I'll Drag a Left-Handed Fireballer Out of Hell Itself
Question. I filed a complaint about how the manga's plot was going, and the next morning I woke up in a different body. What exactly could this mean?
Anyone who's read enough web novels and manga can answer this one easily. The correct answer: "If it bothers you that much, go change it yourself."
Of course, these days you also run into the "I misunderstood the genre" pattern often enough, so you can't just assume.
But with the headlines from every major outlet looking like this today too, I could safely say I was absolutely not imagining things.
A Republic of Korea whose territory spans the entire Korean Peninsula. A country where polygamy is legal, the birth rate is impressively high, and sports enjoy enormous popularity and profitability. And a country where high school baseball forms a major pillar of that sports boom.
If a world like this weren't the setting of The Weakest High School Ace, that would be the stranger thing.
And the identity of me, reincarnated into it?
"Yi-seon, time to eat~"
Kim Yi-seon, obviously.
Kim Yi-seon. In the manga, he's the greatest wall standing in protagonist Kang Min-hyuk's path — the most gifted talent of his generation, a player scouted not only by professional clubs but by Major League organizations as well.
A blazing fastball topping out at 160 km/h, hurled from a textbook overhand delivery off a towering 195-centimeter frame, is magnificent all on its own.
On top of that, the rarity of being a lefty, plus the ability to split his slider into three distinct pitches — a sweeper, a vertical slider, and a hard slider — and land every one of them inside the zone, elevated Kim Yi-seon to a tier far beyond high school.
Donghyun High was a storied baseball program, but they hadn't won a national tournament in ages, and Yi-seon was hailed as the talent who would finally carry them to the top — a player of a different caliber entirely, who seized one of the team's starting pitching spots from his very first year.
Even among the web of rival aces each school had gathered around itself, he was the arch-enemy most tightly bound to the protagonist, playing a pivotal role in the story.
Add elite physical gifts to the mix, and — to borrow the phrasing of the female fans who enjoyed The Weakest Ace — a face as handsome as "an idol member leaving the group over a school-bullying scandal." Suffice to say, the boy had serious star power.
Hearing all that, you'd think: this is a perfect body, so shouldn't I just sit back and enjoy it? Handsome AND a baseball prodigy — shouldn't I be offering 108 bows of gratitude to the Baseball God every single morning?
Like hell. This body has a time bomb strapped to it.
The moment I became aware of my reincarnation, I went straight into future planning. What was I supposed to do with my life from here on?
1. Since I've traveled from the future into the past, cash in my future knowledge for a fortune.
I was a dyed-in-the-wool web novel junkie who enjoyed chaebol stories too, so I knew plenty of ways to make money off foreknowledge. The problem is that the world of The Weakest Ace (that's the abbreviated name the general public uses) isn't the world we used to live in. There's a unified Korea, for one thing, and while it resembles my old world in many ways, it differs in plenty of others.
Still, giving up felt like a waste, so I bought some crypto — only to discover there was no such thing as Bitcoin. I bought the oldest, most actively traded coin instead, and one year later? Delisted. Objection overruled.
2. An adult mind in a child's body — play the child prodigy game.
In my past life my intelligence was perfectly ordinary, just enough to get into a decent Seoul university on the usual route. The act would collapse in no time. Overruled.
3. Born with a handsome face — become a celebrity.
No musical talent, can't dance, can't act. That was true in my past life, and after a little experimenting with this body, I could feel it was true now too. My face is genuinely good-looking, sure, but not overwhelmingly so. Overruled.
I considered streaming as well, but while a woman might get by on it, whether a man could succeed on good looks alone seemed dubious. Overruled.
4. Then hook a rich beauty and become a kept husband.
Would a shut-in gallery-dwelling Manboong-i loser turned Ya-boong-i really pull that off just because his body got a face-lift? Overruled.
"So baseball really is the only way, huh..."
Honestly — baseball? I want to play. I'm a baseball fan, am I seriously going to pass on being a left-handed ace? The guy tops out at 160 km/h, supposedly?
The real problem is this: if I'm only going to play through high school and then quit, what kind of future plan is that? I'm not some Japanese kid betting his life on Koshien.
But after going so far as to reincarnate, I have no desire to crawl back into being a basement-dwelling Manboong-i either.
I came all the way into a manga world — am I really supposed to live yet another beige life? Study adequately, go to an adequate college, land an adequate job, with nothing to call a hobby except reading manga and novels in my room?
"Yasin, you son of a gun. I guess you really did send me here because every word I said was right, huh? Go change it yourself."
Yasin had definitely admitted my analysis was spot-on. Though I couldn't say whether that extended to the throwaway line he'd tacked on at the end — "Isn't he just kind of made of glass?"
Still, if I already know the root causes of most of those injuries, then fixing them is probably possible. Even if the process looks like it's going to be genuinely hellish.
Alright. Let's do this. Baseball it is — I'll play pro, without regret, until I'm forty! With that resolve, I drafted my master plan: Operation Make Kim Yi-seon Healthy.
