A Bluff with Soul
The bus carrying the Doubles squad cruised down the highway's dedicated bus lane.
Inside, however, the mood was comparatively calm, players resting despite the speed outside. And with healthy bodies and bored minds, the players occasionally found themselves cooking up material for the club's own video platform. Right up through last year, the Doubles had mostly posted player interviews and lighthearted pranks — but ever since Noh In-seong joined, the content had begun drifting in a new direction.
"Daegu's still a ways off, so I guess we'll kill some time with a card game."
Noh In-seong tossed two cards to Sung Hyun-tak and opened the proceedings.
"Hmm... you take one, then dish out two more. That about right? And here I thought you didn't even know how to play this."
Sung Hyun-tak tapped his tablet, erased the number 1, and changed it to a 3.
"What are you on about? Who doesn't know this game these days. Call. Flipping three."
The nine and ten of spades. And the ten of hearts.
'Yes...!! Four of a kind!'
Sung Hyun-tak rejoiced inwardly. The cards in his hand were two tens.
Having started with TT — a pocket pair of tens — he grinned and shoved in the maximum number of strokes a single game allowed.
"Seven! All in!"
"Oho? Sounds like you've landed a monster. Pocket tens, maybe pocket nines?"
As if trying to gauge whether Sung Hyun-tak was bluffing, Noh In-seong shot him a sidelong glance. Sung Hyun-tak's counter was to close his eyes and stick out his tongue.
"Call. Flipping your last card, then?"
"...What?"
Came the distinct sound of a tongue being sucked back into a mouth. Noh In-seong had called.
'This guy has zero talent for card games, huh?'
Noh In-seong slid two cards off the top and flipped the last one: the jack of spades.
"Haha! Four of a kind! Get over here — wrist out, pal!"
Just as Sung Hyun-tak cackled and began rolling up his sleeve—
Thwip—
Two cards came sailing through the air and landed square in front of his eyes.
The queen and king of spades. A KQs start — king and queen, same suit. The second-highest hand in the game, a king-high straight flush, thrown straight into Sung Hyun-tak's face.
"If you're not sure, don't bet... did nobody ever teach you that? What are you waiting for. Tie up your senior's hands."
Kim Jun-soo and Lim Jae-min — who had been whimpering and clutching their own wrists — decided this was the perfect chance, and bound Sung Hyun-tak from both sides. Scrawny-framed as he was, Sung Hyun-tak was never going to overpower an actual catcher like Lim Jae-min. He thrashed and kicked, but he couldn't beat two water ghosts operating on the ironclad logic that if anyone's taking hits today, it won't be me.
Noh In-seong began swinging a synthetic leather watch strap.
"Th-this is rigged! You son of a— you were dealing off the bottom of the deck...!!"
"Alright, here comes one... whoooooosh—!!"
CRAAACK—!!
By the time the sound of a man's scalp being torn off had stopped echoing through the bus, the bus was pulling into the Daegu stadium.
Noh In-seong and Daegu had never really clashed in any major way. The reason was nothing special — he just had a habit of picking up suspensions right before they were scheduled to meet. On top of that, they'd rarely given him a reason to be angry, so from his perspective, things had always been perfectly peaceful.
"...Ah, fuck. I'm furious just breathing the same air as this place."
This series, then, began with him at a full boil from the very first second. Noh In-seong, who had gotten off the bus smiling — possibly because thrashing Sung Hyun-tak had been that enjoyable — went dead expressionless within three breaths, and by the time he walked into the stadium, his face had transformed into that of a vengeful spirit.
Daegu was facing the Noh In-seong risk before the game had even begun.
The home team's squad, already inside the stadium, was equally busy with analysis. Before the game, Daegu Lions manager Song Jun-ho fired up a hologram for the briefing.
"Now, everyone, eyes on the materials."
Data on the opposing players was injected into the roster, the briefing covering every possible variable wound its way through — and then.
"...The problem is this guy."
The single most alien dataset — the one that had given Song Jun-ho a splitting headache — appeared on screen.
Daegu, too, had spared no effort analyzing Noh In-seong, regardless of whether he'd played quietly against them or not. This was a man who racked up a WAR matching most players' entire seasons in a single month. Not analyzing him was never an option.
The hologram displayed everything: his stance, which zones he favored, which pitches he hunted. The pitchers who had been watching the other hitters' data with soft oohs and ahhs suddenly found themselves rolling mental resistance saves as a group.
His favored zones and his avoided zones were shaded in reds so similar you could barely tell them apart. He might steal, he might not — but he had never once been caught. They'd only be facing him as a hitter this series, and yet his worst start of the season was seven innings, four earned runs.
