(After School) The Drum of Liberation
The man who had dragged Incheon — a team swimming furiously to keep its head above water at fifth place — back under the surface. The unhinged pitcher of the Twin Legion that crushed people, In-seong-sus, was finally greeted by a two-day break.
Under his usual schedule, that normally meant lazing around and crawling back into bed — or, on the rare occasions he had somewhere far to go and washed up early, spending the day melting into his room.
"Hm. I look rather... sharp today, don't I?"
"In-seong, maybe you should dress like that more often?"
The suit was good enough that his mother had started disguising her usual jabs at his ratty wardrobe as compliments.
His hair, too, was free of its usual frazzled spikes, smoothly swept back with wax in a way that looked almost natural.
"The kind of thing that requires this? Doesn't happen to us."
For Noh In-seong, who only wore a black suit when someone was born or died, the verdict came in the form of his little sister's near-gushing appraisal — praise so lavish you'd never believe they came from the same womb.
"Oppa, you actually look decent today. Normally you look straight-up homeless."
Today was Siyeon's school observation day.
Even her usually busy father had taken the day off — for this, and only this.
"You know how it goes. When a guy who never uses his vacation days suddenly takes one, everyone backs away going, 'God, something crazy urgent must be happening.'"
"Whereas when I say I'm going to beat someone up without taking a day off, people back away going, 'God, what a lunatic.'"
That's called a compliment, you cursed brat! — and with that, his mother's ferocious smash landed squarely on his back.
It was a heartwarming family moment, all things considered.
***
"Whoa, that's really Noh In-seong's oppa... but why does he look so... normal?"
"Maybe because all we ever see is him in his uniform, or shuffling around in slippers in front of his house?"
I can hear every word you're muttering, you little gremlins.
And that kid right there — he's the one who got my autograph playing baseball in the neighborhood years ago. Never dreamed he'd end up in Siyeon's class...
"Alright, everyone, quiet down! Let's all become pancakes, shall we?"
Squaaash—!!
Whoa, that's still a thing? I heard someone filed a formal complaint over it back in my day.
Teacher authority had apparently staged a full revival. Too many parents making a racket, perhaps?
Jeong Hwa-jeong succeeded in lowering the class's decibel level, and the lesson began at last.
"...Ugh, damn it. How am I sleepy again the second I'm reborn into a classroom..."
And so Noh In-seong began to doze off. Standing up.
His mother's look of utter disappointment, his father's look of complete understanding.
And Siyeon's class period, accompanied by a heavy side order of mortification.
The nap, launched without a shred of regard for anyone's gaze, carried on steadily until ten minutes before the end of class.
"Hey! Hey! They're calling you! Wake up, In-seong!"
"Mmngah... huh? Huh! I'm awake!"
—Wahahaahaha!
Jolted awake so abruptly, he scrambled upright with such desperate urgency that the whole class burst out laughing.
Noh In-seong was a little flustered — but like in his usual interviews, his face snapped into place in an instant. There!
Slowly, shamelessly, a grin spread across his face as he eased back into his regular rhythm.
"Now then, Mr. Noh In-seong. We all saw you sleep through the entire lesson. A few words of wisdom for our children, please."
"You're asking me? A nineteen-year-old? Aren't there plenty of fine adults here?"
Noh In-seong glanced around the room. Surely someone here outranked him in age and social standing?
Naturally, there were plenty of people with more life experience and wisdom than Noh In-seong—
"But I suppose you could say no one else quite commands the... the sheer notoriety that you do."
First round, third pick of the draft. The top pick of a massive franchise, the Doubles. First-team roster from winter training all the way to opening day.
Then April MVP, and with May's MVP all but locked in — a prospect that rare simply didn't exist in baseball.
If success were the benchmark, he'd blown past it; from the club's perspective, his signing bonus was already paid back in full.
Of course, his mockery of opposing teams, his on-field assaults, his trash talk, his demolition of opposing clubhouses were equally famous — but those were side effects.
Besides, from the kids' point of view, advice from someone their own age would probably be a lot easier to digest.
Noh In-seong shuffled up to the lectern.
"...Whew. Fine. So everyone here agrees, then?"
—That whatever I'm about to say is advice that will nourish your bones and flesh.
A chill ran down every spine in the room. Right. Of course. This guy is a lunatic.
