In Times of Chaos, the Sycophant Emerges
Kim Yi-seon cranked his wariness up to maximum.
Ever since his relationship with Seo-hee had become half-public knowledge, more than a few people had been quietly feeling him out, watching for an angle. And the man now approaching him reeked of exactly that.
"Catch, you say? The pitchers usually do that among ourselves."
So, refuse him. Cleanly. Getting wishy-washy about it — well, we're on the same team, and we'll be seeing each other around — was not an option.
But the guy just flashed an awkward smile and, embarrassed as he seemed, showed no sign of backing off. If anything, he clung harder.
"We've got an odd number out, so the groups don't work. I still don't know many people here, so I ended up on my own."
"Then why not throw with one of the coaches?"
"Come on, you help out the faces you know. Classmates help classmates, right?"
Classmates?
"You don't remember, huh? Well, I guess you were busy enough trying to establish yourself in the first team. Signed with the club, skipped rookie camp entirely, got called straight up to the national team."
The man — who by any measure looked a little too old to be his classmate — nodded along as if he understood perfectly.
Even if you chalked the prematurely lined face up to looking older than his years, the whole vibe around him was nothing like a fresh high-school draftee's. Where exactly did 'classmate' come into it?
He must have caught the doubt in Yi-seon's eyes, because he launched straight into a self-introduction.
"Go Hyeong-jun. Same draft class as you — 2020. Second rounder, technically, so with Min-hyuk here too, I can't even brag about being the second-best of our class."
Go Hyeong-jun laughed breezily, playing the old friend and calling names like they went way back. Go Hyeong-jun... Go Hyeong-jun, huh.
"He came in through the early draft. Not exactly a senior, but he's older than us, so call him hyung — and for the love of god, don't go off at him like you usually do."
Kang Min-hyuk murmured this under his breath, close to Yi-seon's ear.
I'd have remembered on my own even if you hadn't told me, you punk. And who was watching, exactly, that made it look like he went around badmouthing people and doing whatever he pleased? He was extremely well-mannered with hyungs and elders, thank you very much.
It was just that this particular man failed to qualify for that courtesy.
No matter that he was a classmate, an older hyung — any politeness was wasted on a political animal like this, one brazen enough to try using Yi-seon as a backdoor to Seo-hee—
"Oh, so that's the two-handed glove? The swap mechanism's easier to work than I expected."
Utterly indifferent to Yi-seon's icy reception, Go Hyeong-jun had already moved on to inspecting his glove.
He hadn't actually touched it, sure — but peering over someone's personal equipment uninvited like that? Yi-seon's mood soured fast.
"What exactly are you doing right now?"
Acting like we're best friends, constantly crossing the line every time he glances at something? Infuriating.
But Go Hyeong-jun retreated smoothly, wearing a suitably chastened look, and then said something unexpected.
"Sorry. I'm really into glove break-in methods, so I was trying to see how you work yours. And from the look of it, you don't use any outside tricks — you just wear it and train the leather in through play, right? Probably... mostly catch."
...How did he know that?
Player gloves were all expensive, but two-handed gloves were in another league. They were produced in tiny numbers, and their very structure made them harder to reinforce than ordinary gloves.
So even with a brand-new glove, Yi-seon couldn't do what other players did — bake it in with heat or crush it under physical pressure. Instead, he had to jam the stiff, unyielding leather straight onto his hands and break it in the hard way: by wearing it through practice.
It gave the most reliable results, and there was a reason players rarely used the method.
A glove was, in a sense, a consumable. Every time you swapped in a new one or prepped a backup, you'd have to go through the whole grueling process all over again — it took ages, and until it was done, the stiff leather sat on your hand in this peculiar, maddening way.
And Yi-seon had to break his in for both hands, which doubled the misery. Yet this man had sized it all up at a glance.
"It's the durability, isn't it? I suppose sourcing a two-handed glove is a chore in itself. Then I know a great method — want me to share? It's not something normally used on gloves, but there's a technique leather craftsmen and hobbyists swear by—"
And so, before he knew it, Yi-seon found himself hanging on Go Hyeong-jun's every word.
Kang Min-ah had lately been sensing a threat of the gravest order.
