You're Right, and You're Also Right (1)
"How's your side going?"
"About the same. Song-ah says she doesn't really care either way, Hyun-ah-sunbae says both options are terrible, and Se-yeon says they're both great."
"Well, at least it doesn't sound like they've been fighting over the difference of opinion."
Two men who had made a careless decision based on careless thinking. Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk did nothing but sigh at each other.
"What was the deadline for this again?"
"We have to answer within a week."
Under normal circumstances that would have seemed like plenty of time, but with things having turned out this way, even a week was starting to feel impossibly short.
"...Look, whatever you pick, you're not the one who has to fight it out, so can't you just pick one and get it over with first? Then if we say we only went with the other side because you already took ours, that might actually work as an excuse."
"Did you forget our original promise to reach out to the fans with sincerity? Besides, the moment word gets out that I decided, Ye-eun or Min-ah will never let me hear the end of it."
The first half was the excuse; the second half was the truth.
Min-ah is Kang Min-hyuk's little sister and Kim Se-yeon's friend, so chewing him out would hardly be a stretch for her. And Ye-eun isn't just close with Lim Song-ah—she keeps up a friendly rapport with Jung Hyun-ah-sunbae too. If nothing else, she'd have more than enough ways to make his life annoyingly difficult.
I ignored the loyalty-free coward who couldn't summon the tiniest shred of resolve for his friend's sake, and sank into anguished contemplation alongside my sighs over how to untangle this mess.
So, in the beginning, it had all felt pretty lighthearted. Honestly, which mascot is better is the kind of question people meme-war over online—was it actually important enough to matter?
Ye-eun and Min-ah were both practical people, so I figured nothing serious would come of it.
"I'm telling you, Tani's design just looks weird no matter how you see it? Haven't you seen the kind of perverts it's been attracting online?"
"Or maybe it's so well-made that the perverts latched onto it for entirely secondary reasons? Meanwhile, Hanni is just straight-up terrifying to look at."
They were fighting over it far harder than I'd anticipated.
"Kim Yi-seon, what do you think? Hanni makes more sense as a mascot, right?"
"From where I'm standing, Tani looks better to me—don't you think so too, oppa?"
And the guy who'd asked in the first place kept getting dragged right into the middle of it.
Even now, with the argument showing no sign of resolving itself, they'd both come charging at me and latched on, one arm each, clinging for dear life.
Ye-eun was oh-so-casually wrapping my arm around her waist, her hand drifting just a little lower...
Min-ah kept pressing her chest insistently against my arm while murmuring sweetly into my ear...
Could you two please not do this in broad daylight? And over something as trivial as which mascot is better, of all things?
But my instincts—honed by now spending quite a lot of time with both Ye-eun and Min-ah—were whispering to me loud and clear.
The moment I cut this argument off with some wishy-washy half-measure and picked a side, the other one was going to sulk on a historic, once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-seen-again scale, and I'd suffer for it enormously.
So the best move was clearly to resolve things the way the wise old statesman would—with a firm "you're right, and you're also right"—except
"Like I said, we're better off getting rid of that freak-magnet mascot?"
"Only a pervert would see it as a pervert thing, wouldn't you say? Personally, I think the creepy one that makes kids cry is the one that should disappear?"
How was I supposed to deliver that kind of verdict with these two going at each other this hard?
When both sides fight this fiercely, the natural move is to find neutral territory. Even setting that aside, the standoff was dragging on longer than it should have, and with me physically wedged in the middle, I had a feeling my presence would only make things worse.
So this time I went looking for Seo-hee-noona and asked for her opinion. Normally I avoided it—she had her actual job as team president, and being seen hanging around the players too much could spark the wrong kind of rumors—but surely a handful of visits like this wouldn't hurt.
"Yi-seon, did you miss me that much? Should I just move my office over to the second-team facility? There's so much talk about contactless and remote work these days anyway, moving wouldn't be a problem."
Correction. I might be fine, but noona was clearly not fine.
Her words may have carried the gravitational pull of an older woman, but when she said them while sitting on my lap and rubbing her cheek against my chest, the whole thing felt less like gravitas and more like a kid whining for attention.
She was cute enough to look at, though, so I let it slide.
