Genius
“Whoa… this place is huge. So this is how a successful player lives?”
Gong Ji-hoo kicked off his shoes with a low whistle of admiration, an iced americano—his constant companion—still in hand.
“Successful player, my ass. I haven’t even properly cashed in on free agency yet.”
That was the homeowner, Kim Jae-sang. A fifth-year catcher pulling six hundred million won a year, and about as gracious as a brick wall.
“…Right.”
The left fielder making thirty-three million a year dipped his head, looking thoroughly deflated.
He was making decent side money, sure—but the idea of a salary with “hundred million” attached still felt impossibly distant to Gong Ji-hoo.
“Chicken?”
“At this hour?”
“Then what?”
“I meant, the game just ended and it’s this late—you really think chicken alone is gonna cut it?”
“Chicken and jokbal.”
“Okay.”
Kim Jae-sang tapped the order into his phone without missing a beat. Gong Ji-hoo slipped past him and started looking around the apartment.
Gifts from fans. Baseballs chronicling Kim Jae-sang’s own history.
Gong Ji-hoo’s envious gaze swept over all of it—until it stopped on a display cabinet.
“How many of these do you even have?”
The cabinet was packed with gleaming gold trophies. Three Golden Gloves. Two home run titles. And then—
“Oh… is that an Olympic medal?”
It wasn’t gold, but the bronze medal seemed to shine brighter than anything else in the case. The medal that had turned high-school-graduate rookie Kim Jae-sang into a nationally beloved catcher.
“Tch… that was a rough time.”
Having finished the delivery order, Kim Jae-sang wandered over.
“Yeah?”
“Dude, even I got nervous making the Olympics right out of the gate. You have no idea how much shit I took back then…”
High-school-graduate rookie Kim Jae-sang had put up outstanding numbers the moment he debuted in the KBO. Among catchers, his dominance had been in a class of its own. And yet—
“‘Some kid who’s been in the league five months wants to be the national team catcher? Don’t even put him on the bench. The roster’s already full of holes and you’re wasting a spot…’ Like, what the fuck? Oh Jin-muk gets hurt and somehow I’m the one catching heat? That guy’s a pitcher!”
The old injustice still burned; Kim Jae-sang was getting genuinely worked up just remembering it.
Gong Ji-hoo had read those articles pretty thoroughly himself. Baseball had just been reinstated as an Olympic sport after years away, and he’d only just become a player himself.
With baseball’s popularity at a peak, public interest in the national team had been enormous. The departure of players everyone had considered locks, combined with a high-school rookie making the roster, had sparked no small amount of worry, distrust, and controversy.
But then—
“You proved them wrong, didn’t you?”
“Well… yeah. Because it was me.”
Just like that, the anger vanished. Kim Jae-sang nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Gong Ji-hoo stared at him with a thoroughly unimpressed expression.
“Anyway, it was rough even after I got there, okay? I thought I’d be a backup, then the starting catcher goes down with food poisoning, and every pitcher is a senior who won’t listen to a word I say.”
“So?”
“So what. They’re not Oh Jin-muk or Do Jeong-hoo—who the hell do they think they are, throwing whatever they want? I made them listen one way or another.”
Ah. So that’s when the whole Kim Jae-sang personality controversy started.
“You got results. That’s what matters. Bronze medal, military exemption, treated like a national hero. You got the full package.”
“…Tch.”
Kim Jae-sang smacked his lips.
“How am I supposed to be satisfied with a bronze? Man, if we’d just had Oh Jin-muk or Ryu Hyun-seo…”
“Then it would’ve been gold?”
“If you’d been there too, in your right mind? A hundred percent.”
That was an absurdly high evaluation.
“No, wait—you were still raw back then… honestly, just those two and we probably still take gold.”
The U.S. was there, sure, but they were basically Triple-A level, right? Gong Ji-hoo let Kim Jae-sang’s words wash past one ear and tried imagining himself on the national team.
A stadium with the Taegeukgi flying. Opposing players who looked familiar and foreign all at once. And himself in the batter’s box with the national emblem on his chest.
That’d be fun…
Though he was certain the old him never would have handled that kind of pressure. Just not throwing up in the box would’ve been a win.
“Japan was full strength, sure, but… hey! Gong Ji-hoo! You listening?”
