When the Villain Returns on Monday
It was Monday again.
Ring.
It was still early morning, before lunch time, and a guest had come to Choi Seungtaek’s house.
Choi Seungtaek checked the visitor at the door and greeted him with a bright smile.
Ting ting.
“Gayoung-ah, you’re here?”
Choi Seungtaek opened the door for Park Gayoung.
“Come in! Come in!”
But Park Gayoung pushed the Choi Seungtaek who had been waiting for her right at the door and dashed straight inside.
“Eek… why are you like that? Gayoung-ah?”
“Are you okay? Is it really fine for you to be at home? Have you gone to the hospital yet?”
Park Gayoung looked at Choi Seungtaek with a face full of worry.
“Me? I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine right now. I came home late from training yesterday too.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“It’s true. I even called you yesterday. I told you I was doing all kinds of training in Seosan.”
Yet Park Gayoung, still not fully convinced, began scanning Choi Seungtaek’s body with her eyes, looking for any areas where he might have been hit.
She grabbed his jaw from side to side to check his face, then pressed hard on spots that looked like they might be sore.
“Hey, Gayoung-ah. I’m really fine, okay? You don’t have to check like that.”
“But… I’m worried.”
Yet Park Gayoung’s worry kept growing, and the sight of her carefully examining Choi Seungtaek’s every spot with such a serious face was so adorable that he simply stayed still.
“Ugh. It really doesn’t hurt anymore, huh. I wasn’t pretending back then, was I?”
‘Oh no! Did she catch me?’
Park Gayoung squinted her eyes and looked at Choi Seungtaek as she said that, and Choi Seungtaek’s stomach twisted with panic.
“Nope. How could you?”
“Back then you definitely got hit that hard.”
At the baseball stadium, cameras captured the action from every angle inside the park.
That was why, during the bench-clearing brawl, countless scenes were caught on film, and the climax—Choi Seungtaek’s wild fight scene—was captured from every direction around him.
Thanks to that, when he was hit, the video replayed from multiple angles, and since Park Gayoung had watched all of it, she decided she could fully believe Choi Seungtaek’s words.
“Seungtaek-ah, is baseball really like that? Can you really fight like that?”
“No, it’s not exactly like that. But MLB is pretty lenient. So it ended with a mild penalty.”
“Then were you the one in the wrong?”
“No. It was a little rough that day, but the other team started it first, and we jumped in after. I did get pulled into it pretty hard, though.”
Choi Seungtaek scratched his nose as he replied to Park Gayoung. The scene had been a little embarrassing, which was why he hesitated to talk about it.
“But you said you live with your mom, right? Why isn’t she here?”
“Mom? Today’s a weekday, so she went to work. She’ll come home late tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Then Park Gayoung noticed something odd and looked into Choi Seungtaek’s eyes.
“Um… but… I mean… you called me over to your house all alone?”
“Yeah. I was a little tired today, so I thought I’d rest at home. Mom went to work, so I figured you wouldn’t mind being here.”
At those words, Park Gayoung’s eyes narrowed again.
“Tired? Really? Why would the athlete suddenly feel tired?”
“Huh?”
Park Gayoung started giving Choi Seungtaek a very suspicious look.
“You’re being so forward. I didn’t think you were like that.”
“What? No, what are you talking about!”
Choi Seungtaek, realizing what she was suspecting, said in shock.
“No, Gayoung-ah. I’m not like that at all. I was training the whole day yesterday, so I’m exhausted. I need a day off too.”
“Ah~ so you mean my beauty doesn’t affect you?”
‘Crap.’
Choi Seungtaek felt instinctively that something terrible had happened. Every hair on his body stood on end and goosebumps rose.
“No, that’s not it.”
“So you called me here thinking about something lewd?”
“No way!”
Choi Seungtaek felt dizzy.
“Just kidding, Seungtaek-ah. You’re so adorable.”
Park Gayoung playfully punched him and laughed, and only then did Choi Seungtaek feel a little more at ease.
“Was it fun, Gayoung-ah?”
“Yeah. Watching you break down like that sometimes is fun.”
“Really, Gayoung-ah, you have to come over more. This week I did too much training and my body is wrecked. I need to gain weight, but training makes me lose it.”
Choi Seungtaek lifted the shirt he was still wearing.
“Look… see how skinny I am. This is supposed to be a catcher’s body? People jokingly call the catcher’s abdominal area the baseball belly because it holds stamina, but look at me. There’s nothing like that here now. My muscles are barely clinging to my bones. I need to gain weight… but I don’t know how. Weight is strength and stamina, so to hit farther and stay in the game longer I need to pack on more… that’s what worries me…”
“Whoa…”
Choi Seungtaek spoke at length, but Park Gayoung’s reply was short.
‘Oops. I talked too much. Gayoung probably isn’t interested in that stuff. I only talked about myself.’
