Suho stepped into the box, dust blowing across the dirt.

Settling into the left-hand side, he gauged the distance to the pitcher and set his zero with a few practice swings.

Cade Foster looked him up and down.

There was open dismissal and arrogance in the look.

New face? And Asian? Look how skinny he is. He plays baseball with a build like that?

On top of which, number 79.

A high number means the club expects little of you.

If a man became a major leaguer later and picked a number that high for himself, that would be one thing.

But a number like that in the minors meant the team wasn’t expecting anything either.

Cade nodded to himself.

Ah. New guy who came in at the end of the season. Then it’s obvious.

Some undrafted kid who rolled in from somewhere.

No need to waste time on someone like that.

Cade sent the sign to the catcher with certainty on his face.

The meaning of it was simple.

His most powerful weapon.

Pressing the man down with a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball.

An Asian won’t ever have laid eyes on a hundred.

Overpower him and finish it in three pitches.

As the pitcher went into his windup, the pressure coming off the mound carried all the way to the box.

But in that moment Suho’s head was turning colder than anyone’s.

A hundred. I can’t hit that with the swing I have.

Not with John’s swing.

And not with the swing he’d had at his best in high school, either.

Suho admitted the reality of it coldly.

But it didn’t matter.

All I have to do is contribute to the team winning.

It was how he seized even a little more of a chance.

Right then Cade’s arm came around like a whip.

With a roaring shout the ball left his fingertips, turned into a red line, and drove toward home plate.

A hundred miles an hour.

At the very moment everyone was expecting an overwhelming win for the pitcher.

Suho’s movement betrayed their expectations completely.

He dropped into a bunt stance.

Tok.

The ball met the bat with all its force cancelled out.

And started rolling down the wide-open third base line.

“Wh— what?!”

“A bunt? On that timing?!”

The opposing infield reacted late, caught flat.

The third baseman and the pitcher broke on the ball.

But their reaction had been slow from the start.

And it was already too late to catch Suho, tearing toward first like a storm.

The result was a comfortable infield hit.

Suho stopped on first base, expression flat.

And looked with indifference at the pitcher on the mound, gone white with shock and humiliation.

Surprised? I happen to be confident in my bunting.

Even in the farm system his bunts had been superb.

And his success rate on bunt hits in particular was high.

The data eventually piled up and he couldn’t use it anymore.

But this was America.

There’s no chance you people have data on me.

Put simply, for now he could show them his single greatest strength.

This is how I buy time to build my swing before they figure me out.

That was Suho’s strategy.

His style of baseball was plainly different from what America pursued.

So they’re going to have some trouble with me.

And one man had watched clearly as a Korean player who hadn’t even warmed up reached base against a pitcher that powerful.

Nobody noticed the faint smile at the corner of Taylor’s mouth.

Mark had watched the result with his own eyes from the on-deck circle and still couldn’t believe it.

A bunt? And he got it down?

Mark knew how fast Suho’s legs were, obviously.

He thought there might not be a player faster than Suho in the entire minor leagues.

But… what we needed right now was proof.

Fail to produce a result today and they might be warming the bench for a month, exactly as the manager had said.

Never mind the Arizona Fall League they’d set as a goal.

They’d be looking at next season instead.

There was no way Suho didn’t know that.

Suho was the one who lit the fire under the Arizona Fall League goal in the first place.

And in a first at-bat this important, he bunts.

In American baseball a bunt was as good as a loser’s choice.

Because it amounted to admitting you couldn’t beat the other man with your own strength.

And Suho had done it without hesitating.

Is that really a guy who might be at the end of his baseball career? He’s fearless, like someone playing the game for the first time.

Mark’s whole body went to gooseflesh.

It was a choice he couldn’t have imagined.

The compulsion to prove yourself with strength, and the arrogance that only a head-on fight was the truth.

Suho had laughed lightly at everything that bound Mark and flipped the whole table over.

It was a different feeling from envy.

Something he didn’t have himself.

Pure awe at a competitor’s instinct that was concerned with winning and nothing else.

A first-rounder after all.

Mark adjusted his grip and headed for the box.

Worry crossed his mind.

Damn it, Suho set the table like that…

The problem was himself.

Not long past the end of his rehab, he didn’t have the confidence to square up that monster’s hundred-mile-an-hour ball.

He wanted to show his strength the way Suho had advised.

And that would be what the manager wanted to see.

My body won’t keep up.

Right then.

He caught Suho’s eye, standing on first.

The look in Suho’s eyes seemed to be saying something.

Unfortunately he couldn’t work out the exact meaning.

Looks like he’s telling me something. Should have worked out some signs if I’d known.

While Mark was tapping his foot anxiously, the first pitch came in.

A hundred-mile-an-hour fastball carrying the anger of having given up a bunt hit.

Mark swung through it.

“Strike!”

Second pitch.

A fastball on the same track again.

Mark swung and missed again.

Two strikes in a blink.

The worst possible situation.

Cade looked at Suho on first with a triumphant expression.

An unspoken display saying he wasn’t a man to be rattled by the likes of them.

But that was exactly the moment.

The instant Cade lifted his leg to throw the third pitch.

Suho, the runner on first, took off like a bullet.

“He’s going!”

The catcher’s voice made the pitcher’s command waver.

Thump.

The catcher grabbed the ball and fired to second, but—

“Safe!”

The throw got past the shortstop covering the bag and rolled into the outfield.

