The Fundamentals of Being Fundamentally Fundamentless (1)

"Seriously, stay put. Quietly. Don't make me watch you lose your mind."

"Fine, fine. Just go already."

Since she hadn't even reached the stable stage of pregnancy yet, Ye-eun's belly wasn't showing—not even a hint of it. Still, there I was at the front door, about to leave the house, delivering my earnest final instructions like some doom-prophesying sage.

The doctor had told us, over and over, how careful she needed to be before things stabilized, but Ye-eun apparently had a sneaky blind spot when it came to her own safety—just yesterday she'd gone out grocery shopping on her own. Which is exactly why someone needs to be glued to her side. Namely, me.

I'm living with Ye-eun in her little rented apartment now. I refused the arrangement plenty of times, insisting I was fine, but the veterans, the coaching staff, and even the Manager himself ganged up on me—they'd grant me something like paternity leave, so please, move out of the second-team dorm and go live with her already. So here I am, swept along by sheer momentum.

Looking back, it really was for the best, but at the time I worried it might look like a special favor, or turn into a controversy down the line, so I'd turned it down.

Which is when the General Manager blew up at me: sending a husband to his pregnant wife's side in the early stages—is that a *special favor* to you? Are you trying to demolish this club's public image or what? So I came running over with a happy heart. Honestly, though, thinking about it now, my life hadn't changed much—I was only sleeping and training at the second-team dorm anyway.

"What am I, a glass figurine? Don't overdo it, Kim Yi-seon."

"You're more fragile than glass. Did you not hear the doctor? You have to be careful before the twelve-week mark. I've got Ha-yul on call, so if you need anything, make him do it."

"Ha-yul? Since when does that boy listen to anyone?"

"I pay him an allowance."

At first, my mother-in-law or father-in-law would come down occasionally to look after Ye-eun, or Min-ah would help out—but on both sides it felt a little improper, so now I slip Ha-yul, Ye-eun's little brother, an allowance and use him as a live-in butler. He's happy about the arrangement, so it's a win-win.

Anyway, life with a pregnant Ye-eun... yeah, I still haven't gotten used to it. It's not like before, when anxiety would come crashing in until it was unbearable, but between the giddiness and a low-grade tension, my heart just keeps floating somewhere around the ceiling.

Especially since it's still so early—the pregnancy doesn't show at all—but whenever I think about Haet-nim in there, it hits me even harder.

I'm not exactly a sensitive guy, but the moment I think of Haet-nim, tears prick at my eyes. Just like that.

"Haah... okay, got it. Haet-nim, say bye to Daddy, he's heading out?"

"Daddy's going to work~?"

I just patted her still-slim belly and said my goodbye, and yet something about my voice was going suspiciously soggy.

That day the players' families came to visit, I made my own private resolution to become a proper father, and I've been trying to change, little by little.

Even the most immature people manage to pull off the dad role just fine—there's no way I could keep living like the old Kim Yi-seon. I couldn't face Haet-nim if I did.

So the first thing to change was this: no more offloading every little daily chore onto my women.

"Should I just go alone, then?"

"Min-ah, hold on a sec—anyway, if you need anything, tell Ha-yul. And don't go moving around by yourself for no reason."

"Okay. Got it, so go already."

Since my farewell at the door was dragging on, Min-ah cut in with a pouty face.

The first step of my householder duties, as I'd envisioned them, was Min-ah's college entrance exam.

In the original manga too, Min-ah was a prodigy who never let go of the top spot in her grade, so thorough she'd once tutored her third-year brother in the curriculum back when she was a first-year. That much hadn't changed in this world either.

For someone like that, deciding to skip the rest of high school—where she could barely attend properly and was stuck with remote classes—take the equivalency exam instead, and go straight to college? Hardly a strange choice.

So today was the day Min-ah sat for the high school equivalency exam, her ticket to skipping the rest of high school and heading to university.

My next start was still a ways off, so I'd decided to drive her to the test site myself. My mother-in-law had offered to do it, but she's a busy woman, isn't she? If I hadn't stepped up, Min-ah probably would have gone alone, quiet and lonely.

And whether or not someone cheers for you on exam day—it quietly sticks with you more than people think.

"It's just an equivalency exam. Is all this really necessary?"

"Of course it is. You worked hard to prepare, Min-ah."

"It wasn't really 'hard work.'"

Look at her. Even now, riding in the car, Min-ah talks cool as ice, but the unmistakable satisfaction is leaking all over her face. If I hadn't been paying attention, I'd have missed it entirely.

"That's right. If it's our Miss Kang Min-ah, what's an equivalency exam? The CSAT is a warm-up. You're going to kick Seoul National University's door down, aren't you?"

"Is that even a question? Since I'll be commuting, SNU isn't a bad choice. So that's the plan."

Chattering away about nothing in particular, I started the engine and settled my hands lightly on the wheel.

Min-ah, pretending not to, was watching me carefully out of the corner of her eye. She never admits it, but she secretly likes watching me drive.

