The stadium on a midsummer afternoon, sun blazing down until the grass seemed to smolder.

The stands were empty. Even the wind was holding its breath.

The only thing breaking the silence was one man — Suho, standing in the middle of the batter’s box, sweat pouring off him, swinging.

“One more… just one more…!”

The muttering kept leaking out through his teeth. His elbow and shoulder had gone past their limit and were twitching.

But his eyes still burned like a fire that refused to go out.

One swing. Then another.

Every muscle in his body screamed, and Suho didn’t stop.

“If I can’t take this much—!”

He dragged in a breath, spat the words out, and set his stance again.

He drove every ounce of strength he had into his hands on the grip.

Through pain that felt like his bones splintering, he swung.

Because baseball was everything Suho had.

To him it was never just a sport.

It was the reason he breathed, the one purpose he had for living.

He had no family and no friends. Baseball was the only thing in his life that had never betrayed him.

In filthy back alleys, in the cold rooms of the orphanage, it was the single hope that held him up.

The bat he had swung every day since childhood without missing one. The countless balls he had thrown. The running routes that never ended.

That brutal work was what made him a first-round pick, straight into a pro organization.

People called it a miracle.

But the miracle turned into something colder the moment he reached the pros. It turned into a ceiling.

—He doesn’t have the talent.

—Soon as he steps in the box he freezes.

—There’s no power in his contact. He’ll never be a first-team hitter with that swing.

Coaches, teammates, analysts. The verdicts kept coming, and every one of them was cold.

The media that once held him up as an orphan’s success story had turned to mocking him.

But Suho was the one person who couldn’t accept it.

He couldn’t take the fact in. He didn’t want to believe he lacked talent.

So here he was, jaw clenched, swinging.

The same as he’d always done since he was a kid. If you’re short, do more.

A ceiling was just something you broke through with work.

Which was why, on an off day when every other player was resting, he was alone in the batter’s box.

Under a blazing sun, repeating the drill like a man punishing himself.

And then it happened.

From the dugout of the empty farm-team stadium came a familiar voice. One he was in no way glad to hear right now.

“Suho. Come here a minute.”

The voice belonged to Chulmin Choi, the farm team manager, and Suho’s whole body locked up.

Why is he here on an off day…

It couldn’t be good news. His chest went heavy in an instant and a bad feeling spread through him.

But you don’t ignore a summons like that.

Suho slowly evened out his breathing, gripped his sweat-soaked jersey in one fist, and walked over.

“Yes. You wanted me?”

He couldn’t keep the unease out of his voice.

He followed Choi to the manager’s office.

Choi handed him a bottle of water.

“Sit down. Get comfortable.”

Suho took the water and sat facing him.

Choi let out a long breath.

“Suho. You know why I came in on an off day looking for you, right?”

Suho’s eyebrow twitched.

“I’m not sure.”

He wasn’t psychic. How was he supposed to read the man’s mind?

The truth was that he had a good idea what Choi was about to say.

But he’d decided to play dumb.

No. He had to.

Because what was coming was the one thing he never wanted to hear.

Choi sighed again.

Then the words came out and carved straight into him.

“Suho. I’m sorry, but… you’re released.”

He’d known it was coming, and his eyes still shook.

It didn’t matter. People could be talked around.

Suho spoke, his voice barely above nothing.

“Coach. I’ll work harder. Just give me one more chance. Please.”

Choi shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I want to keep you here, I do… but this time there’s nothing I can do.”

He glanced at Suho once and shook his head again.

“I hate it, but the order came from the GM. And you know how things are with this club right now.”

Choi flung the newspaper in front of him across the desk toward Suho.

Suho read the front-page headline.

[GANGWON HAWKS IN CRISIS: THE KNIFE COMES OUT]

—Seven straight years in last place. This time the overhaul runs from the roster all the way to the front office.

The rest of it was about clearing out the farm players they didn’t need, starting from the bottom.

Suho bit down hard.

“Was there… any talk of a trade?”

His voice was as small as a whisper. One thread of hope. That somewhere out there, somebody might need him.

The answer came back with a bluntness that bordered on cruel.

“I’m sorry. I tried to pull some strings. There wasn’t a single club… that wanted you.”

His heart dropped.

