Just Two More Wins (Part 2)

Last year, the team had already achieved the historic milestone of becoming the first club ever to surpass 100 wins in a single season.

But this winning streak carried a different kind of symbolism altogether.

After claiming the most wins, they had now chased down the longest winning streak as well — the emblem of a team that had become synonymous with winning itself.

"Mm. At the very least, in the year 2050, we are the strongest team there is."

With the tie of the all-time streak record, Doubles manager Jeong Im-taek had arrived at a certain conviction.

Two years running, they had shattered the old records of Korean baseball.

They stood one step away from building something undeniable — a bona fide dynasty.

Sure, someone out there would grumble that a team juiced on cheat codes had no business talking about dynasties. Cowardly bastards, they'd say.

"Excuse me? Two teams actually turned down that cheat code, so why are you giving us grief?"

"..."

And at the present moment, with the two cheat-code-rejecting bastards busy brawling over second and third place, the rest of the league hardly warranted a mention.

All that remained was to hoist the triangular championship flag of a regular season whose magic number had already fallen to 7 —

and from up there in the sky, to watch, slowly and patiently, for the ones climbing toward them.

Jeong Im-taek stepped into his office to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠think through tomorrow's lineup, and flipped on the light.

An uninvited guest was already sitting there.

"...Honestly, this guy's at it again..."

"Mm, I hear you had a mini fridge installed inside the cupboard. Technology really has come a long way."

It was Noh In-seong, sprawled on the office sofa, savoring someone else's cake.

"How did you crack the password?! This time I wore gloves when I punched it in!"

Having noticed powder residue on the keypad and wondered if the brat was somehow dusting it for fingerprints, Jeong Im-taek had pressed the buttons through leather gloves — only for Noh In-seong to say:

"Crack it? I didn't crack anything. I just factory-reset the machine."

Password changed? Then just reset the machine~ — sunk by the sheer simplicity of the solution, the manager sat in silence.

"......"

Listening to a solution befitting a complete lunatic, Jeong Im-taek suddenly remembered he hadn't taken his blood pressure medication today.

He could feel it spiking on the spot.

Inside the Doubles clubhouse, the pressure was mounting fast.

A winning streak is a double-edged sword.

While it lasts, it's euphoric — the team may run themselves ragged out of sheer joy — but the deeper the streak runs, the heavier the burden grows, and so everyone within worked overtime to keep the atmosphere light of their own accord.

But the reporters, intoxicated by the records, kept shoving the players toward higher numbers and loftier heights.

The fans hadn't yet noticed how exhausted the players were.

Whether it was the reporters endlessly flogging the story or the pressure from the fandom itself, the team's surface-level mood was good — but it had a distinctly forced, strained-at-the-seams kind of cheerfulness to it.

"Let's... go."

"Yeah. You heard him. Let's go, everyone..."

Watching corpses exhort each other to fight on, one couldn't help feeling less inspired than pitiful.

"I've still got plenty left in the tank, though?"

Naturally, there was always one man — a designated hitter, freshly back from a brief injury layover — bounding around in perfect health.

"You don't play defense, you lunatic!"

WHAP—!!

He had blithely opened his mouth without reading the room, and promptly found himself crying tears of regret.

The degree varied from player to player, but most of the roster was crying poverty on the stamina front.

The infielders could at least rotate and back each other up, and Sung Hyun-tak, considerably slimmer now, was moonlighting at second base on occasion.

Thanks to that, Nicholas occasionally started at first instead — a genuine plus in terms of conserving energy.

"Aargh, this damn weight refuses to stick. Looks like I'll have to spend another month rolling around on the couch stuffing my face with potato chips and milkshakes."

The downside: Sung Hyun-tak, grumbling as his hard-won bulk melted away all the faster thanks to his second-base shifts.

"Can't you just eat stuff like that to put it back on?"

It was the world's most obvious weight-gain strategy, but at Lim Jae-min's innocent question, Sung Hyun-tak could only snort.

"Haah, I'm telling you, my body sheds weight just from walking. Back then I only gained it because I couldn't walk."

