This Isn't Even a Martial Arts Novel
I was twenty-six.
Which is to say, this was before the regression.
Having finally put an end to my aimless wandering, I decided to walk the path of a web novelist in earnest. The money I'd saved up during my playing days was starting to run dry, after all.
Surprisingly, the first genre I chose was martial arts fiction. And of course, the protagonist's name was Gong Ji-hoo.
Martial arts novels don't need world-building. Isn't that basically free money?
That was the brilliant reasoning behind my first serialization. Naturally, it flopped.
That comment was the last straw. I shut the series down after that.
Then why does everyone talk about plum blossoms so much…
Later on, I found out there were plenty of martial arts novels that did set Mount Hua overflowing with plum blossoms. At the time, I genuinely felt like I'd been scammed.
If I'd just ignored that comment and kept serializing…
It still would've flopped. The story was boring—that's why the comment showed up in the first place.
The reason this memory suddenly resurfaced was, of course, Ryu Hyun-seo's interview.
In that rigid-yet-malleable world of martial arts settings, there's something called Hundred-Times Refined Steel. Exactly what it sounds like—steel tempered a hundred times over—and the usual conceit is that it's stronger than ordinary iron. Take it further and you get Thousand-Times Refined Steel, Ten-Thousand-Times Refined Steel, and so on.
I figure it all comes from the idea that iron grows stronger the more you hammer it. Or maybe the saying came from the setting. Either way.
Today, I intended to find out whether that saying held any truth. If I hammered the metal known as the Irons relentlessly with my bat, would it actually get harder?
Of course, as an unlicensed quack of a blacksmith, I was fully confident that no such thing would happen.
The day of reckoning.
Every player on the Gwangju Irons thought of today that way. Naturally. Lose today, and the Irons' autumn baseball was over—just like that.
The silver linings, such as they were: they'd won yesterday's game, and today was another home game.
Another home game…
Han Sung-gon, catching the starting pitcher's warm-up tosses, let out a quiet sigh.
Home games favored the home team. That much was true. But—
Whether running into those guys right out of the gate is actually an advantage… I'm not so sure.
Moments before first pitch, four players were checking their swings. The ones they called the Wizards' Golden Generation.
Why us…
The 2020 rookie draft was still talked about in Korean baseball circles for any number of reasons—and not just because of the Wizards' Golden Generation. It had produced a whole crop of stars at once, including Busan Swallows catcher Kim Jae-sang. The catch was that none of those high-flying prospects wore a Gwangju Irons uniform.
Not that a team holding Ryu Hyun-seo had any right to complain.
"Play ball!"
The umpire's call snapped Han Sung-gon out of his wandering thoughts, and he pulled up the opposing batter's scouting report in his head.
An Sung-woo. Good contact, solid eye—but he struggles with inside pitches.
Fortunately, today's starter wasn't shy about working the inner half, young as he was.
Thwack!
"Strike!"
First pitch, easy strike.
Even with an 0-1 count, the batter said nothing.
This kid's quiet. I like that about him…
But An Sung-woo had no intention of quietly stepping out of the box.
Crack!
Another pitch working inside—this one a miss that drifted a little too far into the zone. An Sung-woo flicked it cleanly and took first base.
And then—
"Appreciate the hard work~"
A greeting that was starting to give him a full-blown neurosis just from hearing it. The batter settling into the right-handed box was Park Ji-han.
He'd originally been polite and gentlemanly, but ever since Game Two of the playoffs, something in him had come loose—like that guy over there in the on-deck circle, whirling his bat around. At least Park Ji-han didn't give people headaches with bizarre monologues the way that one did.
Park Ji-han is…
Easier to handle than expected, honestly. Because he was a carbon copy of Ryu Hyun-seo.
Han Sung-gon had spent eight years with Ryu Hyun-seo. Aside from the one year Ryu sat out with an injury, he'd watched that genius hit every single day. Ryu Hyun-seo's swing was the textbook definition of an uppercut—but it wasn't without weaknesses. Ryu was just so good that the holes never showed. And Park Ji-han was not Ryu Hyun-seo.
Whoosh!
A fastball screaming high and inside. In Game One, Park Ji-han had flailed at that exact location over and over.
Tick!
"?!"
But the Park Ji-han of Game One and the Park Ji-han standing here now might as well have been different people. He had fully grasped that he didn't need to vault over the wall named Ryu Hyun-seo.
Park Ji-han broke from his stance, laid the bat flat, and simply put it on the incoming pitch.
A surprise bunt.
Not a single player on the Irons saw it coming.
"Damn—!"
The ball dropped with exquisite precision just inside the line. Han Sung-gon—a catcher who'd made free agency twice on the strength of elite defense despite ordinary offensive numbers—scrubbed the panic from his face and scooped the ball clean. But—
Second is—!
Lead runner An Sung-woo had top-tier speed even by KBO standards, and Park Ji-han himself had stolen twenty bases this season.
Thwack!
With no choice, Han Sung-gon never even looked at second—he fired straight to first. The result:
"Out!"
Out. Thank god Park Ji-han was a right-handed hitter and not a lefty.
And just like that, a scoring opportunity in the first inning. The next batter was the single most headache-inducing player Han Sung-gon faced from the Suwon Wizards—psychologically and talent-wise both.
"Appreciate the hard work~"
The original, as expected, started giving people migraines from the greeting alone.
Park Ji-han's surprise bunt. Even I didn't see that coming.
How many games start with a bunt in the first inning, realistically? And from a guy who'd already cleared twenty home runs, no less.
Is this the secret weapon Manager Kim Tae-sik prepared…?
Didn't seem like it. His face was as expressionless as always, but I caught a flicker of surprise. That was a skill I'd picked up after a full month of locked-in first-team life.
