The SS-Class Perfect Battery

This was, without a doubt, a dream. Yet, the images burned into his retinas with an unnerving, hyper-realistic clarity.Here in Seoul, South Korea, heavy sheets of early March rain violently slapped against the bullpen ground. Between the two men standing there—having long abandoned any hope of using an umbrella—their breaths, thick and suffocating enough to sear the lungs, mingled intensely in the vibrating air.Yuhwan’s solid, heavily built frame—stretching an imposing 190 cm with proportions that felt meticulously sculpted by a deity—exuded a wild, feral dominance combined with his drenched black hair. His muscles, glistening under the slick coat of rainwater, were coiled tight and ready to burst, like a predator cornering its prey.Standing right beside him, Haneul Jang’s crimson hair was equally soaked, clinging to the slim line of his shoulders as water cascaded down. Through his translucent, wet shirt, Haneul’s slight, trembling breaths were laid bare, pinned under Yuhwan’s pie

"Hah... gasp... hah!"The bedsheets felt damp, as if they had absorbed the humid moisture of the heavy rain. At the freezing sensation against his skin, Haneul Jang swallowed a groan that was half a scream and bit his lip hard.Slowly, his trembling vision began to open. As the familiar, monotonous patterns of his studio apartment's ceiling burned into his retinas, he finally realized he had safely returned to his brutal, exhausting reality.Cold sweat trickled clammily down his spine.The places where Yuhwan’s raw, burning heat had brushed against him in the dream still felt scalding hot, as if he had suffered actual burns, causing his entire back to stiffen under a tense shudder. That fleeting moment when a coldly drenched face had closed in right before his eyes with a searing breath—the lingering afterimage of the shattered boundary between dream and reality violently clawed through his mind.Without a doubt, he had been locked in a dangerous, suffocating standoff in the pouring r

All the way to S National University, Yuhwan’s insides felt twisted and warped.The palms gripping the leather steering wheel were slick with cold sweat, but the lingering afterimage of Haneul Jang was so deeply burned into his retinas that he couldn't erase it. He repeatedly slammed his foot onto the accelerator with sharp, irritable force.His mind was still entirely occupied by Haneul Jang.He grew even more infuriated at himself for turning into such a pathetic fool.Haneul Jang’s lead was not just a collection of simple signs. It was like a surgeon's scalpel, meticulously dissecting the batter’s brain and hacking away at their psychology.The suffocating sensation of becoming a mere puppet manipulated at the end of Haneul's mitt—even for Yuhwan, a monster who was supposed to rule over the mound more arrogantly than anyone—brutally scraped against his unyielding pride and triggered an uncontrollable rage.A flawless catcher, the likes of which the world had never seen before.With

It crossed the line of a mere miracle; it was an absolute realm of pure sophistry.Just what on earth had he done inside that dream to make the real-life Yuhwan exude such a murderous, suffocating aura, throwing out warnings telling him not to cling to him?The scalding, animalistic heat that had panted in the pitch-black darkness of the dream just a few hours ago—viciously driving his body into a tight corner—was completely nowhere to be found.Only a gaze, forged as cold as a sheet of solid ice, flew over and pierced him like a dagger, making Haneul’s heart relentlessly ache with a sharp throb.Even if he searched through the entirety of his long, accumulated memories from his past lives, a reaction like this was completely far beyond Haneul’s expectations.Yuhwan had always been arrogant, but he had never bared such a razor-sharp, defensive coping mechanism.*‘Could it be that… he's actually conscious of it?’*Haneul desperately tried to steady his trembling heart, calmly assessing

Just what kind of trajectory was this entire situation rolling into?Leaving behind the upperclassmen’s overly dramatic, fussing farewells telling him to go to the hospital, Haneul Jang was dragged all the way down to the parking lot by Yuhwan’s brute force. Before he could even process it, he was sitting in the passenger seat, watching the campus trees rapidly blur past.Yuhwan’s car was a massive, intimidating black German M-series SUV. Because the seat position was incredibly high, Haneul had required Yuhwan’s heavy assistance just to climb in. The searing heat of those large palms firmly wrapping around his waist left a lingering, strange tactile sensation that still felt vivid on the back of his hands.He had hastily climbed into the car to escape everyone's piercing stares, but his dizziness wasn't due to the luxury vehicle. It was the glittering golden business card clutched tight in his hand. The pure shock radiating from that tiny piece of paper was too overwhelming to simply