i love roji’s works so much &, i’m so glad to see the iida/yoshida story has been picked up… the tl notes said it perfectly, their works really are introspective & emotionally aware. i look forward to seeing how this one goes! thank you for the translation!
i really like this story & keep coming back to it bc it’s always an enjoyable read (although i do find the ending lacking). only recently realised upon my latest reread it’s an adaptation so i started reading the novel and i have to say. while i think the manhwa is good in itself (again past the ending) i feel like it may be slipping as an adaptation bc there’s soooo much context to their relationship that’s been snipped out from what i’ve seen so far like…
there’s an entire wonwoo side story partway through about his detailed background & lore, which includes the following:
- the reveal / confirmation he’s at the least been attracted to geonyeong since high school
- him coming across geonyeong in HS when he was sick & nursing him…. this is how he found out he’s allergic to peanuts bc he ended up calling geonyeong’s mom (unsure whether to call 911 or an emergency contact, he picked the latter) & she told him. so wonwoo remembered that detail for a decade. he also fed geonyeong some of that feuit flavoured ice he likes to soothe his throat / hydrate him a bit
- geonyeong did in fact visit him in the hospital. while he was asleep / too out of it to realise until his aunt commented on it.
- the fact he’s been following geonyeong’s career since… about 3 years after the incident? which was like. 1 year into geonyeong’s career bc he got picked up right after high school
- seeing geonyeong play is what made him remember how much he still loved baseball, which is what led him to visiting the stadium daily & thus led to his being hired as Funz
- the reveal wonwoo has been technically working for actually way longer than the manhwa says? the manhwa says 3 years, but from what i could understand wonwoo’s had the job closer to 5-6 because he actively went to the military in the middle of it at some point & was able to keep his position secure
the novel also so far fills in some gaps and adds on to these details. like:
- the reason geonyeong starts asking wonwoo random questions about himself / his life was because at the drinking party w him, jinwon, & sae-eun he realised he knew nothing about wonwoo when they knew a lot about him & his situation and it upset him. so he started asking questions to get to know more about him
- geonyeong had a dream about wonwoo nursing him back in high school & realised it was him who did that — this was the day they talked about his elbow surgery. this is also the same day geonyeong gave wonwoo his key card (since the manhwa only reveals it in a flashback, the when isn’t specified. It’s this day)
- when geonyeong kisses wonwoo to thank him for the fruit ice, the one wonwoo had just eaten is the same flavour he’d fed geonyeong in high school (peach) which cements the memory for geonyeong lol
- the memorial for geonyeong’s dad wasn’t actually requested by the crows, his former team, but instead the hawks! his old catcher was the coach for the hawks & wanted to put a moment of silence in.
i’m only partway thru the novel (& i know it has side stories the manhwa didn’t and ends with wonwoo transferring to a university in the US to be with geonyeong) so there are undoubtedly more details that got left behind in the adaptation i haven’t reached yet. i just wanted to make note of these bc they — especially everything revealed in the wonwoo side story — are kind of a context game changer for me even as someone who already really liked this story!
hiiiiii everyone since apparently this is the end of s1 of the manhwa & they might take some time before launching into s2 (which has already started with the raws). just in case anyone isn’t aware Ball is a novel & this is an adaptation, not its own unique story, and i personally recommend the novel if you like the manhwa because it’s imo very good + really gets into the meat of jiwon’s psyche because it’s entirely from his perspective. provides a lot of extra context on how he acts and how his thought processes go.
there are also a lot of little scenes and details the manhwa cut out (including my fav scene, which is the two of them holding hands in the car on their way to school bc jungwoo pretends his hand fell asleep) so if anyone likes the manhwa…. i recommend the novel 100% it’s completed and entirely free to access (⌒▽⌒)
as for where to read it i do not hand out links as a lot of translators request their TLs not be publicly shared and i Will remove comments from this post if anyone replies with the link to respect that but here’s a quick & easy guide for tracking down a lot of novels:
1. Go to novelupdates, look up the novel you want to read
2. Scroll down to the updates section & look at who the translator is as it’s listed
3. Google “<novel name> <translator name>” & you’ll find what you’re looking for pretty quickly most of the time.
Now you know how to find a good chunk of novels on your own for your reading enjoyment! Have fun with Ball! (๑•ㅂ•)و✧
Thank you sm ^_^
can whoever was tling this one please come back…. my friend and i were talking about divorce and it inexplicably reminded me of this series and how it hasn’t updated in ages. i miss it this author really does have a great knack for storytelling & communication issues i would like to see more kf
god they both love each other so much and want to change and improve FOR each other…….. i love them. my kids. ch2 is so so good i love yano being willing to step out and talk back to a teacher to defend odajima he’s gotten so much bolder…. i also do think it’s interesting seeing the cafeteria incident having a lasting impact on the narrative, im glad it’s sticking around (even if it’s a sad thing to see people treating odajima the way they are because of it, it’s good it wasn’t a dropped detail). the 1.5 extras are sooo nice too the one of them snuggling together in bed with odajima getting excited abt yano reciprocating his feelings…. wah.
