A Proposal That Whips Up a Storm

"Pretty romantic, isn't it?"

"Shut it."

Lee Ye-eun's studio apartment, where she'd been waiting for Kim Yi-seon to come home like always. One particular tenant she wasn't especially fond of was sitting beside her, picking at her nerves with delicate little jabs.

'──♪♬~!!'

That one tenant wasn't the only problem, either — her smartphone showed no intention of ever stopping its buzzing under the weight of countless messages. At this rate, it was getting more traffic than when she'd had the alerts on Kim Yi-seon's official account turned on.

Ye-eun did her best to cool the heat flooding her face and began a slow, deliberate exercise in mind control.

Right. I already knew this was coming.

Kim Yi-seon had apparently done his earnest best to keep it hushed, wandering around mumbling about it — but did he really think he could fool Lee Ye-eun's eyes? Impossible.

Setting aside his suspicious behavior in general, Ye-eun had gotten the full story straight from the players' wives she'd consulted with, so verifying that level of information came as naturally as breathing, whether she intended it or not.

She'd honestly half-hoped someone like Lee Seung-kwon or Kang Min-hyuk would walk off with the All-Star MVP instead, so that no one she knew would end up in the spotlight like this, but...

Anyway. I'm simply facing a fact I already knew. There is zero reason to be surprised.

Breathe in... breathe out... Yeah. Framing it like that actually calms me down a litt—

"Oh, the internet reactions are wild too. Let's see... 'If I were her, I'd be too embarrassed to leave the house for a month.' Hmm... fair point, honestly. What about you — think you'll be housebound for a while? Should I handle the grocery runs from now on?"

"Shut your mouth, Kang Min-ah!"

Calm down, my foot. She knew it, and that was exactly why that wicked girl was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠needling her with such obvious relish.

And why didn't I stop her, you ask? Well — Kim Yi-seon had been so thrilled about the whole thing that she'd known every detail in advance, and how was she supposed to look him in the eye and tell him to call it off?

There was the unpleasant feeling of being surveilled at every turn, sure — but he'd clearly been acting out of his own consideration for her, and it felt a little too cruel to snap stop it at him for that.

Kim Yi-seon acted like he wasn't the type, but he was secretly sensitive. If she told him to knock it off because it embarrassed her, he'd probably mope around in a depressed funk for a week. It would be kind of adorable, admittedly, but you don't do that to a guy in the middle of a red-hot season.

"Still, I'm jealous. All the more because I know that idiot means every word of it."

And above all, that was the real reason she hadn't been able to stop any of it — because it was, exactly as Kang Min-ah said, genuinely, sincerely Kim Yi-seon's whole heart.

"In my case, my age is the issue, so it probably won't be possible until the year after next... but it makes me think I'd like to hear that kind of sincerity for myself, properly."

It wasn't that Kim Yi-seon was bad at expressing himself — quite the opposite, he clung to Ye-eun so constantly it was a problem — but that particular brand of solemn devotion wasn't something he said often.

So she hadn't been able to stop him. If she'd demanded that he only say those words when the two of them were alone because she already knew everything, then it would have stopped being that rare, deeply earnest heart and become just another ordinary love confession, the kind he handed out daily.

"Wow, that's kind of a harsh take. Can we sue? 'He only gets a pass because he's Kim Yi-seon — any ordinary man pulling that proposal would've had me seriously checking Han River water temperatures.' As if Seon oppa's heartfelt confession were some shameful, embarrassing act—"

"Shut it, Kang Min-ah."

...Though embarrassed was, in fact, exactly what she was.

The main culprit behind this entire incident came home with an utterly shameless look on his face. It had been about an hour since the award ceremony in the club's conference room, which meant covering that distance this fast could only mean he'd rushed back as quickly as humanly possible.

And yet Ye-eun couldn't shake the feeling that she'd have preferred he walk a little slower. She still hadn't clawed her way out of the afterglow of that embarrassment. She couldn't even look at her phone right now — she didn't trust herself to check her messages yet.

For all the massive psychological damage she'd taken, though, she found she couldn't quite work up any real anger at Kim Yi-seon.

That had been true before ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he even arrived — the moment he opened the door and walked in, her anger, which hadn't existed to begin with, simply evaporated. The look on his face practically wagged an invisible tail at full speed: 'I did good, didn't I?'

The instant she saw it, aigoo, that's our boy for you rose up alongside an actual thought of he's cute — which confirmed it. Terminal. Hopelessly terminal.

"Welcome home?"

"Yeah...!"

He was clearly doing his best to suppress his emotions, and it was failing spectacularly. His hands wouldn't stay still — fidgeting, drifting toward the pocket inside his jacket, stopping short, twitching back — and the fact that something was in there radiated off him like heat.

"Did you... see the ceremony?"