The shortstop doubted his own eyes at the perfectly executed steal.

That’s impossible… how is a person that fast? That’s just teleportation.

A short groan broke out even from the cold silence of the Quakes dugout.

A play they’d thought reckless had succeeded perfectly, and the cynical mood began to give way a little.

“Wow. What. He’s insanely fast.”

“Is he a track guy?”

Every one of those exclamations twisted the pitcher’s face further with anger.

He clenched his teeth and tried to concentrate on the hitter.

But these men weren’t major leaguers.

They were still only prospects.

So he knew the correct answer was to focus on the hitter.

But his emotions weren’t keeping up with his head.

His whole attention was pulled to Suho on second.

But it didn’t end there.

The moment the pitcher pulled himself together and went into his motion.

Suho ran flat out for third.

“Damn it! He’s going again!”

This was a gathering of the finest prospects there were.

They’d just seen Suho’s baserunning speed for themselves.

So they anticipated he might run again, and they were right.

But unfortunately for them, Suho’s legs seemed to have gone past the human range.

The catcher took the hundred-mile-an-hour fastball cleanly and made a throw to third with nothing extraneous in it.

And Suho’s foot got there first.

“Safe! Safe!”

Back-to-back steals.

Every eye except Suho’s went wide.

Some Asian nobody had ever seen or heard of had turned up out of nowhere and taken over the stage.

But Suho hadn’t been showing off his ability.

He’d run a solo operation for the team, to break the pitcher’s composure completely.

And because of it, the Quakes dugout was moving past astonishment into fervor.

“He went again… the nerve on that guy.”

“Never mind that, Cade’s out of his mind right now.”

“Wow. Never thought I’d see Cade rattled.”

“Bunt single turned into a triple, didn’t it. That’s an extra-base hit.”

His teammates weren’t bystanders anymore.

They were completely absorbed in Suho’s play, as excited as though they were running themselves.

And exactly as they said, the pitcher’s pupils had gone slack.

He couldn’t get himself back together at all.

His shoulders had dropped too. A man whose drive was completely broken.

The count was 2-2.

Still a count in the pitcher’s favor.

But Mark had a knowing smile on him.

It’s over.

However powerful a pitcher is, once his composure breaks.

He may still be able to throw a hundred, but its effectiveness is halved.

So the fastball the pitcher threw after that was no threat at all to Mark.

Above all.

I can’t kick over a table Suho set this perfectly.

A rush of air.

A swing with force enough to raise a storm met the ball.

Craaack.

A roar went out as though it had shaken the world.

The ball climbed into the distant night sky.

And buried itself in the very top row of the outfield stands.

A two-run home run.

Given a single chance apiece, Suho and Mark had taken it perfectly.

There was no silence waiting for them when they came into the dugout after scoring.

One player praised Mark’s home run.

“Beautiful swing.”

That was the signal, and players came over from every direction to pound Mark on the back.

As soon as the congratulations for Mark were done.

Every eye turned to Suho.

Normally the player who hits the home run is the protagonist.

But these men knew this home run had started from Suho’s legs.

“Hey! Have you got rockets on your feet or something?”

“Were you a track guy? Why are you so fast?”

“Do you know who you just wrecked out there? That’s a top-tier prospect!”

“Damn! These new guys are no joke!”

But the game ended in a Quakes loss in the end.

Despite Suho and Mark’s work, the gap opened early was too much to overturn.

The players headed for the locker room with disappointment all over their faces.

Suho was gathering his own equipment to leave as well.

Then someone came over toward him.

Cade Foster, in the opposing team’s uniform.

His face still looked like a man whose anger hadn’t settled.

But the arrogance had been erased from his eyes a long while ago.

“Hey.”

He stared hard at Suho for a moment, then said it quietly.

“I won’t lose next time.”

He left the short remark and walked away.

Mark came over to Suho, who was staring blankly after him, and knocked his shoulder.

“What was that? Guy got demolished. What did he say?”

“Says he won’t lose next time.”

Mark let out a hollow laugh at the nerve of it.

“I’m the one who took him deep. Why come over here and vent at the wrong man?”

Grumbling aside, Mark had to admit it internally.

Honestly, without Suho I wouldn’t have hit that home run either.

If Suho hadn’t reached on the bunt and broken the pitcher’s composure with the steals, he’d have been helpless against a hundred-mile-an-hour ball.

I thought it was a fight we couldn’t win from the start. Suho turned the whole thing over.

And the pitcher seemed to know it too.

Which stood to reason. He’d been on the receiving end, so he’d know it better than anyone.

“In America, especially guys that good, their pride goes through the roof.”

And that man had come over himself, admitted the loss, and promised a next time.

“That means he’s recognized you as an equal, Suho. Or as a rival above him.”

He was right.

Neither of them could see it, but Cade Foster clenched a fist shaking with anger as he left the ballpark.

What had broken him wasn’t Mark’s home run.

It was number 79, who had rolled a bunt as though laughing at his hundred-mile-an-hour pride, then torn his composure to shreds with back-to-back steals.

A complete defeat.

Suho knew what the gesture meant too, and it made him genuinely happy.

How long has it been since anyone acknowledged me.

He couldn’t even remember.

So he was thinking he wanted to keep feeling this way, and right at that moment.

“Hey. You two.”

A coach called them urgently from the dugout side.

“The manager wants you. Get to his office.”

End of Chapter 20