The Scariest Person Is Your Own Wife

Kang Hyun-seok. Despite his image, he had hardly any trace of the old-guard mindset about him — remarkably egalitarian, and on top of that, generous to a fault when it came to looking after his juniors. A genuinely good senior, by any measure.

Cynics might claim it was the scar left behind by a boy who'd had to fight alone as his family's breadwinner, with almost no seniors he could lean on from his debut season onward. Or that helping out guys who couldn't even qualify as his competition anyway was simply an easy, comfortable kind of generosity. Some sneered at his motives, but at the very least, he believed he was doing it with a pure heart.

So while he'd only ever treat the team to reasonably priced meals (he genuinely thought those were the tastiest options, so there was no malice in it), whenever someone on the team needed a lump sum for a family event, or had some major crisis at home, it was always Kang Hyun-seok who stepped up first to help.

The problem was that to his wife, who lived alongside all of this, the whole thing was suffocating to watch. She'd known what kind of man he was when she married him, and she loved that side of him too — but wasn't he taking it a step too far?

Worse, he'd neglected the family on top of it all, so absorbed in baseball and the team. She loved Kang Hyun-seok, yes — but she was a wife who couldn't help being angry all the time.

And that long-buried fury ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠erupted into a truly massive explosion this time as well.

"Off-season special training? As a full-blown training camp with room and board?"

"Yeah. This is the last time. We slipped off the edge of a championship so painfully this year — next year has to be different."

Kang Hyun-seok's wife, Madam Kim Hae-ri, spoke in the gentlest tone she could muster while straining with every fiber of her being to suppress the eyes trembling with rage.

"You saying this year is your last, that you'll retire — I can accept that. I haven't spent just a year or two as a baseball player's wife, you know."

Kang Hyun-seok had lived as a baseball player for nineteen years now, and she had watched him for roughly eighteen, first as his girlfriend, then as his wife.

In that time she'd seen plenty of other players retire, seen their final gambits toward their dreams, and seen the women who stood by watching it all. She'd also seen with her own eyes that most players don't actually want to retire — and that even those who say they do end up feeling nothing but emptiness and sorrow afterward.

True, with a husband who was hardly ever home and a daughter she'd essentially raised alone, she sometimes resented the profession of baseball player a little. But she didn't hate it enough to make her husband suffer. So she could accept him walking back his retirement.

She was, after all, the wife who always told him to hurry up and retire so they could finally live a life together as a couple, and he'd braced himself for her to fly into a rage over the reversal. But she accepted it and moved on far more easily than expected, and Kang Hyun-seok let out a small breath of relief.

Then, immediately after, the lion's roar came crashing down.

"But a training camp with more than TEN participants?! What are you, a professional club?! Why is that YOUR job to do?!!"

"Well... this time we're not even going overseas... it's domestic, because of COVID, so..."

"So because it's domestic, you're going to spend nothing and make the participants pay for it themselves?"

"..."

"Yeah, that's about what I figured. You absolute shameless man!"

Playing baseball for one more year? Understandable. Dedicating the entire off-season to training because this season had to be properly prepared for? A little disappointing, but if he was truly braced for his final challenge, it wasn't beyond reason.

But this wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like the modest personal camps of old, where he'd take off with maybe three or four guys. He wanted to run an off-season camp with a good dozen-plus players participating?

Every single time he'd done something like this in the past, it had been the same maddening routine — 'they're the guys I invited,' 'it's not like they have any money' — and he'd cover everything out of his own pocket, from flights down to lodging, meals, and even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠renting the training facilities.

This year it wasn't even overseas, and the club was lending the training facilities, so the per-person cost would drop significantly — but the headcount had grown by that much. Just providing room and board for all of them was a serious chunk of money.

Of course, it wasn't as if Kang Hyun-seok was short on cash. He'd played at the very top of the KBO for over a decade, and in between had spent three years in Major League Baseball as a full-time starter — where exactly would he have run out of money?

