Guess In-seong's Just a Hateful Little Bastard;;
"OH! This is delicious to die for!"
Andy—black beard... no, black face by now—was shoveling chicken into his mouth, the seasoning smeared all over his lips.
Unlike Caleb, who'd gone to work out to gradually prep for his return to the mound, or Jeong In-woo, who had a start to prepare for, Andy—bored and still in recovery—had tagged along on my signature fried chicken pilgrimage.
"...Didn't you say, like, a minute ago that this was just regular seasoned chicken?"
Salty, sweet, with just enough chili to give it a kick. It's not the kind of flavor that divides opinion—but even so, is that really an appropriate eating speed for a chicken described that way?
"...Two more, please. Ah, and one of them—"
While I placed the order, Andy, who had single-handedly demolished a chicken and a half, finally lifted the bird away from his mouth.
"Come to think of it, In-seong, your early-season numbers are pretty good, aren't they? You might actually be in line for the monthly award and the prize money?"
"My stats are good, sure. The problem is I fall short of the minimums in both pitching and hitting."
"Minus?"
Not enough innings, not enough plate appearances. Which means that among the guys hovering around thirty-odd games like me, another lunatic besides myself could easily pop up.
And if that guy starts hollering, "I've taken more plate appearances and thrown more innings than you! How does some short-count punk open his mouth?! Tsk!"—I'd have no comeback. That's just how it is.
"Ooh, then couldn't you just count every plate appearance as an automatic out and still win the thing?"
Well, that's true.
"Not wrong. The problem is that the people doing the selecting are reporters and fans."
"OH, so you mean you're at a disadvantage?"
Reporters might stay neutral toward me, since I hand them plenty of material—but the beat reporters attached to certain clubs could very well be grinding their teeth at me.
As for the fans... let's not even go there. If the stats are anywhere close, does anyone honestly think they'd give their vote to me?
"Your chicken's here. You ordered one more each, yes?"
"Yes, just set it down here."
Andy set down the carcass he'd been mauling—by now cooled to room temperature—picked up a fresh piece, and kept going.
"So what you're saying is, your odds of covering your fine with award money are basically slim?"
"...Dunno? Too early to tell."
The two punks who picked a fight with me happen to both be monthly MVP candidates, you see.
By the way—you finally got that chicken in your mouth, didn't you, you cursed piece of—
"OH! SHIT! FUCK! In-seong! This is fucking SPICY!!!"
So this chicken does have some heat to it. Enjoy the traditional baptism, you chicken-massacring bastard.
Watching Andy wail while practically dunking his entire face into a yogurt drink put me in a wonderful mood.
Game three? Yeah, I think I can handle this just fine.
Game two, unlike the blowout of game one, had ended in a loss—though not a runaway one. There were a number of factors. For starters, Song Jin-wook had finally appeared as the designated hitter with the swelling off his face, and he did help,
but shortstop aside, a player who hadn't even reached the level of a utility infielder was manning third base—and that mattered a lot too.
And then, whether because I'd riled them up yesterday or simply squeezed the fight out of them, an opposing lineup that had managed to score nothing but two runs all game suddenly—
Today they were relentless—no, beyond relentless. The single biggest factor was that they'd ground Jeong In-young into dust and yanked him after just three and a third innings.
Seeing In-young sulking with a towel draped over his head as he watched the rest of the game, I could practically picture the migraine on the manager's face.
One of the relievers, the grizzled veteran Jeong Jae-kyung, never made it back—and word was he'd announce his retirement once the season ended.
The bullpen arms called up from the minors kept setting the mound on fire left and right. Honestly, the whole operation had problems.
That I'd spent those final three games against the Astros watching, heart in my throat, as pitches sailed near hitters' heads—and still figured it was worth it if the guy could eat one inning... that's the caliber of problem we were talking about.
"Wow, watching in person really is nothing like TV. Maybe the cap's doing a good job hiding all the gray hair?"
"Ugh... please, next time, don't order anything spicy, In-seong."
No chance, you punk. If it scares you that much, order your own food.
And remember, Andy—if we hadn't split the bill, I could've made the entire order spicy today.
Morning of game three.
I walked past Andy, still suffering—though even mid-suffering he kept grabbing pieces, muttering that it was tasty—then past the gloomy Jeong In-young, and headed over to where Jeong In-woo was sitting.
"All set for the start? Your face looks better today."
"Heh heh, I think I've got something to show you today. My condition is fucking fantastic."
Well, well—little brother got shelled into the dirt yesterday, but big brother's in peak condition? Talk about a total collapse of character...
"That's not what I meant, you punk! I'm saying my fly-ball rate is low!"
Stabbing a chicken bone at a man while he's eating makes you seem a few crayons short, but the point itself is actually sound.
This is a park where typical fly balls go to die—the same reason In-young got absolutely destroyed yesterday.
