“Great! Fielding’s next!”

The shoot moved right along. After hitting came the fielding moves. This time they’d actually hit fungoes to capture reaction speed and how each of them fielded the ball.

Mark, a first baseman through and through, moved more nimbly than his size suggested and got the okay without any trouble.

But Suho was different.

“…Wow. Seriously, his fielding’s out of this world too.”

Ben, the director, shook his head in amazement.

The first step, reacting the instant the ball left the bat. The glove work snatching it up. And the transition into the throw—it all flowed as naturally as water.

Hitting, power potential, and fielding too.

Ben sized Suho up again, this time with the eye of the analyst he used to be.

In baseball, what scouts care about most is tools. Put simply, tools are the size of the bowl a player’s natural talent comes in, and skill is how much is in that bowl right now. You can build skill through training, but tools you have to be born with.

And Suho was already showing him three of the core tools the majors wanted most. Contact backed by perfect mechanics. Power potential the data had proven. And the solid defense unfolding right in front of him.

There’s still a lot to polish, but… he’s a real prospect.

With tools like those, all he needed was experience, and he’d shoot up like bean sprouts soaking up water.

“Okay! Cut!”

Ben checked the monitor with a satisfied look.

“The machine says your balance and flexibility are so good that even pretty tough off-balance moves don’t put strain on your joints. Your injury risk is very low.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Suho was relieved. The most important thing for a long career was staying healthy, and he’d gotten a passing grade on that too.

“All right, last up, we’ll capture baserunning!”

The staff bustled around, laying thick safety mats across the studio floor for the slide shots. Rolling around on the bare floor could get someone hurt, so it was only natural.

“See where it’s marked as a base over there? You’re on mats, so don’t be scared—just slide all out.”

Just then, Suho raised his hand.

“Um, excuse me, sir.”

“Yes?”

“Could I just do it on the floor? I’m wearing the bodysuit, so I think I’ll be fine.”

“…Sorry? Without the mats?”

Ben and the staff couldn’t believe their ears. Suit or not, the floor was hard concrete with a thin finish over it.

“Yes. Please take them away.”

“But why? You could get hurt.”

“Well… I think it’ll come out more accurate that way.”

Suho’s eyes were serious.

Sliding on a soft mat and throwing yourself at hard ground were fundamentally different. When fear kicks in, the body shrinks back by instinct and the muscles tighten up. That tiny difference would throw off the data.

“For us, real is good, but… are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. I want the data too.”

Suho was curious how the machine would break down his baserunning, especially his head-first slide. It was his trademark and the weapon he’d survived on, and he wanted to find out whether it was actually efficient, scientifically—or just a reckless way to wreck himself.

If this thing tells me not to either, I guess I’ll have to hold back as much as I can.

Not that he trusted the machine blindly. Machines couldn’t do everything, and people could see things machines couldn’t. Things like experience.

Taylor believed in me.

But people also had something no machine would ever understand: affection. And sometimes affection got in the way of an accurate evaluation.

So here, he needed a machine that would judge him completely objectively. That was why Suho had said he’d run on the bare floor.

Because… I really do think my way is fine.

But what if he was wrong?

Suho didn’t want to walk a road just because someone else told him to anymore. He’d already failed that way once.

“…All right. If that’s what you want.”

At Ben’s signal, the staff cleared away the mats.

Suho stared down the imaginary base marked on the bare floor and steadied his breathing. He was going to make this one just as perfect as the real thing.

“Ready… action!”

The moment the call came, Suho took off.

It was a cramped studio, but the explosiveness of his first step was no different from a real field.

As the imaginary base came up in front of him—

Now.

Suho threw himself forward without hesitating. It was a thoroughly drilled move, calculated right down to keeping his center of gravity as low as possible and the angle he stretched his arms to cut friction with the ground.

A harsh scraping sound rang through the studio as he raked across the hard floor. He shot along like an arrow, touched the base and came to a stop.

A throbbing pain came through the bodysuit, but Suho sprang to his feet without so much as a change of expression. It was the same kind of pain he always felt on the field.

“Okay! Cut!”

Ben clapped and shouted.

Catching his breath, Suho went straight to the monitor. The pain didn’t matter. All that mattered now was the result.

“How’d it look?”

Ben was staring hard at the monitor. His eyes trembled faintly.

“…That’s amazing.”

Ben pointed to the graph on the screen.

“See this? From the moment you launch until you land and slide, your body stays almost level with the ground.”

[Air Resistance: Minimized] [Deceleration Rate: 0.8% (Very Low)]

“Normally with a head-first slide, the impact when you land kills your speed fast. But you… it’s like you’re gliding on ice. You barely slow down at all.”

Ben shook his head, impressed.

“It looks dangerous, but according to the data, there’s no problem. You’re spreading out the impact on your joints incredibly well, too.”

