Passing the Bomb Along (Part 1)

In the second game against Changwon, Noh In-seong had, quite literally, been phenomenally unlucky. "Come on, I saw the ball fine and hit it hard—so what exactly did I do wrong?" "The baseball gods just don't like it when you're doing too well." One jab from Sung Hyun-tak was all it took to send In-seong into a full-blown rage, his hitting slump that suffocating. "Overweight pig of a first baseman...! Guy who got traded away once and thought he was hot stuff...!!" "...That person isn't a god, you idiot." Jeong Im-taek shook his head at In-seong's questionable choice of target. Maybe it was punishment for cursing out the wrong person, or maybe he'd simply drawn on too much luck lately and the bill had come due. Either way, the entire day, the luck itself simply refused to cooperate. Crack--!! "GGGHAAAH--!!" He'd hammered a beautiful line drive, only for the ball to embed itself in the shortstop's body.

Trading one out for a player substitution was unquestionably a win for the Doubles as a team. But that was good for the team. It did nothing for Noh In-seong. "Damn it, he actually caught that." Grumbling, In-seong shoved his bat back into the rack and slumped onto the dugout bench. "Hehe, nothing you can do on days like this. You were the one teasing me back in Gwangju, and look at you now... GGHK!" In-seong shot up instantly at the provocation and seized Song Jin-wook, hammering him. "You're dead?! You're dead, you hear me?! ARGH!!" Having needlessly poured fuel on the fire, Song Jin-wook flailed helplessly in a rear-naked choke. "...Kkh! Kkh! I'll... I'll buy you dinner! Just spare me!" Setting aside the fact that In-seong couldn't hit, he simply could not tolerate the people around him mocking him. Amid all this, his third at-bat gave birth to a meme so legendary it would circulate on every sports site for the next twenty years. Crack--!! "Huh... huh... what?! How is that IN there?!" The pitcher, dodging a ball that had been squared up, stared in shock as it settled meekly into his glove. "Wow. At this point I'm not watching baseball anymore, I'm watching an old variety show. The ball just got vacuumed into the glove." Noh In-seong laughed in sheer disbelief. Some days, there was simply no answer. Meanwhile, a full-blown gender war was erupting over that very meme — but internet keyboard warriors fighting each other was nothing new. Noh In-seong had no room in his life for such trivialities. "...I don't think I'm getting many more chances." At most, two more turns at the plate. Realizing how little opportunity remained, In-seong grew desperate. "No! I still need to watch those bastards piss themselves in agony!" "...What on earth are you talking about, In-seong..." Honestly, it didn't matter whether he got a hit or not — but if he didn't, he'd lose his chance to torment Daegu, and that was unbearable. *** Of course, desperate or not, hits don't just appear on command. Through his fourth at-bat, whether it was bad luck or simply great defense, he remained hitless. In that at-bat, the crowd, believing it was a home run, had raised their gloves in hopeful anticipation—only for— That night's defensive highlight reel rubbed the failure in one more time. "HE CAUGHT IT!!" Far from praising the magnificent wall-climbing jumping catch by last year's rookie center fielder Baek In-jun— "Why the hell did you catch that, you little punk!" "AGH! What the—?! Don't throw things!" A hostile spectator hurled chicken bones toward the center fielder, and chaos ensued. That was, after all, the official ball of a would-be 60th home run — a ball destined to fetch a higher price than even his 59th. Who wouldn't be tempted? Of course, doing that got you ejected, so the bald middle-aged man who'd permanently forfeited his stadium privileges was dragged out screaming. "You bastard, do you have any idea who I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a—GGAAAAACK...!!!" As he thrashed about, the Anti-Riot Electric Shock Drone — the stadium's dedicated processor of every manner of deranged spectator — moved in. There was a minor hiccup in that it briefly looked like it was about to electric-grill a man who merely resembled an octopus, but still. "...Hey! Who the hell put a custom voice pack on the response audio again?! Damn it, the engineer has completely lost it." In any case, throwing bones at a player put you well beyond ordinary hooligan territory, so he got what was coming to him. The way he seized up and twitched under the electric shock as he resisted was, perhaps, a little reminiscent of a octopus. "...PUHAHAHA!" Noh In-seong had been robbed of a hit by a super play, but seeing that scene did cheer him up considerably. *** In the end, Noh In-seong wandered lost all the way to his very last at-bat. By the final plate appearance, perhaps from concentrating so hard for so long— "Ugh, my eyes are blurring..." A seesaw battle against the opposing closer, dragged out to a full count. "No! Our box office numbers...!!" The association, which had been giddily watching sellout crowds pour in game after game thanks to In-seong alone— "No, if this keeps up, we're the only ones who end up looking like fools!" And the drunkards of Busan, already fuming that every one of their own records had been shattered— And everyone anxious that the hit streak might finally end — all of them stomped their feet in suspense. "Eh, doesn't matter if we lose to him. HE'S the one who'll be in a foul mood." Changwon's manager, Kim Chang-soo, was a flexible man. The record-holder was Daegu, and Changwon was, in its own way, fairly close to Daegu. There was no reason not to stick it to them when the opportunity presented itself. Having served Busan, the X-axis, a steaming plate of payback yesterday, he'd apparently decided today's portion would go to Daegu, the Y-axis. 