Steel Gets Stronger the More It's Hammered

“You know those days… when the menu has iced americano, but you just feel like ordering a cafe mocha…”

“Out of nowhere?”

Somehow, coming to Gwangju put me in that kind of mood.

“So I went ahead and bought a cafe mocha.”

Glug-glug.

It had been a while since I’d had a cafe mocha, and it tasted pretty good. Iced, of course.

“You can just suddenly order something completely different like that?”

Lee Dae-beom asked, wearing a strangely unsettled look.

“Huh?”

“You always drink nothing but iced americano before games. I figured that was some kind of jinx for you.”

Had I really been like that?

I guess I kind of had.

I only ever drank iced americano to begin with, so he was probably right. Extreme iced-americano-or-death. The upside?

You never had to look at the menu in a café.

“Come on… calling that a jinx is a stretch. You think I’m gonna tank just because I drank a cafe mocha instead of an AA?”

Of course, I didn’t think of jinxes in a purely negative light. Some of them actually worked—psychologically and otherwise.

There are people like me who’ve regressed… so lucky red underwear could exist too, I guess…

“There are some weirdly specific jinxes out there, you know? Like Se-ho hyung.”

Lee Dae-beom’s cheap mouth didn’t bother protecting a senior teammate’s secret.

“When he leaves the house, there can only be two pairs of shoes in the shoe rack. Otherwise the game doesn’t go his way.”

“Whoa…”

That sounded like a miserable way to live.

“But didn’t hyung get married?”

“He’s got a kid too.”

“His family’s gotta be suffering for that.”

“Apparently his wife puts a lot of effort into managing it.”

It was a strangely obsessive jinx that didn’t fit the always-easygoing senior at all. Surprising, sure—but still.

“Anyway, I’m not like that.”

“Yeah? Good for you, then.”

What could possibly go wrong?

Hmm.

“This is driving me crazy…”

It was the kind of situation that forced those words out. For real.

At the end of the seventh inning, my line for the day after three plate appearances was:

Line drive.

Line drive.

Fly out.

“Does this even make sense…”

A game that could invent a jinx that hadn’t existed before.

And then, before the eighth began, Manager Kim Tae-sik said:

“Gong Ji-hoo, you’re out.”

He was pulling me.

“Park Ji-han, Lee Dae-beom, An Sung-woo, Lee Se-ho, Park Sang-hee. Everyone’s coming out.”

It wasn’t just me getting subbed, of course.

And for good reason.

In a short series like the postseason, simply giving up on a game carried real risk—for the team and for the manager himself.

“Uh… Manager, are you sure this is okay?”

“What’s the problem? You know as well as I do that turning this around is nearly impossible.”

“Still… the media won’t look kindly on it. Neither will the front office.”

A manager who threw in the towel on a game that might still have been winnable. A manager who, no matter how high the odds of defeat, failed to show fight ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠until the end.

That was the kind of talk the coach was warning about.

“Hmph. Who cares about that?”

Manager Kim Tae-sik snorted.

“A manager gets cursed either way when you lose. If that’s the case, better to give those guys a little rest, don’t you think?”

The Suwon Wizards leaned far too heavily on their starters. Thin depth meant exactly that.

“Park Ji-han’s a shortstop and he’s still played nearly every inning. Catcher Park Sang-hee’s the same. They got a little rest before the playoffs, but I don’t want to push them in a game like this. We’ve already taken two wins.”

“Understood…”

The coach nodded reluctantly. And just as Manager Kim Tae-sik was announcing the mass substitution from the dugout before the top of the eighth, one player spoke up.

“Could I take just one more at-bat…? I’m the leadoff hitter.”

It was Gong Ji-hoo.

First at-bat: a well-struck ball sucked straight into the second baseman’s glove.

Second at-bat: a ball that should have just cleared the infielders’ heads was snagged by the first baseman’s leaping catch.

Third at-bat: an ordinary fly ball that needed no explanation.

“Hmm…”

Top of the eighth. Fourth plate appearance.

“Appreciate it…”

Gong Ji-hoo’s final at-bat of the day, granted after asking Manager Kim Tae-sik.

“You look a little drained?”

Han Seong-gon said with a smile. At the start of the game his face had been locked tight; now it had loosened. And why wouldn’t it?

“They pulled all the starters. Why are you still in?”

Because almost the entire starting lineup except Gong Ji-hoo had left the game.

The Suwon Wizards’ lineup is scary, sure—but that’s the starters. The backups…

Sensing victory, Han Seong-gon casually struck up conversation with Gong Ji-hoo—forgetting how much those talks had given him headaches in previous games.

