Influence
Come to think of it.
I am probably the only regressor in the world.
And yet.
I have no real memory of ever acting like one.
I never leveraged future knowledge for personal gain and then shrugged it off as luck. I never spat out those embarrassingly earnest lines like I’m going to live for myself that no one past middle school should ever say out loud. And when it came to meeting people and becoming friends, I never calculated my moves based on memories only I possessed.
It wasn’t because I was some great saint.
And it certainly wasn’t because I was a complete idiot who knew nothing.
Wait… am I actually an idiot who knows nothing?
In the end, the reason I never felt like a proper regressor was simple. In what people would call the first timeline—the future that was my past—I had been living a completely different life from the one I lead now.
In other words.
The Gong Ji-hoo of the past was a former baseball player turned web-novel author.
The Gong Ji-hoo of the present is a baseball player who also writes web novels.
I didn’t even watch baseball broadcasts after I retired, so…
I know absolutely nothing about the future of baseball. No—I barely know anything about the broader baseball landscape at all. Kang Ho-san wasn’t wrong when he said I lacked experience.
On the other hand.
I do know the future trends of web novels…
Did you know? About a year from now, a monstrous new talent appears and kicks off a boom in the SF genre that used to be considered niche. I tried to ride that wave myself and got absolutely wrecked.
Honestly, the first thing I thought after regressing was that I should just write the popular web novels I had already read.
Of course.
The idea was so shameless I scrubbed it from my mind immediately. I didn’t even believe my writing would be better than the original authors’.
So if you were to compare this to a novel, the protagonist Gong Ji-hoo is a regressor who doesn’t feel like a regressor at all.
All regression really gave me was a rock-solid mentality and a reliable side hustle.
That said.
Even someone like me still has one classic regressor cliché clinging to him.
Most people call it the butterfly effect.
Crack!!
“Strike!”
He had lofted one casually over the fence during spring training, but Sim Ji-hwan’s stuff was genuinely good.
A fastball that danced between the mid- and upper-150s, paired with a changeup as his finishing pitch.
His other off-speed stuff still looked a little raw, but at the very least—
Crack!!
“Swing and a miss! Strikeout!”
—he was more than good enough to thrive in the KBO.
After all, a combination of mid-to-upper-150s heat and a much slower off-speed pitch coming out of the exact same delivery is never easy to square up.
—“Ji-hwan used to have a head full of hot air, but after you took him deep back-to-back last year, he finally woke up.”
Kang Ho-san had heard it straight from the Rhinos’ second-team catcher, Kim Kang-tae.
Hmm. Even Sim Ji-hwan performing like this…
Was this the influence of the regressor Gong Ji-hoo?
Crack!
A ball that would fall too deep for an infielder and too shallow for an outfielder—landing in that truly awkward no-man’s-land.
“Mine!”
I called it and sprinted toward the drop point.
With my back to home plate, I twisted my head at the last second to track the ball, then opened my glove skyward.
Thok.
“Out!!”
A clean basket catch.
—Waaaaaaaaah!!
Amid the roar of the crowd, I casually showed the ball and jogged back to my position.
A great defensive play isn’t complete until you act like it was nothing special.
“Whoa! Hyung! Thank you! Only you could’ve caught that!”
I raised a hand in reply to the young pitcher who had, I suspected, benefited from the positive side of a regressor’s butterfly effect.
After-sales service is important, after all.
The butterfly effect set off by the regressor Gong Ji-hoo wasn’t limited to Sim Ji-hwan’s breakout.
If anything, Sim Ji-hwan was the minor case.
The biggest change of all was, without question—
“Good. Let’s keep looking like the first-place team we are.”
—Manager Dong Sang-guk’s arrival with the Rhinos.
I was certain of it now. Actually, I’d been certain for quite a while.
If I hadn’t regressed, last year’s champions would have been the Seoul Wolves.
When a player who took home Korean Series MVP walks around saying, “I didn’t really contribute much to the team’s championship,” isn’t that the bigger deception?
Because of the regressor Gong Ji-hoo’s appearance, the Suwon Wizards claimed their first-ever title. In my personal view, that single championship rewrote the fates of both Manager Kim Tae-sik of the Wizards and Manager Dong Sang-guk of the Wolves.
That title secured Kim Tae-sik a new contract with the Wizards, while Dong Sang-guk failed to re-sign with the Wolves.
And so, through the butterfly effect, Dong Sang-guk became the Rhinos’ manager. As a welcome gift, he specifically requested me, which led to the trade. In the end, the butterfly effect always circles back to the one who started it.
“Ji-hoo.”
“…Yes?”
“How many months has it been since we became teammates?”
“A few, yeah.”
“I’m starting to be able to tell what you’re thinking just from your face.”
“What I’m thinking?”
“Yeah. Your face is pretty transparent when you’re deep in thought.”
I’d heard something similar before, somewhere.
“So what am I thinking right now?”
“Useless thoughts.”
Well, anyone could say that.
“And that expression right there is the ‘anyone could say that’ face.”
Oh.
“Hit the bullseye, didn’t I?”
“Only the last part.”
“Only the last part? So you’re saying you weren’t thinking useless thoughts?”
A global-scale meditation on the influence of a regressor. How was that useless?
If anything—
“I was contemplating a problem the entire world ought to be thinking about.”
“That’s unnecessarily grandiose.”
“How is thinking about my own influence a useless thought?”
“Oh… okay, that one’s actually not useless.”
Huh?
