moment the man laid eyes on you, he'd flinch backward on instinct — and then you won on the outside corner. A sound strategy. There was a reason players came to the plate bundled in protective gear; wrapping your whole body in armor in advance was no different from building yourself to withstand inside pitches.
'He's a rookie. When has he ever been through anything like this? He'll come back shaking like a leaf.'
That was what he thought. Outwardly, however, he remained apologetic and courteous.
"I'm so sorry! It genuinely wasn't intentional!"
Even after injuring his opponent, Cho Ho-soo bowed his head calmly and removed his cap in apology.
Aimed at any other team, this plan deserved applause for its sheer ruthlessness. He'd already laid the groundwork of a pitcher whose command simply kept failing, and he'd apologized every single time — the worst realistic outcome was a warning. Glancing at the home plate umpire, who seemed to be deliberating whether or not to eject him, it looked like the dice had landed on the bad side. But even that, he could accept with a smile.
It was a cheap price to pay for turning one premier slugger into a lifelong head-case.
What he didn't know was this: the first thing he should have been worrying about was the man at second base, who had watched his teammate's injury from start to finish.
"You little—?!"
Even within Noh In-seong's "people I actually know" category, Song Jin-wook occupied a somewhat special position. Sure, he'd been thrust into his life out of nowhere — but they'd eaten together, drunk together, attended each other's weddings, negotiated salaries together, done it all. Their first meeting had started with a punch, but these days they were something close to friendly rivals.
That alone had been more than enough to erase the single stroke of the character for "patience" that stood between everyone and murder.
On top of that, there was the small matter of captain Jong Min-soo — the man who had prevented every previous collision between these two teams — being traded away.
If Korean professional baseball were compared to that certain movie about a milk-throwing waitress, Jong Min-soo was the one position on the field capable of getting a word in with the lunchbox-assailant — a feeble "Hey, we said we weren't—" at best. But now that the neighborhood big brother figure Noh In-seong actually respected was gone, Daegu had no remaining channel of communication with a madman. Dialogue was off the table.
One more stroke of "patience," gone.
And as everyone knows, the third stroke gets drawn in the opponent's blood.
The man who had watched the whole thing unfold from second base — Noh In-seong — charged the mound.
"...You son of a bitch. Do my words not count as words to you?!"
He had gone so far as to deliver a warning, and this bastard hadn't listened. Therefore, Cho Ho-soo was a bad person. The logic was airtight.
Noh In-seong executed the murder_warning.EXE he had personally scheduled in advance.
Cho Ho-soo, dumbstruck, turned toward the thunderous noise charging in from second base—
"GHAK--!!"
A full-force punch landed flush on his face, and for a moment his consciousness went dark. The bench-clearing brawl had begun.
A truly historic first. It was the moment Daegu came face to face with the human catastrophe known as Noh In-seong.
From there, the story loops back to where it began — the moment Daegu's catcher, Song Ji-young, collapsed clutching his stomach.
The players who'd spent the last stretch taking shots at Noh In-seong while trying to neutralize him all froze at the sight.
'He... he's wearing full catcher's armor and he went down like THAT?!'
'And we're in road grays?'
A punch thrown clean over catcher's gear, leaving a man gasping for breath and howling in pain. No matter how deep the brotherhood ran, they had just watched one of their own get disabled in real time. Yes, In-seong had hit harder because of the armor — but it was terror, pure and uncut.
Unable to protect his pitcher in front of the mound, Song Ji-young sank to his knees and pitched forward onto the grass.
Meanwhile, Cho Ho-soo — face rearranged by one punch, lying prone like a frog run over by a car — came to. The moment one man went down, the other got up, like a tag-team match timed to the second.
"Uuurrrgh..."
And by pure misfortune, the man nearest to Cho Ho-soo when he rose was Noh In-seong. After all, the Daegu catcher had only taken that beating because everyone had swarmed the mound area to keep their pitcher from dying.
"Well, well. This bastard's still breathing while the rest of you are laid out."
Granted, with a tooth rattling loose, his mind a blur, and his brain sloshing around his skull, "still breathing" was doing a lot of work — but from Noh In-seong's perspective, anyone still conscious counted as perfectly fine.
Cho Ho-soo's face twisted as he rose unsteadily to his feet.
"You... you...! You coward...!!"
Who was he to interfere, uninvited, in an affair between Song Jin-wook and him? He wasn't even the one who got hit — and he'd sneak-attacked from second base like a coward.
Cho Ho-soo, barely upright on two legs, screamed at Noh In-seong with a face full of venom.
"...Command can waver! You're going to beat a man over THAT?!"
