Bread, the City of Bread (Part 2)
To be fair, it wasn't as though no team had ever booed Noh In-seong directly before.
People had disliked him or hated him for all sorts of reasons going way back.
The outrageous things he said in interviews. The way he trash-talked entire cities and their local pride. The hit-a-homer-then-flip-the-bird-to-the-bench brand of provocation.
Whether you loved sports or couldn't care less about them, he was exactly the kind of problem child you could start booing on sight and never run out of material.
Not 'Why Always Me?' — more like 'Why Always You?'
But this time, thebooing had a slightly different flavor to it.
"Are you kidding me, you bastards? A guy can eat bread, can't he? It's not like I came out of the dugout chugging booze — did I? DID I?"
Because this particular jeer had grown out of a petty misunderstanding, Noh In-seong reacted with unusual sensitivity.
Given everything he'd done to other people, he was hardly in a position to feel wronged — but as far as he was concerned, this was straight-up slander.
"Okay, fine, I did rope You Hong-jin into drinking until dawn and then throw a shutout from the mound. So what's the problem?!"
Shamelessly airing the sins of his own team's living legend was, technically, his personal freedom.
That's the thing about talent — have enough of it, and you can spew all the bullshit you want and keep your pro career intact.
Noh In-seong technically was built to throw shutouts hungover, but he was also a man of such immaculate self-management that he simply chose not to.
His one weakness — an absolute inability to resist anything sweet — was offset thanks to the parents who'd blessed him with an indestructible pancreas.
That said, thieving is still wrong. If it bothers you, hide your snacks better.
"Says the guy who cracked the manager's snack-cabinet passcode with aluminum powder. Real persistence there."
Song Jin-wook looked at him like he'd lost his mind, but —
"He wasn't even eating them! Hiding snacks nobody touches just pisses me off."
Noh In-seong showed no remorse whatsoever.
The cake he'd just ordered would probably be sliced in half and vanish by the next home game anyway.
No wonder managing the Doubles was such a hard job.
"How dare you provoke me! I'll show you what real baseball is — until there's nothing left of you but dust!"
At any rate, a man with a hot head and a cold heart, Noh In-seong did not take provocation lying down.
Take the first punch, and he'd return a killing blow on the spot — a human being whose patience converged on zero.
Before the game, as the crowd showered the Doubles — and Noh In-seong in particular — with boos, he turned toward the stands.
There wasn't a trace of a smile on his face.
BOOOOOO---!!
Amid the torrent of jeers, Noh In-seong — the only one standing there perfectly composed — began moving his hands.
"Uh... uh!! Hey! No! Don't you dare! That's a fineable offense—"
"Stop him, he's about to—...huh?"
Everyone broke into a cold sweat, praying desperately that he would not, for the love of god, raise his middle finger.
"Huh? What is that? Is he doing charades?"
"What on earth is he trying to say right now?"
And just like that, Noh In-seong's 'Speak With Your Body' segment had begun.
He drew a circle with his finger. Then another circle.
Then he spread nine fingers with both hands, raised his thumb, and — slammed it down into the ground?
"...What is that? Is he declaring victory the second the game starts?"
"I feel like I've seen that in a manga that was popular ages ago... or maybe not?"
It looked like some kind of story-progression hand gesture? Though given how sour it made everyone feel, it seemed more like a curse.
He repeated the sequence twice, then strolled away with all the grace of a departing aristocrat.
Seeing him smirk and wave at the crowd, it was abundantly clear that the booing hadn't landed at all.
Nobody knew what the gestures meant, but one thing was certain: nothing that lunatic had said with his hands was friendly.
The crowd's booing only climbed a few more decibels.
Loud enough that the apartment complex nearby was fielding noise complaints.
And of course —
CRRAAACK---!!
Cool wasn't even the word for it — that ball was cold enough to sting. Watching where it landed, no one could tell anymore whether their booing had actually done anything to him at all.
In an instant, the booing flipped to silence.
Bat held high to the sky. Stride proud and unhurried.
Both hands lifted overhead, gesturing for the crowd to raise the volume even more.
"Cut me in half and you'd still find an MVP in each piece--!! Your team doesn't have one! Only mine does!"
Slowly milking the crowd's reaction, the villain who wanted nothing more than another round of boos had silenced them all instead.
The Daejeon fans chose silence — still furious, yes, but refusing to give the man what he wanted.
CRRAACK---!!