“A great player does need to consider the influence he has on the team.”
Slightly different topic, but sure.
“Every little thing a player like that does ends up shaping the team atmosphere, whether anyone notices or not.”
“Is that so…”
Kang Ho-san stretched out a hand and pointed at Song Han-su. Song Han-su tilted his head, then waved back.
“The spiritual pillar of the Rhinos is that guy over there—almost forty and still acting cute. Han-su hyung, right?”
“Yeah.”
Somehow that look suited a massive middle-aged man surprisingly well.
“If that guy had stayed stuck in a slump and kept the mood gloomy, would the team atmosphere still be this good?”
“Well…”
Probably not. Of course—
“Even when Han-su hyung wasn’t hitting, the team was on a winning streak, so maybe the atmosphere would’ve been fine anyway. But.”
If a winning streak had been followed by a losing streak the way it was now—
“It probably wouldn’t feel the same as it does right now.”
I nodded, agreeing with Kang Ho-san.
“The fact that the mood is still good even during a losing streak has a lot to do with that. And…”
“I played a big part in pulling Han-su hyung out of his slump.”
Kang Ho-san’s mouth curled into a grin.
“Exactly.”
“Ha. As expected of Gong Ji-hoo’s influence…”
Terrifying.
Regressors.
“No, Ji-hoo.”
“Yes?”
“That’s pure self-absorption. Do you stand in front of the mirror at home talking to yourself or something?”
“…No.”
Shouting “status window” is not self-absorption. It’s simply standard behavior for anyone who’s experienced a regression-reincarnation-possession story.
Top of the seventh.
Bases loaded.
In other words—
“You can’t walk me this time, can you?”
Irons catcher Han Seong-gon clicked his tongue after hearing me.
“Was it that obvious?”
“Extremely.”
Throughout this series, the Irons battery had been deliberately avoiding any real confrontation with me. If this had been a short postseason series, the bad Gong Ji-hoo inside me might have come out again.
But… it’s just one series in a long season.
Who would complain about free help padding their stats?
“Huu… Why did it have to be you with the bases loaded… Tsk!”
If I had to name the teams that feared me the most, the Irons and the Wolves would top the list.
Ah, the Wizards would probably be up there too.
Huu.
I took a deep breath.
I locked my eyes on the pitcher as he began his delivery. The trajectory of the incoming pitch—
Missed…
“Ball.”
I called time with the home-plate umpire. These days even a batter’s timeout had limits—same reasoning as the pitch clock.
The higher-ups in baseball were dead set on shortening game times, and the new rules this season reflected that will with brutal clarity.
I stepped out of the box and checked the scoreboard.
The score read:
Gwangju Irons 3 : 1 Daegu Rhinos
The Rhinos’ only run had come from Song Han-su’s RBI single in the first. The Irons had successfully flipped the lead.
Sim Ji-hwan had pitched well, but as a two-pitch guy he eventually took a hard hit from the Irons late. Still, he had notched another quality start. For a starter making his first full year in the big leagues, that was an outstanding performance.
Of course.
At this rate he’d take the loss, but…
Obviously I had no intention of letting Sim Ji-hwan become the losing pitcher.
“Nervous, huh? Come to think of it, you haven’t hit a home run lately either.”
Han Seong-gon needled me the moment I stepped back in. We’d gotten familiar enough that he felt free to rib me, but still—teasing someone over three games without a homer was a bit much.
“Me? I’m Gong Ji-hoo, you know.”
“…Wow. You’ve got a steel plate for a face.”
This year’s Daegu Rhinos were, if I was being a little arrogant, the finest product the regressor Gong Ji-hoo had ever created.
The moment I regressed I stripped Sim Ji-hwan of his arrogance. By leading the Suwon Wizards to a Korean Series title, I had delivered the country’s best manager, Dong Sang-guk, straight into the Rhinos’ dugout. And after the trade, I had pulled Song Han-su out of the long slump that had nearly swallowed him.
A ten-game winning streak to open the season. First place in the regular season. I could proudly say my influence on those results was considerable.
So—
“Our team can’t start falling apart this early.”
“We’re thinking the same thing over here.”
Whoosh!!
He had clearly meant to throw a fastball out of the zone.
But.
Bases loaded. A hitter he had been avoiding all series. That was more than enough to make a pitcher tighten up.
Not dead center, but a mistake that still caught the zone.
CRAAAAACK!!!
I crushed it.
The ball rocketed outward on a line. The right fielder didn’t even have time to think about moving.
Whirrr.
By the time my bat hit the ground, the ball had already cleared the fence.
First grand slam of the year?
I’ll say it again. The 2025 Daegu Rhinos were the greatest masterpiece forged by the influence of the regressor Gong Ji-hoo.
And the single greatest part of that masterpiece was, of course, the fact that I had come to the Daegu Rhinos.
At least, that’s how I saw it.
And—
—Waaaaaaaaah!!
—the fans seemed to agree.
Riding the momentum of Gong Ji-hoo’s go-ahead grand slam, the Daegu Rhinos took Game 5 against the Irons, escaping both a sweep and a four-game losing streak.
And when the Seoul Wolves lost as well, the Rhinos held on to first place by a single game, quieting the anxiety of their fans.
Which meant, of course, that the Rhinos community—true to the nature of fan communities that pivot to new topics at lightning speed—immediately found something else to obsess over.
And it wasn’t only the Rhinos fans who latched onto the new issue.
After all—
—it was the kind of story every baseball fan would salivate over.