He had more than enough to support his wife, himself, and their daughter for the rest of her life. But this issue wasn't a question of more money or less money, was it?

"If you want it that badly, handle it yourself. I'm not giving you a single won, so keep that in mind."

And so, with those words as the final word, Kang Hyun-seok was thrown out of his own house. The card he'd been carrying was suspended, and naturally, he no longer had access to the household account either.

Back in the day, Kang Hyun-seok — hopeless at running a household because he was so focused solely on baseball — had decided it was better to leave the money management to his wife than to botch it himself, and had handed over the family finances almost entirely.

It had been a perfectly satisfying choice. Unlike other wives, she never nickel-and-dimed him over money, and she never forced him to scrape by on a pitiful, mouse-tail-sized allowance.

But today, of all days, he found himself quietly resenting that choice of his.

Staring blankly at the front door — its passcode now changed — Kang Hyun-seok stood there for a long while, trying to figure out what on earth he was supposed to do now.

"Hyung, then I'll die together with you. That's the move."

"Hey, you signed up for this camp too."

The brilliant solution he'd finally managed to come up with was to scurry off to the co-conspirator of this whole affair: Lee Hae-ryong.

Of course, Lee Hae-ryong was even more of a family man than Kang Hyun-seok, and he shut it down with a single stroke.

"Hyung, even setting aside your MLB years, your salary was always at least fifty percent higher than mine. Asking me to cough up money now — where's your conscience?"

"I'll figure out a way to pay you back later, I swear..."

"Like hell that'll happen."

Lee Hae-ryong knew his sister-in-law well. She was truly understanding and gentle, a genuinely good person — but once she made up her mind, she never, ever budged. Kang Hyun-seok would be better off giving up.

"You really can't do anything? I have my pride too, you know, this is just..."

But if his sister-in-law was stubborn, wasn't Kang Hyun-seok every bit as bad? Honestly, since everyone attending this camp was a starter anyway, he could reasonably ask them to pay their own way — the fact that he was twisting himself into knots over it was just his signature stubbornness at work.

"So the camp you're imagining absolutely has to be a live-in format? Individual lodging won't do?"

"That's right."

He was an old-school type who believed that a dozen-plus men eating, sleeping, and living together in one shared space was itself a form of training, and he was digging in his heels that it had to be a communal camp.

"Haah... fine. Fine. But where on earth are you planning to rent a place like that?"

Which was exactly why, even if you wanted to help, the whole thing just felt hopeless.

This year's COVID fallout had wiped out every mid-tier lodging business in sight. Even the big hotels had slashed their available rooms drastically for social distancing and whatnot, so to create any real sense of training camp togetherness, you'd have to book out an entire floor, minimum.

Pension-style places couldn't house everyone either, what with the quarantine guidelines. Before money even entered the picture, finding the venue itself was the hard part.

The group needed to be clustered close together within a single building — close enough to feel like one shared space — but not in a handful of wide-open shared rooms; they'd need individual bedrooms for each person, plus an outdoor area attached where everyone could do light stretching and loosen up?

Budget aside, what place like that was even left near the ballpark these days? Realistically they'd have to drive at least an hour out to some facility on the far outskirts of Gyeonggi Province — and at that distance, the whole efficiency of a live-in camp would collapse.

COVID era or not, the baseball season had ended, November and December were creeping closer, and the year-end mood was settling in. Plenty of industries ran on cycles that had already wrapped up for the year, same as baseball.

Once you subtracted the venues those groups had already reserved or booked out in advance, there really didn't seem to be anything suitable left in the greater Seoul area. And if you had deep pockets, you could at least beg other reservations to move — but the budget didn't exist in the first place.

"A single building of reasonable size, with more than a dozen rooms, a spacious yard attached, and the capacity to provide room and board — there is absolutely no such place near Seoul right now—"

"Huh?"