Gain weight only when your legs give out — a constitution that would have been a misery to be born with in the old days.

But what could he do about the body he'd been dealt? Grind it out, by hook or by crook.

Still, the infield was comparatively livable — the weight dropped, sure, but the suffering was manageable.

"GAAAAH...!! I'm begging you, In-seong, when you start on the mound, just go out there as a pitcher...!!"

It was the outfield where the overload had turned genuinely dire.

Every single time Noh In-seong took the mound as the starter,

center fielder Song Joo-in had been sprinting to patch a left-field coverage gap the size of an event horizon.

"Hah... hah... damn it... my salary... is sixty million won... I never... asked... for this...!!"

He had somehow managed to lose three to four kilograms every single time In-seong pitched.

A number that would make even the most extreme crash-diet programs flee in terror.

"...You ought to be making hundreds of millions next year, honestly."

If you calculated defensive WAR alone, he's probably second on the team after me, thought Noh In-seong, looking down with something like pity at the golden-retriever center fielder sprawled on the grass, no longer able to chase the ball.

One other position besides the outfield was collectively pleading exhaustion.

Throughout the entire winning streak, the bees had flapped their wings day after day, game after game — and the hum of their wings was steadily going quiet.

Not because the vibration had sped up past the range of human hearing,

but because this was a collapsing hive — every bee one flutter away from dropping dead. That was the difference.

"Hey, where'd all the bullpen guys go?"

Lim Jae-min, set to start in place of Jo In-soo, went looking for the pitchers to hold his pre-game meetings —

and found himself playing an absurd game of hide-and-seek with men who were nowhere to be found.

"They're all excused from training today. Official rest day. Didn't you hear?"

At Noh In-seong's answer, he hurried off toward the locker room.

Only the rare two-way players were showing up for defensive drills; everyone else was fused to the floor.

Since the Incheon series, they'd been skipping even the daily running, devoting themselves exclusively to rest.

Anything that involved moving the body — stretching excepted — got a hard pass.

It had worked, for a while. There'd been a brief flash of brilliance in the Incheon series.

"This can't go on, sir. The entire bullpen is burned out, and you know it perfectly well."

That last flicker before death — nobody clocked it faster than Noh In-seong, more veteran than anyone.

"You're right about that. Might have no choice but to call up a few 2nd-team pitchers."

And Jeong Im-taek, watching from the outside with an objective eye, had reached the same conclusion.

His first task every single day, before anything else, was pitcher management alongside the pitching coach. How could he possibly not see it?

This stopgap could hold for, at most, the two games against the Superstars — conveniently lined up against their weaker starters.

"After that, the entire bullpen gets rotated out. They all need forced rest. The overload warnings have come in."

It was late August anyway. Ride the new bullpen for a stretch, and once expanded rosters arrived in September, they could breathe easy.

And with Noh In-seong slated to start the first game of next week's Grizzlies series — well, chalk that one up as a one-man-show win...

"So after my start, we just... expect to lose, is that it?"

"...Mm. Honestly? We're walking a tightrope without a net."

Rallying as one heart, one team — that's only possible while the body holds out.

The Doubles roster was beginning to show the limits of sustaining this streak.

Why else would Noh In-seong have been loitering in the manager's office, picking at someone else's cake?

"Really, you're oddly diligent in the strangest ways. Waiting in my office just to deliver a message..."

A flicker of genuine emotion rose in Jeong Im-taek, and for the first time in ages, he moved to praise Noh In-seong —

"Oh, no, no. The cake's just because I walked past and remembered it existed, so I came to steal it. The message, I could've delivered any old time."

Shoving the rest of the cake into his mouth all at once, Noh In-seong was needlessly, unfailingly honest.

"Agh, you little punk, I swear."

Thus the moment flowed quite naturally into Jeong Im-taek's flustered congratulatory oration from the depths of his defenseless office.

In truth, the brat had simply had his cake confiscated by his mother at home and come to eat someone else's. What was there to be moved by?

