The First Phoenix Flag Tournament
"Here, look this way. Honestly, you're so high-maintenance."
Ye-eun came over with a towel and carefully dabbed the sweat from my face.
"Hey, hold on. Not there."
"Why not? If I'm wiping you down, I might as well do it properly."
She wasn't content with just wiping over my clothes — she tucked the towel inside them to get at my chest, then hiked up my shirt to get my stomach and back too. This is where I draw the line, you know?
But as if it were no problem at all, Ye-eun went about it completely naturally, and none of the other members around us batted an eye. Am I seriously the only conservative one here?
Once she'd finished with the sweat, she decided the sunscreen needed reapplying, and her meticulous fingers worked from my face all the way down to my neck. Hey, why are you touching my collarbone?
After that, from who knows where, she produced a portable fan — a surprisingly large one with a seriously strong breeze for its size — and proceeded to cool my whole body down.
I run hot and sweat easily, so this really does help, but she's not a toddler and I'm not one either — being attended to from head to toe like this leaves me faintly embarrassed and painfully aware of everyone watching.
She's always doted on me one detail at a time, but ever since we made up, it feels like she's been using that as an excuse to take the skinship a step too far. Is she feeling competitive with Min-ah or something?
Meanwhile, the game carried on just fine, completely indifferent to my ongoing battle with shame.
Crack!
"In-hoon! Take second! Take second base!"
The batting coach whirled his arms, passionately urging the runner on. In the meantime, the runner who'd already been on second came home, tacking another run onto the board.
Wirye Jeil High 5 : 1 Hanam High
Thankfully, the game was rolling along smoothly. A tidy scoreboard in the top of the eighth. Even though I'd made four outs at the plate earlier today, the game was turning out remarkably well.
Maybe because of that, the managers — who usually kept to the locker room or the waiting area inside the field rather than the dugout — had all come out to the dugout, and nobody seemed to mind much.
Apparently some of the more old-school managers raise hell and file formal protests when a mere manager, not an official staff member or player, sets foot in the dugout — but today the opposing team stayed quiet.
And it wasn't just Ye-eun. Lim Song-ah had hesitated briefly, then followed her in, and was now parked right next to Kang Min-hyuk.
Granted, today was the final game of the weekend league season, which probably played a part. Neither team had anything riding on the last game anyway, so there was no point picking a fight over it.
That said, victory wasn't entirely meaningless. If we won today, the first-years would finish with an excellent record of three wins and one loss across the four games they'd played, dragging the team all the way up to seventh place. We'd already escaped dead last — seventh didn't come with any prize, but a higher ranking just feels good, doesn't it?
The upperclassman starters from the second and third years, meanwhile, had dutifully served as ballast with roughly one win and three losses over the same stretch — but this season was still their stage, and the first-years were merely gaining experience. In exchange, though, they'd better handle their college admissions on their own.
And once today's game ended, vacation would finally begin.
Back in my past life, when I was still a student, vacation meant a joyful stretch of rest and freedom. For a high school baseball club, it meant something a little different.
The Bonghwangdaegi — the Phoenix Flag Tournament.
Even before the weekend league reorganization, it was the only national tournament that took every single team that applied, rather than extending invitations.
Which was why it enjoyed the highest popularity of them all — the one tournament even people who didn't follow high school baseball made a point of watching at least once.
And it was the only official national tournament open to schools that had failed to place first or second in either half of the weekend league.
Anyone could see the guy had ripped it straight off Koshien. That very Phoenix Flag Tournament would devour nearly the entire summer vacation.
In fact, it had already begun. The amateur clubs — the ones that weren't dedicated baseball programs — had been holding regional qualifiers nationwide since around June, squeezed into weekends. The 106 high school teams that won through would advance to the main draw.
Even for the dedicated programs, it was known as the last national tournament before the pro draft — the stage where university coaches and scouting staff made up their minds about which players to recruit.
Which meant it was crucial for dedicated programs — especially the third-years — to put on a good showing right now.
For that reason, ordinary teams without championship aspirations tended to force their third-years into the lineup even when their skills fell short. But lately, our manager's mood had felt a little ominous. Or rather, he looked like a man wrestling with a decision.
Ye-eun, who'd been fanning me, must have sensed it too — the moment the manager started drifting our way, she shot him a wary glance and made herself scarce.
"Yi-seon."
"Yes, Coach."
"No hits from you today?"
"Want me to get one? Looks like I'll get one more at-bat."