Jeong Hwa-jeong wondered if she could still call the whole thing off — but it was far too late.
Noh In-seong's cunning tongue had begun its dance.
***
"Alright, children! I'm Noh In-seong. That over there is Siyeon — I'm her oppa."
Applause rippled through the room. Professional baseball players were, after all, a fairly popular profession among kids.
Athletes are eternally the object of young boys' admiration, after all.
"I've come before you today to offer you all a piece of advice — that's what this is!"
Besides which, as long as he wasn't wearing that ferocious, grotesque, twisted mask of fury, Noh In-seong was actually rather good-looking.
And in baseball, a decent or handsome face is a genuinely important condition for drawing in female fans.
...Of course, most people who came for the face and stayed for the behavior ended up charging in the opposite direction.
Judged on conditions alone, he was the perfect human lie detector of likability — which was exactly why he'd been assigned the role of guest advisor.
"Anyone here who actually likes studying? Genuinely?"
At Noh In-seong's question, only three hands went up in a class of thirty. Perfectly natural.
Ranks one, two, and three. Kids whose names sat at the top of the rankings could afford to enjoy studying.
"Now, for every student here except those three — you need to go find the thing you genuinely want to do."
—Studying is for kids like them. The rest of you need to find something you're actually good at, or actually want to do.
Noh In-seong's next words were not ones a parent could easily swallow.
"For studying, all you need is basic common sense. 'If I pull this stunt in society, what kind of consequences come back to me?' That's it. That's the bar."
But at the same time, it was true enough that everyone stayed uncomfortable and quiet.
"What you actually need is the fight of your lives — what are you going to do for a living when you're real grown-ups and the bills come due?"
Noh In-seong took a batting swing. A fluid, gorgeous swing form that drew a collective ooooh— from the kids.
"I happen to have a talent for baseball, and I believe I'm the best at it in this country. That's why I'm out there breaking everything."
Self-praise usually earns you the label of insufferable. When Noh In-seong does it, it's called confidence.
"Talent at that scale? It doesn't come around often. Might take another hundred years before you see it again."
—It means I was lucky enough to be born in an era where I can make a living off what I'm good at.
"On the other hand, the profession that fits your talent might not exist yet — or it might already be extinct."
Maybe a stone-needle manufacturing technician from the Stone Age.
Or maybe a talent for enduring g-forces as a zero-gravity flight attendant on a spaceship.
Those jobs either haven't appeared yet or got weeded out — so odds are that particular talent will never see the light of day.
"And if you're stuck in that gray zone, you go find the next thing you're good at. And if you can't even see that? Then you study. Simple as that."
Top-tier students earn their grades the Confucian way — 'study, and practice it in due season, ah how joyful' — grinding their noses into the books.
But at least for the next tier down, the deciding factor isn't talent. It's stubbornness.
"Let's all live hard, everyone. It's a hundred-year lifespan now — what's a little failure?"
It's not like one screwup ruins your whole life. You'll get more than enough chances to claw it back.
Though it's not as if anyone's guaranteed a life-retry the way I got one — getting the back of my skull caved in at thirty-seven.
At bottom, Noh In-seong simply wanted these kids to live happy lives doing what they loved.
"When your mom says 'Study!' — that's her genes rejecting who you are! Just hand it right back with a 'Je-hahaha!' You got that?"
—Do what you want. Can't study? Then that's on your mom and dad. Not on you.
The problem, of course, was that he was packaging it in precisely this way and handing schoolchildren a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The kids cheered in unison. They'd just been handed an exit strategy from forcing themselves through things they hated.
For the children of this class, now schooled in Noh In-seong's flame-grilled method of filial piety, nothing in the world could be better.
"Forget the academy! They're forcing us to do stuff we hate!"
"Go? Chess was nothing — machines are stomping all over it anyway! And that meditation nonsense can freeze over, I hate it!"
It was the lecture of the century, mass-producing boys and girls for whom playing all day was the finest thing in life.
"Oh, and one more thing — quit asking my little sister for free tickets. Buy them!"
—Free tickets contribute absolutely nothing to my revenue, so pay up and come in like everyone else.
Even in the middle of all that, he'd quietly discontinued the free-ticket handouts on the grounds that they didn't help his bottom line.
Noh In-seong had collected everything he'd come to collect today.
"Why on earth did I ask this lunatic to give advice..."