Park Gayoung stared at Choi Seungtaek blankly.
“Ah! Sorry, Gayoung-ah. I only talked about myself?”
“Whoa…”
“Huh?”
Park Gayoung stared at his body blankly.
“Huh? Gayoung-ah? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Um… um… ah… um… I’ve never seen a guy’s body up close like this before. Whoa… it looks like I’m looking at a model or something. Can I touch you a little?”
Choi Seungtaek felt a little flustered by Park Gayoung’s eyes that seemed entranced.
Right now Choi Seungtaek’s body was densely packed with lean muscle, a physique more appealing to women than men.
So he himself felt he was lacking, but to Park Gayoung it was an enormous attraction point.
“You touched enough earlier, right?”
“No. Come on. I mean, you touched over the clothes earlier.”
Park Gayoung began gently stroking Choi Seungtaek’s body as if she had been hypnotized, and Choi Seungtaek froze from her touch.
“Whoa… it’s soft but firm. That’s so interesting.”
“I… I really need to gain weight.”
“Huh…? Is that really necessary? Your body is beautiful right now.”
The atmosphere between them grew strange, and Choi Seungtaek, feeling something odd from his body, hurriedly sat on the couch.
“Where are you going! Why are you sitting?”
“Uh… I thought I should sit?”
Park Gayoung sat right beside him, chasing after him.
“So why are you sitting?”
“Because of you.”
“Ah! So that’s why.”
As Choi Seungtaek started shrinking, Park Gayoung stood up, then sat on his lap while still looking at him.
“G-Gayoung-ah? Why are you suddenly sitting on me like this?”
“Then I can ask the question I didn’t really want to earlier, right?”
“Nope.”
Park Gayoung got closer and closer to Choi Seungtaek, and in the strange atmosphere they naturally embraced each other.
***
“Seungtaek-ah, your body really looks sturdy.”
“Yeah? Gayoung-ah, yours is so soft.”
“What?”
After spending time with Park Gayoung, Choi Seungtaek gave a slightly awkward smile.
“But then, what happened to the other players who fought you? Were they okay?”
Choi Seungtaek recalled the situation with Gangnam Parrots while lying down.
“Um… there was one player who just blacked out for a moment, but the foreign player I hit got a little fracture in his nose and is out for about three weeks.”
“If it’s three weeks out, that’s a long time.”
“Three weeks out for a foreign player is pretty serious!”
Choi Seungtaek told the truth, and at the same time the two foreign players from MacPies who had been out three weeks flashed through his mind, making his stomach twist a little.
“So you really are sturdy, huh. Good thing. Being sturdy is the best! Did you eat healthy to stay like this?”
At that moment, various thoughts raced through Choi Seungtaek’s head.
‘Sturdy, no injuries. The strength the System gave me. Too good, even giving penalty. A body without injuries.’
Choi Seungtaek seriously began rethinking Park Gayoung’s words.
‘Wait a second. So I’ve been a body-only player all this time and acting like Zhuge Liang for nothing? It’s important to use your head, but maybe I should have used my body more aggressively?’
To get stronger, he should have worked harder like now, but to win he shouldn’t have held back any means. Until now Choi Seungtaek had been far too proper.
‘Even in a way that doesn’t break the rules, there’s a way to do things dirty. Especially with an MLB-style approach, there are even more options.’
MacPies had received a lot of criticism because of Choi Seungtaek’s aggressive defensive shifts. But when the MLB team analyst said through an interview that it was MLB-style, those criticisms quickly faded.
‘And the important element is Manager Han Geunseong. The manager is a pretty old-school type. Sometimes that’s actually an advantage. He loves to stir up all kinds of mental games. He tells batters to wait for the pitch, which disrupts the opponent pitcher’s concentration. He also often deliberately replaces batters to break timing.’
If I deliberately mess with the opposing pitcher? He would definitely ignore it.
Choi Seungtaek’s mind raced even faster.
‘So if I use my abilities more aggressively?’
Choi Seungtaek recalled the techniques he had already shown before.
‘The home-plate collision rule, bench-clearing brawl, endless first-base obstruction, hitting the opposing pitcher.’
Suddenly countless dirty techniques flashed through Choi Seungtaek’s head. Among them were ways to break unwritten rules that are so sensitive they might appear in an MLB book.
“Seungtaek-ah!”
“Huh?”
Choi Seungtaek, lost in thought, jumped when Park Gayoung called him.
“What were you thinking about so intensely? I was calling you, the prettiest girl, and you didn’t even hear?”
“Haha… that’s it.”
“You looked exactly like the villain in the movie just now.”
“The villain?”
“Yeah. Just now you were definitely planning some evil scheme.”
Choi Seungtaek told the truth after hearing Park Gayoung’s words.
“Correct. Today I’ll just be the villain.”
“Kyahaha.”
Choi Seungtaek pulled Park Gayoung into his arms at the same time as he said that.