The Great Voyage

Mid-June at Eonju Civic Baseball Stadium. Just like any other weekend, Wirye Jeil High's game was underway.

With a score gap like this heading into the top of the ninth, the game was all but decided in Jeil High's favor. And considering who was taking the mound right now — one half of Jeil High's one-two punch, Kang Min-hyuk — the outcome was even more of a foregone conclusion. As for any lingering stamina concerns, Seo Jun-soo had handled the first through third innings, so the ace's arm was still fresh.

Walking to the plate in this hopeless situation was Hanam High's three-hole hitter, with the heart of the order — the four and five spots — lined up behind him.

The situation favored the pitcher, but this was still the top of the lineup. Kang Min-hyuk, a man who savored the psychological chess match against every hitter, refused to let his guard down and quietly organized the data on his opponent and his read from this game in his head.

Not a particularly quick swing by nature. More the type who anticipated the pitch and started his swing half a beat early.

Nam Kang-min called for a pitch inside. An inside strike to open the at-bat would be a solid start — but he didn't like the pitch selection. The catcher asked for the four-seamer.

Fastballs can work against slow-swinging hitters. But this guy was already swinging half a beat ahead, so the odds of his timing getting shoved back were slim. If Min-hyuk's fastball had Kim Yi-seon's velocity and weight to it, maybe. As it stood, it wasn't a great call.

He shook his head once and put down the sign for the shoot pitch. Come to think of it, whenever anyone called this pitch a shoot, Kim Yi-seon would blow up — "That's not a two-seamer, and it sinks way too hard to be a sinker, you brat!" — for reasons that remained a complete mystery. Same grip, same three-quarter arm swing as his other pitches. How was it not the same pitch?

Shoving down the stray thought, he delivered the first pitch.

The ball that had flown toward the middle of the plate bent sharply down and in on the right-handed hitter's hands, clipping the border of the zone.

"Striiiike!!!"

[133 km/h]

There it was. Clean and crisp.

With the first pitch in the books, the mental battle tipped lopsidedly toward the pitcher. Having planted a strike like that, pitch two required no deliberation at all — he was already ready.

"Striiiike!!!"

[120 km/h]

A horizontal slider sweeping far off the outside edge. He'd aimed to bleed it just off the plate for a ball, but it had broken a touch more than he expected.

The hitter adjusted his swing path mid-motion, desperately trying to track the ball — and whiffed. There was no catching a pitch that broke that far, that late.

Kim Yi-seon apparently called this pitch a "sweeper," some bizarre bit of terminology. Where in the world had that word even come from? Typical — the guy used weird pitch names himself, then threw a fit whenever anyone said "shoot" or "fastball" around him.

Now at strike two, pitch three became even easier. Nam Kang-min had grown used to syncing up with him, flashing a sign that fit the count perfectly.

Min-hyuk nodded and set himself.

Dropping low at the waist, the ball left a hand that carved upward like a boxing uppercut —

"Striiiike three! You're out!"

[116 km/h]

An upshoot curveball, delivered after he'd spent two pitches shredding both edges of the strike zone to scramble the hitter's read. So much slower than everything before it that the timing got stolen outright — and a ball that slow, hanging in the air that long, gave away no readable trajectory at all.

Feet frozen, the hitter simply watched the ball thump into the catcher's mitt. A called strikeout. It took him a long moment to even register what had happened. This was the most electric moment a pitcher could know — the instant you threw something your opponent couldn't predict in his wildest imagination.

Waves of excitement rolling off him, Min-hyuk turned his attention to the next hitter. All right then — what kind of batter were you?

The final pitch out of Kang Min-hyuk's hand clipped the bottom of the opponent's bat and bounced down right at the hitter's feet. That's what usually happens when you graze his sinker wrong.

He scooped up the ball as it rolled back toward the mound and flicked it to first with an easy toss. With the final out recorded, today's ballgame was over.

Final score, 4 to 1. Victory for Wirye Jeil High.

