Buff or Nerf? (1)
For a moment, Bang Min-soo wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Kim Yi-seon was quiet. No, he'd never been the chatty type to begin with, but during practice like this, when the whole team was gathered together, he'd usually crack at least one dumb joke. That was the norm.
He said it often, but unlike most old-school baseball players, Bang Min-soo did not believe a catcher's job was to play therapist to his pitchers. Mental management was the manager and coaching staff's responsibility, and even when it fell to the players, it belonged to everyone — not to one designated guy.
So normally, this would be a matter for the veterans to handle rather than him... but that bizarre creature couldn't be dealt with by ordinary human logic, so here he was, out of options.
Aside from Kang Min-hyuk, who'd been his friend since high school, wasn't Bang Min-soo — his personal catcher — the one who spent the most time around the guy? And with Min-hyuk starting today, there was no one else he could ask.
Bang Min-soo approached Kim Yi-seon carefully, slowly, the way a man tests the next plank on a rickety bridge, and threw out his question.
"Anything happen yesterday?"
Something like What's with you today, why so quiet? would have felt too abrupt, so he'd chosen his words as carefully as he could — but this still seemed a little hasty. The words were already out, though, impossible to take back, and just as he began to wonder if he'd poked some dragon's sore spot—
"No, nothing really. Well, my shoulder feels a little stiffer than usual since yesterday's start? Even after going home to rest instead of the dorms, it's still like this."
"Is that so?"
He answered with a soft, natural smile — so smooth that Bang Min-soo genuinely questioned whether the guy was even capable of such a restrained reaction.
Kim Yi-seon? Good heavens, this was a man who came in exactly two modes: the excited oversized golden retriever bouncing off the walls, and the rabid lunatic tearing everything apart. That Kim Yi-seon, giving such a meek, sensible answer?
Confronted with a side of Kim Yi-seon he'd never once seen in the better part of a year spent around him, Bang Min-soo faltered, unable to find his next words.
"I'll head in now. I finished the minimum training I set for my routine, so I should focus a bit more on recovery."
And there he went again, being perfectly reasonable. By this point, Bang Min-soo's brain had completely frozen at the sheer strangeness of the scene. Normally, this would be exactly the moment for the guy to spout some nonsense.
"Uh... yeah. Sure."
"Right. See you later, Min-soo sunbae."
Even that was astonishing enough — but what came next was even harder to believe.
Kim Yi-seon had called Bang Min-soo by his correct name.
That instant, Bang Min-soo bolted straight for the coaches.
"Hmm? Min-soo? What's got you all worked up out of nowhere?"
The battery coach was tidying up, getting ready to call it a day, since the scheduled training was already finished. Bang Min-soo abandoned his usual businesslike manner and blurted it out, urgent.
"Something's wrong with Kim Yi-seon!"
Something was wrong with Kim Yi-seon — and the person reporting it wasn't just anyone, but his personal catcher, Bang Min-soo. That was enough for the manager and coaching staff to call an emergency meeting.
Prospects — pitchers especially — were creatures as fragile as sunfish. Some random nothing of an incident sending them into a mental tailspin was just an everyday occurrence.
For the Seoul Twins, a team leaning on Kim Yi-seon not just for the future but for the present, this would be nothing short of a catastrophe.
"Isn't this probably much ado about nothing? Pitchers get their flat days once in a while after a few starts. That's just how it goes."
"Yi-seon's not like that, though. And it's not that he just got quiet — the kid got sensible."
"Well, when you're drained, I suppose you don't have the energy to mess around."
Of course, gathering around to discuss it didn't magically produce a brilliant solution; the conversation just spun its wheels.
So the consensus was to start slow and pin down the cause first.
"Does there even have to be a cause? It's not exactly rare for pitchers to go sideways out of nowhere."
"Enough with the naysaying already. A cause would at least make this easier to solve."
"He hasn't even pitched since his last start, for what it's worth."
Setting aside the minor-league pitching coach, who'd been interjecting with objections this whole time — that one could hang somewhere appropriate and reflect for a while — they began their reasonable deductions.
First up: the first-team pitching coach, the coach who saw Kim Yi-seon most often.
"Could it be the home run Yi-seon gave up yesterday? He still pitched well enough to finish seven innings, two earned runs, but the fact remains he got taken deep. The pitches hit their spots and the batter just beat them — that's the kind of thing that could rattle a pitcher."
