A Week of Showdowns (3)
We arrived at Gocheok Dome, the only ballpark in Korea where a rainout was a physical impossibility. Fans and starting pitchers loved the place. Position players and bullpen arms, considerably less so.
It was an away series, technically. But the same way the Jamsil Derby against the Seoul Buffaloes barely counted as leaving town, a trip to Gocheok Dome was still Seoul, and that put me in an excellent mood. The opponent being the Seoul Unicorns — the runaway favorite to finish dead last — only made my steps lighter.
We finished our individual work, loosened up, and settled into the dugout to watch the game unfold.
"Don't let your guard down. Give it everything you've got. We've been playing in Seoul all week, so everybody's got plenty left in the tank, right?"
Gang Daeho gathered the club for that little speech before first pitch, and then the hitters started filing into the box one after another.
"Out!"
The home side's cheering section at Gocheok Dome was a ghost town. The Unicorns had already shipped their two biggest superstars overseas and tumbled down the standings ages ago. Over in the visitors' seats, Dragons fans riding a recent winning streak roared themselves hoarse.
Kim Junhyeok actually ate seven innings for once, and we put the game away without breaking a sweat. I got to sit the whole thing out.
Tomorrow our fourth starter, Choi Jaehyeon, would take the ball. The day after that was still up in the air — it would depend on how everybody felt, and on tomorrow's result. What wasn't up in the air was that we had to win tomorrow, no matter what.
A sweep of the league's worst team was what we needed. At the absolute minimum, we had to come away with a winning series.
And if I wanted to meet Song Hyeonji tomorrow evening with a smile on my face...
Same as always, Song Hyeonji had been watching the Dragons from her room on a tablet. She switched the broadcast off.
Oppa didn't pitch today.
She had cheered for this team with everything she had for years, but lately she was having a harder and harder time telling whether she was a Dragons fan or a Lee Junseong fan.
Someone at Junseong oppa's level should be starting. He should be the ace. They really have no eye for talent.
Plenty of Dragons fans felt exactly the same way, so it wasn't as if her fandom had gone off the rails.
But he wants to meet tomorrow at nine? Oppa's got a day game on Sunday, so he'll have to leave early. Is this just a quick hello?
She knew it couldn't be helped. Still, the way Lee Junseong had set up the next date last time they'd met had felt... charged. Something about it had made her hope, privately, that something else might happen.
They hadn't known each other long, but a confession at some beautiful place, or him walking her home and saying something romantic — those were the kinds of things a twenty-year-old girl was more than allowed to hope for from a man.
To kill the boredom, Song Hyeonji posted on an anonymous forum.
Even accounting for the fact that a site full of women tended to lose its mind the second a man entered the conversation, the reaction wasn't one she hadn't seen coming at all.
Well. I didn't mention that oppa is a baseball player.
She hadn't been looking for serious advice in the first place, so Song Hyeonji didn't pay the comments much mind.
Huh?
A comment that blunt snagged Song Hyeonji's eyes and wouldn't let go.
There was no mistaking what it meant. The only time you'd ever think about showing a man your underwear was when you were about to do that — and just imagining it made her face burn.
Song Hyeonji set her phone down and yanked the blanket up over her head.
Even thinking about it made her cheeks go hot. Doing that thing she'd only ever seen in videos she and her friends had secretly watched in school — doing it with Lee Junseong? The fantasy itself felt like committing a sin, and she tried hard to shut it down.
And then, underneath the flutter in her chest, uglier pictures started to bloom.
Stories about athletes treating women like they were disposable. The baseball player who'd been running around with half a dozen girls and gotten publicly destroyed by his girlfriend. How the athletes' village at every international tournament always ran out of condoms...
Song Hyeonji shook her head, trying to throw the filthy thoughts off. Her relationship with Lee Junseong was special. Cheap stories like that had no place in it. She believed that.
Still...
It wasn't as if any of those things were actually going to happen. But she was already picking out a pretty outfit with extra care. If she was going that far, wouldn't it be nice to pick out nice underwear too?
Pop!
"Strike three!"
I closed out the inning and came down off the mound.
I'd had to come in a little early — one out in the sixth, two Unicorns on base — and I ended up throwing 1.2 innings again, a reasonably long outing. I still felt like I could pitch all night.
"That slider — no, the sweeper. It's actually pretty usable now, huh?"
Park Ujin said it as I came off the field.
"It's not there yet. It's decent enough against lefties, but I still can't throw it to right-handers."
"Isn't a lefty's sweeper supposed to be a lefty-killer anyway? That thing that just vanishes off the outside edge."
"Usually, yeah. But if I can take a sweeper with real sweep and attack the outside corner against righties too, that's the best of both worlds. I could also run it in on their hands instead of living away from lefties."
Most left-handers leaned on the changeup when they went after right-handed hitters. That was still a long way off for me. But if I could learn to use the sweeper properly, I'd have a real edge in the timing war.
"Most guys would be happy just being where you are right now..."
"The second you stop growing, you're done. You've at least got to put the work in."
"Can't argue with that. Haha."
I had a mission sitting on my shoulders, for one thing. And I'd been handed this kind of ability and this kind of ceiling — I had no intention of being satisfied.
We took the win, just like we'd expected. Tomorrow's starter wasn't exactly a pillar of confidence, so there was a good chance I'd be back out there.
I showered, packed up, and headed out of the park the way I always did.
"Hyung, I can get back on my own tonight."
"Huh? You got somewhere to be?"
"Something like that."