Kang Min-hyuk, who happened to be passing by and caught the conversation, couldn't stop himself from making a sound at a list of conditions he felt like he'd heard somewhere before.

"...Min-hyuk. Do you know of something?"

"No... it's... it's nothing at all!"

And Kang Min-hyuk was a spectacularly bad liar.

This, then, was the full story of how the players came swarming all the way to Kim Yi-seon's newlywed front yard.

"Hey."

"I'm sorry! I argued it was absolutely not okay, I swear! So please, at least to Min-ah—"

"*Sigh*... after watching all that."

I ignored Kang Min-hyuk, who was trembling like a leaf beside me, and thought over the whole story I'd just heard.

I understood that there was nowhere to hold a live-in training camp. Honestly, it had puzzled me too. They'd built the second-team facility and in the process lost the first-team dorms — so where had all these players been staying and training all this time?

I'd assumed they'd use one of the club's designated partner hotels, but apparently if it absolutely had to be a true 'live-in' camp, even that would fall short of the conditions. Hotel stays really aren't the same as living together under one roof, sure.

And this house hadn't been moved into yet. Ye-eun and I were holding our wedding ceremony in a week, and given the pandemic situation — and the fact that Ye-eun was already pregnant — we couldn't travel far, so we'd decided to do a light hotel-resort honeymoon instead and set the move-in date about three weeks out.

Thanks to that, the house had nothing in it — no furniture, no interior work, nothing — just the handful of simple built-in appliances that came with the place. But according to the seniors, if there were no beds, sleeping bags would do just fine, so as far as they were concerned, no problem.

Unmoved-in or not, ownership and the property registration were already in my name, and since no one was living here right now — it was completely vacated — having people move in temporarily posed no issue whatsoever.

Turning it over every which way, it wasn't impossible, but...

"So... will you lend it to us? Even a week or two and my wife's heart will soften, and we're already looking into other venues in the meantime..."

"No. Absolutely not."

"Really? Thank— huh? You said no?"

"Yes. Sorry, but please leave."

Yeah, get off my lawn, all of you.

Where do you get off squatting in a newlywed couple's house?

I get the circumstances, but I'm not a pushover, you know.

"I told them absolutely not. So stop worrying, and let's just think about what we're going to do with ourselves this off-season instead."

"Really? Then Kim Yi-seon, during the off-season, you'll stay glued to the house except for weight training?"

"Of course."

"I couldn't care less whether they hold their camp here or not. I'm just a little annoyed that my idiotic oppa did something so stupid."

"Don't worry. That bastard Kang Min-hyuk is getting the whole thing reported straight to Lim Song-ah. Way more reliable than beating him up a few times."

"I called the club, and they said they don't know the details either. Apparently if a camp venue turns up, they can offer some funding, but they're swamped trying to secure domestic spring training facilities, so finding something for a players-organized camp is out of reach for them."

"Is that so? How unfortunate. Not that it's any of my business."

I had immediately scampered off to Ye-eun, Min-ah, and Seo-hee-noona and declared, loud and proud, that I was kicking everyone out and putting them in their place.

How dare they. Sure, I'm the youngest on the team, but I'm the biggest star in the Twins — in the whole KBO, even. Did they really think things would just proceed over my objections? I'm the homeowner, for crying out loud.

My girlfriends were all giving me these oddly ambiguous looks, like, do you really need to go that far? But I'm no fool. The fact that "I'm fine with it, do whatever you like" actually means "go ahead, just try it" is something you can learn without looking any further than the dramas Seo-hee-noona and I watch together.

All three of them were saying it wouldn't bother them at all if the seniors held a little camp in some empty rooms — but come on, since when is that sincere? They're being considerate of my position while secretly hating the idea. Obviously.

Baseball matters to me, but my women matter more than that. I wasn't about to make them uncomfortable just to get some training in.

And honestly — is living in barracks really what makes you better, or makes the team gel? The guys who are good are good regardless of all that.