She had always known Kim Yi-seon was irresponsible and lived far too comfortably for his own good — but no, her alarm wasn't because he'd been driving the van he'd won as an All-Star MVP bonus all over the countryside on joyrides. She would have liked to put a stop to that, too, privately.
Nor was it because a man whose actual job kept him busiest of anyone had been fussing over her GED studies like the family of a college entrance exam student, fluttering about at every turn. She'd have preferred he tone that down as well.
No — the crisis she felt now came from something else: Kim Yi-seon's daily-life stories had, somewhere along the line, started to smell off.
"So this time, Hyeong-jun hyung and I are planning to go to a leather goods specialist together, and—"
Hyeong-jun hyung this, Hyeong-jun hyung that, the wretch.
He'd called plenty of people hyung before, and as far as she knew he'd gotten along passably with the seniors back in his school baseball days. But this time was very different.
He had never been this giddy about it, chirping hyung this and hyung that and volunteering the story to her unprompted.
She'd asked Lee Ye-eun, trying to figure out what manner of man this was, and Ye-eun's answer had been:
"Honestly? From what I hear, he's some draft classmate of Kim Yi-seon's. You're not curious about high school or college baseball anecdotes, I'm guessing... As for his private life, I have no idea. Kim Yi-seon kept bringing him up lately, so I checked his socials too, and there was nothing much."
Even trawling his social media turned up almost nothing about his personal life — only stories about his high school and college days, or his minor-league life after joining the Twins, and even those were all about the group rather than himself.
Page after page of posts about so-and-so's hyung, so-and-so's little brother, that kind of content and nothing else.
Lee Ye-eun — the great Lee Ye-eun, of all people — could not deduce a single thing about the man's tastes or character. And if she couldn't read him, then short of the man himself or his own family, it was fair to say nobody on earth had the faintest grasp of his true nature.
But Ye-eun had brushed it off, saying you didn't need to know a man's personality to know his type — he seemed like the sort who'd be no help to Kim Yi-seon, but no danger to him either.
However you looked at it, something was wrong. Kang Min-ah's instincts were screaming a warning: that man must be peeled away from Kim Yi-seon immediately.
And what had hardened that warning into conviction was this:
"Hyeong-jun hyung might come across that way a little, I'll admit. But Min-ah, he really is a good man. It's just that some of what he says and does lends itself to misunderstanding—"
Good heavens. Kang Min-hyuk had said that.
Kang Min-ah trusted everyone in the world except two men — Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk, her doofus-and-doomsday duo of unreliable judges of character. The fact that those two's opinions aligned so emphatically on this man functioned as a critical warning signal.
How on earth do I dig out that creature's true nature, and how do I quarantine him from Yi-seon...?
Thud, thud, thud—
"Yes, come in."
As she sat deep in thought, a knock sounded at the door, and in came Kim Yi-seon. He had his hands hidden behind his back, then brought them forward with practiced ease.
"Ta-da! Min-ah, these are for you."
Kim Yi-seon held out the flowers with his signature goofy grin. Min-ah had never been particularly fond of flowers — impractical things, in her view — so a gift like this felt a little strange.
But Kim Yi-seon, seemingly aware of exactly how she felt, added something on his own.
"Saying 'I love you' with just words felt like it was getting a bit stale lately. So I thought I'd switch it up with flowers. What do you think?"
He shot a tentative glance her way, then produced something genuinely surprising.
"I didn't even know what those flowers were called — turns out they're hydrangeas. When I picked them, the florist told me they weren't great as a gift. Apparently the flower language is something like 'aloofness'?"
Neither she nor Kim Yi-seon was the sort to care about flower meanings. And yet he'd brought it up deliberately.
"I only picked the hydrangeas because the color reminded me of you, Min-ah. But once I heard that, I decided that made these flowers the right choice. Doesn't it fit a little? Not the color — you, and this flower. Everyone calls you cold and distant, but that's not really true, is it?"
And then, uncharacteristically, he got sentimental.
"That's why I like it. These hydrangeas, and you too, Min-ah. So... thank you. Always. I love you."
