After Burning It All Down?

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The away bus hummed back home after the Phoenix series. The road there had been rough, but the Seoul Twins had punched their ticket to the Korean Series.

Last year's dead-last team. A club that had stared down crisis after crisis this season too, scraping into the final playoff spot in third place like a bunch of underdogs lucky to be there.

And that team had clawed its way up from the very bottom to the stage where KBO's strongest team gets decided.

Unsurprisingly, the bus had turned into a festival. Everyone belted out the team anthem, put on talent shows, laughed and shouted until the bus rattled like it might shake apart.

The Korean Series was still ahead of them, but that did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nothing to damper the players' joy.

Except for a few of them.

Next to the back seat, where senior Kang Hyun-seok sat hunched over, muttering that he was tired.

On any other day, the veterans would have monopolized the seat beside him because no one else dared take it. Today, I was sitting there. And I asked quietly.

"Why did you do it?"

"Huh? What's our little rascal going on about all of a sudden?"

"Don't play dumb with me. I'm asking why you did it."

I've spent this life eating, sleeping, and throwing a baseball. I'm a top-tier pitcher in this league. It only took one look to understand exactly what kind of strain senior Hyun-seok had put himself through out there.

Age had eroded his strength, his shoulder, his command over his own body. His arm angle had naturally dropped lower with the years — and he had dragged it forcibly back up.

The grip and wrist angle he'd adjusted years ago to account for flexibility and ligament elasticity declining faster than his muscle — he had twisted those back into his prime form, straining them every bit as hard as he used to.

Worse still, the stride length and release point everyone thought he'd already changed — he threw with those exactly as they'd been in his heyday. That was a form so punishing even his younger body had complained about it, one he'd gradually modified precisely because of that strain. Now he'd dug the fossil back out of retirement, and his body paid for it. How could it not?

And this world wasn't the manga I'd watched through a screen in my past life. Push yourself a little harder, and no dramatic spike in ability materialized as a reward.

Senior Hyun-seok had wrecked his body for a sliver of strength in a single moment — a moment he judged might give him, what, one percent? However I sliced it, it was a stupid choice.

I considered myself someone who knew Kang Hyun-seok pretty well. At home he's a hopeless case who gets nagged by his family constantly, but when it came to baseball, the man was nothing but hunger and effort.

He always planned to play for years to come. He never slacked on the things you do for the future — refining his delivery, practicing new pitches. That was the kind of player he was.

"Then let me ask again. Was today's game really one where we could afford to gamble on tomorrow?"

"It was the most important game of the season, yes. But if we claw our way all the way up here, what about the Korean Series? What about next season?"

"You can only worry about that after you win today."

But now there was only that strangely enlightened look left on his face.

Something was wrong with him. Wrong enough that I had no choice but to say the words I'd sworn I'd never bring up first.

"...Are you planning to retire?"

"Yeah. I've played a long time, haven't I."

I didn't need the answer to know. And just as I knew, the other seniors knew too — that's why they were celebrating so loudly, so exaggeratedly, with the finals still ahead of them.

To burn the moment of sending off Kang Hyun-seok and Lee Hae-ryong — the two of them spending everything they had for one last victory — into a fond memory worth keeping.

But I hated it. Why did it have to be like this?

"You said you had to pay for your daughter's college tuition, plus a wedding fund. Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Turns out the championship bonus this year would cover all of it. So I decided to quit clean."

"You said you'd pitch until you could still throw 130."

"Could probably hit that right now if I tried."

"You know exactly what I mean when I say 'right now.' Does it have to end like this?"

Eighteen years. A full eighteen.

The years since a man named Kang Hyun-seok joined the Seoul Twins, made his name as a super rookie, crossed over to the majors, came back to lead the team to a championship, and then carried the franchise on his back through the rubble when it all collapsed.

I was never a fan of any particular club, but my parents were Seoul Twins fans, so I grew up watching their games all the time.

And in those games, the name Kang Hyun-seok was always there.

Even after I joined this team myself, he acted like a reckless uncle — but he was also one of the people I'd communicated with the most.

In other words, both the past and the present of the Seoul Twins is Kang Hyun-seok. So why was a man like that leaving so suddenly?

Leave while the applause is still loud? Ridiculous. He's the kind of pitcher any team would be lucky just to slot into a five-man rotation — some clubs could run him as a fourth starter. If his shortened innings mean he can't eat frames anymore, he'd still be a massive asset out of the bullpen.