"I did. Every word you said, too."

He kept sneaking glances at her expression, and honestly, for a man built like a telephone pole, why was he hunching like that? Her face obviously wasn't radiating sunshine, so he was hovering there, a little spooked.

He'd probably describe it as her being expressionless. And yes, she would have preferred to receive him with a smile — but the embarrassment was embarrassment, and this was her limit. He'd just have to understand.

After a moment of studying her face, Kim Yi-seon finally seemed to steel himself. He cast off his groveling posture and said one thing.

"Ye-eun."

"What."

He cleared his throat, twice, and drew the ring box from his inner pocket.

"Will you marry me?"

Yeah. Imagine ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if he'd just said this, the two of us alone somewhere with a nice atmosphere.

She didn't need some tearjerker speech or a grand production. He was never going to be good at that stuff anyway, and she hadn't expected much of him.

Who on earth breathed that ridiculous idea into him?

"...Yeah."

Not that she disliked this moment. Even now, drawing out that single short answer, her voice had trembled, just slightly.

"...I've always told you not to apologize, but just for today, I'll say it. I'm sorry. Our marriage was never something that should've been settled with a single sheet of paper. I should have been the one to find a little more courage."

That was my doing, though. I pushed it through. She'd had the pretense of "managing Kim Yi-seon," sure, but really — she'd wanted the title of Kim Yi-seon's wife so badly she'd forced the issue.

And yet this blockheaded man was apologizing even for that, as if it were his own fault. And when he did that, she couldn't even whine at him about how embarrassed she'd been.

As she calmed the swelling in her chest, Kim Yi-seon opened the box and showed her the ring —

"...It's beautiful."

"Right? I heard an engagement ring should be worth three months' salary, so I really did my homework picking it out."

...Hold on. Three months of Kim Yi-seon's salary. His annual pay is the league minimum, call it eighty million won, and players get it split over ten months with two off-season months excluded, so...

"Twenty-four million won?! On ONE ring?!"

"What of it? I'm rich, I told you."

"Still! You can't just burn money like—"

"But it's pretty, isn't it?"

It was, undeniably, beautiful. None of the usual catastrophe you'd expect from handing a man a budget and saying pick me a ring. And it wasn't one of those safe, default solitaires that a sales clerk swears is their bestseller, either — it had clearly been chosen to her own taste.

"Who helped you pick it?"

"I picked it."

She asked if anyone had assisted, and he claimed he chose it himself. Liar. This was a man who couldn't dress himself to save his life, who wore only clothes she'd bought him, who couldn't even choose his own haircut so she tagged along to the barbershop every single time. That man picked out a ring?

"I don't know a thing about fashion or accessories. But I know exactly what Lee Ye-eun likes. I've seen the rings you've called pretty before, and your earrings, your necklaces — as many times as I wanted. So I picked the closest thing to those."

He said it in that matter-of-fact tone, and then, slowly, slid the engagement ring onto her finger.

It fit perfectly.

"There isn't a single fact about you I've ever forgotten. Remember? You reminded me about your mother's birthday, because I'd forgotten it while remembering my own mother's."

"Lucky you."

The words came out sour and bristly instead of sweet. But her eyes wouldn't leave the ring. Not because it was expensive, and not because it was pretty.

"It really suits you."

Because the Kim Yi-seon grinning down at her right now was a genuinely good sight to see.

"...Come here."

"Hm?"

So she spread both arms wide — the universal posture for hold me.

"How long are you planning to stand there in the entryway? Your wife's husband just came home from work, and she doesn't even get a welcome-hug?"

Only then did Kim Yi-seon lunge at her with the same triumphant swagger he'd had when he'd first thrown open the door, sweeping her up and scattering kiss-marks across every inch of her he could reach.

Yeah. As long as you're happy, that's all that matters. With that thought, Lee Ye-eun decided to let this whole incident slide.

"Oh, right — speaking of which, what about Min-ah and Seo-hee unnie? When are you planning to propose to them?"

"...I'll think about it a little more."

"Hmm... Min-ah can't be until the year after next... so Seo-hee unnie at this year's year-end awards, and Min-ah at next year's ceremony — that timing would be perfect."

After all, she refused to be the only one dragged through this.

Kim Yi-seon's audacious(?) proposal drew out every imaginable kind of reaction. The most reasonable of them belonged to the same family as what Lee ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ye-eun had felt at first.

In other words — the camp that had felt the empathy-pain stat hit them full force.

Word even made the rounds that the senior players who'd originally recommended it as a great idea had watched it happen and gone, 'Ah... this might have been a bit much.' Under normal circumstances, that would probably have been the majority opinion.

But as it turned out, an entirely different take had surged even larger.