He's a product of the starter school that says overwhelm them with two pitches and nothing else—so even granting that strikeouts are nice, when more than half the balls put in play against you are flies, there's not much you can do.
In a park like this, a guy like In-woo, whose balls in play skew heavily toward grounders, genuinely has the advantage.
"And the defense? You and Jun-soo hyung will handle that just fine, so pitchers like me basically get to lounge back and sip honey, you know?"
"...Right, every word of that is fair. So why are you explaining it while brandishing the chicken bone you stole off my plate yesterday?"
I figured that was your roundabout way of asking for a beating.
If you weren't today's starter, I'd have already... ugh, seriously, why are there so many lunatics among starting pitchers?
Flinch—!
What now? What is wrong with this bastard?
The moment I clenched my fist, Song Jin-wook, sitting across from me, began trembling like a leaf.
What the hell now? Fuck. I'm starting to think there isn't a single sane man left on this team.
Unlike Noh In-seong, who was quietly questioning Jeong In-woo's mental state, game three turned out to be filled to the brim with factors favoring the Doubles.
The blue-uniformed legion, responsible for two straight days of grim atmosphere, had vanished off to watch their football match,
and in place of the young starter who had so honestly gone pitch-for-pitch with fastballs and sliders the day before—
Crack—!
"See that? Told you I'm different!"
'Ugh. If only you weren't the starter today, I really could put a beating on you...'
A starter who throws a sinker rated 50+ on the MLB scale—above league average—on more than sixty percent of his pitches, layered with a circle change and a slow, loopy curve.
And then,
Crack—!
Four for four. Four runs batted in. Eight total bases.
"Wow, look at him heading for the exits. Yeah, this place does get clogged up like a beggar's wallet again, doesn't it."
"...Hey. If you're going to say that, at least have the decency to say it where I can't hear you."
This was In-seong at his finest—having thoroughly scraped at Kim Jin-il's short fuse every single time he'd stood on second base since giving up that home run to him yesterday.
Noh In-seong had once again presented the Magicians with a steaming pile of misery. Four times over, no less.
"--When exactly did I start imagining the stands were full?"
"ARGH, you insufferable son of a—!"
And to Kim Jin-il, he served that misery with truly admirable persistence. It was pettiness distilled to its purest form.
After the game, sitting alone at the interview podium, staring at the brightly lit stage as if he'd seen it one time too many.
The interview chatter, the set bustling around him—felt like I watched it every single day.
"You know, sometimes this reminds me of a scene from a song."
Midway through the interview, Noh In-seong started talking about something else entirely.
"Noh In-seong? What do you mean by that?"
There stood Reporter Joo So-young, visibly trembling at the thought of what bombshell he might drop today.
She should be thanking me for ushering in the cable golden age of Baseball Friends—why the terror?
What's there to be so scared of? We finally meet again and you go making me look like some kind of villain.
Relax. I don't eat people. Especially not you.
"I'm talking about how, whenever someone takes a beating from me, there's nothing but dead silence—until things quiet down, and then they come bouncing right back out again."
Look, today I'm just trying to tidy up the list of guys who've been marked by me—so do us both a favor and 'cooperate,' Ms. Joo!
"Right, Oh Yeon-seok. From your rookie year up through the middle of last season, you took your beatings with a smile, and then you cleaned your act up a bit in the second half, didn't you?"
"But then you nearly lost the Korean Series by getting taken deep, didn't you? Honestly, you should be down on your knees thanking your team's hitters."
Starting with the Gwangju Tigers' Oh Yeon-seok.
"And then there's the guy who, right on the verge of turning full traitor, barely escaped with his head still attached—and against him your career average is .133?! What even are you... do you step into the box without a bat or something?"
Moving right along to the Grizzlies' Kim Seong-ju.
"And why exactly are you worried about what I might do at an international tournament? You won't be seeing a national team uniform ever again anyway."
One layer after another, he smeared mud across Jo Ho-yeon's face. Obsessively. Meticulously.
There was a saying online: plenty of people didn't watch the Doubles' games in full—but everyone watched the post-game interviews.
Just as Joo So-young, whose face had gone black, then red, then ghost-white under the heat of it all, began struggling to bring the interview to a close—
"Kim Seong-ju. I'll see you next week."
Noh In-seong named his next victim.
"Oh Yeon-seok, you're on the mound for the last game of the series, aren't you? If things keep going like this?"
Don't you dare hide. Take the mound. Keep the promise you made.
A declaration demanding that a man—who had abandoned all dignity and was being passed around the internet as a laughingstock—come face him himself.
The tips of Noh In-seong's fingers, thrust toward the camera, seemed to swallow the light and turn black.
And so, darkness began to spill across Oh Yeon-seok's path.
"...Well. I'm fucked."
So pronounced was the final verdict of reality, spilling from the mouth of Oh Yeon-seok as he finished his rehab exercises and watched the game footage at his computer.