FOR THE FUTURE ⋮ nohyuck/markhyuck/markhyuckno

Chapter Seven

In advance, I'm sorry for the cliche ending of this chapter. It's for THE PLOT.

Seeing students scooting around in excitement confused Donghyuck. From their expressions, he guessed that something interesting had happened today. But what?

"Excuse me? What's the fuss for?" he asked next to him.

"This afternoon, our baseball team plays against SS Univerisity!" she said, eyeing Donghyuck weirdly. "I can't wait!"

"Oh..." Donghyuck smiled at her.

Just as she walked away, the boy facepalmed. How could he forget? The last time he watched a match marked a week until his favorite team game. He broke the news to Jeno and made him fight Mark just before a freaking game! These guys had already been stressing out, and Donghyuck made everything worse.

The thing about being in a spider web wasn't true, Donghyuck realized. The world could turn around him, he might be in everyone's mind, but people had their lives on their own. These guys had an important game coming up, but they let themselves get into the web just because of Donghyuck.

After a lecture, the student came to pick up Noram. He tried his best not to run into that annoying bitch that was after his room. He was succeeding a few days in a row. But that was only a question of how long he would be this successful.

He and Noram walked inside the stadium when the game had already started. Since they were late, they had to sit at the very back. But even from this distance, Donghyuck could clearly see the exhaustion in both Jeno and Mark. Also, their bruises got more visible. They had a few patches too.

It was obvious that the previous day impacted their game. Everyone knew Mark and Jeno were good players, but the way they led the game was awful. Donghyuck used to see Jeno and Mark communicating just with their eyes. Jeno would easily understand Mark and throw a certain pitch―a changeup ball, which usually was tricky and confused the opposite team batter. This was a win for Mark, who could catch the ball effortlessly.

But during that game, it was a mess. They didn't communicate, Jeno threw the baseball balls just how he wanted―curveball, split finger ball, he did whatever. It always came out too strong and made Mark struggle together with the batter. The senior hardly caught a ball, and when he finally did, he could barely keep himself in a squatting position of how strong it was.

What a mess!

Donghyuck heard people from their university wonder what happened to those two, as it was obvious they were on bad terms.

"Did they fight? If a pitcher doesn't trust his catcher, it's an end to their game," someone commented.

"It seems the other way around. The catcher doesn't trust the pitcher at all. He can't seem to understand him."

Meanwhile, students from SS University were celebrating an obvious victory. They thought the opposite team was weak because two of their teammates had bruises. But Donghyuck thought otherwise. It seemed like injuries had no fault here. It was obvious that Jeno had suppressed anger which he used on Mark and the poor batter who just got into the middle of a fight.

"Why's the game so weird?" Noram whined.

Even a kid, who started getting interested in this sport, knew something was off.

"Jeno and Mark aren't in a good relationship right now," Donghyuck explained, blaming himself secretly. "It affects the game."

Embarrassed by their team's performances, many students started leaving. Among them, Donghyuck noticed Renjun and Jaemin. Scared that they might feel him staring, he looked away before he could get caught.