Even a Rain Delay Is Best Served After a Meal

Everyone was staring up at the sky, wondering how long the rain was going to keep coming down.

All the while, the manager and coaches were seeking out the umpire crew, pressing them on whether the game would resume at all.

Noh In-seong, who had been staring blankly at the raindrops dripping off the edge of the dugout roof, vanished off to somewhere. One of the players finally noticed how quiet the dugout had gotten — and only then realized the team's biggest menace was missing.

"...What the? Hey, anyone seen Noh In-seong?"

"Dunno? Bathroom, maybe?"

Jo In-soo, who as captain and starting catcher was obligated to keep tabs on his starting pitcher's every move, was in the middle of hunting him down when the man himself appeared, kicking open the dugout door with something in both hands.

"Ooh-hot-hot... gentlemen, do come have a look. My hands are burning up here."

"...What is that. Hey! Are you seriously eating ramen in the dugout now?!"

The entire team launched into public condemnation of this unprecedented, utterly disgraceful act of madness, but—

"What's the problem? Everyone chews on something during a game anyway. There's no rule on the books that says you can't chew noodles."

Since a lunatic doing lunatic things landed on Noh In-seong with an impact of exactly zero, he simply made a chair of his usual seat and settled into a mid-game meal.

"Ah, it's hot."

Ramen eaten cross-legged on the bare, rain-dampened floor right after a workout always tasted exceptional.

Baseball players do occasionally refuel while waiting around during a game. Sometimes it's just boredom, sometimes it's chewing to stay focused.

But normally they do it out of sight, sneaking a bite or nibbling on something small. Nobody — nobody — had ever done it like this.

Slurp... slurrrp...!!

Everyone had memories of downing cup ramen in the locker room before games once autumn rolled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠around. But openly eating a cup of it during a game, in the dugout? This had to be a first in league history.

The collective composure of the Doubles roster was on a runaway trip to the stratosphere. The old-school legend who once ordered jjajangmyeon delivered and ate it in the corridor — a relic of a more romantic era — suddenly felt vividly, tangibly real today.

"...Tsk. Hey. Is it good?"

"Give me some of the broth, will you, In-seong. Of course you'd pick the one with the most reliably good flavor."

In the middle of all this, the resident free spirits actually started drifting closer. The aroma of ramen was rippling through the air, and stomachs were beginning to grumble one by one. They had their snacks — chocolate-coated biscuit bread, calorie bars, bananas — but none of that fills you up.

Noh In-seong, who had neatly folded the yellow-blue-green tricolor wrapper of his cup ramen into a makeshift bowl, chased off the shambling working-zombies creeping toward his daily bread, drawn by the intoxicating scent.

"Step away, gentlemen. Doesn't the team stock cup ramen? Go boil yourselves one."

When Noh In-seong waved them off — "Shoo! You've got your own! Go eat yours!" — the question came back around:

"We don't have this cup ramen though... where'd you even get it?"

The stocked ramen all came with lids. So why was he holding a lidless one?

"I just filled it with hot water at the water purifier and brought it out. This one's mine. I brought it myself."

Noh In-seong answered between slurps. Personal contraband, apparently.

"Honestly, I did think about running down to the concession stand for some side dishes too."

"...During a game?!"

Everyone recoiled in horror, but the truth was there was no rule prohibiting a player ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from visiting the in-stadium concession stand mid-game.

The rules only said that in uniform, before, during, or after a game, you couldn't chat up the spectators inside the ballpark. And as a bonus, entering the stands was also banned — presumably to keep anyone from getting kicked by an angry fan.

"If I got caught doing that, someone could insist 'the concession stand is right next to the stands, so he must be disciplined,' right?"

It was a very Noh In-seong line of thinking — playing gleefully right on the razor's edge of the rulebook.

"So I just got water from the purifier and—"

The roster, mid-way through Noh In-seong's tall tale, glimpsed something behind his back and scattered in every direction. A bewildered "what?" was all he got out before —

"Ha. Seriously. So a rain delay is a good enough reason to eat cup ramen in the dugout now, is it?"

POOOWEHP—!!

Manager Jung Im-taek, who had just returned from asking the umpire crew how long the delay would run, caught him mid-broth.

"Kgh... KGHK...!!"

And Noh In-seong choked loudly enough for the whole stadium to hear.

"...Get inside to the locker room. And that mess you spat out — go grab one of those burlap sacks and clean it up. Now."

"...Yes sir."

The ramen incident Noh In-seong had orchestrated during his ten-minute absence was resolved in exactly one minute.

