For Whom Do You Cry?
Currently sitting in 8th place. A club paying quite heavily the price for having sold off its players.
As for Gwangju, the Doubles' next opponent — they weren't asking for much.
"...Please, please let us just snag one win while Noh In-seong is resting!"
That was all. Honestly, they just wanted to keep the young players they were developing from losing heart. One victory in the bank, and then they could sit back and enjoy the rare privilege of spectating that maniacal tyrant in comfort.
Gwangju had a long, painful history of their young players getting hurt and suffering.
Oh Yeon-seok's numbers had been on a steep downward curve since around this time last year. Like a man who in 2025 had thrown his entire life savings into American stocks and suddenly found himself researching part-time delivery jobs. In the blink of an eye, a once-shining career hadn't just fallen into a ditch — it was sinking to the very bottom of some pre-modern outhouse.
Family name Oh, given name Yeon-seok. An ERA in the low sixes that was nothing short of pathetic, and after taking one beating after another, he still hadn't managed to log double-digit innings. He was rotating through the starting rotation, technically, but here was a pitcher who, far from helping his team, actually needed rescuing by the bullpen.
Now, seizing on Noh In-seong's absence, he was trying to rebuild his confidence.
"I will bounce back. I swear I will!"
Whether that was even possible was, of course, another matter entirely.
* * *
Trauma.
The word originally referred to any wound, external or internal, but modern people have repurposed it. It has morphed into meaning a wound buried deep in the heart — or at best, that's only half right. These days it's a throwaway word, casually tossed out anywhere by anyone.
Well, Noh In-seong having a spontaneous breakdown over lunch on his day off was, in today's parlance, pretty close to trauma too.
"Gahk. What in the world...!!"
Clams. In my seaweed soup. What is this sorcery. Mother...!!
"What is this behavior, I ask you? I'll give you money for rice AND money for meat, so let's not do this!"
--If you have complaints, then SAY them instead of making this evil food, Mother...!!
To be fair, his mother had no malicious intent whatsoever. If she'd had any intent at all, it was the 50%-off sale.
"...? The clams were on discount, so I bought them. Quit clowning around and just shovel it into your mouth, you ungrateful brat."
Normally he stayed quiet and pretended to be a well-behaved son eating home cooking, but the moment he complained about a single menu item, Siyeon burst out laughing.
"Hehe, Oppa, you're honestly no different from me. Twenty-one years old and pitiful."
She was still holding a grudge over the time he'd demolished her with that exact argument ages ago. What a pathetically, insanely petty creature.
It felt like a slow class change was underway — from cute little sister to a little sister he wanted to strangle.
"Ugh, look at this pettiness."
"YOU'RE one to talk?! Then don't do interviews like THAT! I'm way more magnanimous than you!"
Beep!
Oh Yeon-seok recently claimed that Noh In-seong dodges him on the mound, adding, "It's sad when a good restaurant leaves the neighborhood..." Controversy is brewing...
Beep!
"...You don't turn this stuff on while people are eating. Eat your rice."
People curse when they have nothing left to say, but cursing at the dinner table would only earn him a spoon to the skull. Suddenly the clam broth tasted wonderfully sweet, and Noh In-seong began shoveling soup into his mouth in rapid succession. Conversation over — his new plan was to finish eating and get out fast.
Why the hell is this so good all of a sudden. Dammit.
Noh In-seong, a man who never debated a match he couldn't win, was busy dodging Siyeon's pointed glances. Silence is golden and eloquence is silver, as they say — for good reason. He had, quite diligently, dug his own grave.
* * *
Meanwhile, a patient in far graver condition than any clam-seaweed-soup tragedy could ever inspire: Oh Yeon-seok was laboring under one enormous delusion.
"If it weren't for Noh In-seong, you'd all be losing to us right now!"
The single biggest delusion was believing he was still the Oh Yeon-seok of his career year. Nobody could say winning was impossible, but it certainly shouldn't be described as likely — that would be the sane assessment. It defied comprehension how, in Noh In-seong's absence, the words 'I can beat them!' could come out of anyone's mouth so naturally.
But when you'd been beaten as thoroughly as he had, the urge to bluster grew enormous. Ever since that day, he'd failed to avoid Noh In-seong, absorbed blow after blow, and watched his symptoms worsen by the week — all the way up to a full-blown trauma, the one thing a baseball player must never allow to take root. He could feel himself being driven toward a cliff's edge.
"This time is different. This time is different. I really have to win. I can win!"
He threw himself at it desperately, convinced that beating the Doubles would end all of this. Of course, even the imaginary Oh Yeon-seok of that fantasy was, compared to this year's Song Jin-wook, roughly one finger of a grown man.
"Man, snacks on days when In-seong's out are the BEST. At least nobody's planning to rob me of these."