More precisely, it collapsed, and the fragments lodged all through him.

Nobody wanted him.

That one fact emptied his head out. His ears rang and his breath jammed in his throat.

And in that moment, strangely, what surfaced was every swing he’d ever taken.

The nights he stayed up crying and swinging anyway.

The days his hands split open and he taped them and kept going.

All of it… and what it built was a player nobody wants.

Suho’s eyes went red.

But he couldn’t give up here.

“Coach. Let me meet with the GM. Just once.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

A farm player, and a released one at that, asking for a private meeting with the general manager.

Suho knew it was hopeless and said it anyway. That was how desperate he was.

And the answer was what he expected.

“You think that makes any sense?”

“Please. I’m begging you. You know my situation. I’ll work harder. I’ll kill myself over it this time, I swear.”

Choi shot up out of his chair and came around in front of him.

Then he seized Suho’s wrist and forced it up.

“You. Open your hand.”

Suho quietly opened his palm.

Choi shut his eyes tight and shook Suho’s wrist.

“Look at this…”

Suho’s palm was, in the literal sense, ruins.

No manual laborer, not even a man who spent his days hauling rebar on a construction site, would have a hand like that.

Skin that had split from gripping and swinging a bat, burst open, and hardened over again, layer on layer.

Callus grew on callus, and more callus on top of that.

It looked like old bark that had weathered an eternity.

Choi stared at that palm for a long moment without a word, and then it came out of him, weakly.

His voice started soft and then came down hard.

“You’ve done enough. You worked. No — honestly, I’ve never seen anyone work the way you do. Not one person, not ever! And you’re still on the farm team, and you know it. With the talent you’ve got, you will never make the first team. Not in your whole life. You know that…”

He didn’t have the talent.

Suho had some, or he’d never have reached the pros at all. But the pros were where talent gathered in its purest form, the kind that cleared his without effort.

There was pity and apology in Choi’s eyes, but the cold reality he couldn’t quite put into words came out in his voice anyway.

“And that’s not all of it. You come in early every morning. Four hours before everybody else, warming up. And after? I know you put in two more hours swinging before you go home. And it’s not just me. Everybody knows!”

Suho’s shoulders started to shake.

His fist closed without him meaning to, and the calluses dug painfully into his palm again.

Choi pushed himself to keep going.

“And I know you break down film on the good hitters every night after practice. I hear you’re even breaking down the habits of major leaguers. Suho, that’s work. What you do is real work…”

His voice got smaller and smaller.

Something rose up in Suho’s chest that he couldn’t put a name to. Desperation and grief at once.

“So let me be blunt. What’s your strength? Baserunning you bled for? Speed? You want to spend your career as a pinch runner? Fine, your defense is decent. So you’ll live as a defensive replacement?”

Choi clenched his jaw.

“If you’re a hitter, you hit. Pinch runner, defensive replacement, whatever it is, in the end you have to get on base and you have to hit, or you don’t go up.”

Suho’s heart tore itself apart all over again.

He had worked harder than anyone and wanted it more than anyone, and what came back to him was that he was no use.

But he couldn’t argue. It was true.

Hitting, plate discipline, the basics a hitter is supposed to have. He didn’t have them.

It hadn’t been like that before he signed.

There was a time he was good enough to take MVP at the Blue Dragon Flag.

It had all gone this way after he turned pro, but who was there to blame?

His ability, his talent, simply came up short.

Choi looked him straight in the face and closed it.

“Suho. The professional world is cold. It doesn’t put food on your table out of sentiment.”

That last line went into his heart like a nail.

“So I’m sorry. You’re released.”

With those words, Suho’s world came down.

Baseball, the thing he’d staked his whole life on, the one thing he’d believed would never betray him, had thrown him away. That was how it felt.

Coldly. Cruelly.

Suho packed his things in the locker room and looked around.

Twenty-four this year. He’d been here five years, and the place was home. Walking out of it didn’t come easy.

“Haa…”

A sigh came out of him.

But what was this? There was no despair in it.

Relief, then? Surely not. A man who’s been thrown away doesn’t get to feel relief.

Suho hunched his shoulders.

“Ugh. Everything hurts.”

For Coach to hit him that hard where it counted. Suho knew he wasn’t a harsh man by nature.

