The Extreme of the Unconscious

Donghyun High had been in a bad way lately.

They'd crashed out in the Round of 16 at last year's Phoenix Flag, and then fallen just short of qualifying for the Golden Lion Tournament, the second half of the fall national circuit. Any ordinary school would have called that a respectable, even average, season — but for a team whose stated goal every year was a national championship, it amounted to outright failure.

So the head coach was replaced, and the team kept playing through the offseason in the Winter League to keep their edge sharp, while recruiting first-years more aggressively than usual. The logic was simple: keep playing competitive games to stay sharp, then stockpile talented freshmen and force the incumbent second- and third-year starters to feel real pressure through competition.

Two weeks into the new weekend league season, that logic produced a report card.

Not a success. That was why the mood around the team had sunk so low, too.

Now a third-year, old enough to start worrying about college admissions, Lee Kyung-tae was deep in thought about how the team's cycle had spiraled down this far.

Last year had creaked in places, sure, but the team had still been rolling along more or less fine. Then, as if it had tripped over a loose stone, the whole thing had collapsed in a single instant and never recovered. What had been the trigger? The current coach blamed the losses at the Phoenix Flag and the Blue Dragon Tournament, and ever since he'd been preaching the need for a winning mentality, trying to pump confidence into everyone. But the more Kyung-tae turned it over, the more convinced he was that wasn't it.

It had happened earlier. A moment when everyone's feel for the game briefly broke — not a simple loss, but something else entirely.

And his instinct pointed squarely at that match against Wirye Jeil High in the second half of last year's weekend league. Rationally, he told himself one game couldn't have that much of an impact — but when instinct hit this hard, you didn't just ignore it.

In that case, there was only one way to cut the cycle off: they had to win this upcoming match against Wirye Jeil High. Period.

Kyung-tae, now captain of Donghyun High, finished his deliberation and went straight to the coach.

"So what you're telling me, Kyung-tae, is that we should send our best lineup out for the Jeil High game?"

"Yes, Coach. They're riding momentum that doesn't look normal right now. And we lost our most recent game on top of everything else."

The Donghyun coach looked like a man with a headache.

"Kyung-tae, if our other game this week were winnable, I'd hear you out. But Sunday's opponent is Suwon High. Are you suggesting we write off Suwon entirely and go all-in on Jeil High?"

"With respect, I think Jeil High is the more dangerous team than Suwon."

Even with a student second-guessing his game management, the coach didn't scold him — he listened. That alone said the man wasn't hopelessly closed-minded, and that Kyung-tae had earned his trust.

"Still, no. I respect your opinion, but I'm the one who has to manage this team. Frankly, it's better to beat Suwon and lose to Jeil than the other way around."

And by any common-sense measure, Suwon High was the stronger team. They'd finished second in the first half and first in the second half of last year's weekend league — a genuine powerhouse of the southern Gyeonggi region. With head-to-head results serving as the tiebreaker on equal points, conceding the Suwon game was even harder to justify.

Kyung-tae understood the coach's position well enough to accept it, and he left the office quietly. Even if the ace didn't pitch that day, a loss wasn't inevitable. You did everything within your power.

On the way out, he gathered every recent game video and scorebook from Wirye Jeil High's matches and buried himself in analysis.

"Well, I'll be. The kid's fixin' to get into Seoul National, is he?"

The Wirye Jeil High baseball team room, one day before the Donghyun game. In one corner, Kim Yi-seon had game footage looping on a monitor, with scorebooks of Donghyun's players and pages of his own hand-written scouting notes on the Donghyun program stacked in a pile beside him.

"I'm pitching tomorrow, so I've gotta prepare. Right, Kang-cheol hyung?"

"Huh? Yeah. You gotta prepare."

Nam Kang-min stared at the pair of them, thoroughly dumbfounded.

"Feller whose ball don't go where he wants it even when he throws it, and he's doin' analysis?"

"I have a pitching strategy too, you know."

"Fastball and changeup? Two pitches, that's it, and you got a strategy?"

This guy keeps being right and I hate it.

This little gathering was a battery meeting — a chance to share scouting notes before tomorrow's start. Normally the pitching coach would sit in, but he was busy minding the first-year pitchers. Once you got to the pro level or even the national tournament stage, where real data accumulated, this kind of deep analysis mattered. Right now, though, all they had was last year's records and a handful of weekend league box scores — hardly enough for analysis to mean much.

