The Kind Neighbor, the Unkind Brother
In Korean baseball, the no-hit, no-run record was, surprisingly enough, not all that rare if you went looking for it.
There was the unfortunate distinction that most of them had been thrown by foreign imports, but—
That was only because genuinely dominant homegrown pitchers had been so few and far between.
"These days, the domestic boys have been putting up even more spectacular records, so nobody's exactly desperate for one anymore."
For the league office, the anxiety that the lineage of the Korean no-hitter might die out had already eased considerably.
The guy's mind might as well have belonged to some alien species, but a player with the Republic of Korea printed on his nationality line had finally appeared—and with that, Korean baseball could escape its sorry reality and stretch out toward a dreamlike future.
The problem was that the man who set this particular record hadn't even turned twenty-one yet.
"Damn it, this lunatic's done it AGAIN?!"
And once before, he had successfully threatened another pitcher at knifepoint to make him the sacrificial offering for this very record.
— A third one already... How is anyone supposed to beat this delinquent?
And on top of that, the man he'd set the record against this time was someone he'd already inflicted an even greater humiliation on in the past.
It was proof that if this lunatic took the mound, there was no stopping him—not in the small pond of Korean baseball, not anywhere.
And as a bonus: the last person in the entire world to throw a no-hitter and a perfect game simultaneously—
"...is no longer a person of this world."
"...No, well. That's technically true and all... but you can't just SAY it like that. You'll get the wrong idea across."
He was, at present, a twinkling star in the far reaches of the night sky, living on among honor and legend.
Besides, if you converted perfect games into no-hit records, that made three for his career.
The last man to accomplish even that in the modern era was already resting in the Hall of Fame.
Two records that would never be touched again, in an age where a starter eating innings had become a cheap punchline.
Different league or not—by age alone, weren't those legends still minor leaguers, or rookies, at that point?
"Oof, hell. If I could just sign that insane little brat, I'd cover his fines for the rest of my life."
"What fines? Honestly, the way he goes about things, one punch would probably draw a bigger crowd than any money would."
"I'll give you everything—money, whatever you want—just bring that crazy brat to OUR team RIGHT NOW---!!"
Beneath the surface, the wheels were already turning.
Meanwhile, the Doubles had extended their winning streak through their fifth meeting of the season with Daejeon—and in doing so, had already shattered one record and were busily warming up to break the next.
"You absolute maniacs. You've already passed the single-year winning streak record!"
Twenty consecutive wins for the season—closing in right on the heels of the streak record held by Incheon.
And this, despite the fact that only 114 games had been played.
"...So the magic number's down to 10, huh. Come to think of it, we've already won more games than most championship teams do."
Having left nothing behind for the second-place pack to climb but psychological scars, the Doubles were already radiating the atmosphere of a regular-season title slipping effortlessly into their hands.
79 wins, 33 losses. It was the butterfly effect of a grotesque .705 winning percentage.
Thank goodness there were still thirty games left, and that Busan and Daejeon had racked up so many rainouts—because if this had dragged on even a little longer, the Doubles would already have clinched the pennant and been playing with their feet up.
"...Or wait—maybe these bastards would have pushed even harder to lock in the streak record first?"
Busan's manager, Park Tae-jung, could only pray that Daejeon—their next opponent—was still suffering mightily from the aftereffects of the no-hitter Noh In-seong had served them.
After this weekend, the following Tuesday's head-to-head results would decide who took second place.
"Honestly, if I could finish second just once, I might get to eat free meals in Busan for the rest of my life."
With his tenure steadily running out, the man wanted to dance his final dance in spectacular fashion before stepping off the stage.
Haaa...
The sigh of a former Superstars legend echoed long and loud through the manager's office.
Elsewhere, thanks to the Doubles piling up wins and notching a historic record on top of it, Noh In-seong was granted something that ordinarily took a remarkable alignment of circumstances to earn mid-season: a sweet, precious vacation.
The team had breathing room, which made a short break in the middle of the season possible at all.
"WOO! Three whole days off!"
No rainouts against Daejeon, a weekend series, Monday off, and a start that wasn't his on the rotation—all of it had to line up perfectly, and it had. Noh In-seong broke into a bright grin at his golden holiday.
Of course, his body wasn't exactly ready to move on command.
