Waiting for That Day
Click.
THUD!
Hello. This is Minor League Yeopo, author of The Genius Batter Regresses.
THUD!
I apologize for having to put the series on hiatus due to unavoidable personal circumstances.
THUD! THUD!
As you all know, fall baseball is about to begin. As a player myself, I've decided to focus everything on the games ahead.
BOOM!
"Hey! You trying to demolish the house?!"
A sincere hiatus notice, written with genuine apology. That was what Minor League Yeopo, the author, had been carefully typing out.
I threw open my closed bedroom door, snapping at the crashing sounds coming from outside.
"Sorry. Was I being loud?"
In front of the brand-new TV I'd bought after pouring every last bit of my carefully saved money into it, a massive frame was thrashing its entire body around.
"Huff… huff… Why the hell is this so hard?"
Game controllers gripped in both hands. Park Ji-han sat on the couch, grinning as he watched the spectacle and accepted the apology. Looking at the ridiculous display that giant body was putting on…
It was funny, sure.
But still.
"Ha. At this rate the downstairs neighbors are gonna file a noise complaint… They already did once before."
"So geniuses manage their bodies with video games, huh… You were sitting on something this fun all by yourself…"
Kid's got a lot of secrets. The muscle pig said it sprawled out on the mat.
The pride of the Suwon Wizards' cleanup spot. The power hitter who had finally conquered the forty-home-run plateau.
Lee Dae-beom.
"That's unfair, though? I've got someone who manages me."
A pretty chill older guy, all things considered.
"For real? Where would you even get the money for that, Ji-hoo… Not that I'm looking down on you or anything."
Fair enough — living large on a salary that barely scraped minimum wage was a luxury I was blessed with.
"Someone who's looked after me since high school. Pro bono."
The man who'd told me I had to become a baseball player. The guy who used to come do volunteer work at the orphanage.
"What kind of person does trainer work for free…?"
This didn't look like a physique some neighborhood trainer could build.
Park Ji-han said it while studying my body a little too carefully.
Creepy.
"No thank you. Absolutely not. Please stop."
I wrapped my arms around myself and shrank back as I said it.
"Ji-hoo. Let's not cross that line."
Park Ji-han's face went dead serious. Amazingly enough, this friend of mine — same age as me —
"I've got my own person, so jokes like that are a little…"
—was a married man.
"Ugh, this lovesick bastard's at it again."
Even after more than four years of marriage, the two of them were still sickeningly sweet.
Baseball players getting married young wasn't as rare as people thought. Park Ji-han had married his first love from middle school the moment they became adults. Online communities called him the romantic of the era, or something like that.
Me, on the other hand—
"Ji-han. Don't tell those beautiful love stories in front of Ji-hoo. Apparently this guy's never even had a real relationship."
Yeah. Right. Maybe the reason I regressed was…
"Huh? How do you know that?"
Something Lee Dae-beom should have had absolutely no way of knowing.
"Kim Jae-sang said so. Said Gong Ji-hoo's last love ended in high school or whatever."
"…Since when are you two that close?"
"We're not. You know I don't even like the guy."
Then how—
"He just kept talking about you on the Swallows' MuTube. Felt like a Gong Ji-hoo special."
I, Gong Ji-hoo — a man who, embarrassingly enough, had ego-searching built into his daily routine — had never once heard about this.
I pulled up the video immediately.
True to a popular team, the view count was massive. The title:
"These guys didn't even make fall baseball. They can just upload stuff like this?"
"…I feel like it's a little late for them to start worrying about optics."
"…"
Shockingly, half the video was about me. And then—
"Ah… damn it."
I was getting posthumously dragged without even knowing it.
The comment section was roughly like that.
"Still, doesn't that make you a fan-favorite with the Swallows crowd?"
Park Ji-han — winner in every category — tried to console me like that.
"Is this what a fan-favorite looks like… Feels more like I'm being pitied."
So this was what hollow comfort felt like.
"Sympathy for a virgin, huh."
"You crazy bastard."
I kicked Lee Dae-beom in the back while he was still sprawled on the floor.
"But for real, the fan reaction isn't bad. Kim Jae-sang keeps calling you his rival so much that people are saying we should just kidnap you to Busan with me. Make you experience firsthand how bad the Swallows actually are at baseball."
Park Ji-han, Busan native. This guy was a true-blue hardcore Swallows diehard.
"Anyway, changing the subject — if you've got that trainer, why do you even have an exercise game like this? Just for fun after all?"
Park Ji-han's ability to pivot a conversation was second to none.
"Ah… I bought it for when the kids come over to hang out."
In the end, it barely got used.
My pro-level stats had been so pathetic that the kids from the orphanage never felt comfortable dropping by.
I've called them a few times recently, at least…
The ones I'd been close with were all adults now. So we'd made plans to grab a drink once the season ended.
"Ah… that…"
The three Suwon Wizards classmates. The ones I'd gotten close with after regressing already had a pretty good idea of the environment I'd grown up in. It wasn't something I needed to hide.
"So the trainer too?"
"Yeah. The guy who used to volunteer at the orphanage."
I'd asked him once why he was so good to me. Even back when I was making a name for myself as Minor League Yeopo, he'd always checked on my condition — and I'd been grateful and guilty in equal measure.