But any pitcher worth his salt kept information about the opponent in his head. Pitching was about beating the batter, not just throwing pretty pitches...

"If the mudskipper swims, the little goby swims too, I reckon. Min-hyuk and Ji-wook are both at it, so I suppose you gotta be too."

Nam Kang-min switched off the monitor and snatched the scorebook right out of his hands.

"Go on back and rest. Two fellers whose pitchin' don't get one lick better from thinkin', sittin' here fussin' over paper. What for?"

Nam Kang-min could tell that Kim Yi-seon wasn't in great shape today. Control was barely in the zone by brute force, and a two-pitch pitcher was getting himself all worked up over scouting reports? One look at him now said his head was overloaded and spinning.

If it were only Yi-seon, fine. The problem was that today's starter, Choi Kang-cheol, didn't look much better either.

"Their number-two hitter, Kim Chang-sik, has a statistically significant whiff rate against sliders, so..."

He just kept mumbling along the paper, and Kang-min wanted to snatch it away and tear it to shreds. Couldn't do that to a senior, of course.

If those seats had been occupied by Kang Min-hyuk, Kwon Ji-wook, or even Ha Kyung-woo, this whole scene would have been rock solid. But those two were simply not that breed of player, were they?

What wind had blown through, that they'd both suddenly become obsessed with analysis — a guy who couldn't pitch the moment he started overthinking, and a guy with exactly two pitches thinking himself into knots regardless.

Please, just analyze the fact that thinking is worthless in your case first.

Kang-min turned his head the other way toward the Donghyun dugout and saw much the same picture over there. Players huddled over a note sheet right up to first pitch, drilling it into their memories. And their captain, Lee Kyung-tae, was scanning this side with sharp, narrow eyes.

By everything Kang Min-hyuk and Kim Yi-seon had told him, that was not a man who sat quietly — yet there he was, silently watching only their side. That alone gave Kang-min an uneasy feeling.

He gathered up his catcher's gear with one prayer: please, just don't let the pitchers' heads come apart today.

The auxiliary field of the Jamsil Dome — Donghyun High's de facto home ground. For a baseball powerhouse, Donghyun's fanbase was on the weak side, and crowds barely materialized. A hundred-odd people on a good home game day.

Today, though, some six hundred spectators had reportedly packed in.

None of them, naturally, were there to cheer for Donghyun.

"YI-SEON!! SAY HI TO US!!!"

Women in the stands shrieking and squealing, and Kim Yi-seon smiling and waving back — you genuinely couldn't tell whether this was an idol concert or a baseball game.

Both schools sat in the heart of Wirye City, so in practice they shared the same local fanbase. Unless you were a Donghyun alum or a die-hard, any fan unaffiliated with either school had long since drifted over to Jeil High's side.

Which was why the home team's dugout felt exactly like an away game.

But Lee Kyung-tae, stepping into the batter's box as the leadoff hitter, couldn't have cared less about the atmosphere.

No — if anything...

"Hey, what's with that guy? He's telling us to shut up, isn't he?"

"Unbelievable. A kid who plays baseball gets to do that?"

...he weaponized even this.

He deliberately tapped his helmet by the ear flap, then stretched his bat out to point straight at the stands. A gesture anyone could read at a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠glance. The crowd began booing — it started small, but every time, he exaggerated his reaction to feed it, and the jeers swelled and swelled. By the time the flustered umpire stepped in to warn him, the booing had grown to a proper roar.

A crowd's boos shrink opponents down. Kyung-tae himself might shake it off, but the rest of Donghyun's lineup could well be rattled. However —

"Whoa there, son. Mind your blood pressure."

"Don't talk to him."

The opposing catcher wandered over, clearly sensing something curdling in the air. Kyung-tae brushed him off lightly and fixed his eyes on the pitcher alone.

Just as planned.

"Ghh..."

Boos aimed at one player don't skip the player's own team. Today's Jeil High starter, Choi Kang-cheol — a man whose mental fragility was practically on record.

High school baseball is, at its heart, students playing, so crowds tend to stay polite — slurs and outright booing rarely surface. Which meant Kang-cheol had probably never experienced anything like this.