"Seriously, it's like that guy comes to the ballpark just to eat other people's snacks. Every single day."
Speaking of that one-finger-of-a-man — Song Jin-wook, the actual giant here, was busy throwing a snack party in the gap Noh In-seong had left behind.
* * *
Oh Yeon-seok's inability to win today's game came down to three big reasons.
First: setting aside his own delusions about himself, he was even worse at reading his own team. A rebuilding team trots out its worst-form starting pitcher and declares it will beat the runaway first-place club? Isn't that just staggeringly arrogant? Sure, to outsiders the Doubles might look like a one-man team built entirely on Noh In-seong.
"...Except our 'one man' is ridiculously, obscenely huge, so really we're just an ordinarily oversized team, no?"
"Ngh."
Oh Yeon-seok had come out swinging from the very first inning, gotten tagged for a two-run shot, and felt that familiar dread creeping back up on him. He'd rushed a pitch, Seong Hyun-tak laced a single, and Song Jin-wook lofted a fly ball that cleared the fence.
Shouldn't I have just pitched around Song Jin-wook and gone after Jo In-soo instead? That single regret wrapped itself around his skull like wire. And the deeper he sank into that thought, the less possible a properly thrown pitch became.
So then — the starter had surrendered runs, meaning the offense needed to claw something back so the pitcher could calm down. That had been a tall order even before the fire sale; after the trades were done, it had entered the realm of the impossible.
"Take Noh In-seong out and the others play like their lives depend on it. Naturally."
From Jung Im-taek's perspective, the Doubles actually defended tighter when Noh In-seong wasn't on the mound. There was no one to come in and shut the door on a rally, no one to bail them out with super plays — and crucially, no one whose mere presence pressured the opposing team. Which meant everyone had to get that much more desperate. Unlike hitting, which runs on luck, giving maximum effort on defense was the fastest way to raise your win probability.
The man receiving the full dividend of that defensive excellence was Andy, and ever since he took the mound, the Gwangju hitters had been getting stomped flat. With cleanup man Jeong Him-chan gone, the only hitter Andy needed to fear was the left fielder, Jin Sung-joo — the next-generation cornerstone of Gwangju, valiantly soldiering on at a .300 clip while everyone around him had fallen away.
Except this kid wasn't a one-swing extra-base-hit type either. Deal with the next batter properly, and the inning was over. A slap hitter is a batter who can be managed, never one who can flip a game single-handedly.
Watching the hapless Jin Sung-joo trudge back to the dugout having stranded himself at first...
"...No. Nooo...!!!"
The size of the gap between the two teams was visible to the naked eye, and Oh Yeon-seok could feel the trauma in his head darkening, thickening with every passing inning.
Second: the fastest way to beat a trauma is to confront Noh In-seong head-on. It wasn't quite the bombastic 'Beat the Doubles and everything will be fixed!' logic — but since he was dodging Noh In-seong all the same, this too was just another avoidance mechanism. Truly resolving a psychological problem requires the courage to face it directly. But Oh Yeon-seok had been so utterly demolished by Noh In-seong that his hands still trembled at the thought. Thank goodness for the rest day — if that vicious bastard had chased him to the bitter end today, he'd have walked off the mound on another four-ball walk.
And third — the most important point of all.
"Hey, you cowardly bastard! Live like that your whole life and just retire already! You pathetic little pigeon chest! Oi! Salary thief!"
He'd already confirmed Noh In-seong was off today's roster — and then that voice came ringing out of nowhere.
"...WHAT?! This bastard said he was resting today! Where the hell is he?!"
Oh Yeon-seok, spinning around in search of the voice's source, froze the moment his eyes found a corner of the stands. There, in the front row of the home bleachers, stood Noh In-seong brandishing the flimsy plastic megaphone you'd expect to see at a vegetable stall. Not an electronic device, so it slipped neatly past every stadium regulation — an exquisitely chosen product. From the absolute prime heckling position, every single word landed on the pitcher like a hammer blow.
Yes, Oh Yeon-seok had dodged Noh In-seong. The problem was that Noh In-seong had absolutely no intention of dodging him back.
And since Noh In-seong was currently in the stadium as a spectator...
"WOOOO--!! Pitch clock at eight seconds! Six! Five!"
...he could carry out every conceivable sabotage, with breathtaking shamelessness.
"...Ah, that is INSANELY distracting! Umpire! Make that lunatic stop!"
Naturally, Oh Yeon-seok exploded, screaming at the umpire to shut the madman up. But this whole spectacle was a rerun of the sabotage the Daejeon Phoenix had already endured once.
"And do what, exactly? Eject him for sounding a pitch clock alarm?"
The umpire knew it too — and he also knew that if pushed, that lunatic might show up tomorrow demanding a targeted start against him personally. So Oh Yeon-seok's protest was quietly buried.