A reasonable point, as expected from a professional pitching coach. Everyone was nodding along — everyone except the manager, who looked slightly dissatisfied.
"This is the kid who gave up three runs in the second inning of a start once and didn't so much as blink. It's got to be something else."
Prompted by the manager's call for other theories, the coaches thought for a moment before offering up one more idea.
"Yi-seon's been complaining lately that his changeup is dropping less and gaining velocity — maybe that's the issue? In the last game it wasn't generating swings and misses either, and he ended up sealing it off, didn't he?"
If you thought of it as a circle changeup, that complaint made no sense — but as a sinker, it was a pitch with top-tier stuff by KBO standards, and the coaches couldn't for the life of them understand what he found so unsatisfying about it. Still, considering how often he'd grumbled about it lately, the theory wasn't implausible.
The first-team bullpen coach who'd raised it, wearing the grave expression of a detective who'd just cracked the case, even went on to propose a solution.
But Jung Jin-haeng's gut told him this wasn't it either. He cut off the bullpen coach and asked for more theories. The great Kim Yi-seon was not the type to spiral into a slump over some baseball struggles.
And so, gingerly, the second-team manager raised his hand.
"Um... I stayed quiet because it didn't seem like something I needed to bring up, but given the situation, there's something you should know."
"Go ahead."
"After yesterday's start, Yi-seon said he wanted to rest at home instead of the dorm. It's well known that starters get sensitive before and after their outings, and he'd asked before, so I let him go. Besides, the second-team facility is close to his place anyway."
In other words: the second-team manager had, on his own authority, approved Kim Yi-seon's overnight leave.
There was no rule against it. The person in charge of the second-team dormitory was, after all, the second-team manager.
The second-team compound system existed to give rookies and fringe players an environment where they could devote themselves fully to baseball — and to keep them from needless contact with fans and media that might let air into their heads. If a player wanted to spend a night with his girlfriend or wife, practically speaking, there was no real problem with it.
So the act itself wasn't the issue, but...
"So he spends one day with his wife, comes back, and he's like this?"
"Yes."
"We're screwed."
Meaning: the most troublesome, most powerful possible cause had just landed in their laps.
Family trouble! Even veterans lost their minds and tanked the moment things went sideways at home — it happened daily. And Kim Yi-seon, the kid who probably had 'baseball' written across his left brain and 'girlfriend' across his right, had family problems?
With everyone equally ashen-faced, the meeting ignited in an instant.
"You think he got caught cheating or something?"
"Does that even make sense? This is Kim Yi-seon we're talking about."
"Hey, no man can live on home cooking alone."
"Feel free to say that one to the boss's face. If you can."
"..."
That was the bottom of the barrel, the utterly baseless stuff.
"Could it be an issue with... his male pride?"
"Please. I know Kim Yi-seon's size. What's to worry about."
"Big isn't everything? How would you know. Maybe it's as fast as his fastball."
It sounded like a joke, but somehow it felt disturbingly plausible. Crude speculation all around.
"Existential dread, maybe. Yi-seon's a starter, so he might be fine, but honestly, once the season grinds on, players barely get time with their families."
"Right? Go on one road trip and you don't see their faces for days. It's basically weekend-couple living."
"The season's hitting the halfway turn and the standings are taking shape — his legs could be going out from under him."
Plenty of theories surfaced, including a problem Kim Yi-seon himself had been vaguely feeling of late — but not a single person came within striking distance of the real answer.
"Bickering among ourselves isn't getting us anywhere near the truth. Isn't there any way?"
"We can't exactly ask the man directly about his love life, so what choice do we have? Who on earth would know the details of Yi-seon's relationships?"
"Exactly. Short of a childhood friend who's been joined at the hip with him since school, or someone equally close to both sides of the couple, who'd know such private matters..."
And in that instant, one single name surfaced in the minds of every coach present — including the manager.
"There's only one person, isn't there?"
"He is starting today, though..."
"We'll ask him tomorrow. I hate to bother him while he's resting, but this is important."
The day after his start, Kang Min-hyuk suddenly found himself surrounded by a whole crowd of people.
"You're closest to Yi-seon, aren't you? Just check on him for me, once. You're the pitching staff captain, aren't you? Same Kang clan has to look out for each other, eh?"