Suho let out a long breath of relief.

The machine had proven it. His baseball—his way of surviving—wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t reckless self-destruction.

Ben huffed a laugh at the sight.

“But to be honest with you, for anybody watching, it sure does look dangerous.”

His tone said he’d figured out Suho had come here to test himself.

Suho sheepishly scratched the back of his head, like he’d been caught.

“Sorry.”

“No, no need to apologize. It’s a win-win, so it’s fine. If anything, we got some really perfect motion today, so it works out for us too. Anyway, great work. Go get changed.”

The whole shoot was over.

Suho and Mark peeled off their sweat-soaked suits and changed back into their street clothes. Their bodies were wiped out, but they felt like they could fly.

“Great work, both of you!”

Ben came over himself and handed each of them a thick envelope: the day’s wages they’d been promised, a thousand dollars.

“Thanks to you, I think our development time just got cut by months. Please take this, with my thanks.”

“Thank you.”

Mark took the envelope, grinning ear to ear. With this money, he could send Jenny on her school trip right away. And he could cover the utilities and living expenses too.

Just then, a man who’d been watching from a corner with his arms folded the whole shoot came over. He wore a sharp suit, with a badge pinned to his chest bearing the logo of a famous sports brand.

“Do you have a minute?”

The man held out a business card.

[Rawlings — Marketing Manager, Western Region]

Rawlings was a classic American baseball equipment company—the maker of the official MLB baseball and the glove brand major leaguers used most.

“Watching you two made our gear look great. That slide especially… it was a work of art.”

The man pointed to the equipment bag on the bench.

“These are samples we brought for today’s shoot, but why don’t you take them? It’s a hassle to haul them back to the office, and I think it’d be an honor for the gear to have you two using it.”

“Seriously?”

Mark’s eyes went round. It was super-high-end gear, batting gloves, protective pads and wristbands among it.

But Suho’s eyes were fixed on the gloves sitting in the corner.

“By any chance… are those gloves included too?”

The manager smiled and nodded at the question.

“Yes. I’d be grateful if you’d use all of it.”

There was a reason the man was going out of his way to give Suho and Mark this gear. Forget a thousand dollars—added up, it could easily come close to ten thousand. This wasn’t simple kindness. It was a calculated investment.

It happened fairly often in the minors, actually. From a brand’s point of view, there was no telling which of the tens of thousands of players would hit it big. So they planted seeds early with the prospects who looked like they had a shot.

But this time was a little different. The manager wasn’t going on a hunch. He was sure.

They’re really something, those two. That Asian kid especially… he was a five-tool player.

He was like a unicorn in baseball right now. Unicorns stand for rarity, and players who checked all five boxes were extremely rare. But the motion-capture data had just proven it: Suho had every kind of talent baseball could ask for.

A prospect with that kind of potential can’t miss.

The minors were full of variables, sure. They were crawling with monsters who disappeared because of injuries, a lack of composure, or trouble adjusting.

Even so, I have to plant some goodwill now, while he’s cheap.

The hope was that someday, when he became a major leaguer, this day’s connection might get him to sign with Rawlings. It was the cheapest, surest way to court a future superstar.

Suho looked through the gloves, and then his face fell a little.

Puzzled, the manager asked:

“Oh? Is something wrong? These gloves are our top-of-the-line model, so the quality’s guaranteed.”

“Oh, I know. They look really great. I don’t think I’ll have to worry about gear for a while. But… I was wondering if you have any in a youth size.”

“Do you… have a little brother, by any chance?”

“Yes.”

Suho answered without hesitating. Mark’s brother. Tommy’s torn glove had been weighing on him.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got youth samples in the trunk of my car. Good timing, actually. I’ll go grab one for you now.”

“Oh! Thank you!”

When the man stepped away, Mark came over, beaming, and gave Suho’s shoulder a light thump.

“Hey. Why are you looking out for my brother? You’re making me look bad as his big brother.”

Suho grinned back.

“He’s my little brother now too.”

Mark was at a loss for words. Something in a corner of his chest rang, heavy and deep. A friend who truly cared about his family, about his little brother. Where would he ever find a partner he could count on more than that?

A little later, the man came back carrying a box with a top-of-the-line youth glove in it.

Suho took it carefully and felt a swell of pride.

I got a lot out of today.

He’d gotten to use cutting-edge technology, and it had handed him reference data saying it was time to move forward. He’d earned money. He’d even been courted by a sports company, getting handed pricey gear like this. Things he’d never even dreamed of before, he’d pulled off, all kinds of them, in a single day.

Feels really good… Probably because I’m looking somewhere different now, huh?

The days of holding on with his eyes on the ground were over. The modest wish to just play baseball a long time had been erased.

Now he’d lifted his head. And when he did, he found himself wanting the highest place in this whole world.

The majors.

End of Chapter 47