"Do that. Get a hit, and Coach will give you a prize."
"I don't know what it is, but somehow I doubt it'll be a prize?"
"Get the hit anyway."
The coach was weighing something, in a way he usually wasn't. When that man gets pensive, it usually means either a critical game or some sudden onset of genius-manager syndrome.
Harboring a vague suspicion, I went up in the bottom of the ninth and promptly launched one over the fence.
Final score: 8 to 2. A rout for Jeil High. With that win, we closed out the second half of the weekend league in seventh place. For the record, I'm told this was the first season since the club's founding that we avoided last place in both halves.
Short history or not, what kind of team is this.
"For this Phoenix Flag Tournament, the first-years and the starters will alternate appearances."
"Coach. Are you joking with us right now?"
I knew that prize was too good to be true.
The Phoenix Flag bracket had just been released on the eve of vacation, with the entire baseball club assembled — and down came the coach's bombshell.
"I am completely serious."
"With all due respect, Coach, our college futures are on the line here. And you're sending first-years onto the final stage? Worse, pulling your starters from a single-elimination tournament where one loss ends everything — it makes no sense."
The one saying this was Seung-yong, whose university admission was already locked in. He's about the only third-year who plays baseball like a decent human being. Still, as captain, with none of his classmates willing to speak up, he'd taken the bullet for all of them.
The coach knew that too, so rather than barking at him to quit rambling, he laid it out piece by piece.
"If college mattered that much to you, you should've played better in the weekend league. You all know how the second-half games went, so I won't belabor the point. Honestly, I call you the starters, but take away a few of you and the first-year squad is the starting lineup."
He said it piece by piece, all right — nobody said any of the pieces would be kind. The starter squad looked ready to drop dead on the spot.
"Besides, this is for your benefit too."
"Coach, how is reduced playing time good for us?"
"Would you rather scrape by in the regional rounds — or play in the Central Rounds?"
The coach held the Phoenix Flag bracket up for us to see again, his voice hardening.
"Now, look here. Our first opponent is an amateur club. The next round, we'd face the winner between two more amateur clubs.
Yes, amateur upsets happen often enough at the Phoenix Flag — but a team that gets upset wasn't meant to climb in the first place, so I won't even entertain that scenario."
Then he pointed at one of the third-years.
"You. What does this bracket look like to you?"
"Uh... we should make it to the Round of 64 without much trouble?"
"Exactly. So do you get what I'm saying now?"
The coach slammed his palm down on the desk with a bang. Whoa, that's a bit fiery. Both his eyes were blazing with something like passion, unlike their usual state.
"Cruise into the Round of 64, punch through that slot, and what's waiting is the Round of 32 — what they call the Central Rounds. You boys never wanted to see Dongdaemun? Time to set foot on the dirt of Mokdong, no?"
The Regional Rounds and the Central Rounds.
With a hefty 256 teams entering, the Phoenix Flag simply couldn't fit every game into its window even with the luxury of vacation — it was physically impossible.
So the tournament rented out as many ballparks as possible and burned through the early rounds in the provinces. The stretch from the Round of 256 down to the Round of 64, played fast across more than sixty ballparks nationwide, was one such block.
From the Round of 32 onward, everything moved to just four venues in Seoul and its outskirts: Dongdaemun, Mokdong, Sungui, and the Jamsil Baseball Stadium Auxiliary Field.
So while it wasn't the official terminology, everyone commonly called everything before the Round of 32 the Regional Rounds, and everything after it the Central Rounds. And it was the Central Rounds where the general public truly started paying attention.
"The first-years play the Round of 256, you boys play the Round of 128. Which means the Round of 64 naturally falls to the first-years.
Say you got lucky and won the Round of 64 — you'd be so exhausted you either couldn't show up to the Round of 32 in anything close to perfect condition, or couldn't show up at all. Compared to that, isn't this the better deal?"
What the coach was really saying was this: worried about college? Rather than half-heartedly logging a few regional-round at-bats, show them something spectacular on the Central Rounds stage when every eye in the country is watching.
If you fall short there, it'll sting — but that was always as far as your fate ran anyway.
"If I'd thought the draw was hopeless from the start, I'd have thrown you boys out there and sent the first-years home to rest all vacation. But sitting right in front of us is the luckiest draw in Jeil High baseball history — and you want me to run some surrender-the-season strategy? Not a chance in hell."
