High School Dying-Musical
With Noh In-seong gone for a stretch, the Doubles were in for a rough ride starting with the very next game.
An 11-game suspension. Unless you were caught drunk driving or doping, a punishment that size was nearly unheard of in Korean baseball.
Granted, as the manager who'd just lost both pillars of his team overnight, he had every right to be furious.
But Jung Im-taek actually accepted the scale of the punishment.
"Haaah... honestly, when did this punk not cause a bench clearing last year?"
Of course, it wasn't so much acceptance as half-enlightened resignation. But hey, same difference.
Jung Im-taek had always expected a fight with Daegu eventually — he just hadn't known when.
Noh In-seong didn't get along with the opposing catcher, and he never stopped needling Daegu's players.
The only reason war hadn't broken out until now was his good relationship with Jong Min-soo, the opposing team's pillar.
A guy who'd thrown down with every single team in the league suddenly giving Daegu special treatment? That would have been the stranger outcome.
Still, once the incident happened, there was nothing to do but deal with it.
"Argh, this is driving me insane. Call someone up from the minors. Bring a starting pitcher up."
"Yes, sir! Understood. Would Song Soo-ho do?"
Song Jin-wook was down clutching his ribs, and Noh In-seong had beat the opposing pitcher half to death.
He'd rushed Song Jin-wook to the hospital and done the best he could in the moment.
He was furious — if the umpire had simply thrown Noh In-seong out immediately, none of this would have happened.
"It was a tax I was always going to pay someday. Today just happened to be the day."
Whining about what's already done gets you nowhere.
He had to somehow fill the void left by both Noh In-seong and Song Jin-wook, and hold the line until those two came back.
"Call up Song Soo-ho, move Jin Seong-min into the starting outfield, slot Ji Hak-seong in as designated hitter..."
Amid all this lineup juggling, the report on Song Jin-wook's injury came in surprisingly hopeful.
"So Song Jin-wook is out two to three weeks, is that right?"
"Yes, sir. They say there's a hairline fracture in the ribs. Order is to rest until it heals..."
For a ball that had drilled him square, and a player who'd howled that loudly about the pain, it was a remarkably minor injury.
Song Jin-wook, who'd never been good at registering pain in his life, had simply oversold it a little — it wasn't bad enough to warrant all the writhing.
The one who'd actually earned his roll around on the ground was the opposing starting pitcher, six ribs shattered all at once.
But from Jung Im-taek's perspective, this was still a pretty painful report.
"Unbelievable. Both of them out a minimum of two weeks."
The win percentage they'd banked over the season gave him some cushion, at least.
Two weeks from now. Once that was over... wouldn't it be the All-Star break?
"...Wait. This might actually be... doable?"
Let the starters and hitters run wild, and just give the guys not making the All-Star team a nice, hard rest. Simple as that.
"...Did he plan the bench clearing all the way to this...?"
For one flashing instant, Jung Im-taek wondered: is Noh In-seong's deep, far-sighted scheming capable of reaching here...?!
Of course it wasn't. Noh In-seong had never once triggered a bench clearing with that kind of foresight.
"YES! If I just coast to the All-Star break, I get an invincible three-week vacation!"
If anything, this was a crowd of men who felt pure joy at the prospect of resting.
His weekly paycheck was gone, sure, but the days off were plentiful — so Noh In-seong went to visit Song Jin-wook's hospital room.
The plan: stroll in with a fruit basket, tease the guy about having to eat hospital food, and eat the fruit himself.
"Excuse m—"
Click.
It was, after all, the room of a man making hundreds of millions a year — a private room. Noh In-seong eased the door open, and inside lay Song Jin-wook, and...
"OPPA! Why would you stand there with the ball coming straight at your body just because you got one warning, instead of stepping inside?!!"
...Jung Soo-jung, mid-lecture, in full swing.
Song Jin-wook, ears being chewed clean off, spotted Noh In-seong peering through the crack in the door.