It was just an ordinary day for the Doubles — a team for which such sentimentality had never suited.

Meanwhile, the Superstars sat in the most comfortable position of anyone in this standings race.

"Er... we can't climb any higher, but we can't fall either, can we?"

Literal, immovable comfort. A stability that made one mutter that the standings are a science.

The battle for second — that is, Daejeon and Busan — was currently a blood-soaked slugfest of mutual haymakers,

while the Superstars themselves lounged around in fourth place doing absolutely nothing.

Six games behind the co-second-place teams, seven ahead of the fifth-place Grizzlies —

they were wedged in between, with no room to squirm in either direction.

Not that the Grizzlies had any attention to spare, busy slugging it out with Gwangju and Daegu over who won one game and who tied one.

"Surely we won't... eh, whatever."

So long as they split the series even down the middle, there was simply no way they'd drop.

"Our roster's safe, and those guys have been grinding all streak long..."

A situation where they could win or lose — and wasn't it conveniently a matchup of bottom-tier starters anyway?

Jeong Jae-yoon, general manager and de facto owner of the Superstars, sat back and smirked.

Truly, even if they got swept, who cared?

"Would it be our record? No. It'd be theirs."

Best case, the bomb didn't go off and life went on; worst case, it just made Incheon feel a little smug. Who cared.

Absolute worst case, they dropped two straight and got stuffed and mounted as the streak's final sacrificial offering. Probably, yes.

Fair point. Still — go and check who the Doubles' next opponent and starting pitcher are.

"Bastards who share the same ballpark with us wouldn't have the nerve to just walk in grinning, now would they?"

The jinx of pitching right after a historic record — irrelevant. That pitcher would be coming off three days' rest.

For the final sacrificial offering, a big oafish bear suited better than a man, anyway.

There was no player worth calling up from Incheon regardless, so Jeong Jae-yoon leaned back, at ease.

Comfortably gift his team this year's taste of autumn baseball,

then simply wait for the franchises that could no longer afford next year's extravagance to collapse.

The plan had suffered its share of complications, but in broad strokes, it hadn't changed one bit.

"Haah, that damned bastard, and then thinking about last year and this year getting recycled all over again even after he's gone — it makes my skin crawl."

--You won't sell Song Jin-wook, right?

In place of a conscience, Jeong Jae-yoon's head was busy scheming to rip the franchise up by its very roots the moment Noh In-seong departed.

That faint gleam about his scalp — surely just his imagination.

Jeong Im-taek and the Doubles coaching staff began their final preparations.

Even with a single day of rest, they believed there was still a best move to be made.

"Put the guys who've thrown the most on the injured list, at least."

"Wooo! Free vacation—!!"

What the team needed most right now was a temporary booster — and it began by giving the bullpen arms something to hope for.

No demotion to the 2nd team required — just a temporary removal that let them collect every day of their registration period. The single best measure available.

The front office would hate it, but tough luck — if they didn't like it, they could go build their own 22-game-winning team.

"The GM? Screw him! Right now I am God, and the owner is on my side!"

One flick of his finger, and the front office would be gambling their own jobs to shave a few registration days off the books.

Jeong Im-taek wielded the supreme power of performance-based, results-backed authority with total impunity.

First, the bullpen trusted their manager and resolved to spend their last drop of strength.

Any pitcher with something left in the tank would make this upcoming appearance his last, then be shut down entirely until September.

However many more wins they racked up, September would be fought with a rotation one step above the 2nd team.

In other words, with Noh In-seong's start against the Grizzlies as the finale, extending the winning streak beyond that point would be left entirely to fate.

"I refuse to have my players destroyed by fatigue over something like that."

That so-called world record was just some crusty old relic from a century ago anyway.

"Go break it yourself after you get to the Majors. Our team stops here."

At Jeong Im-taek's bitter remark, Noh In-seong shook his head.

"Even in the Majors, breaking that one looks like a hell of a stretch...?"

This year's Doubles were, at minimum, one of the greatest superteams in the history of Korean baseball.

You could quibble over the value of any individual player, but the results proved they had been a superteam.

