Chapter 15

Chapter 15. Championship Contractor (1)

With Choi Seong’s grand slam, the score became 6–3.

The moment Saeum High closed the gap in one swing, sighs broke out among the scouts.

“Just what the hell is that guy?”

“Even if it was a mistake pitch, he sent it over the fence. No, the ball actually flew completely out of the stadium. Was there really a kid like this among this year’s high school seniors?”

“So what exactly is he? A hitter or a pitcher?”

Everyone could only stare in shock.

The scouts from the Daejeon Hawks and Busan Oceans were especially flustered.

Both teams had been given special orders to bring Choi Seong in.

The Hawks scout immediately called the general manager.

Normally, something like this should have been reported through the head of baseball operations or another superior first, but this time there was no helping it.

“At this rate, I think he might go straight to the Majors.”

The Oceans scout was thinking the same thing.

“I think Korea may have produced a two-way player.”

The scouts weren’t the only ones getting worked up in the stands.

Saeum High’s cheering squad, who had been watching the game in boredom until now, suddenly jumped to their feet.

“Hey! Did you see that?”

“What the hell is up with Choi Seong? Why is he so good?”

“Shouldn’t we get his autograph now while we still can? This is seriously insane…”

The female students continued making a fuss.

Even among all that excitement, however, there were a few people who remained quiet.

They were the gloomy parents from Jamsil Saenae High.

The reporters had already left the stands.

The reason was simple.

“Ah, I’m screwed… My editor told me I absolutely have to bring back an interview today…”

“Should we try going after Choi Seong’s parents?”

“Yujin, how did you manage to get that interview with Choi Seong?”

Reporter Lee Yujin could only smile awkwardly.

The game ended without another change in the score.

Saeum High won 6–3.

With Choi Seong’s arrival, the perennial last-place team had begun to change.

Lee Yujin quietly thought to herself.

Choi Seong had created a miracle.

And she had been the one to open the door to that history.

From now on, she intended to follow his footsteps all the way to the end.

They were overwhelming footsteps unlike anything anyone had ever left behind.

While the reporters waited in front of the team’s temporary locker room, they noticed the scouts approaching from the distance.

When the reporters looked at them curiously, the scouts waved their hands and quickly explained.

“No, no. We know about the tampering rules too. We just have a favor to ask you reporters.”

Their request was simple.

What team did Choi Seong want to join?

Was he perhaps considering MLB?

They wanted the reporters to ask him questions along those lines.

After accepting the request, all the reporters nodded.

They were curious too.

During his interview with Lee Yujin, Choi Seong had taken a step back from answering anything definite.

But surely he had made some kind of decision by now.

Unlike back then, scouts from numerous teams had gathered just to watch him play.

Thirty minutes later, the players finally came outside.

All of them greeted the reporters with bright expressions.

However, the reporters merely returned their greetings out of courtesy.

The real star of the day was someone else.

The moment Choi Seong appeared last, everyone began taking pictures.

I was used to this kind of thing, but…

I still frowned at the endless barrage of camera flashes.

I had deliberately sent the other guys out first so they could get a few comments of their own, but apparently that wasn’t happening.

I’d even stayed behind chatting about random things with Coach Park Seonghyeon before finally coming out.

But still…

I guess there was no helping the fact that all the attention was focused on me.

I thought Park Seoha’s complete-game victory would get quite a bit of attention too, but apparently not.

What could I do?

There was already another player standing under the spotlight.

“Choi Seong! Just give us one comment before you go!”

When I tried to walk past the reporters while pretending not to notice them, they all suddenly stood up.

Show them enough skill, and everything gets solved.

That was part of the charm of sports.

And seeing this kind of reaction again actually felt pretty good.

In my previous life, whenever there was an interview, I always bowed my head and forced myself to smile—even at trashy reporters who wrote terrible articles about me.

But once you stopped caring about all of that…

Life became a lot easier.

“All right. Should I give you just one comment?”

Even after a loss, the media demanded a statement.

After a win, they became even more persistent.