also the note about pittosporum as a plant!!!! i love flower language thank you for including that interview detail…. as soon as i saw it listed as a feb14 flower it clicked that must be why odajima’s birthday is valentine’s day since i’ve thought that his birthday being then was an interesting pick….. i wonder if there’s any significance associated with yano’s birthday too. as always thank you for your translations kou! ^_^
Thank you for reading the notes!! Lol I was thinking maybe no one is interested in flower language but I still wanna put it in so lol. Yeah when I saw the birth(day) flower I went straight to Sensei's twitter to check and bam!! It fits Odajima so well... especially the "partiality" part
OFC THANK YOU FOR INCLUDING THEM…. i love flower language and i love reading notes on things!!! it’s always really fun having that extra insight whether it’s an author’s note (as in this case) or a translator’s note. i just figured ever since i saw on twit that odajima’s birthday was 2/14 it was a reference to his arc about being finding truth in love but knowing it’s actually associated with pittosporum as a flower…. it’s perfect
Oh about Yano's birthday!! I found something on Sensei's Instagram lol. Sensei posted a picture of Yano (holding a present box w a small flower tucked in) with this caption "The flower is snowflake which is his birth(day) flower" (Sensei posted the same picture on twitter but the caption didn't mention this idk why lol). So in Japanese, the flower language for "snowflake" is (as one would have guessed lol) :「純潔」「汚れなき心」「純真な心」「美」= purity, pure heart, innocent mind, and beauty, etc.
Sensei also said the two will celebrate Yano's birthday in the upcoming (unreleased) chapters so yaaayyy haha
fun fact: the thumbnail for this chapter is just that one panel of jigu crying with his face bright red. saw it on my twitter fyp tuesday and it was how i found out the hiatus ended. anyways WE HAVE HIT THE PROGRESS POINT!!!! it’s all uphill from here.shout out to jigu as always. bpd legend
I’M BEHIND BC WORK WAS BUSY LAST WEEK & I’VE BEEN SICK oh my god i have four chapters to review now. fake pittosporum commentary fan guy
god they’re so sweet. forever and always that really is just the first thing i have to say. they’re so sweet. they care about each other and about trying to figure out how to understand each other & understand their approach to their relationship so so much. odajima thanking god for getting to come here with yano… yano wanting to figure out how to express how much he loves odajima in words… god they’re so sweet.
ODAJIMA’S FEAR OF BUGS FROM CH6 ALSO LOLLLLL i know it’s played for a silly little moment but i also like how it is - as everything about his behaviour is - reminder that he’s just a teenager. seeing him freak out at a cicada like that shows he’s healed enough to be able to express himself and his fear and maybe it’s not that deep but to ME it is. also him talking to yano’s dad and feeling guilty for being thanked because to him his motives for helping out yano - from the notebook to getting him to come home - were selfish (and what he described in 2nd leaf as ‘gross’) only to be told that no matter his motives, he still helped someone. he really needed to hear that because even with all of the progress he’s made - and what progress he has - he’s still burdened by the idea of dragging yano down with his own selfish whims, from the day they became roommates to now.
also yano taking odajima firefly-viewing on a date to his family’s spot which was also his parents’ date spot and where his dad PROPOSED…. that’s so intimate. kids you’re only 16 you have a lot of time to go before then but please….. please vol5, 6, whatever timeskip volume where they’re still going strong as adults and get engaged in this spot. sensei please. Sensei
anyways the way yano talks about how he’s not sure if he made the right choice pursuing their high school but he’s still glad he did because he got to meet odajima. wanting to thank him for everything only for odajima to break down because he still feels so, so selfish when it’s normal for him to want to do things for his boyfriend because he wants to stay by his side, and yano telling him outright he’s not sure if he can because he’s not sure what he wants to do but he still wants odajima to know how much he cares about him!!! AND HIS BRINGING UP WHAT HE SAID IN 2ND LEAF…. he didn’t approach their relationship with halfhearted feelings and he MEANT it. and the exchange of first names and i love yous. aaaaaugh wehhhh wahhh sniffle. god they’re SOOO sweet i can’t wait for 4th leaf. how many leaves do pittosporum stems bear because i will keep clapping and cheering if we end up with 10 volumes or something at this rate i need these two to be happy forever
im not gonna read all of that but i feel the same way
this sounds so passive aggressive im cacckling
HELPPPP it’s okay you don’t have to read all that i have too much to say + needed to cover four entire chapters bc i make it a habit to comment on each and i ended up missing several. thank you for agreeing
this gives the EN version some good time to catch up!!! if anyone’s curious about how it ended:
kyuho is fired from his internship one week before its completion because he refuses to use some falsified / doctored information his supervisor provided him. Yoongun, who’s been worried about him because he hasn’t seen him come home the past few days (after Kyuho’s multiple attempts to shut him down re: their relationship prior), he comes across Kyuho heading home from work early while crying and asks what happens. while initially refusing to tell him, Kyuho ends up breaking down, tells Yoongun what happened, and then says something his supervisor said to him (basically that he was tiring) reminded him of Yoongun once saying something similar and that it set him off, and that he didn’t think his personality was really that much of an issue until he had to face this. he then apologised for lashing out and tells Yoongun that they’re too different to work out and that they can never understand each other, which is where the season ends.