"I didn't think much of it either, but Min-soo said the kid seemed off, so I kept an eye out. And he really was. You wouldn't know since you were busy prepping for your start, but the guy was genuinely not right in the head."
"Hey, submarine rookie. That ambidextrous rookie over there's been looking weird lately. You know anything?"
"He told me to keep my chin up. Then he asked whether there were any parts of life that were harder than New Jersey. Hmm... was that his normal self, and the version I first met was the strange one?"
Kim Yi-seon acting strange. Wasn't that just stating the obvious?
From middle school to this very day, every version of Kim Yi-seon Kang Min-hyuk had witnessed had been strange. And constantly, arbitrarily changing, too.
A day or two of oddness wasn't going to amount to any real problem. That's what he thought, anyway.
But when even the manager and the coaching staff came to him personally, begging him to please, just this once, find out what was wrong — annoyance flooded through him, and yet he nodded anyway. No one who knew Kang Min-hyuk's character would have expected him to refuse.
So he went looking for Kim Yi-seon, training in a corner of the second-team facility.
"Good! Deeper, hold it!"
"Hngh!"
It was the same old Kim Yi-seon, no different from any other day. Grunting through his yoga and stretching, complete with that goofy screwed-up face he always made. Nothing had changed at all.
Since his routine today consisted of nothing but recovery work anyway, Kang Min-hyuk laid out his mat and simply observed.
Which meant Kim Yi-seon came straight over the moment training ended.
"Weren't you on the mound yesterday? You don't need the rest?"
"It's nothing. I just wanted to keep the feel of training going."
Kang Min-hyuk said it casually, without thinking — and Kim Yi-seon suddenly furrowed his brow and shot back:
"Are you making proper time for your girlfriends? Honestly, outside of the day after a start, it's hard to carve out a whole day, isn't it?"
"Huh?"
"And it's not just your girlfriends — your family too. I called your mother-in-law yesterday to check in, and she says you barely talk to her once a week. What kind of son does that make you?"
"Uh? Uh..."
"I'd bet Im Song-ah's stuck in the middle of it all and suffering for it. Your other two girlfriends aren't that close with your mother-in-law, but Song-ah's practically been raised as her own daughter. You should be the one putting in the effort here."
Kang Min-hyuk listened for a while, and finally there was only one thing he could say.
"... Who are you?"
"What?"
"You're not Kim Yi-seon. Yes — the Kim Yi-seon I know is not this kind of person. Tell me where the real Kim Yi-seon is, right now!"
"Apparently this punk thinks I'm joking. Hey, get a grip. Aren't you the one talking about proposing after this season ends?"
Kim Yi-seon shot him a look of pure disdain. But this — this could not be Kim Yi-seon.
This was the guy who forgot his own mother's birthday and had to have Lee Ye-eun and his little sister remind him. A man who'd comfortably rank in the top three most immature humans Kang Min-hyuk had ever met in his life.
He wasn't selfish, exactly, but with the brain capacity he had, his capacity for thought extended exactly as far as himself and his girlfriends and then flatlined. That was the Kim Yi-seon he knew, wasn't it?
Drowning in confusion, Kang Min-hyuk realized that Bang Min-soo sunbae's report — Kim Yi-seon has gotten strange — had been wrong.
He hadn't gotten strange. He'd become a different person.
Kang Min-hyuk fired up the part of his brain that went unused outside of baseball, racing at emergency speed.
Asking Kim Yi-seon more questions here would clearly get him nowhere. Judging by that display, the man would probably deny that anything about himself had changed in the first place.
So he'd have to ask someone who could explain why he'd changed like this — and there were only three people capable of driving Kim Yi-seon to that degree of transformation: Lee Ye-eun, his little sister, and the boss.
Min-ah was probably out. If something had happened to throw Kim Yi-seon that far off balance, she would absolutely have given him a heads-up beforehand.
The boss... hmm. Not impossible, but the odds looked low. And even if it were true, she wasn't exactly someone you could casually interrogate.
As Kang Min-hyuk narrowed the options in his head, he arrived at a single remaining candidate.
Originally, like the man himself had said, he'd planned to spend his golden rest day on some outing with his girlfriends — but these were special circumstances.
And so, on his precious day off after a start, Kang Min-hyuk ended up going to see Lee Ye-eun.
And the moment he arrived, Kang Min-hyuk was greeted with something even more astonishing.
"Oh? What brings you all the way out here? Min-ah stepped out for a bit. Want me to call her back?"