Fifteen wins and one loss in the second half of the weekend league — the magic number was gone. Even if second-place Suwon High won out at 13–3 and Jeil High lost every remaining game, the two teams would be tied at 15–3. But under the head-to-head tiebreaker, Wirye Jeil held a 2–0 edge in the season series. First place, locked.

The ecstatic teammates stormed the mound. Even defeated Hanam High applauded in congratulations — they'd at least avoided last place, and it showed in the faint peace of mind on their faces.

The Jeil High players gathered around and hoisted Kang Min-hyuk skyward, over and over. Yi-seon, having started the day before, quietly slipped out of the pile and just watched.

Beside him, the Coach put on a stoic face, but his eyes were faintly red.

"Are you crying, Coach?"

"Crying? You punk. This is just the beginning."

"Still — it's the integrated championship."

Baseball is a game of variables, and an integrated first-and-second-half title was rarer in the weekend league than people assumed. Even in a region dominated by a single powerhouse, one fluke season from an unexpected team was enough to steal a championship.

That's exactly why the integrated title was the surest proof that a school reigned supreme over its region — proof that, for four straight months, without permitting a single variable, it had shown the face of a true contender.

And that integrated championship had just been won by Wirye Jeil High. The perpetual doormat — not one of the Gyeonggi South region's traditional three powers: Donghyun High, Suwon High, and Po'eun High.

As Yi-seon remembered it, the manga's weekend league title had happened exactly once, late in the second year — and that was just a half-season crown, not an outright integrated championship. A scene that stirred feelings he'd never expected to have.

"You know, Yi-seon, you don't exactly look overjoyed yourself."

"Like you said, Coach. This is just the beginning."

Leaving his teammates still drunk on the championship behind, Yi-seon headed into the locker room.

Inside, fresh from his MVP interview with an ice pack draped over his shoulder, sat Kang Min-hyuk. Lim Song-ah stood beside him, chattering away about something or other.

He shot Song-ah a brief, apologetic look, then plopped down right next to Min-hyuk.

"Hey. Kang Min-hyuk."

"Yeah."

"Ready to go get it?"

The high school weekend league season was over. For the vast majority of schools and their students, with only the Phoenix Flag Tournament left on the official calendar, this was effectively the closing chapter of the season.

And yet, ironically, this was precisely where the real show of high school baseball began.

The weekend league had been hastily bloated to fill a 150-school bracket, and the gulf in quality between teams — not to mention the fact that, at most, it was a regional affair — kept its profile low.

Hence the weekend league was, in crude fan parlance, nothing but a launchpad for the national tournament. Some fans went so far as to say the national tournament's opening round was the true first pitch of the high school baseball season.

A tournament where the storied regional powerhouses — the schools with fanbases and tradition — gathered to settle, once and for all, who was the strongest in high school baseball. A drawn-steel, bracket-style war lasting four months across three full tournaments.

Naturally, the high school baseball communities came alive around this time of year, and the debates began: based on weekend league results, which school would take the crown, and which was this year's dark horse?

And the hottest potato of all was, naturally, Wirye Jeil High.

Of course it was. Their MeTube videos had exploded so spectacularly that their latest uploads were now cracking three million views. A team this popular would have blown up even if they couldn't play — and they'd just won the weekend league's integrated championship on top of it?

The casual fans who never used to watch high school baseball now genuinely believed Wirye Jeil High was the strongest team in the nation and would beat everyone in their path.

To be fair, even the veterans conceded that Jeil High's actual quality exceeded early expectations. But the blanket, brainless glazing from the general-public fans irritated the established high school baseball faithful.

And so, in the communities where the high school baseball crowd gathered, a two-week war had been raging: "Wirye Jeil High really is legit, isn't it?" versus "Stop the overhyping already."

Had they been a merely decent team, the fight wouldn't have lasted two weeks. Community dynamics being what they are, any team or school riding a hot streak gets dogpiled with mindless hate by the users with too much time on their hands.

The reason the argument had dragged on this long was that the numbers they'd put up were simply no joke — above all thanks to the absurd performances of the two men who'd anchored the mound as a one-two punch: Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk.

Call it a fluke, call it a weak region, argue all you like — the numbers were far too overwhelming. Even doubled, those figures would still outclass the aces of most storied powerhouse programs.