Of course, no fan alive could stomach the miracle alchemy that turned the very next two swings straight into runs.
"Hey, you bastards--!!"
"What in the hell are them cold-hearted bastards doin', givin' up runs like it's nothin'?!"
And so, onto the fury engine of fans who had gotten so hot they'd gone cold again, Song Jin-wook struck the match.
The bottom of the 1st. Three more hits piled on after that, and the game opened at a brutal 4-0 deficit.
Looking at the face of the bastard now ascending the mound, the disadvantage somehow felt even heavier than the score suggested.
Gulp—
You could practically hear the Daejeon fans swallowing hard.
The most unjust thing in the league threw the first pitch.
FWOOMP--!!
Low and away — precisely at the point farthest from the batter, kissing the very tip of the strike zone.
"...Strike!"
"Hold on, is that really in?! Seriously?!"
"The call is in. That's right on the line."
That already complaint-heavy face was promptly transmuted into an even more crumpled one by the very next pitch.
"...Wow. Strike."
A 166.1 km/h fastball knocked twice on the corner of the zone.
Then the final pitch left his hand.
"...Whew! Swinging strike! Batter out!"
A 145 km/h breaking slider slithered silkily around the batter's bat and buried itself in the dirt.
So exquisite even the umpire had never seen its like — a slider dropping two ball-widths more than the ones before it.
"...Aargh, I'm losing my mind here."
Cho Gyu-cheol scratched his head and trudged back to the dugout with the saddest eyes in Daejeon.
The intel the leadoff batter had extracted — everything three pitches could reveal — was painfully limited.
Myeong Jeong-ho and Jung In-woong fared no better, gleaning nothing new, and the bottom of the 1st ended after a mere ten pitches.
But one game flickered through all of their minds in common.
"...Didn't something like this happen to us last year...?"
At Jung In-woong's words, some finally caught on —
these were, after all, the men who'd been bludgeoned by a full-condition Noh In-seong on his way to making Korean baseball history.
The murmuring in the stands was steadily growing louder, too.
"...Per... perfect. It's the same routine as that game back then, isn't it?"
It was the day Song Mu-jin's PTSD — from the day he'd chopped at that bunt — came roaring back.
Stopping Noh In-seong in this kind of form was impossible unless you were an exceptional hitter — the attempt itself was a fool's errand.
Even at last year's peak, his stamina had in truth been quietly approaching its ceiling.
The reason he'd thrown his full ration of regular innings and then gone straight into a Targeted Outing from the bullpen —
was partly about demolishing a man he couldn't stand, but preserving his body was the bigger reason.
"A lot of innings for a rookie, sure, but it was all Korean Series innings. I banked plenty."
That's why his pitching had always been rated a notch below his hitting.
Without the various monster records, he might've been written off as nothing more than a well-managed premium starter.
But last year, his growth finally plateaued — and once he began building the body he wanted —
"I used to run out of gas by August. Six-man rotation helped, but..."
He was getting pulled from games far less often, leaving him comparatively less time to conserve energy —
yet unlike last year, the stamina of this massively upgraded frame simply refused to drain.
"I still drop a bit of weight after every start, but..."
Eat well, snack well, and most of it comes back. No cause for worry.
"And worst case, I burn out and I'm back to rookie-era Noh In-seong. How much worse could it get?"
A mind at ease makes for an easy road for the ball.
Jo In-soo put down the sign, opened his glove, and the exact pitch he wanted landed right in it.
Even the starting catcher and team captain clicked his tongue, marveling again and again at today's command.
"You're a genuine lunatic, and somehow your stuff is even crazier than you are. No wonder nobody's managed to beat you to death yet."
"You think I'd take a beating and just sit there? I'll be a suspect, never a victim."
Delighting in the captain's shaking head — apparently impressed even by his shameless tongue — Noh In-seong smiled to himself.
Which raised the question: what did the faces of the men who had to endure this bullshit firsthand look like?
"Damn it... do I have to bunt again? Last time I bunted, I suffered all the way into the start of this season."
The Phoenix dugout had gone dark as pitch — Song Mu-jin was weighing resolve against injury, and it showed.
Forget runs — they didn't even have a single hit.
He, the seven-hole hitter, was stepping up for his second at-bat. Still hitless.
That meant it was now the bottom of the 6th. And that bastard was still standing on the mound.
"Strike! Two!"
It was a brazen gamble made possible by a rock-solid infield —
and by the fact that Song Jin-wook had been pulled after barely three plate appearances for Jin Seong-min, thickening the outfield defense besides.
