The Genius Hitter Who Conquered America - Chapter 123

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 123
Before the exhilarating rush of landing the massive sea bream—Victor, as it was known—could even fade away.
Following Hank’s instructions, I hauled up the trap that had been cast into the sea beforehand.
Inside lay an abundance of plump, glistening clams and an assortment of unidentifiable seafood.
Perfect wild proteins.
Shortly after, the two of us disembarked and made our way toward a dilapidated log cabin situated on a sparsely populated coastal area.
It appeared to be Hank’s personal hideaway—a place where he stored and studied the ingredients he hunted.
The exterior was rough and crude, as if it might collapse at any moment.
“Wow.”
The moment I stepped inside, my jaw dropped involuntarily.
Dominating the center of the living room was a massive stainless steel kitchen counter that looked like it belonged in a high-end restaurant, accompanied by state-of-the-art cooking equipment.
The walls displayed an array of knives arranged with surgical precision, their blades honed to razor sharpness.
Hank gestured toward the counter with a jerk of his chin and asked casually.
“Can you cook?”
“Yes. I can.”
“Tsk, tsk. I figured as much. All you baseball guys do is swing bats all day, so I thought… What? You can?”
Hank’s eyes widened as he stared at me.
He had naturally assumed I couldn’t.
Most American baseball players, especially young prospects brimming with vigor, rarely had anything to do with cooking.
After spending all day grinding on the ground and training until blood dripped, they’d return utterly exhausted.
When would they have time to shop for groceries and wield a knife on a cutting board?
Most of them simply reheated frozen pizzas in microwaves or filled their stomachs with delivery food and fast food.
So I had naturally planned to pick up the knife myself and demonstrate real cooking, but the answer I received was unexpected.
“I’m talking about real cooking. Not that garbage food where you just press a microwave button and wait three minutes!”
“Yes. I really can cook.”
“Really? Even seafood? In other words, are you saying you can actually cook with these ingredients you caught today?”
How many times would I need to answer before he believed me?
I suppressed the urge to laugh and answered respectfully once more.
“I really can.”
At my unwavering response, Hank’s bushy eyebrows twitched.
“Then, go ahead and do it. But! If it tastes bad, you’d better be prepared. If you ruin that precious wild protein, I’ll throw you into the sea!”
“Well… it suits my palate well. But would you be okay with Korean cuisine as the main style?”
It was my sincere consideration.
Looking at Hank, who appeared as if he’d spent his entire life eating nothing but thick T-bone steaks and hamburgers, I doubted he could even stomach unfamiliar Korean seafood dishes.
But Hank let out a scoff and answered curtly.
“I’m a nutritionist.”
For a moment, my mind went blank.
That’s right. Despite looking like a bear descended from the mountains, he was the Senior Nutritionist brought in by the Los Angeles Dodgers, the pinnacle of capitalism.
A true expert completely versed in all kinds of ingredients and nutritional components would never be picky about food.
I finally relaxed and nodded in understanding.
“Then I’ll get started right away.”
* * *
‘It’s been a while since I’ve done proper cooking.’
If asked whether I could cook, my answer had always been a firm yes.
Just a few months ago, during those tear-stained days in Minor League Low Single A, it was the same.
I’d run all the way to the Seafood Wholesale Market and hauled Dungeness crabs by the crate to cook and eat myself.
But my first time holding a kitchen knife went back much further than that.
To my days at the Orphanage.
To those very early years when I’d painfully come to understand that I was completely alone in this world.
Rather than surrender to sorrow and cry pitifully, I chose the starkly practical path of survival.
After all, I had to provide for myself with my own two hands.
At first, it was naturally a meager yet desperate calculation to save on food costs.
‘Of course, food expenses were much higher back then.’
I let out a quiet chuckle to myself.
Nothing in this world came easy from the start.
I’d burn meat pitch-black from failing to control the flame.
I’d knocked over salt shakers and thrown away entire pots of stew more times than I could count.