"No — more importantly, what on earth is all this..."
Inside Lee Ye-eun's studio apartment, glimpsed over her shoulder, the space was crammed with fairy-tale books, plush dolls, and scented candles whose mere smell seemed to soothe the soul.
And from the speaker, filling the whole room, played a playlist — not just any classical music, but one meticulously curated around Mozart in particular. Kang Min-hyuk, a man of limited cultural refinement, would simply register it as something he'd heard of somewhere and leave it at that.
But this suited neither Kim Yi-seon, nor Lee Ye-eun, nor even his little sister Min-ah. Not one of them. Could it be the boss's taste?
Still pondering that, he stepped inside at her gesture, and Lee Ye-eun — wearing an expression somewhere distinctly on the benevolent side — poured him a cup of tea.
A benevolent Lee Ye-eun. If someone had told high school–era Kang Min-hyuk about this, he'd have said, You sure that's not a different person? A cousin, maybe?
Even when she was clinging to Kim Yi-seon's side or sitting politely in front of adults, the woman radiated the untamable aura of a wild beast that could not be hidden. And now she was standing there like some Madonna straight out of a storybook...
Madonna? Hold on a second.
Whether his torment showed on his face or not, Lee Ye-eun let out a soft hohoho laugh (which was unsettling in its own right) and confirmed his guess herself.
"Yes, it happened. We went to the hospital too — it's been less than a month, but they say it's certain."
Ah.
Good heavens. Suddenly, Kim Yi-seon — that goofball — turning into an entirely different person made complete sense. If it had been his own news, Kang Min-hyuk's feet would have left the ground; for that guy, it'd be ten times worse.
"Th-then... congratulations. I should probably get going, shouldn't I?"
Running away before he earned himself any unnecessary resentment was clearly the wisest move. He'd already identified the cause of Kim Yi-seon's strangeness, and staying any longer would do nothing but earn him an earful about pestering a pregnant woman.
But Lee Ye-eun shook her head and commanded him to stay a while longer.
"Not until you've heard this part too."
"No, really — you're pregnant, you should be resting—"
"You came because something's off with Kim Yi-seon, didn't you? Him running around half-cocked helps your peace and quiet even less, so sit down and listen."
He hadn't said a word about why he'd come. How did she know?
Truly, Lee Ye-eun was a woman who became more frightening the longer you knew her. Then again, it probably took exactly that kind of woman to contemplate living with that lunatic.
But having come this far, he had no choice. Kang Min-hyuk sat down obediently and resolved to listen to what she had to say.
"First, a question. Say Song-ah tells you tomorrow that she's pregnant. How would you react?"
"I'd be overjoyed, obviously. I'd thank her, too."
"Right. Of course you would."
Lee Ye-eun took a slow sip of her tea. Could it be that Kim Yi-seon, that lunatic, had reacted lukewarmly? No way — not that hopeless romantic. But if it were true, it would be an utter disaster.
Except what Lee Ye-eun said next was a little different.
"That's exactly what Kim Yi-seon did. No — he went even further. Before he left for training today, he fussed over me like I was a princess or a piece of blown glass. He carried on like it was some monumental occasion. It was exhausting."
And yet, for some reason, the smile on Lee Ye-eun's face as she said this was less one of joy than one of quiet bitterness.
"He's terrified right now. More than you'd believe."
"I see. So that's it."
Kang Min-hyuk was not a man of low intelligence — only of narrow application. With the situation laid out this far, spotting it was only natural.
"He keeps saying thank you, saying he loves me, on and on without end — but every single time, I can see how tangled up his head is. He thinks he's hiding it well. Who does he think he's fooling?"
With a sigh, Lee Ye-eun's usual presence returned — that beast-like air of a woman who could see straight through anything.
"This isn't something I can fix for him. If I'm the one who brings it up, he'll just beat himself up over failing to hide his feelings — it won't put his mind at ease. Same goes for Min-ah or Seo-hee unnie."
Grumbling about how troublesome male pride was while simultaneously understanding it better than anyone — at that, Kang Min-hyuk nodded.
This wasn't something Lee Ye-eun or the other girlfriends could resolve for him.
"Fine. I don't need any further explanation or solutions. If you've told me this much, the rest is mine to handle."
After all, this was the kind of thing a man could only confess to a friend who'd walked the same road beside him for years.