“Sorry. Your pointless story was dragging on, so I was ignoring you.”
Kim Jae-sang went quiet. Then a strange little smile crept onto his face.
“Ah~ fair enough. Your friend’s killing it while you’ve been deep-sea diving this whole time—I get why you wouldn’t want to hear it. I’ve never been at the bottom, so I didn’t know how to be considerate!”
It was annoying precisely because it was true.
“Please just shut up… when the hell is the food getting here? We’re gonna be up all night!”
Ding-dong.
The doorbell rang.
“Ahem. I’ll get it. Homeowner stays put.”
“Sure, sure~”
Without even checking the intercom, Gong Ji-hoo opened the front door—and found himself face-to-face with someone he’d spent a good portion of the day staring at.
“…Good evening, sunbae.”
“Oh. Hey…”
Kim Sang-eon. Today’s starting pitcher—the one who’d surrendered two home runs to him—was standing there with chicken and jokbal in both hands.
“Sang-eon’s here?”
“Yeah, hyung. They said the chicken and jokbal downstairs was for this place, so I brought it up. This is right, yeah?”
“Yeah. Sit down. Let’s eat before it gets cold.”
Ugh… this is awkward. So awkward.
I, Gong Ji-hoo, will talk all kinds of trash during a game—but put me in a social situation and I’m a pure, shy young man who freezes up.
Exactly like right now.
“Uh… Gong Ji-hoo sunbae didn’t know I was coming, huh?”
“Drop it. The guy’s ridiculously shy for no reason—if I’d told him, he never would’ve shown up. He was running away anyway.”
“Running away?”
“Didn’t you see Gong Ji-hoo’s interview today?”
I’ll show you something fun. With that, Kim Jae-sang pulled up a video on his phone.
My own vacant, brain-dead response to the commentator’s grinning question.
Even on a second viewing, it was the kind of face that invited a beating. No exaggeration—when I came out of the stadium, home fans were actually charging at me with dual-wielded curses.
“Hahaha! At this point, you actually think that, don’t you?”
“I do not…”
“Though, come on—Gong Ji-hoo’s been grinding so hard to get Busan a championship. No way Author Gong actually hates the Swallows.”
Right—this guy had said he was a fan of mine. A sudden spark of internal camaraderie. This social butterfly knew how to handle an introvert.
“Hold on. I read that thing too. If the premise is that even a guy hitting sixty home runs can’t win a title with that team, doesn’t that mean he basically sees us as complete garbage?”
“That… yeah, that tracks.”
Two Busan Swallows players were now staring daggers at one author. And I, the author of The Genius Batter Regresses, just tore into a chicken leg and asked:
“So if a player like that existed—could your team actually win?”
Truth is, a similar player already existed. Right in front of me. And the Swallows’ record over the five years that player had been with them was—
“…”
No answer. Just a quiet pile of chicken bones growing on the table.
What do three baseball players talk about when they get together? Baseball, in the end.
They’d started with other topics, sure.
Like the story of high-school Gong Ji-hoo confessing to a girl and getting spectacularly dumped.
— “His face back then, man… bawling that he’d never talk to a girl again…”
Or the legendary Busan Full Course that everyone had heard of but no one had ever actually verified.
— “Tomorrow’s an off day for all of us, so I’m buying the Busan Full Course. What? You don’t know what that is? Dude, I’m from Gyeonggi too. Sang-eon knows!”
But the three of them had nothing in common except baseball.
Kim Jae-sang played games when he wasn’t playing baseball—and even those games were baseball games.
I went straight home after games and got busy writing.
Kim Sang-eon was only a first-year, still too focused on baseball to have any real hobbies.
“Come to think of it, sunbae. Was it really the trauma that kept you from performing?”
Kim Sang-eon’s question kicked off the baseball talk for real.
“That’s what I think… but honestly, I don’t know. Whether I just wasn’t good enough, or my mental game was weak.”
“Ha. Look at this guy’s numbers now. If it wasn’t a mental thing, then he was sandbagging before.”
“They say everyone gets one beautiful month.”
“So you’re saying you’re that beautiful month? Seriously?”
“…”
Of course not. I had my own pride about being better than most people.
“Sang-eon, I told you about this a while back, right? That whole genius thing.”
“Ah, that story?”
