The Nation Wants You
After confirming the true nature of all those contrarian Tree Frog fans, Noh In-seong flopped onto his bed and scowled.
His plan had been simple: spend the entire All-Star break lounging at home with the air conditioning on full blast, maybe film a commercial or two in the meantime.
'Ha ha, you idiots. Getting roasted under direct sunlight while cracking jokes out there.'
That was the plan. Instead—
"Ugh, those crazy Tree Frog bastards... Why don't you just form an alliance among yourselves and dump all your votes on one poor soul..."
The complaints spilled out of him without permission. But what could he do? If he didn't want this, he shouldn't have been so good at baseball.
In Korea, being good at baseball sometimes meant getting handed a steaming pile of disappointment instead of what you actually wanted.
It was precisely because he'd protested that sad tradition, ever since before the draft, that he'd ended up with a rebuilding team instead of the last-place club.
And now, this time, the crime of being *too good* was dragging him to the All-Star Game. His list of grievances had a long, long way to go.
This season, and for the rest of his career stretching out ahead of him.
Because the All-Star Game wasn't the only thing with its sights set on Noh In-seong.
***
He was the type who normally stayed up late gathering intel on the world, yet somehow always managed to spring out of bed on time. Apparently the stress had been weighing on him more than he'd realized, because when he finally woke up, it was halfway through the lunch hour.
"Whoa. I've never slept in this late in my life."
He scrambled out of his pajamas and into his uniform—planning to eat first and shower later—and stumbled out in a daze.
For the first time in ages, Noh In-seong dragged himself down to the cafeteria terribly late, and into his ears came a sound that should have been impossible: the news.
This was the Doubles, where the music usually stayed off so everyone could eat and chat in peace. Strange. But when he saw the whole crowd clustered around a screen, jostling and murmuring, it looked like the news was real.
"Well, well? Look at Mr. Team Captain... sitting front and center, watching like it's his life's work. Seriously, what gives."
Noh In-seong scooped the leftover rice onto a tray and shuffled toward the noise.
Most players watched the news on their personal devices in the cafeteria, but holographic displays big enough to stretch to screen size had become pretty widespread lately. If a room didn't have a monitor, you just expanded one and slapped it on the wall.
A 64-inch hologram clung to the wall, with Doubles players gathered around it in twos and threes.
[This 2052 World Baseball Classic has released its preliminary roster of 60 players. Recently...]
"Huh? The national team roster? That's already out?"
"Oh, In-seong. There you are."
"In-seong? He doesn't really need to pay attention to this one, does he?"
Song Jin-wook and Jo In-soo, watching with feverish intensity in the front row, greeted him.
"What? You guys care about the national team too?"
"I guess? The captain's come close to making it every year, and this is my first shot—but hey, my numbers are good."
As if to back up Song Jin-wook's claim, the panelist's voice called out his name.
[As for the new names—four players from the Doubles made it in? Song Jin-wook, Jo In-soo, and... Jeong In-woo.]
[That's right. Jo In-soo earned his spot as the league's number one starting catcher, and Jeong In-woo's numbers are a big step up from last year.]
[And while this is Song Jin-wook's first season on the first-team roster, he's been showing explosive power all year long.]
This was, after all, the man who'd slapped three doubles yesterday to hand Daegu a miserable loss.
[As for Song Jin-wook's defense... well, nobody's even expecting anything there. Presumably a designated hitter slot?]
[Probably. In a short tournament, defense matters more than offense in a sense, so he's most likely to be used as a pinch hitter or DH.]
"What?! What did I ever do to deserve that?!"
Song Jin-wook exploded, but it was a perfectly fair assessment from the panel.
This was a man with a documented history of whiffing on easy pop flies at first base, recreating the infamous *He Dropped The Ball* moment. That guy, playing short-tournament defense?
You could practically hear foreign broadcast crews shouting 'Arigato, So-nu Ji-nuk!' or "Thank you, SONG!" from their booths.
As Noh In-seong smirked and turned his eyes back to the screen, a name he didn't want to hear drifted out of it.
[And the last one... yes, Noh In-seong? He can pitch, play shortstop, second, third—no question he's a legitimate asset...]