'Help me...!! Please...!!' his eyes screamed.
But if he actually helped, would he be Noh In-seong? No. He'd be Jung In-seong.
Noh In-seong set the fruit basket quietly outside the door, raised his middle finger, and gently closed it.
A married couple's fight is a knife slicing through water — but he knew perfectly well that whoever waded into the middle was the one who got cut.
"Why is a pregnant woman watching every single game anyway? Since when is baseball good for a baby?!!"
Concerned for the baby's prenatal development, Noh In-seong grumbled his way out of the hospital at a dead sprint.
He'd planned to poke fun at the guy with broken ribs while snacking on fruit — he hadn't accounted for this ambush.
Clearly, the hospital visit would have to wait until the tail end of his vacation.
Daegu had paid the price of being the first organization irradiated by the substance known as Noh In-seong.
One starting pitcher was looking at a minimum three-month recovery. The catcher had cracked ribs too.
And in the middle of all that, center fielder Seong Il-yeom had picked up — from where, exactly? —
"...I'm sorry, it was supposed to be a bench clearing. Where on earth did he contract orchitis?!"
It wasn't just one or two players, either. A full four were complaining of pain in their lower abdomens or nether regions.
On this point, the blame rested squarely with Noh In-seong.
Back during the previous confrontation with the Superstars, when the bench clearing broke out —
what else could Jin Seong-min, a rookie barely into the pros, have taken away from watching Noh In-seong fight?
'Oh! In a bench clearing, you win by any means necessary!'
He hadn't just shown a young junior some heretic-school tricks. He'd passed down outright demonic arts.
Hadn't it always been said that the martial way exists to defeat those who cannot be beaten by technique alone?
Even a player formally trained in combat sports had fallen to that filthy, grotesque strategy and eaten dirt —
"The only way a weak-bodied, under-muscled guy like current me survives... is that!"
Not particularly tall compared to the others, but exploiting his quickness to infiltrate the densest cluster of bodies.
"Rising uppercuuut—!!"
Huuurgh—!!
Every time an uppercut launched up into someone's crotch, another man dropped without even managing a scream.
The other players caught in the pileup were hurt large and small in the chaos, and in an instant, Daegu was reduced to beggars.
"What the— where's my trade assets, dammit?!"
Screams erupted from the general manager's office as the trade bait was wiped out in the blink of an eye.
The only marketable asset still standing was Jo Il-young, a starting pitching resource. But with starting pitcher Cho Ho-soo injured, who exactly would be left to start games if they sold off a starter? The bullpen?
That's not how a rebuild works. That's just suicide.
With every player he needed to move within the month now dinged up, the price would get slashed —
"Or we hold the record until the players recover and come back...!!"
But with the team's pillar already yanked out, how well could that possibly go?
They had to choose, and one wrong choice could waste the next several years.
Do we side with Mom, or with Dad? Or do we jump to a light-jab fundamentals program? — the options kept multiplying.
Perhaps because they'd been bitten by the Noh In-seong venom too late, they had no immunity.
Daegu wavered, directionless, with no idea how to steer the rest of their season —
and at the tail end of June, they simply stood there, dazed.
The price of befriending one single maniac had been far too steep.
Meanwhile, Noh In-seong had sauntered off to a high school to put in his community service hours.
Whether he liked it or not, crowds came flooding into his alma mater.
First, the reporters, hungry for a feeding and here for interviews.
"Cho Ho-soo is still lying in a hospital bed. Do you have anything to say to him? And no cursing, please!"
"Ah, damn it. I can't curse? Then I've got nothing to say."
"......"
Naturally, that one died on the vine — print, live broadcast, or news, running it would have forced a formal apology segment.
Then came the various baseball fans with nothing better to do, spare time on their hands, and the lure of Noh In-seong playing high school ball.
"Wow! I'm a huge fan!"
"Don't BS me. If I'm your fan, then why the hell are you wearing that pathetic, trashy, filthy uniform?"