“Let’s ask this guy. Who do you think the real geniuses in the KBO are?”
Out of nowhere. I answered without thinking.
“Do Jeong-hoo, Oh Jin-muk, Ryu Hyun-seo, Kim Jae-sang.”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
“See?”
I followed Kim Jae-sang’s glance over to Kim Sang-eon—
“Whoa…”
—who looked oddly impressed.
“That’s the exact same answer hyung gave…”
“This bastard pretends to be modest but can’t stop showing off how great he is.”
“About what?”
I was having trouble following the conversation.
What is this, some Busan-style runaround?
“No other geniuses? What about guys like Lee Dae-beom or Park Ji-han on your team?”
“Nah. Those guys aren’t geniuses—they’re just really good.”
A genius had to be a natural disaster. If you weren’t being called a catastrophe, you didn’t get to be called a genius in baseball. Because—
“Every player in this league was called a genius in school, right?”
“Exactly.”
The league was where all the high school geniuses gathered. To still be called a genius there, you had to be something close to a disaster.
Kim Jae-sang snorted as he listened to my explanation.
“So. Those geniuses. You think you can’t take them? Be honest.”
“…”
Well.
“No? I can take them.”
“Which means your problem was never a lack of skill.”
It could just be bluster, though.
“Most people couldn’t even bluff their way through those names. Sang-eon—can you take Do Jeong-hoo sunbae or Oh Jin-muk sunbae?”
“Me? Absolutely not.”
“…Aren’t you being a little too timid?”
“The timid one’s your mental game. Let’s use Oh Jin-muk as the example. If I use myself, I’m just painting gold on my own face.”
Kim Jae-sang grabbed a big jokbal bone in one hand and mimed a swing.
“How many players would confidently say they can hit Oh Jin-muk’s stuff?”
“Not many, right?”
“In the KBO, sure. What about the U.S. or Japan?”
“I don’t know…”
Those places had monsters on a whole different level, so there’d be a fair number, right? That was what I was thinking when—
Thock.
—Kim Jae-sang shoved the bone toward me.
“Not many there either. I’m sure of it.”
“Come on, no way.”
“Dude, his top velocity is a hundred sixty-eight kilometers. You think that’s common in the majors? Those guys can’t hit him either. He’s posting in two years, right? He goes over, he succeeds. Guaranteed.”
Oh Jin-muk’s stuff was that good?
“—That’s what you were thinking, right?”
Was my face really that easy to read?
“That’s why the idea that you can take them even occurs to you. And when you say it, a lot of people think, ‘Yeah, somehow if it’s him, maybe’—which means it’s not bluster. It’s real.”
“Hmm…”
Kim Jae-sang’s extended “Gong Ji-hoo Genius Theory” went on for a while after that. The conclusion was this:
“Bottom line—if you’re a genius, act like one. You couldn’t show your real skill because you were scared of how people would react? That’s my rival? Give me a break, you little shit.”
In his own way, it was probably meant as praise and comfort.
“Well, I heard hyung’s whole long-winded speech about Gong Ji-hoo sunbae being a genius.”
Kim Sang-eon was finishing off the last of the jokbal.
“So what kind of comment was it that helped a genius like that overcome the trauma that clipped his wings? Everyone’s comments are so nice these days.”
He tossed the question out.
Come to think of it, after my name got out, every comment on the novel turned mild. Can’t be helped, I guess.
Even “SwallowsCantPlayBaseball,” who’d left gems like “You call this garbage writing? Got too much free time?” and “This is so mid,” was now only posting things like—
“Whatever you’re imagining—it’s worse than that.”
Honestly, I still got nervous sometimes.
“…That bad?”
Terrifying.
Kim Sang-eon muttered, then started cleaning up the empty containers. I helped from the side.
The homeowner who’d been running his mouth all night just sat there watching.
I’m only putting up with this because it’s his house.
“When’s the next game?”
Today was Tuesday.
“Friday. Incheon. Four games left, I think.”
“Sang-eon, what about us?”
“Our season ends before next week.”
“When’s the Wizards’ final?”
“Next Monday.”
“Against who?”
The Suwon Wizards’ last regular-season game was at home. And the opponent was—
“The Seoul Wolves.”
“Whoa… that’s gonna be fun.”
The Seoul Wolves, who’d already locked up the regular-season title.