My attempts to save money only wasted ingredients and dealt me painful losses.
But I never put down that kitchen knife.
The real reason I clung so tenaciously to cooking wasn’t simply about my own survival.
‘I had to feed my younger siblings something delicious, no matter what.’
The meal plans funded by the Orphanage were always woefully insufficient to fill the bellies of my younger siblings as they played and grew.
So whenever I won prize money at Baseball Tournaments or received scholarships from School.
Instead of spending it on myself, I’d dash to the Supermarket without a second thought.
When I’d return with my hands heavy with fresh ingredients, the little ones trailing behind me would have their eyes sparkling with such brilliance as they licked their lips in anticipation.
I wanted to feed them the most delicious special meals in the world, without shortage or hunger.
To do that, I had to pick up the pot again even after failures, and grasp the pan again even after burning food.
Through countless failures and persistent, loving determination.
I eventually blossomed into cooking talent that rivaled decent restaurants.
I never thought of that past as sad or pitiful.
Rather, because of those countless failures back then and the warm sense of responsibility to feed my siblings.
I could survive perfectly alone no matter where I fell in this world.
The solid Oh Soo-ho I am now was completed because of it.
Most importantly, I quite liked my own independent and dependable nature.
‘What kind of dish should I prepare.’
A massive sea bream on the cutting board and an abundance of shellfish.
I fell into thought for a moment.
I couldn’t simply insist on flashy, delicious food that merely stimulated the palate.
Sweet, salty, spicy—such stimulating seasoning-heavy dishes were nothing short of poison to a professional athlete pushing their body to its limits.
What I needed now wasn’t simply a feast to please my taste buds.
It had to be the perfect nutritious meal—one that would restore muscles exhausted from training and allow my body to absorb protein with one hundred percent efficiency.
I hadn’t forgotten the true purpose of why I’d come to this place.
‘I’ll steam the fish, and make a clear broth with the shellfish.’
My eyes sharpened as I finalized the menu.
With the intense focus of stepping into the Batter’s Box, I unhesitatingly reached for a sharp kitchen knife.
Scrape, scrape.
The scales of the massive sea bream fell away in a single fluid motion, my hands moving with practiced precision and discipline.
I carved shallow, evenly-spaced cuts into the thick flesh, then carefully inserted thin slices of garlic and green onion between each incision.
This went far beyond simply enhancing flavor—it was a meticulous calculation to completely eliminate any fishy odor and stimulate digestive enzymes in the stomach.
The scene revealed just how many times I’d prepared fish dishes.
Then I retrieved a large steamer and placed the fish inside.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
‘Good. Next….’
As delicate steam began rising from within the steamer, I immediately turned my attention to the adjacent burner without pause.
I plunged the thoroughly cleaned clams and shellfish into boiling water.
Instead of pungent chili powder or murky sauce, I used only coarse salt, chunky radish, and thick green onion to create a clear, refreshing broth.
From cutting technique to heat control.
There was no wasted motion or hesitation as I moved back and forth along the Kitchen Counter.
A cooking method completely different from the typical American seafood preparation—meat marinated in butter, cheese, and thick, salty sauces.
Hank, who had been quietly observing this intuitive and understated cooking process that extracted one hundred percent of the ingredients’ natural energy,
had already folded his arms and lifted the corners of his mouth with interest.
‘What the hell is this kid doing?’
Hank clicked his tongue inwardly.
Of course, among the countless players Hank had supervised over the years,
not all of them cursed and fled before even boarding the Fishing Boat.
A few possessed such vicious determination that they’d eventually make it to the Major League—they stayed until the end, rod in hand, and actually managed to catch fish.
But those guys were hopeless in the kitchen, unable to even cut properly, let alone anything else.
‘Their mindset itself was different.’
Once those guys went through such grueling hardship to obtain the ingredients,
they only desperately tried to eat them as deliciously and provocatively as possible.