Lose a man like that, and filling the hole alone becomes a struggle. Intellectually and emotionally, this choice made no sense. So why.

"Yi-seon."

"What."

"I'm just... tired. That's all."

When I answered his unexpectedly warm voice with a grunt, senior Hyun-seok's face relaxed into something like relief.

"Hae-ryong might not see it that way... but look at our hitters, haven't they kept producing new pillars for the club? There was Hyuk, and these days Byeong-min's doing well, Myeong-gil's one to look forward to, and that Henry fellow? That American kid will be just fine too."

Then the man who never did skinship beyond a shoulder clasp suddenly grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight.

"But pitchers? There was nobody. Starting pitchers, to be exact. Think about it — after Kang Hyun-seok, has the Twins ever produced a homegrown starting ace?"

...No. They hadn't.

Setting aside guys who could adequately turn over a rotation or relievers whose home was the bullpen, not one true homegrown ace had come up since Kang Hyun-seok. For eighteen whole years.

"I say this all the time, but thank you. You, and Min-hyuk both. Now the team doesn't have just one — it has two."

Feeling the weight pressed into those words, I couldn't even throw a tantrum and tell him to stop talking about retirement.

After Game 5 against the Gwangju Phoenix, the Twins fans celebrated — but the tide of nostalgia drowned out even the joy of victory, and the internet turned into an ocean of tears.

To Twins fans, Kang Hyun-seok and Lee Hae-ryong were more than just players.

Day to day, the fans slandered them plenty — the denture-wearing geezer who could barely lob dungballs, the washed-up glass cannon who couldn't even play half a season — but that was always abuse built on a foundation of love. The moment an outsider started seriously running the two of them down, those same fans would rise up to smite them. That's how deeply they cared.

One was the first player the franchise had ever drafted first overall. The other, unlike Kang Hyun-seok who had briefly left for America, had stayed with the team through everything and led from the front as captain.

Even the snickering trolls who slandered them outwardly and told them to just retire already carried, somewhere in a corner of their hearts, good memories of time spent alongside the two of them.

And when players like that fought through their limits and turned a crucial game around? When men whose bodies were already failing refused to spare themselves and burned their final flare?

If you didn't feel something watching that, you either weren't a baseball fan or you genuinely despised the Twins. Which is another way of saying that everyone else — even non-Twins fans — was left deeply moved.

Thanks to that, after the end of Southern Series Game 5, the baseball communities split neatly into Twins fans pouring out tearful nostalgia threads about the two veterans, and fans of other teams politely supplying the appropriate "mm-hm"s and "and then what happened"s — the whole thing settling into something like a quiet, gentle campfire.

...With the exception of the defeated Gwangju Phoenix fans, that is.

So the communities — burning with campfire kindling and the arson of furious Phoenix fans alike — settled into their strange little mood, planning to spend the single day of rest before the Korean Series putting together power comparisons between the Pyongyang Fighters and the Seoul Twins.

Of course, that was before the giant powder keg went off.

"It can't be helped, Kim Yi-seon. No man can play at the top of his game forever."

"Hey, of all people, you're the one saying that?"

The day after the Southern Series ended. Min-hyuk and I had arrived in Pyongyang ahead of the rest of the team to prepare for the Fighters series.

Between that and the Gwangju away leg, we'd been spending way more time on the road than I'd expected. Ye-eun was finally stabilizing, but she was still in a delicate stage, and Min-ah had her college entrance exams next month. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Roaming the country like this, leaving them behind, I couldn't shake the unease.

So this is why ballplayers have such a hard time being good husbands and fathers, I thought.

Anyway — having chased Kang Min-hyuk all the way to Pyongyang, I was dumbfounded by the heartless words coming out of this cold-blooded bastard.

Kang Min-hyuk, of all people, saying that? The man had no conscience. Senior Hyun-seok had looked after him even more than he'd looked after me, frankly.

But Min-hyuk just lowered his head, apparently with no intention of changing his mind, and — uncharacteristically clear-eyed for the blockhead he usually was — laid out his reasoning plainly.

"You know the weight that comes with the seat of an ace pitcher. And senior Kang Hyun-seok loved this team more than anyone and gave everything for that seat. Telling a man like that to keep hauling that heavy burden is not for his sake. It's our own childishness."