[Though... honestly, we have no idea what he might pull off with the national team. It does make you a little nervous, doesn't it?]
At the panelist's uneasy remark, all the players listening around the screen just burst out laughing.
"He's got a point! Even we don't know what's going to happen!"
"Wise words indeed...! He talks about the truth like it's rice at every meal!"
"Well, well, look at you clowns? Guess everyone's gotten comfortable because I've been on my best behavior lately...?"
The instant Noh In-seong's voice dropped an octave, everyone nearby grabbed their trays and scattered like startled roaches.
Noh In-seong's fist was like a convex mirror: it was always closer than it appeared.
A caution zone for human thought. His mood soured another few shades darker.
"Ugh, these lunatics. They even left the screen behind."
Noh In-seong folded the display away, shoved it to one side, and finally started eating.
Looking at his meal—gone stone cold while he'd been watching the broadcast—it felt like an omen that the rest of his day wasn't going to go anywhere good.
***
The Association prided itself on the preliminary roster of sixty it had announced today, calling it remarkably rational.
National team selection had always favored established representatives, but this time was different.
For starters—setting aside the various incidents he'd caused—the presumptive next ace of the national squad was currently blowing the league to smithereens.
With the rest of the league reduced to rubble and dust, his pitching and hitting numbers existed on some other dimensional plane. *Not* selecting him would have been the strange choice.
His only shortcomings were pitch counts and plate appearances. He beat up on opponents so thoroughly that there was little to be done about it.
Song Jin-wook played defense like a toddler and ran the bases like a glacier, but the bat alone justified bringing him along.
Jo In-soo, meanwhile, caught a slight break—because he was the third or fourth-best catcher.
His competition was Incheon's starting catcher. The very same player Noh In-seong had once buried under a flying spear-tackle at second base.
Jeong In-woo had luck on his side too. Setting aside the improved sabermetric numbers and Classic stats he owed to Noh In-seong, the big factor was how thoroughly the Doubles had crushed Gwangju's Oh Yeon-seok this season—twice over—into a state from which he would never rise again.
The bullpen also added Cho Hyo-jin, though he was already a two-time national team veteran.
Back at his old club he'd been worked like a slave, shoved into every inning imaginable, but for the national team he'd always been the designated eighth-inning man.
The reliable arm you'd slam into place as a mid-boss before the closer ever took the mound.
The plan was to hand him the high-leverage relief role again this time, with minimal changes.
*See how fairly we select based on merit!* the Association cried, appealing to the fans.
The actual problem, however, arose not from the fans, but from the players themselves.
"Huh? The national team? Sounds like a pain..."
The presumptive next ace looked distinctly unenthusiastic about the whole national team business.
Beyond unenthusiastic, actually—the vibe was bordering on outright negative.
***
"You said it's a pain? But if I make the team, I can't even go to the team dinners after games."
"N-no, that's not— it's the *national team*!"
National team, my foot. Win and you're a national hero; lose and you're a national criminal, sentenced to execution by cannon.
The afternoon before the third game against Daegu, reporters had been dispatched to every club in the league to collect reactions to the announcement.
An interview request had come to me too, of course, so I was obliging. I was telling them 'nothing but the truth'—
and with every single sentence out of my mouth, the color drained another shade whiter from the reporter's face. Fascinating to watch.
"Well, look—testing myself against other guys and chasing a championship as a national representative? That part's fine, I'll admit."
At that level, I'd be willing to go face-to-face with a few sons of bitches I normally can't stand for the sake of the badge.
And the moment any of them tried to pull the 'I'm your senior' card, we'd suddenly have an injury replacement on the roster.
"But the restrictions on how I'm allowed to behave? That's going to be *genuinely* infuriating, don't you think?"
"Still, if you deliver a good result for the country, the people will cheer for you, won't they?"
Well... fair point. The winner writes history. That truth holds in every sport on Earth.
"But if I so much as have one beer after a win, I'll vanish like one of your parents the instant you flick a finger at them. You know that, right?"
"......"
See? Even you've got nothing to say.
Noh In-seong had crushed the reporter in a battle of pure logic. It wasn't for nothing that a certain broadcast network's debate show had banned him for life.
