Now I Finally Understand Why You Lived the Way You Did
In the end, he never swung the bat once. After watching nothing but unpleasant pitches sail by, he finished his first at-bat with a walk on four balls.
"Fine, good. A walk may be worth less than a hit, but getting on base is getting on base."
Nobody out, runners on first and second — the kind of situation where any reasonable team should have put a run on the board.
But Dustin and Song Jin-wook, unlike their usual selves, blew up their own team's rally instead of the opposing pitcher. Dustin grounded into an infield fly of all things, and Song Jin-wook produced a classic, textbook 6-4-3 double play.
[If Song Jin-wook had any speed at all, maybe — but this... he ran his heart out, and still nowhere close to beating the throw...]
[That's right! Incheon escapes the jam in the bottom of the first! Such is Jamsil!]
Aigoo, these slow-footed friends. Well, can't fault them for at least trying to run hard.
After wrapping up the defense in the second, In-seong sat down next to the two of them when the Doubles' turn at bat came around again.
"Chun-sik, let's just say I saw this coming. The guy's out there throwing cutters and curves, after all."
A pitcher who competed with a hard cutter, a four-seamer, and a curveball — meaning he'd pile up strikes fast and finish you off with junk. In other words, the exact human counter to Chun-sik, a man whose batting average fell off a cliff the deeper the count went against him.
"But Teacher Song, instead of your own swing, you're out here doing a falling-down swing. What exactly did you do over the holiday that you couldn't rest?"
When Song Jin-wook was in form, his swing came out quick, and thanks to his trademark 'eyes that tracked the ball's flight path,' he squared it up consistently. On top of that, he carried the second-biggest body on the team after Dustin, so setting raw power aside, just letting his weight ride through the bat sent the ball a long way.
But the mess he was making today — the guy's eyes were dull and his swing was sprawling. A textbook case of a player marinated in fatigue.
"...Uh... hmm... well, you see..."
He hemmed and hawed, stammering, but In-seong got the picture.
Ahh, so you weren't the only one busy making a child on Children's Day, In-soo hyung? Yeah, I can tell from how red your face is.
"Hold on — you're only one year older than me."
You were last year's draft pick, and you spent the whole time at the second-team training ground. When exactly did you two meet?
The guy was so oblivious in everything he did that he'd earned everyone's dislike, but he was no slacker. If he were, he'd have been sent back down to the second team long ago — there was no way their manager would have kept him around declaring he'd use him as the designated hitter.
"We've... um... known each other for over fourteen years..."
Listening to the whole story — well, well. Turns out they went back past elementary school; they were kindergarten playmates.
A childhood friend living right next door? Aigoo, if he'd been born in Japan he'd be all over the news by now. A genuine manga protagonist.
Noh In-seong gazed at Song Jin-wook, cradling a small portion of envy and an enormous portion of jealousy in his heart.
Unlike the lively dugout, occupied with verbally tormenting Song Jin-wook, the game itself was going nowhere fast. It was hard to even call it seesaw — the two teams' mediocre offenses and mediocre pitching were locked in an awkward embrace.
In-seong was a hitter blessed with a 'wide zone,' but there was little he could do about brushback pitches that bordered on intentional. It was a mercy, at least, that the ball was visible and that Jin Sa-rang wasn't a pitcher with truly blazing velocity — and since he vaguely sensed the kid was threatening rather than actually trying to hit him, he quietly took his base at first.
Separate from all that, his mood was souring by the minute.
"Agh, that crazy old bastard, seriously. Do it one more time and I'm charging into that dugout and turning that mouth of his inside out."
As for the sheer audacity of cursing directly into the camera — that was business as usual, so everyone just accepted it.
[Noh In-seong reaches base yet again. Whew, Incheon is being awfully aggressive today.]
[They keep firing in on his body, and honestly it does feel rather intentional... but the result is ball four nonetheless.]
"...That insane old coot. Keep up this shit the whole game, then bring up some hard-throwing second-team pitcher to gun one at me — is that the plan?"
Because then he could trade himself for one second-team arm, and In-seong would go down as a trashbag who couldn't keep his promises.
"That does sound like something that man would cook up. Eh, no way."
He was in the middle of wondering whether, if it came to that, he ought to just take one for the team and unseal the beast—
CRACK!!
"WHOO, fuck! YES! Chun-sik! You hit just fine when you swing before they crowd you!"
"WOOOO—!!"
[First pitch—he went for it way too boldly! Dustin did not let that cutter over the heart of the plate go unpunished!]
[Against a pitcher who works the corners with velocity that isn't overwhelming, wasted pitches are fatal!]
The very first pitch Jin Sa-rang threw — a cutter that drifted in over the middle like a hanging slider — and Dustin didn't miss it.
2-0. The Doubles' lead.
Incheon's dugout abruptly began scrambling.
"Tch. You have to keep the hitters behind him suppressed for a punishment like that to actually count as punishment..."
Jeon Yong-jun's mood curdled on the spot. Judged purely on current form, In-seong was obviously the one who deserved to be pitched around — but he'd had pitches fired at him in succession partly out of revenge, partly to put a little fear into him.
"Just make it an automatic intentional walk from now on. Sa-rang has to go deep into this game today."
"...But that means we just keep piling up baserunners. Are you sure about this?"
The bench coach's unease was hardly strange. Even granting that a runner's value dropped with the out count, every time they walked In-seong, the expected run value more than doubled. The importance of free runners was drilled into everyone at all times, and the closer things were to nobody out, the more a runner on first was worth.
The next two hitters were sluggers who also happened to be contact machines — just two men who could flat-out hit. The data had long since proven that double-play probability only climbed once you got past those two, both of whom squared the ball up so effortlessly.
"Well, I won't deny the data exists..."