The mood turned faintly misty. It was moving enough that she might have suspected he had a proposal ring hidden somewhere — an emotional declaration utterly unimaginable from the Kim Yi-seon of everyday life.
Even Kang Min-ah, no great wellspring of sensitivity, was genuinely touched.
She hugged Kim Yi-seon tight right then and there, then ushered him inside to rest, guiding him slowly into the room. Lee Ye-eun had just stepped out to shop for groceries — the perfect opportunity to have him to herself.
She was riding the afterglow of that moving moment, plotting to sidle up beside him and trade some light conversation while the mood lasted, when—
"Oh, these hydrangeas? Hyeong-jun hyung was the one who told me about them in the first place. Didn't know that hyung would even know his flowers — I showed him your photo and he said it made him think of blue hydrangeas, that's how I—"
At that instant, Kang Min-ah resolved that the man named Go Hyeong-jun had to be dealt with. Without exception.
Go Hyeong-jun. Twenty-three years old this year.
He'd been a fairly promising player in high school too, though not at the level of going straight pro, and he'd chosen college along with an athletic scholarship.
And at university, he ran into his first wall — one entirely different from anything high school had thrown at him.
Skill? It wasn't a question of skill. Go Hyeong-jun had been reasonably confident in his own ability. But did the world really run on ability and talent alone?
"Hyeong-jun, the starter spot for this tournament is going to Dae-woo. You're still a freshman. Dae-woo needs to show something this tournament or the corporate teams won't come calling. Just give up this one spot for him, alright?"
"Of course, sunbae. I know Dae-woo sunbae's situation. I'll step aside."
Go Hyeong-jun said it with a warm, easy smile. Inside, however, he was rotting through.
Getting signed by a corporate team? If that was so urgent, maybe Dae-woo should have learned to play baseball properly by now. He was the one who kept insisting he wanted to keep playing — why should Go Hyeong-jun pay the price for his inability to?
If a man lacked talent and skill, the honorable thing was to admit it and move on — chase a teaching certificate, a youth coaching license, a community sports instructor post — or else work even harder. Clinging half-heartedly to baseball until you aged out of it, only to get your spot stolen by an underclassman in the ugliest possible way? Pathetic.
That was it. The wall Go Hyeong-jun hit in college was the wall of connections — of human relationships and hierarchy.
It was a wall of position he had never once felt in high school.
A touted prospect from the start, Go Hyeong-jun had never needed to concern himself with interpersonal politics. The manager, invested in his players' advancement, had used him from his first year and lavished him with opportunities, and his teammates had treated the team's best player with due deference.
Naturally — they benefited from it too. Stick close to the guy who plays well, and good things come your way.
College was different. Getting drafted by a pro club was a sky-high fantasy — you were lucky if one player a year made it. Even corporate teams were hard to crack, and the default career path for everyone else was becoming a community sports instructor teaching toddlers, middle-aged men, and grandpas.
Opportunities? Preferential treatment? Those belonged not to the guy who played well, but to the ones with a pipeline into a corporate team, the ones with the connections to broker a decent job placement — and the leeches who latched onto those connections.
None of it would ever come looking for a freshman who'd just enrolled.
A chill of crisis washed over him. He was confident in his skill. Especially since his junior year, he could feel his body growing in real time, and even at college he constantly sensed that he was still improving — but what good was any of it if he never got the chance to show it on the field?
He had to break through that cartel and seize his opportunity. But how? Even if the power to select players lay with the manager, how did a mere freshman appeal to him? Sure, he'd enrolled on a scholarship, but scholarship athletes were a dime a dozen even in the upper classes.
Go Hyeong-jun agonized over the problem for a long while — and then, unexpectedly, he realized the solution was simple.
"Byeong-su hyung, you're really making us all chip in again?"
"Ah, the luck's running hot today. Can't help it. Order jajangmyeon for everyone — and sweet and sour pork too."
"Sunbae, the manager did say to watch your diet..."
"Seriously, Byeong-su hyung?! Whoa, Choi Byeong-su's wallet is getting annihilated today. Hey, Ji-han, what're you getting?"
Wink.
"Uh... you already ordered the sweet and sour pork, so I'll just have one rice bowl and call it good."