So Park Ji-han had decided on that bunt himself. Which meant—
Today's game matters that much.
And that he trusted the cleanup crew starting with me.
"Hoo…"
A deep breath. I had no intention of letting this chance slip either. Today, I planned to hammer the Irons without a moment's rest.
"Going to be quiet again today?"
The pure-hearted senior—remarkably pure for an Irons catcher—asked.
"Nay, how would Catcher hyung know of such a thing?"
"What?"
Ah.
"My mistake. I was thinking about martial arts novels before the game."
"…Right."
A senior whose heart was as vast as the four seas. Was this not the way of the jianghu?
Indeed—all under heaven walk the same path.
"You really are a writer, huh…"
"Have you by any chance read my novels, hyung?"
Could it be—another devoted reader, right here?
"Nah. I only read martial arts stuff."
There was not.
Settling into my stance, I put a critical question to Han Sung-gon.
"Hyung. Do you think Mount Hua had plum blossoms?"
"Huh?"
His answer came fast.
"Obviously it did, right?"
"Actually, Mount Hua has no plum blossoms."
"…You're lying."
"I'm serious."
As if to jolt Han Sung-gon out of his brain-freeze—
"Ahem."
—the umpire cleared his throat.
"Ha… Every time you step in the box, my head starts hurting."
I'd been hearing that a lot since the regression. Mostly from opposing catchers. Naturally, I had no intention of cutting back on the talking.
This is just how I loosen up, in my own way…
A personal routine for a soft-hearted guy like me.
Thwack!
"Ball."
A pitch sailing way outside. Eye or no eye—that was just a ball.
"Planning to walk me?"
"As if."
Given that someone had already bunted in the first, I'd briefly wondered if they might intentionally walk me in the first too. If not that—
A miss?
Personally, I believe a pitcher's first offering tells you a lot about him.
Rookie on the mound, first year. Put up solid numbers this season—people are calling him a Rookie of the Year candidate—but he doesn't have much experience in games this big.
He'd started in the semi-playoffs, sure. But the Gwangju Irons had been on a winning streak right up until they ran into us. A guillotine match like today's would be a first for him.
And in a game this important, first and second with one out already in the first inning? Facing a hitter currently riding the hottest bat in the league?
The pressure was inevitable. That was the diagnosis of Gong Ji-hoo, quack psychologist—well before quack blacksmith.
"Hmm…"
The pitcher shook off the catcher's signs again and again, then finally nodded.
Whoooosh!!
Probably a breaking ball meant to fool the hitter. A pitch that needed to drop out of the zone. The pitch type was likely—
A splitter?
But here's the thing about being a baseball player. A little pressure can produce results you can never take back. Just like the pre-regression me.
The pitcher on the mound was no different.
CRAAACK!!
Yesterday's game had left me with a lot to think about. Two line drives was pushing it, even for me. Should I raise my launch angle? I'd considered it. But you can't make that kind of adjustment overnight. You work through it carefully once the season's over. Correcting a swing you've lived with for years takes that kind of effort.
So how do you solve the line-drive problem that's been bugging you since yesterday? The answer:
Just hit the damn thing as hard as humanly possible.
Hard enough that even an infielder can't glove it. The good news: Ryu Hyun-seo played shortstop, and I was a left-handed hitter. Unless the ball was hit practically right at him, even reflexes like his wouldn't snag my contact easily.
Just like right now.
Thock.
A double.
A good start. An Sung-woo came home on my double, and the next batter, Lee Dae-beom, crushed a monster home run off the rattled pitcher and dragged him off the mound entirely.
The reliever who followed managed to put out the fire in our lineup somehow—but not before three runs had already crossed the plate. Even so, we couldn't afford to relax.
Thwack!
The pitcher warming up on the mound. Even from the outfield, you could feel that pure masculine swagger. Today's starter was Charlie.
Three days' rest. For a Wizards team that absolutely needed this win, it was the only choice they had. With the Suwon Wizards, a fully rested fourth starter carried more risk than a short-rested ace. Charlie had taken on the brutal assignment without complaint. Of course—
There was no conversation that went anything like:
"Charlie, what do we do? We've come this far."
"Got it, boss. Let's give it a shot."
Manager Kim Tae-sik was from Gyeonggi Province, and Charlie's family sold cheese in Philadelphia.
Either way—the Suwon Wizards had put up three runs in the first. But with Charlie on short rest, we headed into the bottom of the first carrying a quiet undercurrent of unease.
His warm-ups looked fine, at least…
The Irons' leadoff hitter was, as always, Ryu Hyun-seo. Watching him step into the box only made the anxiety swell. And then—
CRAAACK!!
Ryu Hyun-seo lashed the first pitch like a bolt of lightning. The ball screamed toward left field. Thankfully, it wasn't going to clear the wall—but—
It's going to carom off the fence.
Playing deep, I took off and tracked the landing point as I ran. Should I give up on the catch and set up for the relay? Ryu Hyun-seo was fast. No matter how cleanly I handled the carom, this wouldn't turn into one of those fence-single situations like with Lee Dae-beom. This was extra bases for sure. And if I hesitated even a little, Ryu was the kind of player who could take third.
A runner in scoring position with nobody out—even Charlie would struggle to hold that down when he wasn't at full strength. So I stopped thinking about the fence. I only watched the ball as it fell. And then—
Thud!
I jumped, slammed into the wall, and stretched my glove as high as it would go.
Thup.
I felt the ball settle into the pocket.
"Out!!"
I held the ball up in answer to Charlie, who was raising a thumb from the distant mound.
…Huh?
Plop.
Just then, I felt something drop out of the sky.