Jeon Yong-jun was, after all, a manager of the modern era. Sabermetrics was the law of the land now. And it was undeniably true that this approach itself raised the odds of surrendering runs.
"But a hitter's feel is real, and when a man can't touch the ball at all, that feel goes cold. That's simply how it works."
So: keep walking him until a situation came along where they could actually challenge him.
"The man dug his own grave by promising peace as a Parents' Day gift — of course I'm going to use it."
Incheon's revenge on Noh In-seong, the monster who had claimed the Monthly MVP on freakish numbers, was eminently practical.
Thanks to Jeong In-young's six scoreless innings, the game itself ended in a nail-biter, a two-run victory. Dustin drove in four by the end, and In-soo hyung, for the first time in a while, homered thanks to the ball clipping a fan blade.
As for In-seong — walks in his first two plate appearances, then automatic intentional walks the rest of the way. The opponent flat-out refused to face him at all.
In truth, the other players were threatened less with pitches than they were threatened in other ways entirely.
"Ugh... I really was too rough out there today, wasn't I..."
Everyone stumbled out of the showers sighing, flopping around the locker room, complaining of sheer mental exhaustion. For starters, Hyun-tak hyung, in payment for getting an opponent called out on interference in the seventh, had a file-thin shaving of flesh carved off his calf in a tackle. And In-soo hyung came within a hair of a bench-clearing with Ji Yong-jae, the opposing center fielder who'd whipped a vicious backswing at him.
"How many times did I tell that bastard to fix his swing? I've literally lost count!"
A pop! right in front of his eyes, then the whistle of wind past his ear — only those who've lived it understand, In-soo hyung raged.
Pop? Doesn't that mean the bat practically kissed the mask? That guy's unhinged.
And off to the side, Teacher Song... keeping his head down. Right — you're the designated hitter. They didn't even face you, did they?
"I got trash-talked too, you know..."
"You got trash-talked by everyone, punk."
Just as Sung Hyun-tak had said it in an exhausted voice — the backup catcher, a virtuoso of profanity, had contributed his own dazzling double-barreled tirade to the pile.
As for In-seong himself, today he'd been a ghost — no dangerous slide tackles, no trash talk, not even the courtesy of being pitched to. At most... the ball had whizzed past his eyes a few times? He was still reminiscing when the manager walked in.
"Good work today, everyone. Noh In-seong especially — I came out here today braced for anything, and in the end you held it in."
"...That's the part you chose to praise?"
He'd reached base four times today, thank you very much. What kind of remark was that, aimed at a man with excellent numbers?
"And Sung Hyun-tak. The medical office ran the tests earlier, and the physical coach says you're resting tomorrow's game."
"Huh? I can play!"
"Sure you can — and that's proof your brain's gone soft. That contusion is being held together by dopamine and nothing else. The moment it wears off, it'll be 'Aigoo, I'm dying!' and you'll be flat on your back clutching your calf."
He wasn't wrong. If the flesh had been gouged file-deep, then once the adrenaline settled, the injury would announce itself whether Hyun-tak liked it or not.
"And Noh In-seong — I need to ask you about something related to that."
The manager's tone made him uneasy. Whenever he asked right after dealing with the man who'd actually been hurt, it usually meant...
"Can you play second base?"
There it is — you always say that right before you inform someone they're being shipped somewhere.
Well, In-seong accepted it readily enough. It wasn't as if their defensive specialist was going to gatekeep an infield position, and In-seong was both the one capable of answering the opponent's garbage tackles and the one whose very presence had left trauma behind. With him stationed at second, everyone on the other side would think twice, at least a little.
Before that, though — perhaps he should secure a certain promise in advance. He'd need to stop by the manager's office on his way out.
Once home, he presented his parents with some fine chocolate and recounted the day's events.
"No, seriously, Mom and Dad — is this right? This body was issued as a transferable asset of Parents Co., Ltd., and it might come back damaged from doing you a favor?"
"I don't know when 'this body, received from one's parents' got modernized, but today's game was certainly a rough one."
His father's assessment was fair. Two people had gotten hurt or felt threatened — that alone told you exactly what kind of game it had been.
And his mother's eyes were surely shimmering with worry too...?
"All the same, violence is a bad thing, In-seong."
"Oh, for fuck's sake — swinging that violence is how I keep from getting hurt, I'm telling you..."
In the end, no child ever truly beats their parents: a sweeping revision clause was attached to the Parents' Day promise.
Article 1. Even where the Child (hereinafter "Party B") responds in the established manner to an attack initiated first by the opponent, the Parents (hereinafter "Party A") shall not hold Party B responsible.
That clause alone was plenty. All he had to do was avoid getting hurt before responding.
Noh In-seong felt the satisfaction of a castaway spotting a lighter washed up on the shore.
"Aigo! These crazy bastards are seriously coming for me today!"
By a literal hair, the opposing center fielder's man-eating tackle had grazed his shin guard.
"Interference! He's out!"
Whether the guy had judged he'd be out anyway, or simply couldn't defy his manager's strong recommendation, he'd been picking ever so delicately at In-seong's nerves since earlier.
[In the midst of a dangerous moment for Noh In-seong, quick thinking shines through. He leaps clean over it — two outs!]
[Watching the replays, he does seem to be getting badgered rather persistently. Viewed in hindsight, this is starting to look like retaliation...]
When Noh In-seong came back to the dugout after closing out the top of the third, the teammates took one look at his signature sssssss... smile and knew exactly what was coming.
'Ah — another one's about to get carried off on a stretcher...'
'That's the face he makes right before he beats the living daylights out of someone.'
And there, in that trigger-ready atmosphere, Noh In-seong reached into his bag, pulled something out, and began wiping it down.