"I trust you. Just don't stay out too late. Don't get swept up in the moment, that's all I'm saying."
"Of course."
Gocheok Dome's miserable transit situation was a genuine flaw... but most of the fans would have cleared out by now. I wasn't worried.
I got there earlier than I'd planned and waited for Song Hyeonji.
I didn't even do Instagram, but you could tell at a glance this was that exact influencer aesthetic. It wasn't an outright bar, either, and yet the whole atmosphere made you feel like you were supposed to order a drink.
No matter how much Song Hyeonji liked me, I couldn't just come at her head-on. A decent share of that liking was admiration for a rising star on her favorite baseball team, anyway.
A fantasy only stayed a fantasy if you didn't smash it. The bigger the expectation, the uglier it got when it broke.
"Oppa, you're already here?"
Song Hyeonji spotted me the second she walked in.
"I ended up getting here earlier than I thought."
I checked the time. She'd arrived a full ten minutes early herself.
"Aww, I was going to get here first and wait for you!"
"You don't have to go that far. Sit down."
She took her seat, sounding more at ease than last time. The outfit was innocent in a distinctly twenty-year-old way, and the makeup was, by my standards, just a little too busy. Was that the trend these days? The raw material was excellent enough that it didn't matter.
"I watched the game again today."
"Yeah? Doesn't it get boring? It's the same thing every night."
"Boring? Every time you come in I watch with my heart in my throat."
Fair enough. I'd been the same way watching the players I loved.
"Then I'll have to pitch even harder so Hyeonji doesn't have to worry."
"Oppa, you're already doing more than enough!"
I appreciated the words. I just wasn't thrilled that the conversation only ever seemed to flow in this direction.
Was that what Song Hyeonji wanted too? That would be a real problem.
The small talk wandered on, and we finally started on a late dinner. By that point I felt a little bad about the awkward hour I'd picked. Too late to tell her to eat beforehand, too early to skip the meal entirely...
"How's college treating you? It's spring — must be a lot going on."
"Um... I have to study more than I expected, and otherwise? Hehe."
"I was going to go to college last year if I didn't get drafted."
"Oh my gosh, really? You were worried you wouldn't get drafted?"
"Yeah. I only scraped in because I had a decent showing in the Vermilion Cup finals. Even a third-round pick was them being generous. That's why I'm grateful to the club."
"I really didn't know that... I only found out about you starting from exhibition games."
So she wasn't enough of a heavy fan to follow the amateur draft. Most people weren't, to be fair.
"Thinking back on it... Ah. Do you drink, by the way?"
"Huh? I've tried it before, but..."
I thought twenty-year-old college kids lived at the bottom of a bottle. Maybe not.
"This place seems like it would go well with a drink."
I ordered a wine I didn't even like, and it didn't take long to arrive.
"Oh, this smells really nice."
"Doesn't it."
I couldn't have told you a thing about how wine was supposed to taste. I didn't even like drinking, if I was being honest.
"Anyway... Right before the draft, all I wanted was a chance. Anything. And now here I am, pitching in the pros I used to dream about. Still feels surreal."
"..."
Song Hyeonji listened without a word.
"Ah, was I whining too much? I've never told anyone this before."
"No. I like hearing things like this."
If the conversation was going to sit in that player-and-fan shape no matter what I did, then I needed to plant something else in her. That she was special. That what we had was different. Song Hyeonji was a sentimental girl. She'd take to it.
"But if it were you, oppa, wouldn't you have made it to the pros eventually even if you'd gone to college?"
"Then I never would have met you that day, would I?"
"Ah..."
I took a sip and went on.
"I love taking the mound with the team's win on my shoulders. I love the crowd cheering. But getting my shot earlier than I expected, and running into you by chance wearing a jersey with my name on it — those are the same to me. Moments like that feel like gifts."
"I'm nothing special... I'm not that amazing."
Song Hyeonji drank without answering.
"Why is it so warm in here?"
She fanned her face with her hand for no real reason, trying to cool the color rising in her cheeks.
I'd wondered if I'd laid it on too thick. Apparently not.
The truth was, I had a far more dramatic story than anything I'd just told her — dying, meeting a Baseball Immortal, and coming back. Obviously I wasn't planning on telling that one to anyone.
We finished the meal in a slightly awkward hush and stepped back outside.
"I'll take you home."
"I'm fine, though..."
"I want to."
"...Okay."
Whether she just couldn't hold her liquor or not, Song Hyeonji's steps had gone a little unsteady.
I hadn't been hoping the wine would work quite this well.
We walked, and the street grew quieter, more out of the way. I had no intention of sending her off like this.
"What a shame."
"I know, right? We met so late we barely even had any time."
I let a little silence sit, then glanced at her. It might have been the alcohol, but she looked wide open. Unguarded.
"Hyeonji."
"Yes?"
I stopped walking. She stopped with me and looked up.
"What do you... mean..."
This kind of thing usually went better if you didn't put too much weight on it. But with Song Hyeonji, I had a feeling this would work better than some half-baked excuse to take her somewhere.
"I don't know. I just know I want to be with you a little more, right now."
"Ah—!"
I pulled her into my arms. She seemed startled, but she didn't push me away. I'd never believed she would.
"Is it just me? Do you not want to be with me, Hyeonji? If you don't, just say so."
She seemed to hesitate for a second.
I couldn't say exactly how far that yes was meant to go. But it would be enough to get her as far as the hotel.
Song Hyeonji and I locked our fingers together and walked on down the street.