For wearing a Grizzlies uniform, his fan service consisted of a raised middle finger instead of a handshake.
I'm suspended anyway, so fan or no fan, what are you gonna do? — guys operating on that mindset walked differently.
"Goddammit, Noh In-seong! What is this consistency! I love you!"
Even funnier was the fact that lunatics who cheered that response actually started showing up.
He dodged any additional disciplinary action, but Noh In-seong could not dodge the death of his brain cells.
"Dammit. How are there more lunatics now than when I was actually in high school?"
Just as the final-year corporal in him (from two years ago) barely fended off the crazies and prepared to run fungo drills —
two more loud groups arrived, offering nothing but annoyance and exhaustion.
First, the federation that oversees all of Korean high school baseball.
And second, a delegation of parents.
If you guessed roughly what factions these were, congratulations. That's the right answer.
"Noh In-seong has poisoned school baseball! Wake up! Repent!"
"Booo—!! Trash player—!!"
The President's Cup turned into a total warzone and Korean high school baseball is in chaos — and it's all YOUR fault!
Two groups in need of a scapegoat had come to condemn him.
SHOOOOOSHSHSHSH—!!!
"GET LOST, you bastards! Secret training hours start NOW!"
"GWAAAAHK—!! This is unlawful suppression—!!"
Swept away by an oversized water cannon that had commandeered the school's entire water tank, they vanished.
As a bonus side effect (?), the field suddenly enjoyed a plentiful supply of moisture, making any falls that much softer.
It was summer.
Even by last year's standards, Noh In-seong's kids were already numerous.
"So why didn't it blow up last year and only exploded this year? Then it's not my fault, is it."
"...A first-year taking a starting spot? Nobody manages that but you."
A fresh enrollee unseating a senior, cementing his own spot, and walking straight into the lineup.
It took extraordinary skill — and in the tiny closed society of a school baseball club, it created problems of a completely different kind.
'Hey, are you insane? You think I'm a pushover? Has this freshman lost his mind?'
If you couldn't withstand that pressure, then no matter how much showmanship you had — even at Noh In-seong's level — you'd never get the chance to show it.
But now a year had passed, those kids were second-years, and players capable of shoving the older generation aside had begun to emerge.
"So bench clearings have gotten too violent? And what exactly do you want me to do about it?"
"...Because the circumstances are absolutely outrageous, that's why!"
Practicing what you learn is the unity of knowledge and action — even the Analects recommends it.
Of course, since the textbook had been Noh In-seong, the results were... considerably catastrophic.
Players from both teams cursing out and disrespecting the opposing managers simultaneously, followed by retaliation pitches, followed by counter-retaliation pitches.
The result: an all-out brawl between two high schools in the President's Cup final, and a game left hanging, unresolved.
"We can't hand both schools a forfeit, so there's a rematch!"
A historic incident: twelve players injured, six carted off.
Needless to say, the parents declared it's all Noh In-seong's fault! and demanded measures to prevent any recurrence.
The high school federation, equally unwilling to see its name in the incident-and-accident columns again, hinted that he should do something.
"...And what exactly am I supposed to do? You lunatics. Write a new law, do whatever. Why are you whining at ME?"
"Wh-what?!"
A player with zero motivation, zero willingness, and a head full of irritation being handed 'it's your fault!'?
He was already stressing himself half to death just babysitting these kids in this murderous heat — he'd blown past his threshold long ago.
The short-fused human firecracker who'd last year nearly gone to war with an opposing catcher over the word "hot" was now burning down entirely.
What followed was hell unleashed upon the weekend league containing Noh In-seong's alma mater.
Acting manager-slash-coach Noh In-seong stuffed his soldiers into that most glorious of hells.
"You opened with a dirty slide tackle, so this time — shall we wager your playing career on matching fists with me?"
"GWAAAAHK—!!"
This was, after all, a country where baseball meant squeezing results out of the kids even if you had to grind them to paste when they underperformed.