"Unbelievable. There's actually a lunatic who eats ramen in the dugout, and that lunatic is my starting pitcher."

After physically dragging Noh In-seong out of his dugout dining experience, Jung Im-taek's head was throbbing all over again.

The forecast came in: the rain would let up in about thirty minutes, the wind would ease briefly, and play could resume for a limited window. For the umpires, it beat canceling the game and having to squeeze in a make-up later — better to finish it while the rain held off.

He was on his way back to the dugout to order everyone to start loosening up again when he saw the sight that made his skull ache anew: his starting pitcher, calmly performing his noodle-based asceticism right in front of him.

There was Noh In-seong, that maniac, slowly warming his shoulder back up by playing catch.

"You going to be okay? You've been sitting for over an hour! Your shoulder's gone completely cold!"

"I haven't even thrown fifty pitches! I heat up fast! I'm fine!"

What Jo In-soo was saying was technically sound. When a game gets delayed past an hour, it's often smarter to go to the bullpen. But the moment the easy catch shifted into light pitching, one look at the ball erased all such thoughts.

—POWHEONG!

Was it the hearty meal that had restored his condition, or just the brisk chill in today's air? Either way, watching the ball carry even truer and longer than before made Jung Im-taek feel like his common sense was physically rupturing.

"Can a genius only become a genius by being insane? No — this guy's too deranged even for that."

It wasn't as if he'd never seen an unhinged player in his career, nor a genius. But a madman with actual talent to back it up? Jung Im-taek was seeing one for the first time in his life.

Forty minutes later, the rain simply stopped, all at once.

At the umpires' request, the tarps came off, and the grounds crew scrambled to prep the field for resumption. The storm clouds hadn't cleared enough for the sun to break through, but at the very least, baseball was once again possible.

"...The wind hasn't died down at all, though. You sure this is resumable?"

"What kind of idiot trusts the weather forecast? Well, the rain stopped on schedule, so they got that part right at least."

Noh In-seong grumbled, but Jo In-soo waved him off. The game would proceed. The only problem was that the wind had only grown stronger — now blowing harder than it had in the top of the first.

A gale so vicious it was hard to keep your eyes open.

"Play ball!"

At least the fountain of ramen erupting from his mouth hadn't made it onto camera, so the man's image was spared a few wrinkles. Noh In-seong stepped into the batter's box.

Changwon's new reliever called for a sinker on his PitchCom, set his target up and in, and quietly positioned his mitt to receive it there. And just as the opposing catcher was zoning out at the faint, familiar aroma drifting off the batter —

"Strike!"

It was the exact opposite of where the pitch was supposed to go — reverse pitching. The catcher did snag it in a panic, but for one heart-stopping instant, he'd been genuinely rattled.

'...He can't locate!'

'...Goddamn it. I can barely even keep my eyes open out here, forget about the ball. What a fantastic day for baseball.'

The wind kept whipping into Noh In-seong's face, making it nearly impossible to see straight. The breeze wrecked the batter's vision while simultaneously wrecking the pitcher's command — a miracle collaboration of misery.

Even with his eyes half-shut against the gale, Noh In-seong could still swing properly, but this was not hitting by sight. When his blind bat sliced through empty air, he understood: today was not going to be easy.

Of course, when the pitcher and the hitter are both suffering, common sense dictates the guy catching it is suffering too.

"Swing, strike... huh?"

The space behind the catcher — the backstop area — doesn't get tarped. Most of the rainwater had drained away, but a small puddle had pooled in a dip in the grass. The catcher, praying the ball would bounce off the tarp quickly, got precisely the opposite of what he hoped for: the ball plopped into the tiny pond and died.

Noh In-seong had reached first base on a strikeout.

The stolen base attempts on both sides were equally agonizing to watch.

First, Noh In-seong on the bases was forced to run slower than usual, fighting a head-on gale.

"Hnnngh...!!"

Ten meters per second doesn't sound like much until you realize it's the wind speed equivalent of a black golf umbrella being waved in your face at full extension. He could feel the resistance even with his baseball spikes punching into the ground with every stride. By any normal standard, he should have hit second base ages ago, but the wind had his uniform billowing like a flag.

He'd taken off on a perfectly timed steal, yet the delay gave the catcher just enough time to receive the pitch and fire down to second.

But the catcher's side of it was no picnic either.

Noh In-seong running into a headwind meant, from the catcher's vantage, that the wind was blowing to the right. The throw, naturally, got hijacked mid-flight, curving in a direction it had never been asked to go and tumbling out into the outfield grass.

Noh In-seong planted himself on third, then caught the wind rolling in from the outfield — a wind practically escorting him home.