'Take him on. Go down swinging.' Three balls, two strikes — it's a strikeout or a hit — and the at-bat ground on, stubborn and unrelenting. CRACK--!! Carrying that defiance through to the end and shoving a plate of payback in Daegu's face while remaining perfectly fair and square about it — Noh In-seong finally, at his very last at-bat, scratched out a hit. The game itself was a loss, and some called the ending a bit anticlimactic. "Uh, excuse me — who exactly won us yesterday's game, then?" He'd hit two home runs the day before, so the critics could shut their mouths, frankly. Thirty-three consecutive games with a hit, before anyone quite realized it. "Tch. Feels like I got a charity pass, but..." Even the man who could shred his own conscience into confetti and sell it by the gram knew exactly whose fault it was that this streak had survived. It meant that when the record extension earned him an interview, he could at least face the camera and offer a word of thanks. "Damn it, Kim Chang-soo! I like you!" ...Which was precisely the problem with his idea of gratitude. "Heh heh... you, my friend, apparently never had the 'honorific speech' application installed." A man roughly forty years his junior was talking down to him, but the sentiment got through anyway. A rare day — one of the few where he'd nearly lost a fight fought honestly, and clean. As if acknowledging his opponent, Noh In-seong refrained from his usual opponent-grinding interview theatrics. "Ahem... in any case, baseball is fair. 'Probability' is always honest. Wouldn't you say?" Of course, even in the middle of that, he couldn't resist quoting his own batting average and leaving behind a few loaded words. "...Um... you're talking about baseball, right?" A remarkably toned-down interview by In-seong standards, wrapping things up warmly between 'baseball players.' "You little son of a—!" Naturally, to the certain Changwon parent company that had just been caught probability-manipulating yet again and slapped with an astronomical punitive damages bill— it must have felt like dancing on a burning corpse. "Who was it that held a knife to a baseball player's probability of 0.00426% and threatened to cut it in half, hmm?" "......" Well. Was Noh In-seong the kind of man who worried about such things? The relationship over the baseball gaming scandal had already frayed beyond repair, so what was a little more? In-seong went right ahead and packed generous handfuls of salt into every fresh wound. *** When the Doubles returned from their three-game regional road trip through Daegu, Gwangju, and Changwon— the players' reactions were surprisingly good. "Man, two days on the road, one day off, two on, two off — doesn't even feel like a road trip." There was zero reason for their stamina to run dry. Nothing like those grind-it-out 3-and-3 season stretches of hopping from one hotel to another. Naturally, everyone stayed wired on the ride home, entertaining themselves in their own ways— "The Game of Death! Fourteen!" "...It's just you and me holding our hands out right now. What kind of idiot calls an even number..." CRACK---!! GAAAHHAAGH---!! And yes, there was one incident where a slap-spike of near-injury caliber landed squarely on the throat of the very someone he'd once put in a chokehold. But even through all that, everyone sat grinning ear to ear, waiting only for the sweet approaching moment of clock-out. "A home game for the first time in ages — and check-in tomorrow isn't even morning! It's noon!" Once the bus pulled into the stadium, all they had to do was grab their bags and rest up through that evening and the entire next day. "Alright, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you all rest up well, and assemble at the home clubhouse on Tuesday. Dismissed!" Just as Jeong Im-taek said, everyone could go straight home. Wasn't this the most comfortable road trip imaginable? So the whole team headed home in good spirits — all except one man, who grumbled his way somewhere entirely different. "Phew. Thank god it was one night, two days, back and forth. Imagine if this were a full regular season schedule." "Absolutely horrifying," Sung Hyun-tak shuddered. The reason was simple. The car handover had been completed — but Sung Hyun-tak had been spinning a bat at the time. Given the era, he should at least be grateful that 24-hour unmanned vehicle pickup stations now existed. Of course, there was still a mountain of tedious paperwork left beyond that. "Ugh, when am I supposed to get all this done." It was already dead of night. No matter how advanced the systems got, vehicle registration took forever. Having to waste hours until morning just churning out documents — what an infuriating chore. And to top it off, some bastard riding the same subway line kept smirking at him the whole way. "You won a car as a bonus? The guy who spends half the year riding the team bus anyway?" At Noh In-seong's pitying expression, Sung Hyun-tak — for whom car tuning was the very nectar of life — exploded. "Do you have ANY idea how it feels to win a car and then have to let it sit there gathering dust for half a year because of games like this?!" "Nope. I don't even have a license." As hobbies went, the cost-to-fun ratio was terrible — but what could you do? It was his funeral, his choice. "What do you even do for fun, anyway?" "Seriously, what IS your hobby, that you get to laugh at me?" Sung Hyun-tak pressed. "I enjoy all my hobbies right there at the baseball stadium, so I'd say I'm covered, no?" Sung Hyun-tak belatedly registered just how sadistic that hobby was, and hastily backpedaled. "H-haha. In-seong, rest well. See you Tuesday." Push the conversation any further, and he risked ending up like Song Jin-wook. Sung Hyun-tak would rather pass on getting his rear end kicked on a daily basis. *** The next day — Sunday, a scheduled day off with no game. In ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠air warm as a space heater yet comfortable, humidity dropped to at least hand-dryer levels. Noh In-seong reported to the stadium as a concept of fan service. "...A fan is a fan, I suppose. You're the one who caught it. It was all over the news." "Hi, big bro! Hehe." A photo-op event, standing before the cameras with the lucky event winner — the Jeong Kid. "There you go. Congratulations. If you'd waited for just one more, the number of digits probably would've changed, but..." The 59th home run ball the kid had caught hadn't reached the hundreds of millions of won, but it had still fetched a hefty sum. Honestly, the club could have lowballed him hard. They could have just let some opposing player — or In-seong himself — flatten the kid, declared no more records, the end!, and been done with it. But the general manager, having grimly realized that paying out a generous reward would make the kid (and every other fan) hunt even harder, had settled up like a man of honor. The highest-valued reward in the history of Korean baseball. Two hundred million won in prize money after taxes, plus some six million won in assorted perks thrown in by the parent company. "Hehe, I got a laptop for free!" The kid, now the proud owner of a feather-light hologram laptop, whooped about installing block games on it. "'Free'? I paid for that with a slice of the luck you'll be spending your whole life." Noh In-seong cut in sternly, telling the kid to stay humble about his fortune. Just how much luck had he burned through? It was the kind of luck you couldn't even fathom. 'Bad luck and good luck are two sides of the same coin, after all.' Sound advice — coming from the man who'd dumped every ounce of his past life's luck into drawing the grand prize. He'd accepted the price cleanly too — ice-slide, self-inflicted tombstone and all — and successfully reincarnated into another world. "Stay humble, brat." "They say that's the hardest thing in the world to do, though? I learned it from an old folk song!" "...That thing counts as a folk song now?!" Noh In-seong nearly fainted at the sheer drift of the times since he'd faceplanted off that icy road. *** Incidentally — if the kid had caught the ball behind that one instead, the payout would have been on an entirely different level. There are no 'what-ifs' in baseball, but baseball isn't what puts rice on the table here, so In-seong indulged the hypothetical. "If you'd caught the 60th home run ball instead..." "What if I had?" "Hundreds of millions. That's the ball that ties the Asian record." It would have instantly converted into a commodity even the Japanese would covet. There were still people grieving to this day that the Asian record was held by a foreigner. At the very least, they'd have been delighted that a fellow East Asian broke it, and bought it up eagerly. ...Or would they? "Come to think of it, I did hit a 'Japanese barbecue' joke right in the middle of the Tokyo Dome." Rethinking it — wasn't that, from Japan's perspective, a symbol of hostility? He should count himself lucky they didn't torch the thing as a cursed object. With one poorly aimed quip, Noh In-seong had once demonstrated the dark magic of watching a ball's price plummet in real time. The buffet the kid dragged him to afterward, promising to treat him since the event was over. Naturally, the prize package had included restaurant gift certificates, among other things. If it were his own money, sure — but as far as gift-certificate fine dining went, the kid had made the objectively optimal selection. Noh In-seong had no hobby of freeloading off children, but his ball had contributed to this feast, after all. 'Right. If it's free, even sodium hydroxide deserves a full shot, as they say.' Quoting a mangled proverb, he shuffled along behind the kid. "Oh, right! Big bro. Do you have anything going on Monday?" Just as the meal was about to begin, the Jeong Kid asked about his schedule for tomorrow. Noh In-seong.EXE, searching his internal calendar, detected a scheduling overlap. He was about to refuse — and then something clicked, and a slow grin spread across his face. "...I don't, actually... though I have a pretty good guess why you're asking." There was, after all, a certain junior human recently who'd said something remarkably similar while trying to use him. "A parent-teacher conference?" "...Huh?! How did you know?!" And he also remembered the conversation they'd had that day on the swings. "You skipped your homework, and that other kid skipped his too. The two of you got busted as a matched set, huh." "Urk!" SLUUUUURP...!! Vacuuming down an entire plate of oil pasta in a single breath, In-seong continued. "Look, I don't mind helping out... but we do this properly. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ask your mom to write something like a letter of authorization." Besides, from this end, sending me — someone you already know — beats dragging your mother out there. He said it all brazenly, fully aware that their shared homeroom teacher, Jeong Hwa-jeong, would explode out of her uniform if she ever found out. "Your dad's a reporter, your mom's got her own work — I'm sure the homeroom teacher will understand... yaaawn." Noh In-seong speared every piece of meat on the steak plate into his mouth in a single forkful. The Jeong Kid stared, thunderstruck. No, seriously — that steak was bigger than the kid's own face. How? "...Big bro, have you perhaps never heard of this cultural artifact called a 'knife'?" "Knives, my boy, are decorative face-saving items for people who need to pretend they have small mouths." Having shattered yet another piece of a child's common sense, Noh In-seong got in line for his second plate. He was, after all, still very hungry.