And in that environment, the problem was that Noh In-seong had become acting manager in place of a coach who'd been focusing on player development.
"Coach, where are you going?!"
"Ohh, my back, my back...!!"
Despite the stint lasting barely ten days, the incumbent manager — his herniated disc finally giving out — went flat on his back, and
Noh In-seong, promoted from acting coach to acting manager, didn't ask for much.
For the most part he kept existing policy: 'Let's keep doing things this way!'
"For the eyes — we gouge out BOTH! For the teeth — dentures! Infinite retaliation! Infinite payback!"
Only one new policy was enacted: a doctrine of retaliation — return everything the opponent dishes out, only worse.
Standings didn't matter. In this weekend league, the only thing that counted was punishing whatever the opponent did.
Needless to say, every school in the region went into hysterics.
Noh In-seong had graduated two years ago, after all. His high school days?
"The league destroyer...!! The player breaker...!!"
"The punk who threw two punches at a guy's face for a little trash talk and ended his season...!"
"The one who made a kid crawl on the ground like a dog over a dirty slide...!! The founder of 'senpais are the first to die'...!!"
The opposing managers in the weekend league had to stop their dirty tricks and tremble instead.
Every time their lingering PTSD brushed against their brains, they were too busy flinching to scheme.
And in the process —
Noh In-seong's team succeeded in punching through the Blue Dragon Championship regional qualifiers.
"Well, obviously. Play clean baseball and a defensively strong team wins nine times out of ten."
After all the fungo drills he'd hammered into them, incoming balls were scooped up with what was practically a yawn.
Bonus: the batting form of Jung Hong-jin, who'd spent ages hitting like a landmine under the team's feet, had been fully overhauled.
CRACKAAAK—!!
"YESSSSS—!!"
Instead, he'd risen to become the team's table-setting leadoff hitter, drawing the attention of droves of scouts.
Of course, that process involved training brutal enough to nearly induce rhabdomyolysis.
"Yeah, these days AI can map out your limits. So grit your teeth and push through! This chicken you're being destroyed by — you ordered it yourself!"
"AAAGH—!! It's too much! Please!"
"Oh? You're still hiding enough strength to form actual words! You've been hoarding thirty percent of your stamina, haven't you!"
"No I haven't, you absolute lunatic!"
You've simply got to accept that getting caught by a GOAT as petty as Noh In-seong is your karmic lot. What can you do?
It was, after all, the glorious position of being tormented nonstop by a reigning MVP planted right beside you.
And then came the day Noh In-seong returned.
Having raised plenty of hell, he tidied up the board so the school's real coach could come back to a comfortable situation.
"So tell me. You act up like this because you're actually producing results?"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
Their idol — the man who'd always insisted he was nothing like the hell-raisers he ran with — had just betrayed them.
"I benched every single upperclassman in my FIRST year, did everything I wanted, and slapped my name on every record there was."
Youngest perfect game ever. Youngest most strikeouts. Youngest home runs in five consecutive at-bats...
Every major honor, plaques won almost as a matter of routine, championship trophies.
So why are you 'fakes' who only cracked the starting lineup in your second year copying me?
"Unless the league and the managers are weeping that they can't survive without you, don't you dare imitate me."
In what looked for all the world like kicking away the ladder behind him, droves of young players pushed back —
"Climb every ladder there is, take the Blue Dragon title, beat Japan, come home after a nuclear-bomb celebration. Then—"
— If that ticks you off, then prove it, kids!
The moment he added that he'd officially acknowledge the winner as his successor, everyone suddenly went quiet — pure magic.
Before fists and results, empty talk is worthless. That holds true anywhere on Earth.
To become a king of madness, those kids were nothing but unproven, uncertified street punks.
A second high schooler who actually fulfilled the conditions Noh In-seong laid out did eventually appear —
but that was a thing that came only after a truly long, long wait.
A very, very distant thing indeed.