Cooking Tonight?

The two returned to West Tokyo City at half past six in the evening. Coming home looking so fresh and clean would definitely arouse suspicion, so they went to the Batting Cage and practiced batting for over an hour before heading back guiltily.

"Sneaking onto your dad's phone in the middle of the night to send a leave request text—you sure know your way around that. Do you do this a lot?" Kōshū was once again acting as the supervisor today, and he still teased Lang Zhi while the latter was nearly out of breath.

"Of course not! I thought about it for ages yesterday before I came up with such a great idea."

"You really are talented. You finally managed to be clever for once, and you used it in the wrong place."

"Huh?" Lang Zhi was about to argue when Kōshū pointed out that his form had gone off and made him do it again.

"You really are a devil."

"Sure. If I were a devil, I'd be telling you not to train right now. I'm tutoring you and supervising your workouts—I'm practically an angel, okay?"

While the two bickered, Shen Qing came over carrying extra food. "Oh, right. During the New Year, let's all visit Lang Zhi's grandparents together. They called today and said they seemed to have seen Lang Zhi in the countryside with another tall child. They probably missed Lang Zhi so much that they mistook someone else for him."

"O-okay..." Kōshū stammered. Shen Qing mistook it for nervousness about meeting them for the first time and reassured him, "It's fine, there's still more than a month to go. Besides, they know about our situation. They're both very kind old people, so don't worry."

After seeing Shen Qing off and listening to her footsteps gradually fade down the stairs, Kōshū and Lang Zhi both let out a sigh of relief. "That was close. I thought we were about to get caught red-handed."

"Good thing you said we should come straight back today," Lang Zhi said thankfully. Only after finishing the whole series of exercises did he realize how risky it had been. If they had been found out, they would have been in deep trouble.

By the latter half of November, the wind on the streets had grown increasingly biting, and everyone bundled themselves up tightly. The baseball boys were also entering the off-season. Training from Monday to Friday had been moved to the Indoor Training Field; only on weekends, when the children could get fully warmed up, would they train outdoors.

"Haha, steam's coming off your head."

"Aren't you the same?"

This was the perfect time for the coaches to study new training plans. Kinoshita Yanagi, who had been here for two full months, sat opposite Coach Ninomiya like a student.

"You've been here for two months now. Have you adjusted?"

Kinoshita Yanagi nodded. He could more or less guess why Coach Ninomiya had called him over.

"So, what ideas do you have for improving the team's overall offense?"

"Over the past two months, I've gotten a grasp of everyone else's batting situation and given guidance on quite a few players' batting forms and problems." Kinoshita Yanagi first summarized what he had done these past two months. "For regular training, I think the team's existing program is already sufficient. The focus should be on experimenting with batting order adjustments and making specialized batting adjustments for each member of the First String."

"Mm, we can try different batting order adjustments over the next few months, but their actual effectiveness will still have to be verified in next year's games. As for specialized batting adjustments, do you mean training for each person's Batting Cold Zone?"

"Yes. We can add batting tests to the monthly evaluations, divide the Strike Zone into a Nine-section Grid, then multiply the types of pitches by the nine sections of the Strike Zone. That way, among all those combinations, we can see exactly which pitches in which areas the children struggle with the most."

Coach Ninomiya laughed. "Your testing method would be very useful for hitters who are already highly skilled, but for middle school children... they might hand you a report that's mostly Xs." Besides, batting ability was not such a simple matter. It was heavily affected by the pitcher they faced and their condition that day.

"That's why I want to first try it on children in the First String who already meet the conditions, such as Hayakawa Aki and Kōshū."

"Hayakawa is fine, but compared to his pitching, Kōshū is still relying on talent when it comes to batting. Keep a closer eye on him. Don't let him run off to be a Ball Feeding Pitcher halfway through batting practice."

"Understood."

"That's all I wanted to ask about work. Since you've been an assistant coach for several years, I have a lot of confidence in you. Next, speaking as an elder, I'd like to ask you: what do you think of Kinoshita Club?"

Kinoshita Yanagi's true thoughts were that, after coming to the club, he faced nothing but children every day, had to manage all sorts of miscellaneous matters, and found his own life confined to this tiny little world. It felt as though he could see the end of it at a glance.

But aloud, he said, "It's a nostalgic place. After all, I came from this club myself, and... it's the legacy my father left behind."

"Ah—" Coach Ninomiya let out a long sigh. How could he not understand this young man's thoughts? When people were young, they always wanted to venture out into the world, because they had a fire in their hearts that would not easily be extinguished by the harsh winds and bitter rains outside. Only when they grew older, when all that remained inside was a tiny flame, did they begin to fear this and that and seek stability.