(The expressions on Ye-eun's and Min-ah's faces when they heard that little speech had seemed a bit strange, but I'm sure it was just my imagination.)

Above all, weren't the ones who'd disgraced themselves at the Korean Series the other seniors, and not me? Sure, I gave up two runs over two games, then one run... but a starter who holds the line like that has done his job, plain and simple.

Not my problem. Even if it's Kang Hyun-seok-hyung's request and the other seniors' business, the answer's the same. If he wants a camp residence that badly, he can ask the club to find one — why is he moving into his junior's newlywed house?

Out of the bare minimum of conscience, I asked Seo-hee-noona to have the club look into lodging for the seniors' camp, and with that, my duty was done. Meaning: I was fully prepared to throw every last one of them out of my house.

"Well, thank you all for coming today, and I received the gifts gratefully. Ye-eun and I are holding our official wedding ceremony next week — you all got the invitations in advance, right? See you then."

I announced it to the seniors in a firm, clipped tone, right in front of Ye-eun, Min-ah, and Seo-hee-noona.

The moment my rock-solid resolve made itself known, Kang Min-hyuk was the first to meet Min-ah's eyes — and bolt out the door like a man escaping a crime scene, while the remaining seniors shuffled about, reading the room, and slowly began filing out of the yard.

This house was about to find its peace again. We'd only opened the place up to take a look around, so all I had to do was tell the property manager to lock it back up. The move-in was scheduled for three weeks out anyway, so we wouldn't be back until then.

But then Ye-eun said something so wildly off-script from what we'd agreed on that it nearly knocked me over.

"Do we really need to go through all that? It's not like we're living here right now anyway. Lending it out for a little while isn't hard."

...What is this? Is this a test? If I waver here, does an affection-drop event trigger — 'well, that figures'?

I shook my head firmly, insisting that was absolutely not the case, and spoke.

"No, but this is the newlywed home you and I are going to live in. What kind of conscience-free human beings even think about freeloading in a newlywed couple's house? These days, even living with your in-laws is grounds for divorce — senior or not, they're still outsiders. End of discussion. Mm-hm."

"Ugh." — a groan, conscience clearly pricked. Perfect. I had definitely handled that flawlessly. Look at Ye-eun's face right now — isn't that a beaming smile?

But Ye-eun's position did not change.

"No. Just tell them to make themselves at home. Hmm... how should I address you all?"

"Sister-in-law, call us anything you like. Honestly, 'you bastards' works too!"

"Then I'll just call you sunbae-nim. Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim? The house has no furniture yet and it's hardly a comfortable living environment — will you really be all right?"

"Oh please, we're hardly so shameless as to quibble over that."

"Well, if you're sure. The third floor will probably be for the two of us, so please stick to the first and second if you can. If it were up to me, I'd assign rooms personally, but I'm still not familiar with the house, so I can't say which rooms are best."

"Thank you so much!"

The sight of a man deep into his forties bowing and scraping to a woman who'd only just turned twenty... how do I even describe it. The sheer destructive power of it was staggering.

And it wasn't just hyung — the seniors standing behind him were hunched over, bowing their heads in thanks right along with him, and the whole thing already had the settled feeling of a done deal.

Flustered, I called all three of them — Ye-eun included — back inside and had a quick word.

"Seriously? You're really lending the place out as the seniors' training camp?"

"Why? You don't like it?"

"Uh... that's..."

Am I supposed to say I don't like it here? I mean, that would make her the bad guy for refusing something she doesn't like, so this is her way of making sure the rejection lands on my...

"Forget it. I can see exactly what you're thinking, Kim Yi-seon."

But cutting off my words, Ye-eun turned to look at Min-ah and Seo-hee-noona standing beside us.

"You two don't mind either, right?"

"Nope. My annoyance was at the idiot oppa for betraying us in the first place — the house is plenty big, and letting them stay a little while is no problem at all."