“For the cafe mocha.”

“Cafe mocha…?”

“Wouldn’t it be unfair? To the cafe mocha.”

“…”

What the hell is he talking about…

Han Seong-gon decided to focus solely on facing Gong Ji-hoo. Trying to hold a conversation with something incomprehensible was exhausting. Still—

…What am I even supposed to throw this guy?

Even without talking, Gong Ji-hoo was more than enough to give him a headache.

On the mound for the Irons—

Stop overthinking it.

Han Seong-gon decided to keep it simple. Gong Ji-hoo was a tough matchup, but today he had produced nothing at the plate.

So—

Throw your best pitch!

Pressure Gong Ji-hoo with the pitcher’s strongest weapon.

The pitcher nodded at the sign.

This at-bat wouldn’t swing the outcome much, I figured.

No matter how good I was, I was still just one of nine hitters. Likewise—

The game didn’t fall apart because I went quiet.

Was the Suwon Wizards a Gong Ji-hoo one-man team? No.

In a way I was just a rock that had rolled in out of nowhere.

Even without me, the Suwon Wizards had been fighting for second place.

Wait—were the Suwon Wizards second before the regression too?

Honestly, I couldn’t remember clearly. Back then, around this time, I hadn’t been in my right mind for a lot of reasons.

Well, it’s not like they would’ve dropped out of second just because I wasn’t there.

Why did the smell of alcohol from Jeong Geun-wook suddenly come to mind?

That’s not what matters right now.

Anyway, the reason today’s game had turned so bleak was ultimately the collapse of the mound.

Going by the “Pitcher Aristocracy Theory” I’d mentioned before—

If the nobles lose the war faster than anyone else, commoners like us don’t have much say.

So.

I would simply do my own best.

“Hoo…”

If I finished the game hitless today, what were the odds that a new jinx would be born—“Gong Ji-hoo must drink iced americano before games”?

I rated them pretty high.

I was the soft-hearted type, after all.

Jinxes were a pain. Once you started fretting over them, there was no bottom and no end.

Whoooosh!

A fastball. A powerful pitch clipping the outer edge of the zone. But—

No matter how fast it was, it couldn’t match Oh Jin-muk.

No matter how strong it was, it couldn’t match Oh Jin-muk.

It felt like Oh Jin-muk had become some kind of power-level scanner, but after the day I hit that walk-off home run, he had become the standard for high-velocity pitches. What could I do about that?

CRAAAACK!!!

The cafe mocha was no longer a criminal.

Crash!

The Gwangju stadium, silenced by Gong Ji-hoo’s home run, suddenly rang with the sound of something shattering. At that noise—

“Huh?”

Gong Ji-hoo, rounding the bases—

—and caster Lee Han-yeong, mid home-run call—

“Man… that guy can really hit. He’s homered every game so far— wait, what the hell?”

—and the Wizards players who had been quietly admiring their silent teammate’s blast—

All of them froze in confusion.

Lee Han-yeong quickly wiped away the surprise and continued with professional coverage.

The Gwangju Irons’ home park. Irons Champions Field. Because of the unnecessarily long name, everyone just called it Champ Field. And this stadium had a unique feature.

A raised platform in the outfield. A car displayed on that platform.

The famous Home Run Zone of Gwangju’s ballpark.

The parent company of the Gwangju Irons was an automobile manufacturer. Hit a home run into the zone where their newest model was displayed, and the actual car was gifted to the player.

The Home Run Zone had been around for quite a while, yet surprisingly few players had ever claimed a car.

Only seven, to be exact.

Gong Ji-hoo had just become the eighth Irons car owner.

“Hyung, is that car expensive?”

The player who had just won an SUV worth more than his own annual salary with a single swing was already thinking only about selling it.

To cut to the chase—

They said you could take the cash equivalent instead.

“This is probably why people get addicted to gambling…”

I’d just made a huge sum, yet it was hard to feel happy about it.

Because—

We lost.

I quickly scrolled through the internet news section reporting the result.

The title alone made the content obvious, so I skipped it.

I skipped the aggressive column too.

Something that sounded insanely cool caught my eye, so I clicked.

“Oh…”

According to the article, in the interview Ryu Hyun-seo had said:

This senior ignored a call from his close little brother the day before, yet he was out here dropping the coolest lines possible. Still, it suited him.

“…Ji-han.”

“What’s up?”

“Does steel really get stronger the more you hammer it?”

“That interview?”

I didn’t know, so—

“I’ll have to check.”

Tomorrow.