"Argh, damn it. Now that I think about it, I threw past 120 pitches, didn't I..."
No matter how much his bulk-up regimen had hardened his stamina, the day after a pitcher worked that hard was always a rough one.
Unlike his past self, he wasn't bedridden until dinnertime, unable to move a muscle.
His body creaked and groaned, but he could move if he had to. That kind of level.
"Today I'm just going to eat properly. Mom left over some curry... and there's rice too."
--Well then, before that, why not have a little snack?
At that moment, something drifted across Noh In-seong's mind.
The bread he'd had shipped to his house. Naturally, he'd sent some to Song Jin-wook's place and to the Doubles' front office too.
But the most important destination was his own stomach, wasn't it?
He vaguely remembered his mother mentioning they'd received the bread when he'd gotten home yesterday.
It had come by the box, so of course there'd be some left... or so he thought, as he dug through the refrigerator—only to find the space where the bread should have been utterly empty, with three sticky notes plastered in a row.
"...What is this? Where's the bread, and what's with the notes?"
The first note was his father's declaration of a nutritional-snack draft.
Son, how did you know Dad likes these... I'll enjoy them!
Gone was not the sweet stuff, but the hearty, savory bread with just enough kick to stand in for a proper meal.
"Aaagh, my chive bread...!! Well. Fine. A working man needs his snacks, I suppose."
Still—the man who'd raised him had earned it, so he could let that one slide.
The second note was a casualty report: every last cake item conscripted for his mother's guest hospitality.
Hohoho, my darling son. Thank you. You've done your mother proud for the first time in ages!
Three of the season's most coveted limited-edition cakes had been mercilessly sliced up for six of the neighborhood aunties.
"NOOO, this season's limited cake...!! Fine. Okay. I can just buy more whenever I'm in Daejeon anyway."
Even this he could forgive—his mother had, after all, forgotten every ache and pain of raising him in her joy.
"But THIS little brat? Unforgivable."
Took all the rest, lol bye
Owed him neither birth nor upbringing, the little sister he'd dutifully kept entertained all these years had swept the bread clean away.
Not so much as one lousy, worst-tasting loaf left behind—the little thief had hoovered up everything, and her note was the shortest of the lot.
"Siyeon, you little—?! I kept you alive all these years because you were my SISTER, and this is how you repay a debt of gratitude—with TREACHERY?!"
Staring at his sister's chicken-scratch handwriting, Noh In-seong's eyes rolled back in his head.
I'll catch that brat and end her. He hauled his creaking body upright and slipped on his sandals.
"...Ah, hell. It's disgustingly hot out..."
Cursing the sun itself, Noh In-seong vanished into the blazing midsummer noon.
Where could the brat even have gone? The neighborhood, at most.
In an age where social media meant anyone could find out who was doing what and where with a five-second search—
"...So she went... by bus... Okay. When I catch you, you're going to suffer for an entire day."
After scrolling through Siyeon's social feed and mapping out her every move for the day, Noh In-seong had her final destination.
He gave chase by bus.
Beep— Adult fare.
Well, she was on foot, so he'd be fine.
"...What is this, a charity organization?"
He had exactly one plan: the moment he caught her, that butt-smacking sandal was getting immortalized as a permanent fixture pinned to her own channel.
He melted off the bus at the stop and walked a few minutes through the sweltering heat—and there it was, a donation center.
Short sleeves and shorts in this weather or not, an athlete was still an athlete.
Just as the people inside the facility began to exchange curious glances at the sudden appearance of a wall of muscle, the little brat—hard at work on her vacation homework and her brother-torturing in equal measure—appeared in front of the building.
"Hnngh... so hot. Drop this off quick and head straight home..."
Between her tiny, stubby strides and an ice chest crammed full of bread that she was dragging along on a handcart, she'd arrived dramatically later than the older brother who'd lazily rolled out of bed and ridden the bus bare-chested.
"...Huh?!"
Needless to say, the moment Siyeon spotted Noh In-seong standing squarely in front of the building, her face froze solid.
"Found you. You're dead now."
She did steal the bread, so she can't complain when I paddle her until her butt's as puffy as a fresh loaf... right?
Gazing down at his sister's thoroughly bloodless face, Noh In-seong raised the sandal in one hand.
"Eeeek! I'm sorryyy!!"