If you can't beat them, join them.
To the seniors, he flattered. To his classmates, he maintained himself carefully within the bounds of mild, endearing annoyance.
He organized gatherings proactively — but always put a well-connected senior at the front, letting authority pool around the senior while he worked the room.
From that cunning vantage point, he left everyone in the baseball club with the same impression: Go Hyeong-jun? Great kid. Accommodating, quick on the uptake, real pleasure to have around.
After that, everything was easy.
Once he'd been granted a few starts, extracting the unspoken consensus from his seniors and classmates — let's push the guy who's headed out through the early draft — hadn't even been work.
And so Go Hyeong-jun proved his ability, earned the Seoul Twins' draft call, and turned pro.
Missing spring camp and starting in the minors was a little disappointing, as befitting a first pro season — but it was merely a continuation of what he'd been doing since college.
Much as he had at university, he spent his time sweet-talking the resident minor-league old guard and the players friendly with the Futures coaches, and in no time at all he was king of the second team.
And when the opportunity finally arrived, the minor-league manager just as naturally wrote his name onto the list of players to consider promoting to the first team.
The next stage awaited. Even with this brief first-team look, he was still in his debut year, so nailing down a permanent starting job immediately would be difficult — unless he put on one hell of a show.
The existing players had their established rhythms, their psychological ease with one another. Those advantages were real. But flip that around: once he acquired those same things, claiming the wide-open infield backup spot on the first team would be the easiest thing in the world.
"So? Did it work?"
"Oh! Whoa, hyung, you're unreal. You can read all that at a glance?"
"People ask me for relationship advice all the time. Turns out having the right prop when you're delivering something heartfelt works wonders."
"College grads really are built different. This is why they say you need that diploma hanging off your shoulder!"
"What does that have to do with being a baseball player, Kim Yi-seon? And you're a high school grad yourself."
"Hey, I could've gotten into college through the regular admissions process — I made a choice. You couldn't get into college if you died and came back to life."
The two young punks still bickered away in front of him. But they were not punks to be dismissed.
Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk. The prospects upon whom the entire Korean baseball world had fixed its gaze — the Seoul Twins and far beyond it.
Even Go Hyeong-jun couldn't force his way into the veteran cliques whose bonds were already forged solid. But these Seoul Twins were a rebuilding club, with a fair number of young players who hadn't yet formed those tight-knit webs.
Ordinarily, those young players wouldn't hold much sway — but these two were exceptions.
Since when was Kim Yi-seon any ordinary rookie? Setting the baseball side aside entirely, wasn't he the innermost of inner circles, tied directly to the club president and the owner's own family?
Look no further than Bang Min-soo, elevated to a permanent first-team roster spot as Kim Yi-seon's personal catcher. A pioneer who had already walked the road Go Hyeong-jun needed to walk — and a competitor.
After grasping this truth through Bang Min-soo's example, Go Hyeong-jun mobilized every ounce of his ability to learn everything there was to know about the two.
They happened to share the minor-league dormitory, so he observed their daily lives firsthand and collected stories from the other Futures players.
Their track records to date, naturally — and their media interviews and feature articles, down to the last word.
Official social media, clubhouse rumors, all of it — he gathered everything, ranked each piece by his own estimate of its reliability, and filed it away.
By the end of it, Go Hyeong-jun had succeeded in mapping the two men out to a considerable degree.
Kim Yi-seon is impulsive as hell with some real blind spots in social intelligence, but he's smarter than he looks. Kang Min-hyuk, on the other hand, is perfectly capable of reading a room — and catastrophically stupid in every other respect.
Even now, he kept quietly testing his inferences against the pair's words and behavior. And the intelligence thus harvested went straight into crafting his bespoke service.
"Min-hyuk, what about you? Why not take this chance to go for a drive with your girls too? I've got my license — I'll drive."
"No, thank you. How could I possibly use you as a chauffeur for my own private affairs, hyung?"
"Come on, why not? I'd be getting a breather out of it myself."
Prepare the flattery to fit the man, and even granite-stiff Kang Min-hyuk melted like butter.
Go Hyeong-jun was confident this time, too.