Read his stat line and he was the god of baseball; compile his conduct and he was a Wild West outlaw. A man who'd shoot you for making eye contact, or drill you with a fastball simply because he didn't like your face.
"...So what you're telling me is, we have no idea what this damn bastard is going to do?"
Daegu catcher Song Ji-young asked the coach about the wrongness he was sensing.
"That's exactly the problem. There's no pattern to him at all. No telling what he'll do."
Even the coach failed to get a read on this walking impurity of Korean baseball. One day he'd drop down a bunt and sprint to first while laughing in the opponent's face; the next at-bat he'd launch a home run. He'd fly into a rage over getting plunked and start throwing punches — then walk off, saying he wanted to insult the guy some more first. Just when you'd chalk him up as a pure mood player, he'd suddenly snap into cold rationality. You could only conclude that something upstairs was wired wrong.
Song Ji-young began urgently re-examining the materials. If he didn't dig up something before first pitch, he had a feeling he'd be the one making a fool of himself next.
[Ladies and gentlemen... whoof, yes. We can feel the heat even up here in the booth.]
[Indeed — commentator Lee Chang-young just touched the window glass and flinched for a moment. Haha.]
Even glass heated through despite the air conditioning in a sealed room told the whole story: the stadium was at a full rolling boil. And it was late June, no less — peak season for Sun Co., Ltd. to be running its famous crunch mode. First pitch was at 6:30, but the sun wouldn't set until well past 7:30 — a season outright hazardous to human health.
"...Ah...fuck...somebody build...enclosed dugouts..."
That was how hot it was — the moment Noh In-seong stepped in as the game's leadoff hitter, his strength simply drained out of him.
"Huh? Somebody's running low on gas, I see?"
"Is your team just shameless, or do you have some secret cooling system nobody told me about?"
Whatever rage the veteran pitcher harbored at being served casual banter by a rookie was neatly canceled out by Noh In-seong's spectacularly scrunched-up face. He'd tried to rattle the kid with a bit of chatter after calling for a first-pitch curveball — and then—
CRACK—!!
[Noh In-seong takes the very first pitch! The curveball dives down in front of the center fielder!]
[The curve did hang a touch — but from a hitter's standpoint, especially one sitting on a breaking ball, you couldn't ask for a nicer gift.]
"Phew... better get back in a hurry."
Sweat streaming down his face, Noh In-seong took an enormous, shameless lead off first — and instantly regretted it as the ball whipped toward the bag.
[...And of course, with a lead that wide, here comes the pickoff throw. Noh In-seong dives back safely.]
[His expression is something else. Let's hope that's the heat and not anger.]
Two more pickoff attempts followed, and Noh In-seong, mid-tirade, grudgingly shaved another half step off his lead. Unlike the Daegu players — local clay-humans, fired in the kiln on the regular — he could barely stay upright.
"Wow. Even back in high school, playing in a stadium with facilities like a homeless shelter, it was never this hot."
Well, naturally — times had changed. This was an era in which a high schooler's human rights carried more weight than an apartment dweller's noise complaints, and advances in noise-canceling technology had finally legalized night games. Even Noh In-seong normally played night games in this kind of heat. It just so happened that even the night games now featured a sun that refused to set for hours, which rendered the whole arrangement meaningless.
At last, the Daegu pitcher delivered — and at last, Noh In-seong took off for second.
CRACK—!!
And right behind him, Song Jin-wook — himself on the verge of expiring from the heat — smacked a base hit.
[Song Jin-wook lines one—and the second baseman can't come up with it! Noh In-seong's start was lightning-quick!]
[He's... rounded third! The right fielder's got it and is firing home!]
Spotting the third-base coach windmilling his arm, Noh In-seong kicked it into overdrive — but judging by what he'd glimpsed out of the corner of his eye...
'Ah, damn it. The throw's going to beat me there. Coach... no, has the heat addled the coach's brain too?'
And yet he had no desire to collide with the catcher and accept an injury in the very first inning. By the time he was nearly home, Song Ji-young had already secured the ball and planted himself across half the plate.
"Got him!"
Certain that merely touching the ball to Noh In-seong meant an out, Song thrust his glove forward —
Thwip...
"...?!"
A droplet of water fell from above, and the sun abruptly seemed to be blotted out. Noh In-seong was gazing down at him — upside down — from somewhere in the sky.
[...Noh In-seong leaps clean over Song Ji-young and touches home plate! Song Ji-young just stands there, gaping!]
[The aerial somersault is remarkable enough, but that explosive jump is on another level — he cleared an entire human being!]
"...Safe!"