"If 'sorry' were enough, the world would never have any nuclear standoffs!!"
The Jean Valjean of the Noh household had been caught, but Noh In-seong was, in the end, no miser about donating bread.
Truthfully, what had infuriated him wasn't the theft itself—it was the sheer gall of who do you think you are, screwing ME over.
If Siyeon had simply taken the bread without leaving notes, he'd have shrugged, given up, and ordered delivery food instead. Fine. Whatever.
It could all have been a nice, easy good deed—and her fatal crime was failing to grasp her own brother's temper even slightly before testing it.
"So what were you planning to do here anyway, hauling all this bread? Wasn't it heavy?"
His sister, who'd wedged ice packs into the cooler box and wheezed the whole way dragging that cart.
"School gave us 'do one good deed' as vacation homework! So I'm giving bread to the people here!"
Noh In-seong smiled for a moment, genuinely proud that his sister was doing something kind and wholesome—
"...Except that it's MY bread, you little gremlin!"
—and then his face scrunched up all over again as he seized her by the cheeks.
"HIIIIING!!"
Noh In-seong's fury-fueled kneading, squishing his little sister's cheek-flesh this way and that.
His heart had been glad, truly—but the sheer audacity of stealing her own brother's bread to hand out to strangers had boiled his blood all over again.
The organization mainly provided meals to daycare centers, elderly people living alone, and folks struggling to get by. The big operations got corporate backing, but this was a small neighborhood outfit serving its own community.
It had started, he heard, as a modest retirement pastime—helping the neighborhood's solitary seniors get their meals.
"...Whew. Fine. I'm glad you're doing good work... let's get the rest of this bread delivered too."
And since it happened to help his own neighborhood, Noh In-seong decided to make an additional donation on the spot.
No grand ceremonial check—just a quick, simple wire transfer through a mobile app.
"On top of that, I'll connect you with a business I know. The owner lives in this neighborhood too, so..."
And with that, Noh In-seong rang up Deok Jin-man's food company as well, performing an act of adult virtue, incidentally and magnanimously.
"Oh my, thank you so much. You're... surprisingly different from your image."
The facility director kept marveling—nothing like the man she'd seen on broadcasts and at the ballpark.
"Sorry? Excuse me, and what exactly is my image, then? Outside the stadium I've been living a perfectly decent life, thank you very much."
He was only a madman between the lines; in daily life, a perfectly sane young man. Noh In-seong felt somewhat wronged—
"Oppa, that thing where you cornered those reporters? It was on the nine o'clock news."
"...Aaargh."
But as Siyeon so helpfully pointed out, this was an image decline he had summoned entirely upon himself.
While Noh In-seong was performing this rare act of social contribution—doing actual good, of all things—one team somewhere was trembling in its boots.
"Damn it... this is our LAST chance...!!"
Incheon. The team that had declared a full rebuild this season and was stacking losses to the ceiling.
The facility itself was fine, of course—they had a dome, so rainouts were practically a foreign concept—
"Damn it all, if we could just tear this dome down, maybe something would change."
Ironically, Incheon's manager Jin Woo-jeong found himself praying someone would rip the cursed roof off and let the rain pour in.
His team's record was dismal enough already, and the bombshell they were about to face was a burden in every possible way.
"The record on the line is OURS—and now WE'RE the ones who have to play them?!"
The moment they handed over two straight losses, the all-time winning streak would be tied.
And then, the instant any other team dropped even a single game, one of their most treasured records would be permanently swapped into someone else's trophy case.
"Why did it have to be NOW that I'm managing... I've lost my mind...!!"
If he had one shred of hope, it was that In-seong wouldn't appear in the first game of the series.
"The boys are all coming back... but even so, I have no idea if we can actually win...!!"
Jin Sa-rang, the team's ace-in-waiting, had returned after rehabbing his injury, all the way through his minor-league assignment.
Jin Noh-ryeok had needed time to reattach after splitting a fingernail, too.
But by all appearances, both would be able to take the mound in this first game.
"...Damn it. So now I have to do the very thing I hate most, with my own two hands."
The dilemma: in order to protect their legacy, he would have to behave exactly like the manager he himself had chased out the door.
Rookie manager Jin Woo-jeong swallowed his tears and prepared for war with the Doubles.