Jeong Hwa-jeong clutched her head. He was a madman of a direction — a vector — she had never once seen in thirty years of living.
She'd asked him to help point the kids in the right direction, and he'd shown up with the submachine gun of the same name and opened fire.
How on earth was she going to deal with the parents' complaints? She felt utterly lost.
***
"...This is not what I meant when I asked you to give them advice, Mr. In-seong?"
She'd intended for him to talk about the importance of study habits and things like that. Ruined, Jeong Hwa-jeong was simply ruined.
"For the record, I once went on a debate panel and called your gene pool garbage to your face."
Words like that didn't land on the legendary madman who'd gotten an entire channel's debate program suspended for four weeks.
Noh In-seong, at the highlight of the observation day — lunch hour — stood in front of Jeong Hwa-jeong, parked himself with maximum manspreading, and inhaled the school lunch: everyone's favorite menu, curry rice with fried food on top.
"Man, in my day it was all this blessed 'well-being' nonsense — they hauled in some yogurt none of us had ever seen or heard of and served us biohazard."
"I'd at least appreciate it if you called it 'health food'... And besides, wasn't that way before your time?"
If the kids who put it in their mouths activated the expulsion sequence immediately, what part of that was health food? An automatic-dieting biohazard, more like.
Noh In-seong accepted a second helping of curry rice with a thoroughly satisfied face.
"Ahh, now this~ is the good stuff."
"...What are you, some kind of monk? Did you fake your age or something? You sound like a fifty-five-year-old man..."
"To hear that from a man of thirty. What a world we live in. My little sister's already talking marriage, and here I am..."
Jeong Hwa-jeong attempted a silent hair-grab — but today, Noh In-seong was all white.
Her fury-filled hand sliced through empty air.
"You could call it a saintly disposition? Yielding the road so politely to the car trying to overtake you. Guess you're not from Busan, then."
"KYAAAAH!"
It drove a deep wound into Jeong Hwa-jeong's heart — already frayed from holiday-related stress, no less.
Noh In-seong had also, quite neatly, avenged the hairs torn out during the family restaurant incident.
***
The observation day ends with everyone taking photos. For some reason, everyone scrambles to snap commemorative pictures.
Noh In-seong had no such photos. Before observation days ever came around, he'd racked up far too many incidents and accidents —
and he himself had always chosen to skip school with that same time and energy instead.
"Wow... I have a kid who could disown me at this point, and this is my first proper observation day..."
When his mother said that, it meant his chest stung a little.
Siyeon in the center, their mother just above her, father and Noh In-seong on either side.
"...Why is he the only one who's that tall?"
"Tell me about it. His father is tall, but he was never this tall."
His growth plates still wide open, Noh In-seong, who kept stretching by the day, had to bend his knees just barely to fit in frame.
Noh In-seong also got plenty of photo requests. Though these were requests from fans.
"Whoa! The God of Rotten Personality...!"
"He usually signs autographs, but today they say he's doing photos instead!"
"...I, ahem, threw a bit harder than usual yesterday, you see."
His pitch count had been near the limit, same as always — but unlike his usual self, he'd botched the pacing.
No wonder they gave him an extra day off. Once this was over, he planned to go home and do absolutely nothing for an entire day.
Click!
A photo of Noh In-seong with the kids — and, surprisingly, not his signature rotten grin but a confident, radiant smile —
became a beautiful memory of that day.
***
And so, as his remarks spread, it became a day of nightmares for the parents.
He was already a bad-mannered player who raised their children's odds of getting hurt on the field — and now he was crushing their will to study, too?
In a reality where he wanted to flay them alive but couldn't because it was a crime, he'd been taxidermied on the internet instead.
"...So that's what happened. Do take note."
"...That little punk, why does he cause problems even on his days off? Heh heh... HEH HEH!!"
And thanks to that one speech in front of the children, Noh In-seong had earned the grudge of countless parents.
To think the reason the team's SNS suddenly exploded was that damned man.
He already had a delinquent image that played terribly with parents, and now he was the sworn natural enemy of study habits?
The general manager's already-thinning hair fluttered loose in drifts from the stress.
Say what you would about a profession that devours your health and harvests grudges — even Noh In-seong seemed pitiable this time.
"I hear chocolate's good for hair growth..."
With chocolate filched from the manager's office — even handing that over meant some scrap of conscience remained in him. Just barely.