"If you botch In-seong's record today, I guarantee he'll kick you ten times a day, every day."
"Aigoo, my timing's just off today, you know? One home run and every other at-bat's an out."
With easygoing grace, Song Jin-wook — who had ducked off for 'a quick breather, batting's just not clicking today' —
had somehow materialized among the dugout crowd, elegantly carving a slice of cake with a fork.
"Wait, are they seriously mad because we ate their bread? Then if we eat their cake instead, they won't be mad, right?"
"...You genuinely need your neck wrung once before you'll come to your senses, don't you."
Jung Im-taek clutched his head, feeling as though his team's last few sane bastards were disappearing one by one.
Of course, a perfect game is not a record achieved easily.
As some say: "The great record that comes to a man only once in his lifetime."
No baseball player in history has ever thrown two perfect games — so at least as of 2052, no player alive could argue with that statement.
And the Noh In-seong of August 2052 had not yet earned the right to a rebuttal either.
SNAP--!!
Jin Seong-min, whose first step had betrayed him, spun desperately and sprinted the other way.
Why did a fly ball he could normally catch in his sleep look so impossibly far away today?
"AAAAGH--!!"
The frustration of chasing the ball to the very end, stretching his arm to its limit and still coming up empty, crashed into his guilt — and Jin Seong-min hurled his glove into the dirt.
"I broke it up... so why do I feel even more nervous now? Damn it."
The team's cleanup slugger, Jung In-woong, had reached base for the first time today — finally ending the long, long no-runner drought.
And yet Noh In-seong, whose great record had died at 6⅔ innings, was oddly calm for a man whose history had just shattered.
The whole team crowded the mound to check on his mental state, but —
"Hey, Seong-min. Good play. Thanks to you, the no-hitter's still alive."
Noh In-seong grinned and praised the defense of his direct junior, who had somehow prevented a hit.
After everyone cleared off the mound, he calmly struck out the next batter and finally walked back to the dugout.
The record was still technically in progress — but something utterly absurd had just happened.
"...And here I thought you were about to punt the kid into orbit."
Jung Im-taek asked why on earth he wasn't angry, and —
"Come on, Coach. The moment he turned that left fielder's fly ball, the game was up for me anyway."
Came Noh In-seong's confession of near-resignation.
That ball would have been a surefire hit with Song Jin-wook out there — the record only survived because Jin Seong-min's range happened to be wider than that man's.
"...I'm... I'm sorry, what?"
Jin Seong-min's brain simply evacuated as he stared up at his great senior.
"I'd already given up the second the ball went toward left field. I thought it was still Song Jin-wook out there."
Being locked in was all well and good — he just hadn't noticed the defensive substitution until that exact moment.
"...I have to ask. What exactly IS your image of me, inside that head of yours..."
Song Jin-wook decided to quietly finish his remaining cake in dignified silence.
It was the first act of situational awareness he'd managed in ages, and a miracle occurred: his scheduled butt-kicking was granted a stay of execution.
For the remaining two innings, the Doubles did not change pitchers.
And the Phoenix could not pry a single hit out of that unchanged arm.
The batters kept changing; the strikeouts stayed exactly the same.
Nine innings. Sixteen strikeouts. One error — and every other plate appearance ending in a harmless out.
Once again, history had been made.
Noh In-seong walked away with the glory of having thrown three no-hitters just two years into his professional debut.
And Daejeon was branded forever as the first city in history to swallow a perfect game and a no-hitter at the same time.
"Zero hits, zero runs! Welcome to the City of Bread!"
After the final out, he capped it all off with an (In-seong-grade) devastating interview — then dropped the microphone straight onto the floor.
The very definition of a Heel. A flawless villain performance, start to finish.
Half of Daejeon was ready to crack that rude lunatic's skull open with a hardened baguette, but —
"Aaah~ this was our last trip to Daejeon this season, and I already bought all the bread I need~"
A man who had accomplished his mission before the game even started wouldn't be back until next year at the earliest.
"Though who knows — if you guys claw your way to second place, maybe I'll come back for another taste of that bread."
And so, telling them vengeance could wait until then, the son of a bitch danced his way up the bus steps.
A debt of karma, equivalent to one entire city, had been added to his tab.
Exactly when that bill would come due, however, remained anyone's guess.
"...Yer a dead man, y'know that."
One thing was certain: the city of Daejeon would remember.