He threw his first pitch with the booing still rattling in his ears.

"Ball!"

And the four-seamer missed by a mile.

The fastball was missing so badly it might as well have been the changeup —

Lee Kyung-tae grinned.

God, Lee Kyung-tae is a filthy piece of work. Every time we meet, his tricks get cleverer and dirtier.

He'd stirred the crowd into a booing frenzy, then when he reached base on a single, he "accidentally" bumped into our first baseman on the way past. Contact squarely in the gray zone — impossible to call intentional or not. Nothing serious, just a brush of bodies, but the atmosphere turned uglier still.

At this point the guy is a god of shaking down an opponent's mentality. I have to give him that.

On top of everything else: that twitchy little lead-off shuffle of his, the flagrant sign-stealing every single time he reached second — a given, really — and him hollering "LET'S GO!" at full volume every time Kang-cheol hyung went into his windup.

When he came up again in the third, he did his practice swings menacingly close to the catcher and drew a warning from the umpire. Coach was absolutely livid — he stormed out and appealed hard for an ejection on unsportsmanlike conduct, but the umpire apparently wasn't the tossing type and settled for the warning.

"I swear, that kid makes my blood boil every time I see him. Who'd ever pick up a guy who plays baseball like that?"

"He is pretty good, though."

Two at-bats, two hits. Yeah.

Everything in me wanted to drill one in his ribs, but Kang-cheol hyung — fragile as he looks — is too soft-hearted for intentional beanballs. And if he threw one, it would only wreck his own head worse.

Coach chewed back his anger, pacing.

"Yi-seon. Loosen up your arm."

"Already?"

It's the third inning, coach.

"Does that look like a guy who can keep throwing, to you? I want to pull him right now, but we've got nobody else. He pitches through this inning, minimum. You go sixty pitches, that's six innings for you."

Easy to say, Coach. Even manga Kang Min-hyuk averages about five innings on sixty pitches.

He didn't really mean the sixty, of course — and sure enough, he called another reliever into the dugout.

Wait. That's Seo Jun-soo.

Ah. Right — Coach hasn't figured out yet that Jun-soo turns into a collapsing bird chest after the mid-game.

Coach, seriously — if you burn sixty pitches and come out, this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kid is throwing the rest? If you put Jun-soo in for nine innings he could genuinely give up ten runs, I'm not joking. So I need to throw a complete game: six innings, sixty pitches. If I push it to sixty-two, would the team director even notice?

I took the mound in the bottom of the fourth. The score was already 5–1. Knowing Kang-cheol hyung's temperament, surviving five earned runs in that state was honestly a miracle.

I'd hit a double today, but it hadn't been nearly enough to claw anything back. So the answer was for me to stop the bleeding too, huh.

I loosened up lightly and studied the hitter stepping in.

Donghyun's five-hole hitter. If my notes were right, he handled fastballs well but struggled against off-speed.

Then let's ambush him — changeup for a strike, first pitch.

I shook off Nam Kang-min's sign and called for the changeup myself. Kang-min refused once, but after I insisted twice, he caved.

The changeup spilled off my fingers, soft and easy. Even the feel of it rolling under my fingers was clean — maybe one of those one-out-of-ten perfect ones.

"Striiike!"

Whiff, as expected. If you've got my fastball on the brain, an off-speed pitch dropping that well is supposed to be unplayable.

Pitch two. According to the scouting report, this guy swings aggressively even when the count's against him.

Then another changeup.

Kang-min refused again; I demanded the changeup hard.

And the second pitch spun loose —

CRACK!!!

Huh?

The first triple-allowed of my life. Thankfully, auxiliary field or not, Jamsil was still Jamsil — the fences were deep, so it stayed in the park. A triple, though.

It hadn't been hit quite as flush as the notes said his weakness was, and I genuinely thought that pitch was fine — that changeup was above-average quality among the stuff ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I usually throw. So it wasn't a conditioning problem. The guy just got lucky. No reason to wobble.

I looked at the next hitter, the six-hole batter, and ran the analysis back through my head.

A swing-first type who hunted contact rather than taking pitches. So: strike one to grab the count, then bait pitches from the second offering.

This time I agreed with the catcher's sign. A light nod, and a four-seamer.

"Striiike!"