"Much appreciated, Song pro. Lovely weather we're having."

"So when I hit well I'm 'Song pro,' and when I don't I'm just Song Jin-wook? You insufferable bastard."

One sacrifice fly from Song Jin-wook toward right field, and Noh In-seong rode the wind across home plate. Still trading jabs, they filed back into the dugout —

"In-seong, you'd better get ready, you're up again soon."

— whereupon Dustin and Jo In-soo came right back in, in the blink of an eye.

End of the inning. The Doubles would have to settle for one run.

Noh In-seong, for his part, was no less tormented up on the mound, at the mercy of winds gusting from every direction.

This was a situation where he had to say a little prayer every time he released a practice pitch. Changwon had noticed too, and tried to weaponize the wind against him —

"Strike! Batter out!"

— but Noh In-seong, stone-faced with irritation, was throwing only the pitches least affected by the gale.

Reason number one: the four-seam fastball was the only pitch he could reliably bury in the zone under these conditions.

Reason number two: the fastball had started doing exactly as it pleased, flipping and running on its own whims.

Even the most wind-resistant pitch is still at the mercy of gusts that shift in both volume and direction from one instant to the next. Batters would swing at what looked like an identical fastball arriving on an identical line, and then—

"Swing, strike three! Batter out!"

"...But that one was coming right at me."

A moving ball wearing a four-seam's disguise would sneak out of the zone like a schoolyard tease — what, you don't trust your eyes? Considering the catcher's skill behind the plate, there was trust that even breaking pitches wouldn't skip past him. But with everyone already thrilled half to death by an all-fastball diet, there was no reason to oblige them further.

Noh In-seong sealed the bottom of the fifth with three straight strikeouts.

'Same pitch every time — and every one a different ball.' A baseball truism realized in the most perverse way imaginable.

And the moment Changwon finally deciphered the true nature of these deranged pitches was—

"The wind has exceeded acceptable limits. Today's game will be called here."

— the instant the home plate umpire pulled both teams off the field and declared a 1-0 Cold Game.

Not a rain-out cold game. A wind-out cold game. A miracle delivered by instantaneous gusts over 20 m/s and a sustained average of 15.3.

It was the divine authority that Typhoon Jeoksong, making landfall near Changwon, had briefly bestowed upon Noh In-seong.

"...Hold on. Then we should have canceled it back there!"

Changwon manager Kim Chang-soo's protest was swallowed whole by the eerie, moaning howl of the wind.

Noh In-seong had claimed a historic achievement: a five-inning shutout.

Naturally, Noh In-seong still had to face the media.

It was the first dugout meal in the history of professional baseball ever caught on camera, after all.

"Why were you eating ramen in the dugout during a game?"

"I heard sodium intake during competition helps athletic performance?"

—And besides, it's not even against the rules. Take it up with the rulebook or don't.

Thanks to that shameless answer, he narrowly avoided the catastrophe of food names being stapled in front of his nickname. One reporter pressed whether the whole thing had been a calculated stunt to land a sponsorship deal, and—

"Hey, that works for me? If you've got an ad in mind, call my people. I want a ramen as spicy as my fastball."

"...No, that wasn't exactly an invitation to self-promote."

Another reporter suggested the five-inning shutout should be chalked up to luck rather than skill.

"Oh? So any team that gets a five-inning shutout from here ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on out is a talentless, luck-riding fraud of a franchise — is that what we're saying?"

Gwangju... Suwon... wait a second, come to think of it—

"Our own legendary pitcher once threw a rain-shortened complete shutout, and this traitorous maniac—!!"

"...Whoa, that's not quite what I meant—"

Blindsided by the sheer leap in Noh In-seong's logic, the reporter deflated into a sulky, tight-lipped frog.

With forecasts saying the typhoon near Changwon would rage on for at least another week, everyone packed up at the team hotel and loaded onto the bus.

Nature's fickle moods had made Noh In-seong laugh, made him cry, and in the end, raised his hand in victory. And yet—

"...Somehow... we won, and I'm not even happy about it."

It didn't feel like he'd accomplished anything. It felt like the whole game had just been yanked around by one lunatic and ended in a shrug.

Noh In-seong sank into his seat with a sour expression.

'...And I get this exact feeling every single time I face that bastard...'

'What is this? Introspection?'

'Is this what they feel like when I drill a pitch into their ribs?'

Hearing his reflection, Jung Im-taek, the coaching staff, and the entire roster all nodded along in sour, reluctant solidarity.

And with that, the Doubles' team bus pulled away, bound for Jamsil.