Whenever I lost a game, I practically became the sacrifice at that day’s witch-burning ceremony.

Every community forum and social media account would flood me with abuse.

Everyone would rush to blame me, saying the team lost because of me.

The reporters smiled, probably thinking I was joking.

Why exactly did I have to behave nicely for you people?

I didn’t need some carefully manufactured public image.

As long as you had the skills, professional sports would lift you up anyway.

The occasional personality controversy?

As long as I stayed away from drugs, alcohol scandals, and women-related trouble, I’d be fine.

“You’ve continued to show impressive performances. Is there a particular team you’d like to join in the future? Or are you considering playing overseas?”

One reporter quickly fired off the question.

I frowned.

Sure, I was reaching the point where I needed to decide my future.

But wasn’t this supposed to be about today’s game?

“Nothing has been decided yet. However…”

Still, I might as well toss them one decent headline.

I had spent the past few months thinking about it.

And there was a high chance things would unfold according to the simulation currently forming in my head.

If we won the weekend league, the system would probably give me another mission.

And there would probably be choices available to me after that.

“I want a team that won’t touch my pitching form or batting form at all.”

In my previous life, I had changed my pitching form dozens of times because coaches kept pressuring me to do things their way.

It wasn’t as bad in the Majors, but coaching staffs in Korea and Japan had been far too authoritarian.

And I had listened to them.

As a result, I spent my career constantly dealing with injuries caused by my repeatedly altered pitching and batting forms.

Did my body get better?

Yeah, right.

After adding one thing after another, my mechanics turned into a patchwork mess, and all I got in return were even more injuries.

“Excuse me?”

The reporter who had asked the question looked flustered.

For me, it was simple.

All I wanted was for them to leave me alone and let me do things my way.

Of course, Korean coaches hearing this would probably be trembling with anger right now.

This damned Confucian hierarchy was the problem.

“That’s all I have to say. Coach Park Seonghyeon will explain everything about today’s game. Right, Coach?”

Caught off guard, Park Seonghyeon nodded.

I casually slipped away.

The reporters stared blankly at me for a moment after seeing me refuse the postgame interview.

Then they immediately surrounded Park Seonghyeon instead.

[Out-of-the-Park Home Run Prospect Choi Seong Leaves After Giving Just One Comment]

[His Skills Are the Best, But His Personality… Which Team Will Choi Seong Choose?]

[Saeum High’s Miraculous Three-Game Winning Streak… Choi Seong Was Behind It All]

[“It’s All Thanks to Choi Seong”… Why Saeum High’s Coach Praised Him]

[Choi Seong: “The Team I Want Is One That Won’t Touch My Pitching Form”]

For a high school baseball player, quite a lot of articles were published about me.

There weren’t any major stories happening in the other regions right now, so news about Choi Seong was being sucked up like everything was falling into a black hole.

Some articles were positive.

Others openly criticized that single comment from Choi Seong.

Meanwhile, Matt Hardy, a Yankees scout from MLB, actually liked what he saw.

“He’s got guts.”

He hadn’t watched an actual game yet, but he liked the kid’s mentality.

Some articles criticized him for leaving after only one statement, but looking at the situation carefully, the reporter’s very first question had been rude in the first place.

They should have asked him about the game.

Who started an interview by immediately asking where a player planned to go?

And the way Choi Seong gave one answer before handing things over to his coach actually left an even better impression.

His method was rough, but his actions were ultimately for the team.

“I should go watch him soon.”

Of course, Matt Hardy had no intention of judging him based only on the weekend league.

He was, after all, the head scout responsible for East Asia for one of MLB’s most prestigious franchises.

He would need to look at Choi Seong’s overall statistics before making any judgment.

And true ability revealed itself not in league play, but in tournaments.

At least, that was how he saw it.

A miraculous three-game winning streak.

What everyone was saying was simple.

Slowly, a certain sense of expectation began growing throughout the school.

“Maybe we can win the championship too?”

I smiled while looking at a fan letter made in the style of a photo card.

So things like this still existed even in this digital age.

Of course, everyone around me was looking at me with envy.