So I channeled the weight of being the man of the house, plus a generous dash of showing off, and pulled out with style. Really, nothing displays an adult's charm like a well-executed drive.

Kim Yi-seon himself thought nothing of it, but his private comings and goings were, in fact, throwing the baseball fandom into mass confusion.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Let's think about this rationally.

Never mind that this is supposedly a world where polygamy is normal—the man gets spotted with one of his three girlfriends constantly. He's not even some veteran player; he's a rookie fresh out of high school.

The day after he'd gutted out a start in the Korea-Japan Finals, he wasn't resting—he was photographed on a date with a girlfriend in Tokyo. And in the little township in Yangpyeong County where the Twins' second-team dorm sits, Kim Yi-seon shows up so often ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that not recognizing his car gets you branded a spy.

Head from there to the bustling streets of Wirye City—his hometown, not far from Yangpyeong—and while you won't see him quite that often, you can still catch Kim Yi-seon out shopping with a girlfriend about once a week.

You could generously call him a devoted lover, but depending on who's looking, doesn't that sound plenty like a guy obsessed with women? It's not even like he's just faithful to the original girlfriends—he added one more. The company president... ahem, anyway.

Nobody dares spell out the details because of the terror that the Seoul Group legal team will show up at their door with a lawsuit in hand, but a single innocent-sounding line hinting that 'Kim Yi-seon and Han Seo-hee have some kind of... situation' gets tolerated, so everyone has come to tacitly accept it as fact.

(Granted, among the internet ghouls, a few zero-self-control types have been posting things like 'The Seoul Twins' manager and GM are all puppets—the club is actually run according to what Kim Yi-seon said in his bedroom the night before games' under the blessed anonymity of a VPN, but nearly all of them were tracked down and dealt with, eventually.)

Back to the point: staying faithful to a childhood-friend girlfriend, or even extending that devotion to Min-ah, little sister of his best friend Kang Min-hyuk—that much can be waved off as love running deep.

But steadily collecting more women... isn't that pushing it a bit?

Sports fans are all too familiar with the sight of promising young talents ruining themselves obsessing over money or women. It's understandable that plenty of people worry a national-treasure-level talent like Kim Yi-seon might go the same way.

On the other hand, some argue the backlash is overblown—he doesn't drink, he only sees his girlfriends, and he's never touched one-night stands or the nightlife scene.

And so the community's mainstream opinion, rolling every take into one, settled on a strange new meme: "the fundamentals of being fundamentless"—meaning, a guy whose behavior looks utterly devoid of fundamentals but is, on closer inspection, practically the definition of them, and who's good at baseball regardless.

Min-ah, naturally, strolled out of the exam hall brimming with confidence, and I drove us straight home without even asking how it went.

It's Min-ah, after all. She understood the high school curriculum better than I did, and I did high school twice. I literally cannot imagine her getting a single question wrong on an equivalency exam.

So on the drive home, just to break the mood with idle small talk—no real meaning behind it at all—I asked Min-ah a question.

"Hey, Min-ah. You know what my nickname is on the forums these days?"

"Hmm. Not really. I don't really check baseball communities."

That's probably not a lie. Since we read the manga together back then, she seems to browse the manga community fairly often, but baseball—unlike Ye-eun—was never something Min-ah kept up with.

So I lightly, jokingly, told her what I'd read.

"They're calling me 'the fundamentals of being fundamentless.' The guy whose lack of fundamentals is, itself, his fundamental trait."

While Min-ah was sitting her exam, I had nothing to do, so I'd killed time with some light stretching and web browsing. And that's when I'd seen the baseball forums abuzz about yours truly.

Absolutely ridiculous, of course. But I get it. A truly perfect person gives the haters nothing to work with, so they have to dredge up fantasies from the depths of their imaginations to nitpick.

It's like that nonsense where some celebrity got smeared for supposedly refusing to buy someone ribs, or the absurd rumor that some ballplayer framed his own manager for gambling.

For a guy like me—whose head contains nothing but baseball and my women—to be called fundamentless? As a local boy from Wirye City, overflowing with loyalty to my club (well, to Seo-hee noona, to be precise), that's slander of the most forced, bad-faith kind.

It's a meme, so I can't exactly fight it, but honestly, some people are just bottomless.

Min-ah's reaction, however, was not what I expected.

"Oppa. Should I respond to this? Through the agency, certainly, but if we put in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠good word with Seo-hee unni, we could probably handle it at the Seoul Group level too."

"No, no—it's just fans joking around. No need to go that far."

"But it bothers you, doesn't it?"

Her face was serious. I appreciated the concern, but it seemed like too much, so I waved it off with a laugh.

"Oh, come on. It only hurts if it's even a little bit true. Where exactly would someone as fundamentally sound as me take damage from that? Right?"

But Min-ah's expression didn't soften one bit. And I've spent long enough watching this girl by now that I can make a decent guess at what's going through her head.

Which is to say: that was the face of someone finding it just a touch hard to answer.