He was the opposite, in fact. Warm, and more than generous with the people around him.

If anything, he’s the reason I got even one more year here.

So he couldn’t hate him. If anything he was grateful. The man had handed him reality.

Anyone reading Suho’s mind right then might have called him crazy.

But Suho wasn’t crazy at all.

His world had come down, sure. But the one great asset he had, the optimism, was still there.

If he let that go too…

He’d end up genuinely useless. That was the thought.

“Shake it off. You’ll be fine. You’ll do fine, Suho Oh.”

He comforted himself. And to actually shake it off, he forced both corners of his mouth up.

“They always say mental management is what matters most for a ballplayer, and here I’ve built mine up this solid… good thing, too.”

At least it was good for something.

Except.

Suho was only human. His chest ached and stung. He’d thought he would be fine and he wasn’t fine at all.

Why? He was supposed to shake it off and go find a new life.

Fortunately, Suho knew the reason.

This thing. Regret. It really doesn’t let go.

It had hold of his trouser leg and no intention of releasing him.

If he left this place with no plan at all… he’d probably keep away from baseball forever.

And he didn’t want that. He’d done this his whole life.

And he was still young. It wasn’t time to give up yet.

Baseball… maybe a little longer?

No. One more time, and make it the last. Truly the last.

At home he was finished. Nobody wanted him.

But Suho raised his head, slowly.

Past the locker room, the wide-open sky.

And Korea wasn’t the only country under it that played baseball.

There’s America.

The country that loved the game more than anywhere else.

Maybe the last struggle should happen where the game was born.

He was a free man now. Nobody had any say over him.

So this wasn’t being driven out. He was going to make one last run at it.

And who knows? If I learn the game where it started, maybe I could…

Suho had never once complained to anyone, but the truth was that he had broken the moment he turned pro.

—If you want to survive in the pros, throw out the swing you have and rebuild it a new way.

From the day he heard that from the hitting coach, he started losing himself.

New mechanics, new rhythm.

None of it fit his body.

The quality of his contact dulled. His feel at the plate went, and his eye went with it.

And still Suho never doubted it once.

Because there were players ahead of him who had succeeded that way.

He’d seen it with his own eyes.

So he believed the wall of the pros was simply that high. He assumed the shortfall was his.

Not that he sat around doing nothing about it.

Every night Suho broke down major-league hitters.

He wanted to learn their mechanics. He wanted to have them.

He believed that if he had them, he could change.

But he didn’t know how.

Studying major leaguers all night only told him the answer existed somewhere.

It never told him the road to it.

That wasn’t a problem you could fill in with work alone.

How force gets transferred. Mechanics, the heart of hitting, was far more complicated than he’d thought.

And nobody ever gave him an answer for how it was supposed to be done.

So he believed the shortfall was his, took it quietly, and held on.

They say in America they build it around the player.

So maybe.

Suho let out a small laugh.

Well. Honestly, separate from all that, the odds are thin.

Because at home, and on the farm team no less, his numbers were a disaster. Could a player like that possibly do well in America, at a far higher level?

Cases like that were vanishingly rare. No — there weren’t any. Suho knew it perfectly well.

Players who were great in Korea go to America and succeed.

Players who weren’t didn’t.

But it’s fine if I fail.

He’d already failed once. Failing again changed nothing.

And this seemed like the only way to be rid of the regret that still hadn’t left him.

Right now, Suho just wanted to play a little more baseball.

But he wasn’t making the attempt only because he wanted to play.

If that were it, he could play as a hobby instead of a pro.

I want to make it in baseball.

So he’d make the case himself.

Baseball had always been written in new records, and someone always walks the road that wasn’t there before.

Suho believed he still had the right to stand on that road.

Even if he hadn’t earned anyone’s recognition so far.

Even if the world came down, he had to believe in himself.

Don’t try and the chance is zero. Try, and however small it is, it isn’t nothing.

“Let’s go to America.”

This wasn’t running away. It was the last and hottest act of defiance he had.

Suho branded it into himself.

If it doesn’t work after this, I quit cleanly.

Suho didn’t know it at the time.

That a choice that might have been nothing but greed, nothing but regret, would change the whole of his life.

And that this was —

the luck, and the fate, that belongs only to those who never gave up.

End of Chapter 1