Thankyou sm for this, i read the raw without translating it
although i spent the entirety of it picturing joonmin as having a lighter hair colour & yoogyeol as having black hair so seeing the cover of this had me like ?! for a sec haha. yoogyeol is described as having sharper & more intellectual seeming features (to contrast how brickheaded he actually is lol) several times so i feel like the appearance they gave joonmin here suits that better? but i look forward to seeing how the adaptation plays out :) i don’t really understand guideverse as an entirety but i like this story!
Have you read the novel? Can you give me some spoilers about their relationship?
i have read the novel! finished it less than a week ago, actually. if you want spoilers…do you want story spoilers too or just relationship ones? there’s a specific detail involved in their relationship that’s incredibly important but also like. massive story spoilers so if you just want relationship ones…
[SPOILERS]
so as established so far yoogyeol has had a crush on joonmin since he was 16 — joonmin saved him from the rubble of a collapsed building in what was effectively an esper terrorist attack at the mall. they’re 24, so he’s been holding on to his feelings for 8 years! meanwhile despite all the fighting…. joonmin has also liked him back the entire time without realising it lol he’s been attracted to him since the day they met but kept pushing it away & lashed out at him when they met officially at 18 because he was mad at himself for being drawn to someone when his Woojoo hyung (the guide he imprinted on) was still unable to be found. their relationship is a lot of constant back & forth & fighting pretty much all the way through to the end, but it softens up a lot as the story goes on & you can get a real sense of how much they mean to each other. Joonmin even tells Yoogyeol he’s precious to him & like family at some point which makes Yoogyeol happy bc. he doesn’t have a family. and when Joonmin confesses he actually gets upset w him at first over it lol because Joonmin takes the family descriptor back and Yoogyeol is like what the hell….. how could you jerk me around like this… the story is pretty serious but they are for the most part quite silly for a while
do you have the link where you read it?
i don’t share links to respect translator & hosting site policies, my apologies! but you should be able to find it pretty easily by looking up the KR title (“i’m not your fated guide, but”) on novelupdates, seeing who the translator is marked as, and googling it from there. :-)
Can you spoil me about what is up with the guide he imprinted???
Someone spoiled it down there if you scroll down a bit but in summary of what they said, and I hope person who doesn’t want any spoiler see this.
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the guide he imprinted on was the mc but from the future
person above me said it already, but i can absolutely go into more detail about it!
[SPOILERS BELOW]
[MAJOR SPOILERS]
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yeah, Woojoo is just Yoogyeol. when fighting against a powerful Esper from a terrorist group he threw the two of them into a fissure in the ground which threw him 9 years into the past, where he met 15 year old Joonmin (one year before Joonmin & Yoogyeol were set to meet at age 16 in the accident Joonmin rescued Yoogyeol from). he was already horribly beat up by the Esper & got some horrific burns all over his body when he went to the past, and Joonmin was actually temporarily blinded from a head injury so he couldn’t see what Yoogyeol looked like, could only feel the scars and injuries. & Yoogyeol wasn’t about to give him his name bc it would mess with what effectively became a closed time loop so he let Joonmin call him Woojoo. and bc Joonmin hadn’t manifested as an Esper properly (??) yet he Guided him to help with that, and Joonmin was so like. grateful to have company and someone helping him out he imprinted on him. (his interest in Woojoo is like. entirely gratefulness / a sense of duty and wanting to repay him, on that note.) it’s why Joonmin and Yoogyeol’s matching rate is so high at 92% — even if Joonmin didn’t consciously recognise Yoogyeol since the Yoogyeol he knew and was put with was technically younger than Woojoo, the traces of that remained lol. once they learn the truth their rate shoots up to 98% and sets an international record