Well — he'd already administered the vaccine in massive doses long ago. This was the man whose built-in interview macros ran nonstop: the moment he stumbled mid-answer, I love you; when a game had been rough, thank you; when asked who he was grateful to, a little bit about the fans and then straight to his girlfriend.

Adding one more proposal at this point wasn't news. If anything, plenty of people watched the public proposal happen and simply moved on — yep, that's Kim Yi-seon for you.

Kim Yi-seon's parents and Lee Ye-eun's parents, for their part, reportedly exchanged nothing more than 'Those two are at it again.' and 'Just leave them be, they clearly adore each other,' before heading out to dinner together as couples. Clearly, nobody in his circle had batted an eye either.

But there did exist a handful of people whose reactions fell outside both categories — and the most representative among them was...

"Hey, Han. So you're telling me the woman the rookie just proposed to is this person here?"

"That's right, Walker. Didn't you see her at spring camp?"

"I only barely made it to camp at the tail end, on account of my contract. And even then the rookie was busy playing in the Okinawa league, so I hardly saw his face — how was I supposed to have seen his fiancée?"

It was Walker Landon, the Twins' foreign pitcher, who rather considered himself a good friend of Kim Yi-seon's. He stared at the photos the interpreter had shown him with unmistakable fascination.

Walker had been so relentlessly curious about the whole affair that the interpreter had gone out of his way to get Kim Yi-seon's permission before showing him the pictures.

Public attention did them no particular good, so the two women simply weren't paraded at official events — but neither Lee Ye-eun nor Kang Min-ah was any kind of secret, so the permission came easily.

Photos, after all, were nothing new. There had been that documentary-style business back in high school, and they showed up constantly in fan photos and footage — a quick internet search would turn them up in seconds.

"No question about it — the rookie's got every reason to lose his head. But this is a different woman from the one I saw before, no?"

And there it was — the part where Walker's reaction to this proposal diverged from everyone else's. He'd thought, quite plainly, 'Ah, so he's finally marrying that young lady I saw back then.' Instead, everyone kept talking about entirely different women, and something about it didn't sit right.

"The one you saw before? Did you see him with yet another woman? He does have one more girlfriend, I've heard — though since she's still a student, she's not yet of marriageable age."

"A student? Then there's no problem there... hold on. The rookie's a young'un too, isn't he. Right. You wouldn't happen to have a photo of that one as well?"

That woman from back then. He'd never once taken her for a student. She'd been dressed like a full-blown career woman.

But then, if she was a student, that tracked too. He hesitated to say it out loud — he'd get called a racist — but East Asians all looked so young that reading their age was genuinely difficult.

And the photo he was shown...

"Hmm... a pretty thing, this one. But..."

"Is something the matter, Walker?"

Among the photos the interpreter showed him was one of a long-haired girl with a rather cool, composed face, arm in arm with the rookie.

Walker studied it several times over.

"Walker. That girl isn't just Player Kim Yi-seon's girlfriend — she is also the younger sister of Player Kang Min-hyuk. Kindly do not entertain any thought of behaving disrespectfully toward her."

"The hell kind of talk is that? I'll swear on my career as Grill Master of my own household — I wouldn't dream of being rude to a teammate's family. I may be a Black man, but—"

"I know, Walker. That is precisely why I'm telling you to be careful."

The interpreter had gone pale at whatever was brewing behind Walker's eyes and rushed out the warning. But what Walker was actually turning over in his head lay in a completely different direction.

"Just asking, mind you — does the rookie have any fiancées besides those two?"

"Both of these ladies visited camp last spring, so every player knows their faces — that much I do know. Whether he has any further girlfriends is his private business, and I have no idea."

A sharp suspicion took root in Walker. That woman. For someone with no official connection, she'd walked into club facilities awfully boldly, hadn't she? If the club didn't know her, could anyone just stroll in like that?

Chewing on that thought, Walker kept pressing the interpreter.

"Then tell me — does the club have any staff who fit this description? East Asian ages are hard to pin down, but... probably around my age or a touch younger. Definitely not somebody who works at the second-division dorm, not often seen at the first-team training facility either, but someone with free access to the second-division facilities. What kind of employee is that?"

"Walker, no such strange employee exists. If we're being precise... she's not an employee, but if you're looking for a woman in her twenties, there's the club president."

"The president?"

The interpreter kept explaining this and that, but none of it reached Walker's ears anymore.

In that very instant, Walker whipped out his phone, fed Seoul Twins President through his translation app into Korean, and punched it into the search bar of a Korean portal site.

"Walker, why on earth are you looking that u— Walker?"

"Oh. Lord have mercy."

So this rookie. He'd known already that beneath that pretty boy-band face the kid was all man, but—

"Well, damn. That's kind of impressive?"

And the search results came back absolutely stuffed with photographs of the very woman Walker had seen that day.