The board flashed 148. Right — today is not a condition problem, like I said.

For pitch two I called for the changeup, low and diving. A bait pitch landing right in his swing window.

But the moment I flashed the sign, Nam Kang-min stood up, pulled off his mask, and trudged out to the mound.

"What? Something wrong?"

"Good grief. I done told you out there and you just won't listen, will ye. Empty yer dang head!"

Kang-min thumped his chest pad, exasperated.

"Excuse me? Why would a pitcher empty his head?"

"All that figurin' and second-guessin' is a net loss, son. You just empty out, go 'ooh, I wanna throw this'un,' and let her fly. That's when you're best."

I'm not Kang-cheol hyung, you know. That's a bit harsh.

"Are you saying my pattern is so obvious it's meaningless?"

"That's right! Sometimes you gotta drive it plumb through a feller's ear 'fore it sticks!"

He'd been so wound up even his signature roundabout drawl had burned off.

My pitch mix is that predictable? Wow. Stings a little.

Still, when a catcher pushes this hard, he usually has a reason. But even when I tried to empty my head, the analysis I'd memorized kept floating back up. Now what?

While the two of us held our summit on the mound, the pitching coach jogged over, caught the gist, and offered a word of his own.

"Kang-min's not far wrong. When you start overthinking, your stuff goes predictable. When that happens, throw while deliberately thinking about something else — the head clears right up."

"Something else? Like what?"

"Sure. Like what you're gonna do after the game."

What I'm doing after the game...

Come to think of it, I'd promised myself that in the post-game MVP interview I'd say something to Ye-eun and Min-ah — something as sincere and moving as I could manage.

All I'd done was decide I'd do it. I hadn't settled on a single word of what to actually say.

What should I even say?

The flow had clearly been ours early on. But one conversation between pitcher and catcher later, the game's current had reversed completely.

Lee Kyung-tae walked to the plate for what might be the ninth inning — Donghyun's last swing — running the game back over in his head.

At some point the score had flipped to 6–5. One run down meant one swing could take it back — except the man on the mound was no pushover.

Kim Yi-seon stood on the rubber. His own personal curse of a matchup. The guy had suddenly converted to pitching this year, and was already stringing together high-level starts.

Yi-seon's actual appearances had been few, but his video library was enormous, so Kyung-tae had been able to dissect his style in detail. No glaring tells, but the deception and the pitch repertoire were mapped.

Knowing there was a good chance he'd pitch today, Kyung-tae had made every available batter study up on Kim Yi-seon and shared the full analysis.

"Striiike!!"

The first pitch had just zipped past. What on earth was going through that man's head when he threw like this?

That made ten consecutive high fastballs. And before that? Three changeups in a row.

There was no predicting it. No textbook sequencing, no personal preference pattern — nothing. The pitches simply came at random. The analysis had flagged this tendency, but today it was off the charts.

So should you just sell out for one pitch?

"Striiike!!"

Pitch two. Low fastball this time.

Some teammates had stepped in selling out entirely — all-in on the changeup, or camping on the high fastball he threw most often. It never worked. Kyung-tae himself had just been tempted to sit dead-red on the high fastball, and down came this low ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one instead.

And Kyung-tae knew exactly who was behind this. That raccoon of a catcher. He looked slow, but his instincts were razor-sharp. Every time Yi-seon dodged a read, and Kyung-tae committed hard to one lane, that catcher would stroll over and needle him — as if to say, I can see every thought in your head.

So here was a pitcher whose entire card deck was four cards — up or down, fastball or changeup — and there was no reading him at all.

How, exactly, was a hitter supposed to hit against this filthy battery?

"Striiike!!! You're out!!"

Looking strike three. He never laid a bat on it. The ball had been dead center of the zone, too.

Even knowing it was coming, that was hard to hit — what chance did you have when it arrived with no warning at all?

Baseball is an absolutely miserable game.

Kim Yi-seon's final line today: 3-for-6, a home run, four RBIs at the plate — and on the mound, six innings, sixty pitches, ten strikeouts, no walks, no runs.

The game's MVP, naturally, was Kim Yi-seon. Donghyun High, already struggling since the Jeil High match last year had cost them their hitting rhythm and their confidence on the mound, took the same beating all over again — and their weekend league record wobbled badly from there on out.