And honestly, he had a point. Whether someone's command was truly shaking was, to any outside observer, mere suspicion — there was no hard evidence. Shamelessly playing the victim was, by the unwritten rules of Korean baseball, the objectively correct move.
Noh In-seong nodded along, as if to say that logic held up.
"You're damn right it does, you bastard!"
Instead of an apology, the price of saying you-you-you're a maniac! was brutal. This was a man whose response to any rebuttal was then go die — conversation was never going to land.
WHAM--!!
"AAAGH-!!"
All that effort spent standing up, for absolutely nothing — another searing liver shot buried itself in his gut.
The reason Noh In-seong never touched a man he'd already dropped was that everyone he'd hit had ended up in the ER or on the injury list. Cho Ho-soo was the first to prove durable enough that he'd actually needed a second helping of punishment.
And the first pig deserved special treatment.
"You're a special case. Normally I don't hit a man who's already down."
Noh In-seong hoisted the collapsed Cho Ho-soo into the air with one hand—
"Huuurgh...!!"
WHAAAAM---!!
The instant it felt like his left lung had been crushed flat, Cho Ho-soo went airborne. Whether by accident or design, the fist landed with surgical precision near his left ribs.
Gripping the exact spot where Song Jin-wook had been drilled, Cho Ho-soo crash-landed on the diamond. Dazed and unable to put up any resistance, every single rib screamed at once — and too wrecked even to properly scream, he could only roll around clawing at the dirt.
Perhaps because it looked like Noh In-seong's revenge had run its course, the Daegu players still standing began edging closer. However hellish the situation, teammates were teammates.
"...Gulp. Hey. What do we do about Ho-soo? Shouldn't somebody go in there, even now?"
"...I feel like walking in there right now could get us killed."
Noh In-seong planted his foot on the head of the writhing, moaning Cho Ho-soo and raised his fist.
"You're gonna let this one slide on his account? Or do the rest of you want your seasons ended too?!"
"AAAGH...!! The cleats! The cleats hurt! Please get your foot off...!!"
Any man who paid zero mind to the welfare of the human squirming beneath his boot was clearly not someone you wanted to cross paths with mid-swing...
'...Season... ended...!!'
A chill began crawling down the spines of the Daegu players. Flashing through their minds was the interview clip of Jimmy Sutton, still on a ventilator in a hospital bed. With the umpires more interested in managing the situation from a safe distance, just waiting for it all to end—
Noh In-seong, looking bored, gave the fallen Cho Ho-soo's cheek a couple of casual pats and brought the nightmare to a close.
"Next time, read the room before you throw at my team's hitters. Do it one more time and your career is finished."
--Throw one more of these at my team, and I'm ripping your arm clean off.
Alas, that whispered final effort at restraint — mercy, even — went completely unrewarded.
"Ehh... euhh..."
The patient who'd already lost his mind three punches ago lost consciousness a second time.
Having completed his course of physical-and-personality therapy, Noh In-seong turned to the home plate umpire with a look of deep satisfaction.
"Eject me, umpire! Do it!"
"E-ejected! Noh In-seong is ejected!"
The man had demanded his own ejection from the umpire. Whether there was any meaning in ejecting a player who was leaving of his own accord was beside the point — it was certainly a spectacular way to go out.
Starting a bench-clearing brawl over a matter that wasn't even his: additional discipline. Stepping on a fallen player with his cleats: additional discipline. Insulting conduct toward an opposing player (the cheek-patting): additional discipline.
With this massive bench-clearing incident stacking no fewer than three flavors of violation at once, the league couldn't exactly look the other way.
"...Eleven games total. A twenty million won fine, plus thirty hours of community service?"
And to top it off, he was ordered to undergo testing for intermittent explosive disorder.
"Aigo, would it kill you to just stay quiet for once? Why do you have to keep pulling this crap?"
The league, which had hoped he'd quietly set his records and drift out of the spotlight, fumed — what did they even call this?
"They kept throwing at my teammates' bodies right to the end! That can't just slide!"
From Noh In-seong's perspective, the retaliation had been entirely proportionate — so he fumed right back at the league, ordering them to pipe down.
"Then why isn't that lunatic disciplined?!"
"...He received a five-game suspension as well, but... honestly, I doubt he'll see the field for three months."
After the small farce of Noh In-seong sheepishly retaking his seat, he set off to serve his sentence.
"At the very least, I can do my community service at my old high school, right?"
"Haah... fine. Do whatever you want..."
Just as late June seemed poised to pass by quietly, Noh In-seong secured himself another round of unpaid vacation.