At some point, I’d even heard that a Choi Seong fan club had been created.

Being my fan might be a little difficult, though…

I put the roughly five letters into my bag.

Ah, of course, I took the candy out separately.

In my previous life, I had avoided sugary things like cola because I was obsessed with managing my body.

But now, I didn’t care.

This time, I planned to eat what I wanted and enjoy what I could while living my life.

“Choi Seong.”

Just as I was about to go back to sleep, someone called my name.

I knew exactly who it was.

Park Seonghyeon stood there with an anxious expression on his face.

Whenever he wasn’t calm, it was usually a sign that something good had happened.

“Seong-ah. Please do some interviews. They’re practically begging me to get you to let them put you in the papers.”

“I’ll do it later when the time is right. We’re in the middle of the season right now.”

“Even if we’re in the middle of the season, this is getting ridiculous. Sports reporters have their cars parked outside the school gate waiting for you.”

“Wow, they sure are interested. Especially after writing all that garbage.”

Everyone in the classroom was staring at Coach Park Seonghyeon and me.

I didn’t care.

Getting another bit of sleep was more important.

The younger you were, the more important it was to sleep as much as possible without worrying about anything.

After all, sleep was the only time your muscles could truly rest.

“Seong-ah, I’m seriously worried about you. You can’t act like this with the draft coming up. This is exactly when you should be trying to make a good impression on the scouts…”

“It’s fine, Coach. They’re all going to be desperate to draft me anyway.”

I had already checked the reactions online calling me Korea’s second two-way player.

Every team community was talking about me.

It wasn’t just the Baseball 9-Dan community either.

Everywhere I looked, people were arguing over whether their team should bring in Choi Seong.

Some people said it had only been two games.

But—

“I’m going to keep showing them.”

“Who I am.”

Coach Park Seonghyeon stared at me blankly.

Then the bell signaling the end of break rang, and he finally left the classroom.

Usually, a coach wouldn’t come all the way here just for something like this.

He really was an unusual man.

Still, I supposed it meant he cared about me that much.

For the record, I had no intention of compromising with the media.

The guys who had deliberately written malicious articles about me were probably doing it because they wanted leverage before negotiating with me.

It was a kind of conditioning.

Trying to train me from the beginning.

But I had absolutely no intention of dancing to their tune.

In my previous life, I had started by compromising just a little.

And once I did that, I ended up giving them one thing after another.

“That will never happen in this life.”

Those bastards who had turned my parents’ deaths into huge headlines.

Those bastards who framed one bad game as something caused by my parents’ deaths.

I had to show every single one of them from the very beginning that I wasn’t someone they could push around.

The first half of the season passed quickly.

There had only been two games left in the first place.

I started both of them, while Park Seoha played in one game.

The result was simple.

Four wins and one loss.

Jeil High also finished with the exact same record, 4–1.

However, we had already beaten Jeil High head-to-head.

That meant we were able to claim first place for the first time.

After the final game ended, I raised one finger toward the sky.

It was the only celebration the timid version of me had ever done in my previous life.

A gesture showing that when the championship was decided—

We stood above everyone else.

Every player, along with Coach Park Seonghyeon, rushed over and pulled me into a fierce embrace.

I had closed out the bottom of the ninth.

“Finally… Finally, we did it.”

“I’m so proud of you guys. You worked hard!”

Coach Park Seonghyeon even did something ridiculous by dropping Mentos into cola and using it like champagne to celebrate.

Of course, he only did it because we had begged him to.

Sticky cola sprayed all over the locker room.

But nobody complained.

Instead, we enjoyed it.

This moment.

The moment when Saeum High—the school every team had ignored and looked down on—

became champions.

After things finally settled down somewhat, a small fanfare appeared before my eyes, followed by a notification on my retina.

[Make a Lower-Ranked Team Champions.] CLEARED!

• You have written a miracle by leading perennial last-place team Saeum High to a championship.

• You have acquired the potential [Championship Contractor].

The moment I saw the ability, I couldn’t help but stare in shock.

Isn’t this way too broken?