Whether Noh In-seong could ever get so lucky as to land on a team like that again in the Majors was anyone's guess.

Rather than chase something like that, I'd sooner challenge a god hopped up on performance enhancers.

Noh In-seong's philosophy was simple: what mattered was himself and the people around him. Who cared about records that required other people's help?

"Haah. Might as well hurry up and end this damn circus."

Watching the thought of leaving this record behind as his legacy poke its head up between the complaints,

Noh In-seong figured he'd apparently grown at least somewhat attached to the place.

Jeong Im-taek's pitching-staff triage didn't stop there.

"You've earned it, Dong-yeop, Dong-goo, Joo-hyuk. Rest up. See you in September."

"YES, SIR!!"

Pitchers with nothing left to throw, or whose injury risk had climbed past every red line.

So Dong-yeop, Yeom Dong-goo, and Jin Joo-hyuk — the multi-inning workhorses.

Guys who'd been fed into the grinder like dogs all season — swingmen in name only, practically indentured laborers by the end.

Collectively, they clutched their ten-day vacation vouchers — the injured list — and vanished off to rest.

In place of the three already wiped out and gone, the pitchers down in the 2nd team got their call-ups.

Song Soo-ho came up — the guy they'd been yo-yoing between leagues except on Noh In-seong's starts ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— but that was the end of it.

"As for the rest, well, there's no such thing as more prospects to call up."

Inside the bus rolling out for the final showdown with a weakened roster, there was nothing but silence.

The endgame of the streak had arrived.

No matter how fantastically they'd destroyed Incheon, the holiday had been exactly one day long.

Walking into the ballpark with every muscle dragging, there wasn't a smile to be found on any Doubles player's face.

"...I know. It's going to be rough."

Knowing full well how different everyone's complexions were from the start of the season, Jeong Im-taek called the team together.

"This is the last one! After this, anyone who opens their mouth — their whining won't even make it into the history books! Just the sobbing of irrelevant has-beens!"

They had all already climbed to the summit. Anyone who wanted to tear them down from here on out would have to beat them first.

"Leave a clean mark in the history books! After that, we leave the rest to heaven! We've already done everything there is to do!"

Do all that man can do, and await heaven's verdict. The Doubles had done it all already.

All that remained belonged to the realm of whether the god of baseball would deign to confirm the record or not.

Win or lose, none of it would be your fault — and none of it mine, either. At that speech, the corners of every mouth in the room curled upward.

"Awfully honest of you, skipper. You want to dodge the blame too, huh?"

Even Song Jin-wook's oblivious jab served the moment beautifully, at least right now.

Everyone else snorted — and each man stopped watching the others and turned inward.

"That's right, you punk. We tied the all-time record honestly, so everyone else can shut their traps, eh? Twenty-six straight wins?"

--Ugh, honestly, this guy. Reporters and players alike, just zip it.

He punctuated it with a fist swung through empty air — apparently the loose locker-room vibe of his playing days hadn't worn off one bit.

In response to their leader's blunt honesty, the raggedy veterans who had sprinted drunk on the streak until they frayed at every seam began to answer the call.

"Ahh, that's right. Either way, if we keep the streak going, the owner's going to pad our bonuses nice and fat, right?"

The grizzled old-timer, planning to retire after his final free agency, wanted a handsome allowance for his twilight years.

"Hm, come to think of it, I think it's about time I swapped out my car."

The first baseman who shed weight at the mere sight of exercise insisted on trading in the car he'd bought with last year's championship bonus.

"A baby stroller for my little girl needs remote control, obviously~"

The designated hitter, thoroughly house-trained by his wife, was in the market for a stroller ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instead of a car.

Hands shot out one by one, each man voicing his own motive, and gathered together into one.

"Me? I just want to watch the Incheon bastards' faces get pulped, then sleep like the dead."

The demon in human form named his own motive last, laying his hand atop the pile.

"One, two, three — GO DOUBLES!"

Their final journey had begun.

Home game against the Superstars — Game 5 of the season series.