He said he wanted me to achieve the dream he never could. That I had talent.
And even when I decided to retire, he'd just smiled and said he respected my choice. A genuinely good person.
"Then I guess I can't ask him for help… If he's the one who built your physique, I would've paid whatever it took."
At some point the giant TV screen had switched over to a sports channel.
The home team in red uniforms. One player raised a fist toward the stands, and—
—WAAAAAAAH!!!
A massive roar erupted.
The player manning shortstop. Same number 2 as Park Ji-han. Captain of the Gwangju Irons.
Ryu Hyun-seo.
Park Ji-han stared fixedly at the faint smile Ryu Hyun-seo wore on camera. That smile looked startlingly similar to the one Park Ji-han wore every day.
Hello. This is Minor League Yeopo, author of The Genius Batter Regresses.
I apologize for having to put the series on hiatus due to unavoidable personal circumstances.
As you all know, fall baseball is about to begin. As a player myself, I've decided to focus everything on the games ahead.
I will also do my absolute best to push the return date as little as possible.
For a little while, please cheer on Suwon's Gong Ji-hoo instead of Busan's Gong Ji-hoo.
I'll be back with good news.
As always, thank you.
CRAAAAACK!!!
In other words—
CRAAACK!
The Wild Card game—
CRAAAAACK!!!
—was a complete domination.
"Whoa… he's not holding anything back."
Just like Lee Dae-beom muttered, Ryu Hyun-seo showed no mercy.
Bottom of the first. Leading off as the leadoff hitter, he announced his first postseason RBI with a leadoff home run.
Next at-bat: a soft contact two-RBI single.
Next at-bat: a one-RBI double that put the chasing Rhinos firmly in the rearview.
And then—
"Man… he's actually running that?"
After driving in the run, he turned into a baserunner. Before the pitcher on the mound could even process what was happening—
—"Safe!"
—he stole third.
"Do we even need to watch the rest of this?"
Before the fifth inning was even over, the score was already 5–1.
The Irons' captain was simply owning the game.
"Stealing third…"
I don't like stolen bases. As I've said before, there's always a chance of failure, and if you push too hard and get hurt, it's a loss for both me and the team.
But.
A stolen base by a player like that is a completely different conversation.
A player like Park Ji-han who hits 20-20 gets called a five-tool threat.
A 30-30 guy? Call him an absurd five-tool threat.
And a 40-40 player? That's already something beyond the five-tool label.
And on top of that, a stolen-base success rate over ninety percent? We call players like that monsters. Disasters.
And Ryu Hyun-seo was exactly that kind of monster.
"Hmm… Ji-han's got it rough, huh?"
"…"
Park Ji-han didn't answer. He just stared blankly at the game on TV.
"What does?"
Lee Dae-beom answered instead.
"I mean, the player he's compared to the most is that senior, right? In a way, aren't they rivals?"
"Rivals, my ass…"
Park Ji-han shook his head slowly.
"He's just a hyung I'm close with. Someone I look up to."
That was what he said.
"You're close?"
The age gap between Ryu Hyun-seo and us was three years. They shouldn't have crossed paths in high school.
"We grew up in the same neighborhood. He's also the reason I started playing baseball."
"Huh? Ryu Hyun-seo was from Busan?"
Ryu Hyun-seo meant the Gwangju Irons. The Gwangju Irons meant Ryu Hyun-seo. It was practically a law of nature.
"Well, I'm from Busan and I play in Suwon, and Dae-beom is basically from Jeju if you think about it. It happens."
Lee Dae-beom had finished middle school in Jeju and transferred to Busan in high school for baseball. He liked to call himself a study-abroad case.
"Anyway, I've never once thought I could surpass Hyun-seo hyung. But still…"
Park Ji-han and Ryu Hyun-seo resembled each other in a lot of ways. Starting with the small things — same jersey number, same defensive position, same playing style, and so on. His most famous nickname was "Fake Hyun-seo," after all. He'd probably been consciously or unconsciously trying to emulate Ryu Hyun-seo all along.
Always blocked by the wall named Ryu Hyun-seo, Fake Hyun-seo had posted solid numbers year after year and still never once won a Golden Glove.
"Just once. Just one game. Just one series. I want to beat him. He's leaving Korea next year, so it has to be this year."
That didn't mean he planned to live in that shadow forever. Park Ji-han was an outstanding baseball player in his own right.
But still—
"You're a hitter. Facing that guy is the pitchers' job. What's there to win or lose?"
Oblivious friends exist everywhere.
"You whined about Kim Jae-sang being your rival too."
"That was less about wanting to beat him and more about wanting, like… a healthy competition. Just living like that…"
But as the tactless Lee Dae-beom had pointed out, facing Ryu Hyun-seo wasn't our job as hitters. At best, we'd give everything on defense.
"Our pitching staff… I'm already feeling bad for them. Think they can stop him?"
In the end, fighting hitters was the pitchers' job.
"The series isn't over yet. And there's still the semi-playoffs."
"Ah."
An Sung-woo, who'd been sitting silently the whole time, finally spoke — and only then did I remember that we weren't guaranteed to face the Gwangju Irons.