The coach had clearly smelled victory, and he was fired up beyond belief. To be fair — the team forever marked for last place in the weekend league, escaping dead last in both halves and reaching the Round of 32 of the Phoenix Flag? If that was all we accomplished, his stock as a manager would climb considerably.
And that fervor didn't stop with the coach. It spread to the starter squad, who'd been marinating in defeatism just moments before. Dongdaemun. To students playing high school baseball, those words were achingly sweet. Anyone who could resist that never should have picked up a bat in the first place.
After that impassioned speech, the coach dismissed the starter squad in the still-blazing atmosphere and kept the first-years behind for a few extra words.
"That's what I told your seniors, but honestly? I don't expect much from you."
The man who'd been ready to smash the place apart a minute ago had suddenly reverted to a weary middle-aged dad ground down by work and life. His energy had drained so completely that watching him sucked the fire right out of the room.
"Look, you went three-and-one, but you all know the luck ran your way too. Proper dedicated programs show up by the Round of 64 — it won't be as easy as I made it sound.
Truth is, the starters are so deflated I just needed to throw them something. So — Se-hyeong, you especially, loosen up those shoulders."
The coach had singled out Oh Se-hyeong, the freshman who was chummy with the upperclassmen. I could see the boy, brimming with visible ambition moments ago, wilt in confusion.
"You think one more Phoenix Flag game at this point changes your recruitment? College coaches don't have holes in their heads. So work hard — but don't burn yourselves out for your seniors with those martyred, caved-in thoughts of yours."
The first-years had initially assumed he was telling them to relax, but once they saw how genuinely drained their coach looked, the 'oh, he really couldn't care less' realization scattered the whole we'll-fight-to-the-end atmosphere.
Now he was truly waving them off, shooing everyone out. Every time I watched him like this, I thought: this man should have been an actor, not a baseball manager. Maybe both sides are real, maybe only one — but one of them is definitely a performance.
After the first-years were dismissed too, everyone filtered back toward the dorms — except Kang Min-hyuk was acting strange. He wasn't heading inside; he was just sitting alone on a bench, staring into space.
"..."
He's never been much of a talker, and that meditation-or-spaced-out routine of his is a regular occurrence, so the other guys and the coaching staff apparently couldn't read it.
But I'd spent 326 chapters of a manga and four years of real life with this guy — of course I could. His heart and his habits were transparent as glass to me.
"Hey, Kang Min-hyuk. What's got you thinking so hard."
I slid onto the bench beside him. One look was enough to tell me he was seriously shaken.
"...So the Phoenix Flag is finally here."
"It is. The Phoenix Flag."
Of course. That was the reason. Memories of his late father. A promise. For Kang Min-hyuk, the Phoenix Flag was the One True Goal — a seizure-inducing obsession button, basically.
"What, you didn't expect the first-years to play first, and now that you're about to take the field you're nervous?"
"No, it's not that. Kim Yi-seon — how ready do you think we are?"
Well, let's see. Aside from me and Kang Min-hyuk, the rest of the guys looked to be at seventy percent or more of the peak form I'd seen from them in the manga, and the two of us hadn't properly finished preparing yet, so...
"Maybe fifty percent? That's about where I'd put us."
My number must have come in lower than his own estimate, because Kang Min-hyuk looked hollowed out. So he'd rated us higher, huh.
"That's the problem. We're still underprepared, and I can't be certain we can actually pull it off."
Ah, so it wasn't the pressure of playing in the tournament — he was worried that a bunch of undercooked kids would get the whole team blown out?
"You're the ace, aren't you? If the ace throws a perfect game, what does the rest matter?"
This from the guy who'd later grab schools with far worse rosters by the collar and drag them up the mountain. Whining over this?
I figured I'd pep up the slouching Kang Min-hyuk — and maybe load him with snacks while I was at it — so I pulled out some precious baked goods. A little sugar in the system and something in the stomach never failed to lift a mood.
"Eat these and get your spirits up."
Dainty little cookies, baked into adorable shapes. For reasons known only to her, Min-ah always made them in the shape of puppies and dog bones.
I held them out, and Kang Min-hyuk's vacant eyes slowly began to refocus.
"These are..."
"Cookies Min-ah made. What did she say again? Cut the sugar, boost the protein, good for your diet, that kind of thing. They actually taste pretty great."
"Kim Yi-seon."
"Yeah?"
"Could you not just take one real punch for me?"
And past the point of simply refocusing, a light of pure fury kindled in Kang Min-hyuk's previously hollow eyes.
Hmm... well, he's energized, so I guess mission accomplished?