"Excuse me, but the man is still sharp as ever? Forget the whining and the guilt trips — losing him is a blow to the roster, plain and simple. How many players like him do you think are just lying around?"

"That's exactly the childishness I'm talking about. Senior Hyun-seok has given this team more than enough. It's time he rested."

True to form for a guy whose stubbornness was filthy-strong, he refused to bend an inch. Argue with him all day and he'd just keep repeating the same thing.

I sank into my seat with a sigh and said one thing.

"I'm not ready to carry that yet."

My wedding to Ye-eun. Haet-nim-i's safe delivery and her first years of life. Min-ah heading off to college, and what her life should look like once she's an adult. How exactly I'm supposed to navigate things with Seo-hee-noona's family. Just the personal milestones in my own life were enough to make my head feel like it would split open.

And now, beyond merely juggling a playing career with everyday life, I was supposed to become the pillar of the team, like senior Hyun-seok?

That carried a different weight than simply being the most talented player on the field. I couldn't just do whatever I pleased anymore — can't just pitch well and call winning good enough. I'd have to live bearing responsibility, resolve, and that weight, every single day.

Would senior Hyun-seok really have such a rocky reputation at home if he were truly a thoughtless man? His family mattered to him just as much as the team did — and because his love and sense of duty toward the team ran that deep, he'd inevitably neglected the home front in return.

Why his daughter was distant with her father, why his wife gave him an earful — same reason. He lived for the team, and time with his daughter became scarce, while the sight of him sacrificing for the team only looked suffocating to his wife.

I didn't have the confidence to live that life. At least, not right now.

Maybe it really was just a child's tantrum — demanding more from him, exactly like Min-hyuk said. But I wasn't confident. That was that.

Min-hyuk plopped down beside me, swept away his serious face, and put on his usual goofball grin.

"Still, unlike him, there are two of us, not one."

Honestly, if his girlfriends heard that, he'd get smacked on the back of the head for talking nonsense.

"Do Lim Song-ah or any of your other girlfriends actually sign off on that theory?"

"Dunno. If I catch hell someday, that's when you'll bail me out."

"If you're gonna die, die alone."

"I always think this, but you're heartless. Anyway, I don't know much about family matters, but baseball? I'd say we know that well enough."

Kang Min-hyuk, wearing the most smug, self-assured smile in the world.

"You and me, pooling our strength — what in baseball could possibly be impossible? Didn't we just take three wins in this Southern Series together, the two of us?"

"We almost blew it at the end."

"Minor details. Skip them."

Looking at this punk, he really has gotten sneakily smooth-talking, hasn't he.

"Senior Hyun-seok carried the burden of being an ace alone when he was a high school rookie, same as us. But there are two of us. Should be far easier, no?"

There were plenty of petty counterarguments I could have raised — that in the season senior Hyun-seok debuted, unlike ours, the roster was full of veterans; that early Hyun-seok was more of a super rookie than the league-devouring monster he became; that the Seoul Twins back then were a brand-new expansion team with low expectations. But I couldn't get a single one of them past my lips.

Because somehow, listening to Min-hyuk say it with that smile on his face, a baseless optimism kept creeping in — that maybe, just maybe, it really could work.

"So that means we have to win this Korean Series without him, starting now?"

"Please. Honestly, hasn't the last game been the first one all postseason where senior Hyun-seok actually accomplished anything? Nothing changes now that he's gone, right?"

Not sneakily anymore — openly smooth-talking. The old Kang Min-hyuk would never have cracked a joke like that. Wonder who he learned it from.

But I agreed with him. Yeah, fine — was the team really going to collapse overnight just because one or two more seniors retired?

I decided to march forward, chin up. If it had to be this way, then all the better — let's put a championship ring in the hands of the retiring Kang Hyun-seok and Lee Hae-ryong.

I rose to my feet, letting Min-hyuk haul me up by the hand, and headed for the practice field to prepare for the game I'd be starting.

But the resolve of us boy breadwinners never got its chance to become reality.

The Seoul Twins, having burned every last ounce of energy on the postseason to get there, suffered a crushing, almost unreal defeat in the Korean Series that followed.

"Hey! Wait, you kids! What the hell happened all of a sudden?!"

If there was one silver lining, it was this: watching the sorry state of the team, one certain veteran who had already decided to retire changed his mind — blood pressure spiking and all — and resolved to play for exactly one more year.