So the cautious Jeil High supporters had settled on a middle position — "Hate all you want, but with a one-two punch at least as good as any powerhouse's aces, Wirye Jeil High is a legitimately strong team" — and that was becoming the mainstream opinion.

And then, news arrived that flipped the entire debate on its head.

"Kang Min-hyuk, you absolute meatheaded piece of..."

"I'm sorry..."

Crouched in the corner of the baseball clubhouse was Kang Min-hyuk.

Lim Song-ah glared at Yi-seon like one of those mothers scolding, Why are you yelling at my poor boy and making him cower? Look, the guy crossed a line here, okay?

"I skipped tutoring you for exactly one stretch, and you tanked your finals that badly? How?"

Yi-seon genuinely could not comprehend how a final exam score bottomed out to academic ineligibility. Athletic-club kids whined so relentlessly that the passing bar was famously generous — the kind of lenient where even a guy who'd answered every question with a single ruler-straight line would scrape through if the teacher misaligned the answer key.

"Even Cha Il-sung, who sleeps through every class and slept through exam period too, passed. How on earth did you fail? Truly impressive. Genuinely."

As Yi-seon had noted before, Min-hyuk was diligent. He didn't goof off in class and participated properly. He took notes with real effort. That when Yi-seon once glanced over, not a single word of those notes was legible was another matter entirely.

How could someone so smart on the baseball field be this hopeless at studying? His mother was a capable lawyer, his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠little sister was a top student. Was this guy actually a foundling they picked up off the street?

As Yi-seon pressed his man-to-man full-court harassment of Min-hyuk, the Coach broke it up with a hearty chuckle.

"Well, no harm done. It's fine — I was planning to give Min-hyuk a rest for a while anyway."

With that, the Coach pulled out the tournament bracket.

"It helps that our opponents are amateurs, but traveling this far for away games makes conditioning a headache. Min-hyuk was due for rest after running so hard all through the weekend league regardless."

Their Round of 256 opponent in the Phoenix Flag was an amateur club, not a proper baseball program. As last year, the draw had been kind this year too. The problem was where that school was located.

"So we're traveling the whole way to Samjiyon and Hyesan on word of mouth alone. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠This isn't a scholar's pilgrimage home, Coach."

The opponent: Hyesan Forestry High School. Hyesan sits along the upper reaches of the Tumen River in North Hamgyong Province, close by Mount Paektu — the definition of the middle of nowhere. And yet somehow a baseball field existed out there, and the team managed to play home games. Remarkable.

"The early ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rounds should be manageable regardless. I intend to give the students who've seen little game time a real chance to play."

At those words, the first-years stiffened. That's right — you lot need to see the field too.

"Since the Coach has said his piece, I'll let it slide. Kang Min-hyuk — if you don't pass the makeup exam by the time I'm back from sightseeing at Mount Paektu, you are dead."

Thanks to this tournament, Yi-seon was now traveling all the way to Mount Paektu. He'd never managed it in his past life, and in this one his mother's distaste for hiking had kept him to the Geumgang Mountains and nothing else.

"Hm? Yi-seon, you need the rest too. You logged plenty of weekend league innings."

"Sorry?"

"None of that. You played fourteen games. You know what they're saying about you online lately? That I'm a child abuser who wrings grades out of my players by wringing out their arms."

Excuse me — I get checked by Director Cho every single day, found perfectly healthy, and play accordingly.

Perhaps the online discourse had stung a little, because the Coach declared, with perfect composure:

"The Round of 256 is against amateurs, and both projected Round of 128 opponents are manageable. From the Phoenix Flag on, you and Min-hyuk will be playing continuously — Phoenix Flag, Blue Dragon Flag, Golden Lion Flag. Consider this your final rest, and take as much of it as you can."

He had a point. For the next three months or so, the schedule would likely be even more brutal than the weekend league, with games coming nonstop. The Coach's call to bank rest in advance was, if anything, the sensible one.

Still... if he wasn't playing baseball, what on earth was Yi-seon supposed to do for three whole weeks...?