***
"Ugh, today went *disgustingly* badly...!"
"Strange how the ball just kept finding its way out of the zone on you, huh...?"
"Some days are like that. We won the series anyway, right?"
*Screech—! Bang!*
The clatter of locker doors, the hiss of showers, the low grumbling of players reliving their failures to each other.
The postgame atmosphere after a loss was always a little awkward, a little sour—nothing like the days you won.
The Doubles players changed out of their uniforms like zombies.
The third game against Daegu had ended in a blowout loss. My cold rice earlier had proven to be a genuine prophecy.
10-4. They'd taken the series, but ending the week like this left a bad taste in every possible way.
"No wonder my rice was cold today... Looks like I need a new routine: only ever eat piping hot rice from now on."
Noh In-seong grumbled as he carried his gear into the locker room.
Today's loss had left the whole team's mood scattered and tense.
Jeong In-woo, who normally pitched lights-out at home. Jo In-soo, a veteran nearing the end of his prime.
Song Jin-wook was a separate case—you had to watch him with your brain switched off by design—but every one of them had lost while exposing nothing but their own weaknesses.
Oh, and Noh In-seong was, of course, exempt from all of that. The man had never once been happy about a national team selection to begin with.
Today, too, he'd delivered a performance in perfect inverse proportion to the rest of the roster. Two hits in four at-bats, two RBIs, a stolen base for good measure. A solid day's work.
Which was exactly why Jeong In-woo—his head scrambled since Jo In-soo's passed ball—had spent the entire day talking to *no one but* Noh In-seong.
***
"Ahh, so we couldn't pull off the sweep after all..."
He was sitting on the wooden bench mourning it when Song Jin-wook came over, toweling off his wet hair.
"In-seong, how does your lesson's effect last less than a single day? Were you lying to me?"
"At least get your words straight, you crazed one-day-wonder windmill."
Song Jin-wook had instantly forgotten his compact 'wrist-first, knob-leading' swing and re-learned his old 'Dogmeat Farm Harvest Swing' instead.
Apparently, in that short span of time, he'd forgotten whether he was a professional baseball player or a butcher's dog.
It's not like he was some video game creature capped at four learned skills. How do you forget in *one day*?
And another thing—if he can forget that fast, why can he *never* learn 'defense'?
"Maybe it's just not his natural type?"
"...My house isn't shaped like a baseball, In-seong."
That was Noh In-seong's way of saying: keep this up and your house is going to be a refrigerator box in the middle of a public park.
*You* were the only one who hit well today, and look at the mess that's caused, you lunatic national team reservists.
Jeong In-woo: seven innings, seven earned runs. Jo In-soo: no hits, one passed ball. Song Jin-wook: zero for four with four strikeouts.
"You're right though. At this rate, forget the national team—we could field a begging team."
"......"
Whatever buoyant energy the morning had carried was gone without a trace, and they boarded the bus in gloomy silence.
The silence inside the bus lasted all the way until each of them stepped off and headed home.
"...Whew. Let's win them all next week. One day off, then see you at the training facility Tuesday."
Only Noh In-seong bothered with the customary farewell.
"Yeah. Rest well, In-seong."
"And Coach Song, whose swing spreads back out like a virus—you'll be handled by someone other than me this time."
"Sure, sure... you rest up t—huh?"
Song Jin-wook's head snapped up, eyes blank with disbelief.
What was it? Why, it was *Love's Extra Batting Practice*, of course.
"Youth really is a beautiful thing. No matter how hard you run 'em into the ground, they recover."
The manager had come up from behind and clapped Song Jin-wook on the shoulder. They'd planned to have lunch together Monday. That was getting canceled, then.
"No...!! No!! Why is it only me?!"
"The starting pitcher's worn out, In-soo sunbae would be worn out with extra training—but you've got plenty left in the tank, don't you?"
It wasn't even defense. All he had to do was swing a bat.
Leaving Song Jin-wook's screams echoing behind him, Noh In-seong headed for home.
"...That kid..."
"...You're the... starter... so you should..."
He ignored the evening's bitter echoes trailing after him.