Five o’clock the next morning.

South Central LA was quieter at dawn than at night. It was a strange neighborhood with strange air, but Suho’s body woke at the hour it remembered, right on time. As always, he laced up his sneakers and headed out.

Day one was such a blur.

Yesterday he’d met Mark’s mother, talked with the kids for a little while, and gone straight to sleep.

With that thought, Suho jogged through the neighborhood and took it all in. The streetlights flickered like they were on their last legs, and old cars that seemed to have lost their owners sat abandoned all along the streets.

Maybe it was being alone that gave him the room to notice more, but what caught his eye was the houses. As if they’d all agreed on it, every window and every front door had thick iron bars bolted over it. Bleak cages—you couldn’t tell whether they were there to keep someone out or to lock the people inside in. The graffiti scrawled across every wall, meaning who knew what, gave a silent warning that there was no law here.

Hm… I don’t think even the hillside shantytowns back in Korea are this bad.

To be fair, the place itself was in better shape here. You didn’t have to climb hills so steep they left you gasping for air. The streets were wide enough for two cars to pass. And the houses weren’t shacks crammed up against each other; old as they were, they were real single-family homes.

But there was one crucial difference: the air.

If Korea’s hillside shantytowns were places soaked in hard lives and poverty, this place felt like danger was lying in wait, ready to go off at any moment.

Mark grew up somewhere pretty rough.

If anything, that made Mark seem even more impressive. A genius hitter had come out of a place like this. Suho didn’t know exactly what Mark’s past had been like, but he’d probably had it at least as hard as Suho had.

After his loop around the neighborhood, Suho finished up with shadow swings and stretching in a park nearby. It was eight o’clock when he got back, soaked in sweat—and he froze with his hand on the front door.

“Hey! Tommy! Your socks don’t match! Change them!”

“Mark, where’d my hair tie go? I’m late!”

“Lily! Don’t run with bread in your mouth!”

It was a war zone.

Kids getting ready for school and kindergarten were running all over the cramped living room. Right in the middle of it stood Mark with a frying pan, yelling at the top of his lungs.

He wiped off his sweat and stepped inside. When Mark spotted him, he looked like he couldn’t believe it.

“…Wow. You’re sticking to your routine today too?”

Mark shook his head. He’d watched it all season: Suho went out at five every single morning to work out, relentlessly. But their season was over now. A normal player would be sprawled out asleep until the sun was high in the sky.

Suho gave a light shrug.

“It’s a habit. If I skip it, my body feels stiffer.”

“You’re hard-core, man. Hard-core. Anyway, you’re gonna clean up and come eat, right? It’s nothing fancy.”

“Sure am. Smells good.”

By the time Suho had showered and come out, the war of getting ready had mostly settled down. Five of them crowded around the small round table: Mark, Suho and the three kids.

He glanced around. Mark’s mother, who’d welcomed him so warmly yesterday, was nowhere in sight.

Mark scooped scrambled eggs onto Suho’s plate and said offhandedly:

“Looking for Mom? She left for work. She heads out at the crack of dawn.”

“Ah…”

“Don’t worry about it. Just eat. Seriously, it’s nothing fancy.”

The food on the table was simple: toast made from dry bread that came in a jumbo bag, the cheapest brand of cereal at the supermarket, thin slices of cheap ham and a little scrambled egg. A typical breakfast for a poor American family.

Honestly, going by the menu alone, it wasn’t much different from the bread with peanut butter or the cereal they’d eaten in the minor league housing. Then and now, it was food that was less about nutrition than about fuel to fill your stomach.

But it feels different.

Back in the housing, everyone ate at different times.

Mark always got up late and wolfed his food down, and Cash wouldn’t even come out of his room, so we hardly ever ate at the same table.

Once in a while they did sit down together, but everyone would have their earbuds in or be staring at their phones, busy shoving food in. So it had always been a lonely, dry meal he got for himself. But now—

“Mark, give me more ham.”

“Hey, Tommy. Don’t steal my food. Big brother’s gotta keep his strength up.”

“Pfft, all you did was get fat.”

It was noisy. Plates clattered and voices went back and forth.

He bit into the toast set out for him. It was cheap bread, dry enough to stick in your throat. And yet, strangely, it went down smoother than any feast.

In the middle of the meal, Lily, the youngest, chewing away on her bread, suddenly spoke up.

“Mark. My kindergarten says I have to bring school supplies.”

“Hm? What kind?”

“Colored pencils. Mine are all used up. And Jenny needs money too.”

Jenny’s hand froze on the bread she was tearing. In an instant her face turned red as a beet.

“Hey! Lily! Can you be quiet? When did I say that!”

“Yesterday you almost told Mom and then you didn’t. ‘Cause you’re going on the school trip.”

“N-no! I’m not going! I don’t need it! I’ll handle it myself!”

Jenny tried to clap a hand over Lily’s mouth, but it was too late.

Kids from poor families grow up fast. They know by instinct that when money comes up, their parents, or their big brother, get put on the spot. And on top of that, there was a stranger in the house right now. Jenny hung her head, ashamed and sorry.

Just as the mood was about to sink—

“Ha ha ha!”

Mark burst out laughing so hard the table shook.

“You guys, seriously! We’ve got company and you’re gonna embarrass me like this? Talking about stuff like that at the table?”

Mark put on a stern face, but the smile on his lips didn’t budge. Instead of looking sorry about the money or letting on that things were tight, he’d made it about his own pride and laughed the whole thing off.

