Baek Eunha
How long had I waited after hanging up the phone? Maybe fifteen minutes?
I had been keeping an eye on the other pitchers who had tried out when my mother's call came through, prompting me to head outside the ballpark.
"Son!"
"It's freezing out here, Mom. You shouldn't have stepped outside. Where's Eunha?"
"In the car, where else? Come on, let's go grab some lunch!"
"All right."
Mom's car was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sedan. And that brought out the single greatest flaw of this body: I was entirely too big to squeeze comfortably into an average passenger car. Seriously, why on earth did I grow this massive? My dad was about five-foot-nine and Mom was barely five-foot-three.
"How did the tryout go?"
"Who do you think you're talking to? You know how it went."
"Well, that's my husband for you!"
Eunha spoke up from the back seat, and I offered her a soft, fond smile as I answered.
Radiant blonde hair and piercing blue eyes—she looked identical to how she had in our previous life. To anyone looking at her, she didn't possess a single trace of Korean heritage. Yet in this life, she was undeniably, legally Korean.
For the record, both of her parents were Korean citizens as well. I did hear that her mother's side had some American ancestry mixed in down the line, but still... seeing her look exactly like she used to never ceased to amaze me.
In our past life, the two of us had grown up in an orphanage without parents to our names. While I had been reborn into an entirely different physical vessel, Eunha seemed to have inherited the exact same body.
"Aigoo, look at you two, just head over heels," Mom chimed in teasingly. "This boy walks around wearing a permanent scowl, but the moment you're in front of him, Eunha, he turns into pure smiles."
"Husband! You should smile for your mother once in a while too!"
"Ahem."
"Look at him clearing his throat to brush it off again. See? There's no point in raising a son!"
"Mom, when you were raising Harin, didn't you constantly say there was no better son in the world than me?"
"Quiet, you punk! Aigoo. Causing such a massive scandal out of the blue, and now claiming you're going to play baseball again... Sweetie, you said you were taking a leave of absence after the first semester of college, right?"
"Yes, Mother," Eunha replied cheerfully. "Since it's a special leave, I can take up to two years without any problem, and I've verified that I can use up to three years of regular leave too! I plan to see how things unfold before making a final call."
"Sigh... I can't stop you two since you've already decided to keep the baby, but... you still have your college education ahead of you. You could have gotten married and had a child a little later. Good grief... a boy who never caused an ounce of trouble his entire life, of all things..."
Hearing Mom's lament, I let out a quiet sigh inside. Frankly, I felt thoroughly wronged. The moment we became legal adults, Eunha had dragged me out for drinks to celebrate, and the next thing I knew when I opened my eyes, we were in a hotel room.
"Your father-in-law would have been well within his rights to beat you half to death, but he let it slide so peacefully. My son really was born under a lucky star."
"Mom, believe me, I was just as stunned by how that played out."
"Fasten your seatbelts, back there. Let's get moving. What should we eat for lunch?"
"Well, since the weather is this cold, how about beef short rib soup?"
"Shall we head to our usual spot?"
"Sounds good to me."
Once Mom focused on the road and fell silent, Eunha leaned in close, pressing her body against mine. Her subtle, familiar fragrance drifted over, and I couldn't keep the corners of my mouth from curling upward.
Huddling beside me, Eunha pulled out her smartphone, opened a memo app, and began typing away.
...Gaslighting? What on earth was she talking about?
Good heavens. Just how many years had this master plan been in the making? Seeing the sheer disbelief plastered across my face, Eunha stifled a giggle. Good grief... I pulled out my own phone and brought up a notepad.
Our situation could only be described by the word miracle. Without a doubt, the two of us had died at the exact same moment. I could still vividly recall that instant, and whenever I asked Eunha about it, she remembered it just as clearly.
Unless both of us were suffering from some shared mental delusion, it had to be reality. Our previous lives had ended around the year 2040. Both of us had been born in the year 2000.