And step one was:
"All right — one~ two~ one~ two~ breathe in... and out... and relax."
Yoga.
Stiff body, weak core? Then you just start training it from childhood, problem solved. Pilates exists for this sort of thing too, but it's still unfamiliar in Korea and yoga is simply more efficient. Even MLB players swear by it.
"Now, Yi-seon? You separate the upper body from the lower body like this, and move them independently. Breathe in?"
"Ghk...!"
When you first hear the word "yoga," you might picture some gentle flexibility routine, but that couldn't be further from the truth. For a baseball player, excess flexibility is poison in the first place.
You might ask what nonsense this is — a stiff guy trying to build flexibility? Here's the thing: if your body can stretch without limit, without restraint, you get injured.
That's why yoga, before it's anything else, is training in control — teaching your body how to rein in all that stretchiness it's developed.
"Ugh-ghh-ghhk!!! Ghk!!"
"Come on, Yi-seon? Let's count to ten. One, two, three, four~"
Which is to say: it's brutally hard. My lower back is already quivering like jelly, and the muscles around every joint I'm forcibly holding in a stretched position are screaming.
Mom, who tagged along when I said I wanted to learn yoga, thinking she'd give it a try alongside her son, has already collapsed in a heap somewhere over there.
"Now relax. Let's try that ten more times, shall we?"
I'm sorry, what? Somebody save me...
"Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hooooooo..."
Step two: endurance. Like some bald-headed hero's daily routine, I run every single day.
At first, even a short jog left me gagging, but now I can run five kilometers straight without stopping. The full ten? Honestly, that part's manga-level exaggeration, so I skipped it.
It may be old-fashioned, but in Korea and Japan alike, running remains the single most important element of baseball training — a workout I absolutely can't skip.
And just as the bald hero's routine doesn't end with running, neither does my endurance regimen.
"Nineteen... no, eighteen! Nine...teen! ...Twenty! Pwah...!"
Strength work at the lowest possible intensity, every session, every set, on repeat. The gym bros would sneer and call me a light-weight rep addict, but my goal isn't strength — it's muscular endurance, so this is the right approach.
Bodyweight squats, push-ups gripping a broomstick, pull-ups on a low bar where my feet keep touching the ground — low-intensity bodyweight work, repeated as many times as I can manage. Right now I'm up to about ten or fifteen sets of twenty.
"Ugh! Twenty!"
The problem is, this hurts like crazy too. Honestly, a short, brutal session with heavy weights would be kinder.
As the muscles creep toward their limit they burn like they're on fire, and holding proper form to protect my joints through all of it is no joke.
But even this isn't the end.
"Yi-seon. Dinner's ready."
"Yes, one moment, please."
I dash off today's training log and sprint to the table. Then I confirm that the side dishes I requested are there, and dig in immediately.
"Is it really that good, our Yi-seon?"
"Yes, it's delicious."
Setting aside the scattered vegetables, the protein side of the menu reads: tofu and mackerel. Plus chicken breast.
And this is method number three: diet control.
After strength training, you need plenty of protein. But I'd heard back in my past life that red meat promotes muscle inflammation, which can work against injury prevention.
So from childhood, I take in plant-based proteins along with oily fish and white meats like chicken — two rabbits with one stone.
Pork belly? Ribeye? Not before retirement, minimum.
Dad looks slightly disappointed surveying the dinner table, but there's nothing to be done. A healthy son matters more than a tasty dinner, doesn't it?
"Yi-seon. What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"A baseball player."
"A baseball player? A fireballing pitcher like Kang Hyun-seok of the Twins? Or a slugger like Kim Jeong-hyuk, knocking them out of the park?"
When Dad asked about my dreams, every example that came to mind was a Twins player — naturally, since who in this house isn't a Twins fan?
Both players he named were ones I'd never seen in this world before, but like the ballplayers of my old life, they seemed to be quite accomplished, admirable athletes.
"No. Something a little different."
But my goal is a bit different.
"Oh? You want to go to America someday and all that?"
"I'm going to play baseball for a long, long time without ever getting hurt."
It's a truly hellish routine. Not a single part of this life is easy.
This is a child's body, and even I crave spam and tteokbokki.
The yoga yanks my muscles until they ache, the strength training makes them feel like they're burning, and the running leaves me so winded that bile comes crawling up from somewhere deep inside.
"That's right. Staying healthy is what matters most. Our boy really knows his baseball."
My answer must have left an impression, because Dad kept nodding to himself.
Still, my goal is probably bigger and more unshakable than anything he's imagining. "Stay reasonably injury-free"? That doesn't even begin to cut it.
At this point, someone ought to start calling me the Diamond Body. I'm going to retire still throwing 160 km/h fastballs in my late thirties — and I'll walk away as the kind of player people beg for just one more year. Only then will my soul be at peace.
They say a left-handed fireballer is something you'd drag out of hell itself. And me? I'm dragging left-handed fireballer Kim Yi-seon up out of hell — one excruciating training session at a time.