Completely erasing from their minds all the nutritional value I’d just been talking about.
The moment they turned on the gas range, they’d dump mountains of butter,
coat things in flour and throw them into bubbling oil, or slather everything with salty sauce and bake it.
‘Of course, I can’t say that’s wrong.’
Every human has a compensation psychology.
After enduring rough sea fishing I’d never done before in my life, experiencing extreme physical exhaustion,
and tasting the intense sense of achievement from successful hunting,
when that thrilling dopamine burst hits an energy-depleted brain, it naturally wants to reward itself with the most stimulating, calorie-explosive flavors.
‘It’s an entirely natural instinct. And especially during the off-season, even more so.’
During the off-season, players freely eat whatever they want, partly to relieve stress.
But Soo-ho was different.
‘Even before the temptation of pleasure and reward psychology, he never forgets the essence.’
He hadn’t forgotten for even a single second that he was a Professional Baseball player, not a fisherman or a gourmet.
Soo-ho didn’t necessarily know what perfect diet he needed to construct during the off-season to devour the Major League monsters.
The precise nutritional answer wasn’t something he possessed.
But at the very least, he meticulously controlled the act of shoving garbage into an athlete’s body.
‘He’s maintaining the absolute minimum line he must protect with perfect rationality.’
Sea bream steamed with not a drop of oil, only scorching steam.
Shellfish broth boiled clear and refreshing without stimulating seasonings.
Before that ruthless restraint—willingly sacrificing the mouth’s pleasure solely for tomorrow’s baseball—Hank felt a spine-tingling thrill.
‘The Dodgers brought another monster.’
To put it more frankly.
Soo-ho had a different grain than the monsters I’d met before.
Of course, the apex predators reigning at the pinnacle of the Major League were equally meticulous about self-management to a chilling degree.
They strictly controlled their diets to protect their bodies worth hundreds of billions, thousands of billions.
‘During the season, they endure all pleasures like monks.’
That fierce, unyielding poison—willingly suppressing the tongue’s joy to maintain their great careers and astronomical salaries.
For them, restraint was both an ‘obligation’ and a ‘price’ they must rightfully pay to bear the weight of the great crown.
But Soo-ho wasn’t forcing himself to endure.
No one commanded it, and he hadn’t yet joined the ranks of billionaires.
For this lean young Oriental, only one absolute standard breathed as a natural instinct: does this help tomorrow’s baseball more?
In choosing dishes that pleased the muscles over dishes that pleased the mouth, there wasn’t a trace of resentment or compensatory psychology.
‘Rather than a monster… he’s a madman completely consumed by the very essence of baseball itself.’
Hank’s instinct, honed from managing countless geniuses and stars, was warning him harshly.
This type of human cannot fail even if they wanted to.
Even if the god of baseball threw a tantrum and forcibly cast him into the mire.
He was the most stubborn of the stubborn—the kind who would lick the mud and crawl back up to the Batter’s Box to swing the bat again.
“All done.”
While Hank was lost in thought, Soo-ho arranged the steaming sea bream and clear shellfish broth neatly on the Kitchen Counter.
“Would you like to try it?”
Hank quietly picked up a spoon and fork.
First he sipped a mouthful of the clear, steeped shellfish broth, then tore away a large piece of the glossy white flesh of the sea bream and pushed it boldly into his mouth.
Chew, chew.
His perpetually furrowed brow twitched for a moment.
Soon, an enraptured expression spread across his weathered face, as if he were tasting a delicacy for the first time in the world.
“…I like it.”
He wasn’t talking about the food.
Though I saw Soo-ho for the first time today.
Not only did he show no complaints.
The way he pressed forward, eyes only on what lay ahead—I really liked that.
So then.
‘I’ll take responsibility for you and make sure you achieve your goal.’
The month or so ahead that we would spend together.
Hank was determined to sculpt Soo-ho’s body into one that would make anyone envious.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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