"So what does our Yi-seon need today? Just say the word. Noona will get you anything."
"When you put it that way, it sounds like I'm someone who only comes to see you when I want something."
It wasn't as if I only visited noona with a purpose in mind. Sometimes I came just because I missed her, or because I always did.
But there was Seo-hee-noona, wearing an expression that said she knew exactly what I was up to no matter how I danced around it, urging me to just spit it out.
And then she went beyond merely sitting on my lap—turning to face me directly, pressing in so close that her chest and stomach were flush against mine...
If I let this go on, the mood might turn into something very strange indeed. Covering Seo-hee-noona with both my arms—she was in a state that would have caused an absolutely catastrophic scene if any other player or staff member walked in—I had no choice but to murmur softly into her ear.
"Noona... could you maybe step in and mediate between the two of them?"
These days, around me at least, she acted so cutesy you'd forget who was the elder. But when she was on the clock, she was still every bit the charismatic boss.
Who could ever imagine that behind that coolly composed face, her head was filled with nothing but ugh, this is exhausting and I miss Yi-seon?
Which meant maybe Ye-eun and Min-ah would give noona's opinion some genuine weight too. Or failing that, if she simply picked one side and settled it by a two-to-one majority, they'd be indignant—but maybe they'd accept it.
"Uh... what?"
But the atmosphere changed.
Seo-hee-noona, who until a second ago had been clinging to me so tightly I'd begun to suspect ulterior motives, froze the moment she heard my request and slowly, slowly peeled herself away from my body.
Her pupils trembled faintly with distress, and her mouth kept opening and closing as she fumbled for words. Watching her, I felt that she was cute— no, not cute. Worried. I was worried.
"Noona, what's wrong? Is something the matter?"
When I pulled her into a hug and patted her back as if to tell her to breathe, the tension eased a little at last.
Then, as though steeling herself, she opened her mouth.
"Yi-seon."
"Yes, noona."
"It's... it's an embarrassing thing to admit, but I'll be honest with you. Ye-eun and Min-ah... they scare me too."
Eyes locked with mine, Seo-hee-noona looked exactly like a daughter-in-law pleading her terror of a ferocious mother-in-law.
...Yeah. Those two definitely ran on the intense side.
And so, with intervention by a third party rendered completely impossible, I found myself cornered in the worst-case scenario: I alone would have to choose one of the two.
The fan service angle, the promotional strategy—those had been scrubbed from my brain ages ago. Ye-eun or Min-ah looked on the verge of genuine disappointment, and I was worried about fan service?
How was I supposed to handle this? Which choice would let me wrap things up with the least fallout? Pick Hanni and console Min-ah? Pick Tani and console Ye-eun?
This was only the second time in my life I'd faced a riddle as unsolvable as who do you love more, Mom or Dad. (The other one was when Ye-eun hit me with me or baseball. Ye-eun eventually conceded a move on that one.)
Hoping someone might have even a sliver of good advice, I asked the other married-veteran players and coaches on the team too.
"Huh? Um... hard to say? If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't have gotten kicked out of the house last time I went on a fishing trip, now would I?"
"Ah... so that's why my wife's been asking me lately which mascot I think is better..."
"Hey now! You keep that quiet from the baby of the team, you hear?"
"Oh, right, right."
I had the distinct feeling I'd just overheard something deeply strange.
Anyway, these useless married men remained as incapable of good advice as ever. Though I suppose it made sense. Weren't most of the married starters who signed with the Seoul Twins choosing the club specifically so their wives and families could live in Seoul?
Charitably, you'd say they adore their wives. Less charitably, they were poor souls whose domestic power balances had tilted entirely toward the Mrs. Not that I was in any position to judge.
But seriously, how did not one single person have a useful opinion? The only suggestion that had even tempted me was just run to the PR team and ask them to change the plan—until another senior shot it down with the very reasonable deduction that the moment the question's already framed as either A or B, pulling a stunt like that would only make them angrier.
And even beyond that, the campaign was already in full swing, and Hanni and Tani dolls were reportedly flying off the shelves. How was any of this supposed to be walked back?
Day by day, the event's launch crept closer, and Kang Min-hyuk slithered out like an eel with the cheap move of whatever you pick, I'll back the other one. Kang Min-hyuk, if you ever have a fight with your wife, I am never helping you. Mark my words.