"Oppa. Look, it's true you're a bit... unrestrained, you fall in love at the drop of a hat, and you're kind of an airhead—but none of that is wrong, okay? It's your private life. If you ever change your mind, tell me right away."

Hold on. Isn't that less a rebuttal of what I said and more... weirdly, a confirmation of it?

Dreading the answer, I asked Min-ah anyway.

"Min-ah. I'm asking just in case, but... do you actually agree with what they're saying?"

And instead of answering, Min-ah quietly turned her head away, dodging my eyes.

Wait. Seriously?

"Ha-yul. Is this actually happening? Do you have any idea how serious and devoted a man I am?"

Yes, Haet-nim's on the way, and yes, I've sworn to become a mature adult—but this time I'm making an exception. Yi-seon is sulking.

I mean, come on. How could it be Min-ah of all people? I came home in a cold sweat and asked Ye-eun about it, and she just smirked and said, 'You're only figuring that out now?'

Wow. Okay. Do I need to show everyone what a *fundamentless* person actually looks like before they fix their thinking? Do they have any idea how many sketchy notes I get tucked into fan mail when I'm signing autographs and handing out photos? If I'd taken up every single one of those offers, King Uija of Baekje would have ranked below me. I mean it.

I can't exactly blow up at a pregnant Ye-eun or an exam-stressed Min-ah, so I retreated meekly in front of them—but the more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and here I am, airing my grievances.

Lee Ha-yul (17, terrified of his sister but mercenary enough to be bought with an allowance), who had listened to my whole story, spoke up.

"Hyung, I like you and all, but honestly? Ye-eun noona and Min-ah-ssi are right."

...Even you, Ha-yul? Betrayal? Today is officially dizzying. Do you have any idea how much game currency and how many snacks I've bought you since you were a kid? And the moment you're grown, you stab me in the back?

As I trembled with the wounds of betrayal, Ha-yul let out a long sigh and said,

"Look, I already think what you've done is insane. I mean—the guy did it with Lee Ye-eun's eyes burning holes into his back the whole time, and he still picked up two more girlfriends. Kim Yi-seon hyung, in a certain sense, I genuinely respect you."

And I don't think he was joking—there was something close to genuine awe in his eyes.

He has a point, honestly. Even I still don't fully understand how I ended up with three girlfriends.

But that's that, and this is this. What does having three girlfriends have to do with being fundamentless? I only ever date the women I actually love, and I intend to marry all of them without breaking up with a single one. Where, precisely, is the fundamentlessness in that?

Ha-yul paid my impassioned defense roughly the attention you'd give background noise, and the moment I finished, he said with a bored face,

"Then I guess as long as you can hold your head high, that's all that matters. You don't think so, and noona and the other girlfriends probably don't care that much either."

"Of course I hold my head high. It's just—people keep spouting this nonsense, and it grates. If I ignore it, the meme calcifies into permanent truth, but if I go the legal route, it's not quite malicious enough to justify that either..."

"Weird. The Kim Yi-seon I know doesn't agonize over things like this."

"Well, excuse me for becoming the father of a child. What am I supposed to do if Haet-nim grows up thinking her dad was some unserious deadbeat who dated any woman he could find?"

Kids these days pick up the weirdest stuff off the internet, way too fast. If Haet-nim grows up and tells people her dad has no fundamentals, I will cry.

Ha-yul eyed me with lukewarm disdain. Still, apparently remembering the allowance he'd been milking out of me, he straightened up and began answering in earnest.

"If it bugs you that much, what about flipping the meme instead?"

"Flipping it?"

Maybe because he grew up playing with me more than with his own sister, Ha-yul—scion of a hopeless in-crowd family—is oddly the one most fluent in out-crowd internet culture. Which is probably why his suggestion landed right on my wavelength.

"You know how it goes—something starts as a mean nickname or an insult, and later a totally different meaning gets layered on top of it. Happens all the time."

"...That's true, yeah."

"So if we deliberately twist your 'fundamentless' label until it gets reinterpreted as something else entirely, most people will just go along with the new meaning."

He's absolutely right.

The PR team is already desperate to squeeze one more quotable line out of me, and the media's no different. And I'm a player fans watch with their own eyes at the ballpark—every play I make lands directly in front of them. With just a bit of deliberate acting, I could bend that nickname clean over and flip it into something positive.

"'The fundamentals of being fundamentless,' huh... If you sprinkle in some trendy food preferences or slang abbreviations, a few simple equipment choices, your gaming or manga tastes—mix that stuff in well, it'll go viral in no time, and the old image will fade on its own."

At that point I looked up and studied Ha-yul's face again.

Lee Ye-eun doesn't have those sharp instincts for nothing. The blood really doesn't lie, does it?

"Ha-yul."

"Yeah?"

"If this works out, I'm raising your allowance."

"For real?"

At the magic words, the bored teenager from thirty seconds ago vanished, and Ha-yul's motivation shot clean through the ceiling.

Come to think of it, I still don't understand why I'm the one paying my brother-in-law's allowance—but hey, good work deserves good pay, right?