"Thanks, dumbass. I was heading into the dugout anyway because of the heat — didn't need you throwing in a free run."
Wiping his sweat onto his uniform, Noh In-seong hustled into the dugout.
"The misting fan's mine! Everybody back off!"
"Aigoo, this damn kid with zero concept of rank...!!"
And there, a pitched battle far more violent than the day's baseball broke out.
There is actual scientific evidence that hotter days produce more runs. The higher the temperature, the thinner the air, the farther the ball flies. The Fiery Peninsula, however, is a slightly different animal — the humidity is high enough to make any respectable humidifier surrender on the spot. A humidor, a device built specifically to add moisture to baseballs, is utterly unnecessary in these parts.
Was it thanks to nature's torture method — one evocative of that refined culinary art of steaming a person alive? Or is there simply a law of the universe that bats die when fully cooked, the same way people do?
By the time Noh In-seong's third at-bat rolled around, the score stood at 2-1. Both teams were mired in a stubborn scoring drought.
"It's not going to work this time."
"If I fell for it once, I'd already be the idiot, wouldn't I?"
After the two men traded greetings delivered with smiles that could spit in each other's faces, Daegu — wary of extra-base hits — deployed the shift. Anchored around second base: to comply with the shift-restriction rule, the shortstop had to hug the bag at second, which meant the third baseman could only slide over as far as the old shortstop position. Still, it helped.
[And there you have it — the defense shifting over to the right, bit by bit.]
[Data-driven baseball, presumably. Though if the batter can just slap it the other way, none of it means a thing.]
Against the right-handed Noh In-seong, it was a perfectly reasonable setup — if you planned to attack him away.
"...Hey. You guys didn't actually scout my games, did you?"
"What are you talking about? We followed the scouting reports to the letter. ...Oh. This is mind games, isn't it."
Noh In-seong sneered at Song Ji-young. So they'd figured out one thing and completely missed the other two.
Exactly as expected, the pitcher started a cutter off the outside corner and let it bore back in—
--Tink!
[N—Noh In-seong bunts! It rolls toward where the third baseman would be standing — but the shift is on...!!]
[It clips the third-base bag and spins down the line! The left fielder finally tracks it down!]
Noh In-seong had turned the shift's fatal flaw against it, wholesale. Now, sure — there does exist an unwritten rule about not bunting against a shift. But this was a man who couldn't have cared less about bunting or unwritten rules, and who lived for nothing so much as getting under people's skin.
"Moron. Have I ever looked like someone who honors even one of those?"
Standing on second base, Noh In-seong flashed a beaming grin at the opposing manager, whose face had gone purple with fury.
Song Jin-wook and Dustin went down back-to-back, and Lim Jae-min stepped into the batter's box. While Jo In-soo — thoroughly baked after crouching in full catcher's gear under this sun — sat sealed inside an ice bath, the rookie catcher granted a spot start took his at-bat.
Naturally, a war of words to break the kid's spirit commenced — except—
"Hey, hey. You getting cheeky with me too, rookie?"
"What else would I do? Put him on the mound and he'll tattoo a pinstripe across your ass the same way."
Lim Jae-min, cursed with a lunatic best friend, unveiled a startlingly vicious tongue in the space of those few seconds. His wrist was still sore from getting whipped in today's poker masterclass, and it was sweltering on top of that. Polite language never stood a chance.
A riled-up Song Ji-young called for a cutter at the hitter's body.
Tink—!
The cunning rookie, having predicted an inside pitch designed purely to intimidate, laid it down. Of course, no extra-base fireworks followed — for a hitter whose batting average and slugging percentage were nearly identical, that would be pure luxury. But Noh In-seong took off anyway, flatly ignoring the third-base coach frantically waving him to stop.
Much like before, the right fielder showed off a cannon and the ball came screaming home, and once again Noh In-seong bent both knees, coiling to leap.
"Not falling for it this time...!!"
As if to say once was plenty — fall for it twice and you truly are the idiot. Song Ji-young rose out of his crouch, bracing for Noh In-seong to take to the air—
[Noh In-seong — head-first slide—!! He slaps the plate! Safe! The Doubles add another run!]
[Haha, could it be he remembered the leap from earlier...? Song Ji-young rising halfway out of his crouch is what did him in.]
Noh In-seong had fooled him a second time. And to Song Ji-young — sinking into despair as he realized his own moment of idiocy was about to be taxidermied into an eternal highlight gif—
"Who bluffs twice in a row? Don't you ever go near a gambling table."
Bequeathing that pearl of life wisdom — with a caveat that it was a surefire recipe for losing your shirt — Noh In-seong, and the Doubles along with him, raked in the pot.
The price of the lesson: one run.