Just as the pressure kept mounting, no help arrived from anywhere, and I was starting to wonder if this whole mess would only end when one of the two blew up at me beyond all repair—
"Friend, is something the matter? I heard from Hanni that it was some kind of family trouble."
Kim Yi-seon's pick for the finest father on the entire Seoul Twins roster: Paulo had come to see me.
"Ha ha ha! That is quite the predicament."
"It really is. I don't quite understand why they got so invested all of a sudden, but from where I'm standing, this is two hundred percent genuine."
The moment I laid out my exact circumstances, Paulo roared with laughter, then—apparently finding it fascinating—listened to every last detail with remarkable thoroughness. How thorough? He actually tried to press me for a detailed account of what the atmosphere had felt like when the two of them were at each other's throats.
Something about that level of diligence felt almost like consulting a specialist, and it built my confidence. If it was Paulo, I genuinely believed he might hand me the key to breaking through this situation. My expectations climbed.
"So, Paulo. Which mascot should I pick?"
"The mascot? Hmm. I could not say, friend."
But Paulo offered not the slightest hint of a solution.
"Paulo. Did you really just come here to listen and laugh?"
You're going to belly-laugh like some Mexican character out of an American cartoon and then just move on without a single solution? That's not like you, Paulo.
Granted, the man had a severe case of homesickness and a whole family to think about, but he was a serious, good person at heart.
"But this is a question to which no answer exists, no? Am I wrong?"
"Sure. Fair enough. But if even you don't have an answer, Paulo, then I have no idea how this is supposed to be solved. There's no one left to ask."
Senior players, club staff, Seo-hee-noona, and now even Paulo—none of it had produced an answer. Who was I supposed to turn to next? The high school baseball kids? The national team seniors? Or... my father-in-law? Or mother-in-law?
No. Absolutely not the last one. While I was agonizing over who my next source of wisdom might be, Paulo burst out in another hearty round of hahaha's and said:
"Of course there is no one to ask. Ask anyone you like—the correct answer does not exist."
"So what, I should just give up and start planning how to console whichever one I don't pick?"
I was starting to get irritated. Kind a man as Paulo was, wasn't this flat-out mocking me to my face?
"Mm. Young friend. Would you care to hear an old story of mine?"
But then Paulo wiped the smile clean off his face, and with a grave expression, changed the entire tenor of the room.
"As I mentioned before, I too have three wives. Camila, Isadora, Vera. Women I love enough to stake my very soul on."
Paulo smiled briefly at the sound of their names, then looked me dead in the eye and posed a single question.
"And each of them is confident that she loves me in return. But, young friend—my relationship with each of my wives may be as it is, but can the same be said of their relationships with one another?"
And at that question, I flinched. It stung.
"...No. I suppose it wasn't."
"Exactly. My wives and I loved one another dearly, but the wives themselves were never particularly close. In fact, Camila and Vera once came to actual blows—pulling each other's hair, the whole affair."
Paulo said it lightly, as if it were all water under the bridge.
"There was a day, you see, when I was cooking chili con carne at home. Isadora insisted it tasted best with a generous helping of chile ancho, while Vera declared that a hearty dose of chile guajillo was what gave the dish its soul. And then the two of them fought over which version was better for an entire month—using me as the taste tester, mind you. Do you follow?"
Something about that story felt awfully familiar. Paulo himself seemed to find the memory ridiculous, chuckling under his breath as he told it.
"So. Do you know how I settled it in the end?"
"How did you?"
"I didn't. It ended only after I stuffed myself with both versions of chili con carne at every single meal until I made myself sick."
It was, essentially, another way of saying there was no answer. But between the way Paulo told the story and the hints threaded through it, I felt like I finally understood what he was driving at.
"Paulo. So what you're saying is... my choice itself isn't what matters?"
"That is it, friend. Clever as ever, you are. What does some damned chili matter, or a ridiculous-looking mascot? The truth is simply that they don't get along well with each other. And they are each of them looking at you, and holding it in, and getting by."
With a benevolent smile, Paulo distilled the entire lesson into a single sentence for me.
"Your task, my friend, is not to choose. It is to convey your heart."