Suho played along, putting down his fork and sticking his index fingers in his ears.

“Ah! I can’t hear anything. I didn’t hear a thing.”

Growing up in the orphanage, Suho knew this move well.

Jenny, who’d gone tense, burst out giggling at how straight he kept his face.

Lily’s eyes went round, and she pointed at Suho.

“He’s so nice. He covered his ears for us.”

“Yeah. You sure made one good friend, huh.”

Jenny added that with a smile, looking relieved.

The one most surprised was Mark.

Is this guy for real crazy?

In a good way.

This could have been an uncomfortable spot for Suho.

No—it must be uncomfortable for him.

Mark was the one who’d invited him here as a guest, and it felt like he wasn’t treating his guest right at all.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go…

He’d wanted to treat Suho like a king. He just hadn’t thought about a curveball like this, since his siblings were so young. But Suho’s quick thinking had gotten them past it, and thanks to him, the mood at the table was a lot brighter.

Figures. They don’t call him the Magician for nothing.

So…

Maybe he could tell Suho everything?

After breakfast, the kids left for school and kindergarten, and the house went quiet again.

When Mark started to clear the dishes, Suho stopped him.

“I’ll do it.”

“Guests don’t do dishes. Leave it.”

“I’ve got to earn my keep. Besides, you did all the cooking.”

He nudged Mark aside and pulled on the rubber gloves. Guest or not, this was nothing. No—if anything, it was simple manners, the way Suho saw it, and he held firmly to the belief that he would never do anything that crossed the line of good manners.

Mark gave in with a show of reluctance and leaned against the counter by the sink. Over the clatter of dishes, he asked:

“Want some coffee? Coffee tastes amazing with the best view in town.”

“You know I don’t drink coffee.”

He kept his focus on the dishes as he answered.

Mark shook his head in disbelief.

“Man, you take care of your body like a damn fanatic. Hey! Major leaguers smoke! Huh? They drink coffee, they do it all! There are even monsters who drink the night before a game. What are you, a Puritan?”

“That’s because they’re monsters with talent. I have to work for it.”

Mark couldn’t believe it. Suho talked like he wasn’t the talented type.

If you’re not the talented type… then who in the world is?

Mark had never seen a player with a talent as special as Suho’s. Even in this huge country, Suho’s talent was one of a kind.

But by now, Mark was pretty used to Suho.

“No point arguing with you… Juice, then?”

“If you’re offering, I’ll gladly take it.”

“Okay. I’ll set it up. Come out back when you’re done with the dishes.”

Mark hummed a tune as he took the orange juice out of the fridge and headed out to the yard.

Rinsing plates under the running water, Suho looked out the window. Mark was unfolding an old camping chair, his back to the house. In front of his siblings he was like Superman, but alone, from behind, he looked somehow small.

Suho set the last plate in the drying rack, wiped his wet hands and went out into the yard.

In a shady corner of the yard sat two worn camping chairs with the paint chipping off and, instead of a table, a green plastic milk crate turned upside down. On top of it sat two glasses of orange juice with ice floating in them, sweating in the heat.

When Suho eased back into the creaking chair, Mark jerked his chin toward the other side of the wall.

“So? Killer view, huh?”

There was no Hollywood sign where Suho looked, no blue ocean. Instead, a tangle of power lines sliced up the sky like a spiderweb, and a bleak spread of houses stretched out with sirens wailing somewhere off in the distance, nonstop.

And yet it was oddly peaceful. It had the kind of raw, rough energy only a place where people were fighting to get by could give off.

“I’ve never seen a view like this. It’s one of a kind. I mean that in a good way.”

“I swear, I’ve never once heard you say a bad word about anything, you punk.”

Mark huffed a laugh and handed Suho a glass of juice from the top of the crate.

“So, how do you like it here?”

“How do you think? I’m grateful.”

When Suho took the juice and drank it down in one cool gulp, Mark gave a laugh like he couldn’t believe him.

“Grateful? I’m sorry I dragged you here for nothing and put you through all this. A cramped house, loud kids, money talk.”

“I don’t think I’m being put through anything. I’m really having fun. It reminds me of the old days, too.”

He meant it.

Suho was an orphan, but he hadn’t been completely alone. He remembered living at the orphanage as a kid, packed in with the younger kids, noisy just like this. They didn’t share any blood, but they’d filled in for what each other lacked, and he could feel that same warmth in this house.

Mark couldn’t find any pretense on Suho’s face. He’d been secretly embarrassed to show him how shabby his life really was, but relief came over him: with this friend, it would be okay.

Fiddling with his empty glass, Mark eased into it.

“You… curious? About my life, I mean.”

Suho nodded without a moment’s hesitation.

“Of course.”

The reason was clear. Without Mark, Suho never would have lasted in America.

From the very first day in a strange land, Mark had treated him like a friend, with no prejudice at all, and he’d always been on Suho’s side, feeding him information. Thanks to that, Suho had landed safely with a Dodgers affiliate, put up great numbers in a short season, and even earned a shot at the Arizona Fall League.

So to Suho, Mark wasn’t just a teammate. He was the man who’d opened the second act of Suho’s baseball life, and a partner he could trust with his back.

So of course I want to know.

Suho sank back in his chair and waited for Mark to go on.

At last, it was time to get to know Mark Williams the man.

End of Chapter 43