--Oh, and by the way, everyone knows you've been ducking this guy. He might well call a targeted outing on you next.
This was a man who would resort to the most creative methods imaginable for the sole pleasure of watching you crumple. Oh Yeon-seok, who had stepped on the tail of a mad dog, ultimately couldn't hold out today either, and had to hand the ball over.
By the end of the bottom of the fourth: four innings, eight runs allowed. Not completely shredded, perhaps — but the sight of his slumped back retreating to the dugout after such a miserable beating was pitiful beyond words.
* * *
After the game — after yet another blowout loss to the Doubles even with Noh In-seong absent, after proving beyond all doubt that his 'Doubles trauma' was beyond curing — Oh Yeon-seok made his choice.
It was, in effect, a declaration of surrender: please, stop doing this to me.
"Sob... sob sob... What did I... what did I ever do so wrong, huh? I was wrong. I was wrong, okay..."
Walking out of an interview saying he couldn't take it anymore, begging everyone to just leave him alone, weeping and wailing — the manufacture of a permanent archival embarrassment. The endless slump, the collapsing numbers, the resulting loss of confidence. Nothing but disaster after disaster piling up, wearing the man himself thinner and thinner, until at last, under the accumulated weight of it all, he broke.
"...Excuse me? This bastard? He's collapsing over THIS?!"
From Noh In-seong's perspective, it was utterly absurd. Jo Ho-yeon had been reduced to an unemployed hack scraping by on columns. Kim Seong-ju had at least survived thanks to him, though he was still lying blankly in a hospital bed. And this guy was going to bow out with nothing more than a lifetime of kicking his own blankets? Was this seriously how it ended?
Noh In-seong was famous for exacting bloody revenge on whoever struck first — but there was no denying that crying and sniveling on a terrestrial broadcast packed a punch. Before anyone knew it, public opinion had shifted considerably.
He poked at Noh In-seong first? Guilty.
But collapsing THIS hard, to where the guy might not even be able to keep playing? That's a bit much;;
In-seong-ah, you've paid him back enough. Go pick on someone else.
To Noh In-seong, it felt like a bolt from the blue. How on earth had they known he was in the middle of plotting an even more elaborate harassment campaign? And now where was all this accumulated rage supposed to go?
He'd already been simmering over the Siyeon incident, and beating up on Oh Yeon-seok had only taken the edge off. Now...
"Ah, what a waste. Well, nothing to be done. Guess I'll vent by tormenting Joo Ji-hoon for a while."
Gwangju still had someone left who had suffered at Noh In-seong's hands. The man who'd so generously supplied him with stolen-base records — Joo Ji-hoon was still around, so it'd be fine! Noh In-seong took comfort in the fact that he still had a victim lined up for the remainder of the season.
Then, the next day.
"...What. Where'd he go?"
"No idea? I heard he tweaked his hamstring after the last game and went in for reconstructive surgery?"
From the mouth of Jo In-soo — the man who ran the team's entire catcher intelligence network — came the announcement: out for the season.
And so Noh In-seong's homeless rage went wandering the empty air once more.
* * *
Emptied of purpose, Noh In-seong spent the remaining two games handing the Gwangju pitchers a thorough, elegant beatdown, and then called ahead to Changwon. After all, they too had a colorful history of stirring up trouble with him.
He'd expected a proper brawl — pick a fight, trade some fire, curse each other out, throw some punches... he'd been looking forward to passionate baseball.
"Heheh, Mr. Noh In-seong. Do remember we're in the middle of a rebuild. Honestly, we gave up on this season a while ago."
"...ARGH, is there not a single human being who'll actually take a fight when it's offered?!"
The opposing manager, Kim Chang-soo, was a genial soul who just chuckled. And with second baseman Jeong Jin-woo as the only man on the team fighting valiantly alone, the whole brawling question got swept away in a clean, merciless series sweep.
The Doubles, riding a staggering 14-game winning streak, headed into the stretch with only Games 5 and 6 remaining against them — a schedule of two games, then a day off, then the final stretch. And ironically, for the first time ever, Noh In-seong was playing baseball that was simply... baseball. No one picking fights with him at all.
"YES! THIS is what the f-ing game is supposed to be!"
From the league association's perspective, it was a godsend.
"No, seriously, is THIS what the f-ing game is supposed to be?!"
From Noh In-seong's perspective, it was, quite literally, a big fat NO.
"Unbelievable. No fire, no fury — it's nothing but rebuilding teams, season-surrendered teams, or teams who already locked up their record!"
Unless a team was actually playing fall baseball, venting Noh In-seong's fury would remain a distant dream. And so, a full year and seven months after his reincarnation — only now, in the first days of August — the days finally arrived when Noh In-seong got to experience 'playing nothing but peaceful baseball, with absolutely nobody picking a fight.'
Autumn was drawing near.