Blessed with Power (2)
"Nngh."
My body was in agony. It felt as though I'd been beaten from head to toe for an entire day. On top of that came the sharp, headache-inducing smell of antiseptic, and a chaotic din all around me.
Where was I?
A hospital. Judging by how frantic everyone looked, the emergency room.
I had met the Baseball Immortal. A dream? No — that couldn't have been a dream. The memory of being hit by a car and coming within a breath of death was still vivid, and yet, compared to that, my body was far too intact.
I found myself wondering how I was supposed to make anyone else understand a situation this absurd.
It turned out not to be a problem. According to the staff, I'd been a complete wreck when the ambulance picked me up after a bystander called it in. But I was fine now — so what were they going to do about it? Not entirely fine, of course, but I could walk, and I figured I'd be fully recovered in a day or two.
Fortunately, no one had reached my parents before I woke up. How badly would they have panicked if they'd been told their son had been hit by a car and nearly died? I couldn't hide it completely, so I had them informed it was just a minor traffic accident.
I'd probably need to stay in the hospital for the rest of the day, but that was within acceptable limits. I had a future to think about, after all.
The first thing weighing on me was the bastard who'd tried to kill me. Had he simply been a lunatic, or had he held some kind of grudge? I'd never committed a crime worth dying over. Even if he was mentally ill, the fact that the man who'd tried to murder me was still walking around sat extremely badly with me. I needed to get the police involved and have him caught, fast.
And then there was becoming a professional baseball player — what had once been a dream and was now a mission.
I looked down at my hands. It wasn't my imagination. Even though my body hadn't fully recovered, I could feel a strength that hadn't been there before. There was no question about it. I had received Babe Ruth's blessing.
And hearing from his own mouth that I'd originally had the talent to go pro had filled me with confidence. Confidence, it seemed, really could transform a person. My job hadn't changed. Neither had my appearance. But I was no longer the gloomy wreck I'd been before. I was practically overflowing with energy.
The next question was how to actually go pro. The rookie draft wasn't far off. I needed to get picked — even if it was with the last selection. There was a developmental player system, but the pay was lower and it came with all kinds of headaches. I was aiming for a proper draft nomination, no question.
I couldn't play in a game right now, so who was I supposed to convince? I'd need to sit down and work out a more detailed plan. I wasn't particularly worried, though. With this power, it was possible. I would go pro. I was certain of it.
The problem was...
A dull ache pulsed from my groin. I slipped a hand under the blanket and eased the hospital pants down a little.
I'd always been considerably taller than the average Korean adult, and even accounting for my height, what I was packing had been impressive. In all my twenty years, I'd never actually put it to use — but that thing had just been given the wings of incredible virility. Getting hard for no particular reason was a fact of life for any man, but I could tell the rigidity was on a completely different level from before.
It wasn't that I didn't want a girlfriend, or that I didn't want to have sex. But was this kind of excessive stamina actually going to help? I didn't want to go to prostitutes, and it wasn't as though I was going to start chasing rich middle-aged women either.
It would probably be a side effect for a while. But considering everything I'd been given, this much was nothing.
A knock came at the door.
"I'll come in."
"Yes!"
A nurse's voice. I yanked my pants back up in a hurry.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine."
"I heard you came through the ER. That's amazing... Let me take a look at your legs."
She was a fairly young nurse. Recently hired, maybe? Still, she had a college degree, which meant she was at least four or five years older than me. She had a pretty face and skin so pale it was almost luminous. Under normal circumstances I would have been grateful for the view — but my lower half still hadn't gone down. And now she was leaning in close, trailing perfume, showing off the line of her neck. It was getting harder to hold it together.
I'm going to die of embarrassment.
Come on. How many times had nurses seen a male patient tenting the sheets? Worrying about this in the first place was probably childish. I wasn't in elementary school. The real issue was that my size was a little... out of the ordinary. Ah, whatever. It wasn't like we were going to see each other often. Who cared?
Still, I closed my eyes and pretended to be lost in thought, trying not to look mortified. In that interval, the nurse pulled the blanket aside.
I wished she'd just finish her job and disappear. I was starting to feel disgusted with myself for even caring about this.
"Hah..."
Huh?
What was that reaction?
I almost opened my eyes, then decided to keep them shut.
"I'll get another nurse."
"What?"
I opened my eyes. The nurse's face was full of contempt. She glanced at me for a second, then turned her head away.
"Just because you're lying there quietly, you think you're an easy mark?"
She delivered the line in a voice gone ice-cold and walked out of the room. I sat there, frozen.
Was she insane?
I couldn't make sense of it. There had to be some kind of misunderstanding — but where? Because of what was going on down there? It was a physiological reaction. Had she never seen one before? She was a nurse, and before that she was a woman well past twenty-five.