Yet here we were, reborn in South Korea—a small Asian country whose existence we had barely registered back then—in the year 2010, as entirely different people, all while retaining every shred of our past-life memories. If that wasn't a miracle, I had no idea what else to call it.
"Aigoo, look at you two back there. Are you going to shower each other with kisses in the car next?"
"Ahem."
"Mother, did you just give us permission?" Eunha quipped playfully.
"Eunha, what on earth do you even see in my son that's kept you glued to him since kindergarten...? Even if he's my own flesh and blood, he takes after his father with that blunt poker face, and he's built like a grizzly bear. Honestly, he looks terrifying at times, doesn't he?"
"Hehe. That massive build is part of his charm, Mother."
"By the way, why didn't Harin come with you?" I asked.
"Harin? She said she was going out to meet a friend. Come to think of it, haven't you two made up yet?"
"We never fought in the first place..."
"Wait, husband. Did you fight with Harin?"
"No. Why would I ever fight with her?"
Yoo Harin. She was my younger sister, seven years my junior. Having been an orphan all on my own in my past life, gaining a little sister in this one had made me treasure her like gold and raise her with utmost care. But the moment my sudden marriage was announced, she had completely cut off all communication with me.
She used to be such an adorable little girl, always declaring that she would marry her big brother when she grew up. Apparently, she had reached the age where adolescent rebellion set in.
Over a warm bowl of beef short rib soup at the restaurant, we chatted about the tryout results.
"Wait, what? You really passed?"
"Mom, do you have that little faith in your own son?"
"No, it's just... you barely played in any games during middle school. And the second you were assigned to a different high school from Eunha, you quit baseball on the spot and transferred to her school, didn't you? It's been three whole years since you touched a baseball, so isn't it stranger that you actually passed?"
"I told you I was confident. I'm going to cancel my college admission now."
"Still, after studying so hard just to get into the same university as Eunha... can't you just take a leave of absence instead?"
"I'd have to attend the first semester to do that, but I have to report to spring training in two weeks. It's just not going to work out."
"Hmm... Well, the front office must have seen something in you to accept you. Does that mean you get a salary right away?"
"Yes. Starting at forty million won."
We bounced various details back and forth. Eunha already knew the broad strokes, so she simply nodded along without saying much. Deep down, it seemed she had always wanted to see me play baseball again in this life... though I couldn't say for certain.
Still, when I first told her I was applying for the open tryout, she had jumped for joy so intensely that it almost made me regret quitting baseball during my school days.
The truth was, I hadn't quit baseball back then without good reason. The youth coaches and managers in this country were... frankly, absolute garbage. Back in middle school, I had joined the baseball club solely because Jaehyung wouldn't stop pestering me.
At the time, my dominant arm in this life was different from the one I had used in my previous life, leaving my mechanics completely unbalanced as I struggled to adjust. But because I threw hard, the manager offered zero technical feedback, barking at me to just pound the strike zone right down the middle.
On top of that, that lunatic of a manager insisted on putting me out as a starter and having me throw a hundred pitches. His reasoning was laughable: he claimed that only by throwing continuously would a pitcher realize on his own what needed fixing.
He was the kind of manager who belonged in a Japanese high school drama, where pitching a hundred and fifty balls at Koshien was bizarrely romanticized as a once-in-a-lifetime passion.
The human body was a consumable resource. Throwing a baseball exerted tremendous torque and stress on the elbow, which was why pitchers blew out their ligaments every other day in the professional circuit.
Yet he wanted an underdeveloped adolescent body to take the mound as a starter and heave a hundred pitches? Whether my ulnar collateral ligament tore to shreds didn't matter to him—all he cared about was padding his immediate coaching record.
Naturally, I refused to obey his orders, and the manager and coaching staff retaliated by benching me indefinitely. If not for Jaehyung being on that team, I would have walked away long before. Watching that kid, who didn't possess an ounce of natural catching talent, endure brutal blocking drills tore my heart out, so I had stuck around just to hover by his side and give him advice.