"Mm. They're our team's players after all. If circumstances didn't allow it, who knows — but if it works, I'm in favor."

And with that, the opinions of all three were gathered up and stamped into established fact.

You're actually approving this? That absurd nonsense?

While I stood there stunned, Min-ah was the first to speak, letting out a sigh.

"It's fine, so stop watching our faces already. This house is so enormous that with just a few people it's not merely lonely — it's downright creepy. Wouldn't it be nice to have it bustling with people?"

Seo-hee-noona added her two cents.

"She's right. I was never the type to leave my room much to begin with, and a house this size — lending out a few rooms won't inconvenience me one bit."

And the final nail came from Ye-eun.

"And let me say it one more time, Kim Yi-seon. From the very first glance, your eyes were shaking like a leaf and you were thinking, I hope they say yes — it's all written on your face, so who are you trying to fool? You still don't realize everything shows on your expressions?"

Ye-eun stood there triumphant, declaring that no matter how much bluster I put up, I couldn't outrun her eyes.

"And once more for the record: it doesn't bother me. Honestly, it works out well. So stop glancing at me and at these two every five seconds, and tell them to do whatever they want — camp, party, all of it."

At those words, I very, very carefully asked Ye-eun in return.

"...Truly?"

"Yes."

"...You're not just putting up with it for my sake even though it bothers you?"

"No."

Only then did I sidle quietly back out into the yard.

The seniors, who had been standing there awkwardly frozen — I had clearly approved this, then abruptly dragged all three girls inside — turned as one. And I spoke in the most careful voice I could manage.

"So, um... the wives said yes."

"""WAAAAAH!!!"""

I have no idea why a cheer broke out, but for one moment, the yard turned into a festival.

Lee Ye-eun had not, in fact, arrived at this decision out of any genuine consideration for Kim Yi-seon's feelings.

Granted, she'd weighed that benefit too — but she'd had rather a broader range of gains in mind.

"I could really go for a Hallabong right now. Why all of a sudden, I wonder? Maybe Haet-nim-i wants some?"

"Me! I'll go get ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them! I know a place that brings in the good Hallabong!"

One senior went sprinting out the door.

"I can't figure out why my shoulders are so knotted. Is it because I'm pregnant?"

"Sister-in-law, didn't I tell you I got properly trained in sports massage? And I brought my massage table along this time, too!"

Two seniors were immediately kneading her shoulders with the utmost care.

"Maybe it's because the curtains aren't up yet, but the sunlight is intense. I've been cooped up in the house lately — no sun at all — so I suppose it does get a bit bothersome..."

"Curtains? Leave that to me, I'll have them up in no time. Every stick of furniture in my own place, I DIY'd!"

And a third senior, since the move-in hadn't happened yet, swiftly installed the curtain rod that happened to be standing ready nearby.

In Lee Ye-eun's assessment, managing the players through their wives hadn't been a bad approach. It's not easy to ignore your wife when she's on your case, after all.

But that had only ever been indirect control — influence filtered through acquaintance and the one-step-removed relationship of "so-and-so's wife."

"Oh, thank you."

"Aw, we're the ones living under your roof — this much is only natural."

So in her mind, creating a direct debt of gratitude with the players themselves, and thereby naturally steering them to follow Lee Ye-eun's word — this camp was not a bad tactic at all for that purpose.

You only had to look at the scene unfolding now to see it. No matter how attentively they waited on her, did anyone think the guilt of having barged into a newlywed home would wash away? With a pregnant woman in the house, no less?

From now on, the Twins players would find it nearly impossible to refuse one of Lee Ye-eun's "little favors." Some of them might have anyway, but now they'd treat Kim Yi-seon all the better for it too.

Lee Ye-eun wore a satisfied smile at the sheer perfection of the situation.

And Kang Min-ah, watching from the sidelines, thought to herself: Yep. Absolute madwoman.