Ah, fuck. Seriously.
That deranged bitch had just shattered every bit of excitement I'd been carrying about the future. Even the old, ugly feelings from before I'd met the Baseball Immortal came flooding back. I wanted to grab her by the hair right then and there.
Another knock.
"Um... may I come in?"
A woman's voice — different from the last one. So she'd actually gone and fetched another nurse, like she'd said.
I let out a long breath and summoned a superhuman amount of patience. Not dumping my shitty moods on other people was one of my few talents.
"Yes."
The nurse who'd heard my answer opened the door. Naturally, it was someone else. She looked even younger than the first one.
"I'm going to check your legs, is that alright?"
"...Of course."
Her tone was soft, nothing like the first woman's clipped professionalism — though that was probably a result of whatever had just happened. In the meantime, things down below had settled. I wasn't wearing anything under the hospital gown, so even without an erection there was a bit of a bulge, but nothing worth worrying about.
"Oh, it's just some bruising? You'll be better in no time. It doesn't hurt, does it?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you."
Her calm manner soothed me a little, but the anger didn't fully go away. As a patient, I had every right to hold this hospital accountable.
"Is there anything else you need?"
"Not really, but..."
"Yes?"
"Who was that person who came in first? I don't know what kind of misunderstanding she had, but she walked out of here looking seriously pissed."
"Ah..."
I'd debated whether to press the issue, but I couldn't just let it go.
"I'm not trying to give you a hard time. But earlier was genuinely unpleasant. What did she say? I should at least hear it."
The replacement nurse had a somewhat naive look about her. Now that I thought about it — they'd treated me like some kind of pervert and sent this soft-hearted girl in as a substitute? The first one had a personality problem, plain and simple.
"Her name is Yu Suhyeon — she's a colleague of mine. She's not a bad person, she's just been dealing with a lot lately."
"I don't care what her name is. I want to know what the misunderstanding was. And I don't care whether she's been sensitive lately or whether she's always like that."
The nurse hesitated. What the hell had that woman said?
"She, um... she thought you'd put something strange in your pants."
"What?"
It wasn't just her personality. The woman was unhinged. I was on the larger side, and I'd been fully hard, but what kind of mind did you have to have to look at a pair of pants and jump to that conclusion?
"Look. You can see there's nothing on this bed, right? And you saw everything when you checked my legs a minute ago."
"Yes... I checked everything. My colleague must have misunderstood. Please let me apologize on her behalf."
The nurse bowed her head. I felt filthy. The misunderstanding was cleared up, but asking Yu Suhyeon to come back and see for herself would only drag the fight out longer. And in this country, when a man got into a dispute over something like this, he was thoroughly on the losing end. That was just the reality.
"The truth is, something similar happened not long ago. There was a middle-aged patient who kept making passes at Suhyeon, and one day he pulled a stunt like that..."
"And did Nurse Suhyeon react the same way then?"
"That's..."
She'd reacted that way because she thought I was an easy target. Was that middle-aged guy connected to the hospital somehow? Or was he her sponsor? The words rose to my lips, but I forced them back down.
"Forget it. Just forget it. If you're done here, you can go."
"Yes... please let me know if you need anything."
The look on her face was less apology and more I survived — I made it through. So this was how she'd been playing handmaiden to that Yu Suhyeon bitch, more than once. I felt a little bad thinking it, but she had the kind of personality that was easy to take advantage of. It was written all over her.
The nurse left the room. My mood was even worse than before.
I'd just gotten a brief, bitter taste of how the world actually worked. Being recognized and respected for playing the baseball I loved was important — but so was social status. You needed it to get through life.
Just wait. I was going to become someone that women like her couldn't afford to treat however they wanted, and I was going to do it as fast as humanly possible.
And somehow, the moment I pictured that bitch looking at me with those contemptuous eyes, I felt a stir down below. She was a pretty sensual woman in her own right, and the thought of putting the girl who'd stared at me like that on her back beneath me was almost more than I could take. I didn't know whether it was the increased libido or whether I'd just discovered a hidden preference.
Babe Ruth, up in the Immortal Realm, had demanded that I become a baseball player for the history books. He had never told me to live quietly, without pleasure. If I happened to change a few women's destinies along the way, well — that would fall under providence too, wouldn't it?
Good.
I would succeed in baseball. I would seize a status that no one could ignore. And I would fuck Yu Suhyeon — no, women far better than her — as much as I damn well pleased.
An ace on the mound. An ace at the plate. An ace in bed. The birth of a Three-Way Player that left mere two-way players in the dust.
Being able to put my life's plan that simply made something in my chest settle. Just imagining how I was going to enjoy this life was enough to carry me through the rest of the day without a trace of boredom.