The coaches in high school were somewhat decent by comparison, but being separated from Eunha was something I couldn't stomach. So I coolly hung up my cleats, transferred to the high school Eunha attended, and spent all three years glued to her side.
"Husband! Give it your all at spring camp! That means I can watch your games on TV later, right?"
"A Developmental Player can only be registered to the first-team active roster starting June 1st... so it'll be tough to see me on air early in the season. Futures League games rarely get broadcasted. Ah, you might catch the exhibition games, though. I believe everyone's eligible to participate in those."
"My son certainly dreams big," Mom teased. "You really think you'll make the first team right away this year?"
"Mom, how can you have so little faith in your own boy?"
"Well, look at reality! No matter how I look at it, the team that picked up a kid who hasn't played baseball in three years seems like the one with the problem!"
"Mom, have you ever seen me tell a lie? I'll show you this year—I'll be standing on that first-team mound."
"I don't know about lying, but I certainly saw you cause a monumental scandal..."
"Ahem."
Seriously, I was innocent! After finishing lunch, we stopped by a neighborhood photo studio to get pictures taken for my passport. Mom headed home, telling us to enjoy some time alone, which naturally left just Eunha and me.
"It's freezing outside. You should really head home and get some rest. You're still in the early stages, you know."
"What am I supposed to do stuck at home all by myself? Husband, while you're getting your ID photo, shouldn't we take a couples portrait too?"
"Shall we? What are your friends up to today?"
Once the college entrance exams wrapped up and before university started, high school seniors were usually busy running around and hanging out. Unlike me, who hadn't made any friends, Eunha had plenty. There were at least three close friends of hers whose faces I could readily recognize.
The reason I hadn't made friends was simple enough: who in their right mind would casually approach a six-foot-three, deadpan giant who transferred midway into a regular academic high school? Even I wouldn't have approached someone like that. On top of that, I hadn't put in the slightest effort to socialize either.
During class, I sat quietly in the very back corner focusing entirely on my studies, and during breaks, I spent every waking second with Eunha. In fact, I ended up becoming friendlier with Eunha's circle of friends than with any guys my age.
Since I wasn't bad-looking in this life, a few girls had tried to approach me over the years... but I had no eyes for anyone other than Eunha.
"Well, they're all busy going out for drinks," she said. "I'm genuinely fine, though. Not a single regret."
"...Well, as long as you're happy, that's all that matters."
After taking our photos, we stopped by the local district office to submit the passport application, then slipped into a cozy cafe to catch our breath.
"You can't have caffeine, right?"
"Right. What should I get? What about you, husband?"
"I'm taking a break from working out today anyway. Just a decaf for me."
"Then I'll have chamomile tea."
After ordering our drinks, Eunha glanced at me hesitantly, carefully reading my expression.
"...Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Hmm. No matter how much I think about it, I can't help feeling like I was being too selfish."
"Selfish about what?"
"You studied so hard just to get into the same university as me... Don't you feel any regret letting that go?"
"Not in the slightest. To be completely honest, studying was never my strong suit anyway. I'm totally fine with it."
I genuinely meant it. Leaving a physical frame like this to waste without playing sports would have been a crime. Even if I had attended university, I probably would have just ended up being a distraction to Eunha's studies.
"...I just really hope you can enjoy baseball in this life."
"Considering I've already set off a massive scandal, enjoying it leisurely might be out of the question. I have to earn enough to feed you and our baby now."
"Still, in this life, both of us have parents, and our families are reasonably stable."
"Even so, we're legal adults now. We can't keep relying on our parents forever. Just you wait. I'll show you what it looks like when I tear up the first team this year."
"Can you really pull that off after sitting out for three years?"
"Who do you think I am?"
"Hmm... Can I really get my hopes up?"
"Go ahead. Aim your expectations as high as the sky."
"Then what about the Titans? Can you lead them to a championship?"
"Ah... now that might be asking for a bit too much."
After all, over the last ten years, their league finishes had been seventh, eighth, eighth, seventh, seventh, seventh, eighth, eighth, dead last, dead last, and dead last.