"Having you transition straight from America to this small club in Japan must be difficult for you. But I understand Mrs. Kinoshita's thinking too. She's getting older and just wants to keep her child by her side. If you need me to help persuade her, I can do that." Coach Ninomiya raised his brows and questioned him with his eyes.

"Haha, there's no need. Actually, this is pretty good too. I'm about at the age to settle down and build a career. It's time to find a place to put down roots, and returning to where I first learned baseball isn't so bad either."

Coach Ninomiya smiled a little mischievously. "You really don't need my help? I'll take your word for it."

"Thank you for the offer, Coach Ninomiya, but I really don't."

Then Coach Ninomiya immediately put on a stern face. "Since you've decided to accept this job, I'll be demanding of you as the head coach from now on. At the very least, don't even think about quitting this year."

"Whoa—Coach, you're starting to sound like a capitalist."

When Kinoshita Yanagi came out of Coach Ninomiya's office, he saw Kōshū down on the field acting as a Ball Feeding Pitcher again. Several people were lined up behind the batter. "Hey—Kōshū, you're not the Ball Feeding Pitcher today. Don't add pitching practice on your own."

"Coach Kinoshita, don't be so serious. It's only a few people."

"No. Coach Ninomiya was just saying that you haven't been getting enough batting practice."

"Ah—" The moment he heard Coach Ninomiya had noticed, Kōshū immediately gave up feeding balls. After saying a few words to the batters, he went to practice against the net.

These kids really don't take me seriously at all, Kinoshita Yanagi complained inwardly.

So he turned to find Lang Zhi instead. A few days ago, the boy had pulled him aside and told him that during the Intra-squad Practice Match, he seemed to have entered a slow-motion state. It had greatly piqued Kinoshita Yanagi's interest.

"Where's Sasaki-kun?" He had just seen him a moment ago. How had he disappeared the instant Kinoshita Yanagi came down?

Yoshino, the second baseman standing nearby, tried not to laugh. "Coach Kinoshita, you'd better not look for him. He ran inside as soon as he saw you coming."

Huh? These children really didn't take him seriously at all, especially these two brothers!

"He ran inside?"

Yoshino nodded and smiled a little wickedly. Coach Kinoshita had been making Lang Zhi help him with experiments these past few days. By now, Lang Zhi wanted to hide whenever he saw Coach Kinoshita.

"It's fine if the experiment doesn't work out. Why are you hiding from me?" Coach Kinoshita sounded very magnanimous, but his feet never stopped moving. Before long, he had dragged Lang Zhi back out again.

"Today, we're still practicing pitch tracking." Kinoshita walked toward the pitching machine.

"Coach Kinoshita, please spare me—" He could not even work out math problems properly. How was he supposed to calculate roughly how many times a ball had spun?

Several people around them burst out laughing at Lang Zhi's mournful voice.

On the other side, Kōshū, who was practicing batting, sidled up beside Hayakawa Aki again.

"Oh, right. My parents aren't home today. Do you and Lang Zhi want to come over?" Ever since Hayakawa Aki had been invited to Kōshū's home that time, he had wanted to invite them to his own home.

"Sure. Let me borrow your game console. It's completely banned at my house."

"Should we ask Sasaki-kun?"

"He'll definitely be fine with it."

So that evening, after Lang Zhi had just been put through the wringer by Coach Kinoshita, Kōshū dragged him to Hayakawa's house. The Hayakawa home was in the suburbs, and the rooms were cramped. The three boys all squeezed into one room to sleep. Two bunk beds stood facing each other, laundry hung overhead, and the empty lower bunk was neatly piled with game consoles and various discs. They simply sat on the floor and played games.

Hayakawa had been to Kōshū's home. After seeing how spacious the house of a family of two doctors was, although he had thought about inviting Kōshū to his own place, he had hesitated many times.

"Hayakawa-kun, what were you thinking just now?" As though he had eyes in the back of his head, Kōshū was still holding the controller yet could read the thoughts of the person behind him.

"I was thinking maybe we should just order takeout..."

"Great—" Before Hayakawa Aki could finish, his two younger brothers jumped up.

"I want pizza!"

"I want barbecue!"

"It's takeout! You can only eat barbecue at a restaurant!"

"Shut up! You idiot! Can't they cook it and deliver it? That's popular lately, right? Right?" The round little child looked toward Lang Zhi. By a child's instincts, this person seemed less intimidating.

"Huh? Are there places like that?" Lang Zhi asked in surprise.

"Ah, so you're an idiot too!" Children had no filter, and even Hayakawa Aki could not stop him. It seemed his good temper had been tempered by exactly this sort of thing.

"Hey, hey!" Lang Zhi was a little angry, but he did not know how to deal with children as monkey-like as these.

Smack— Kōshū lightly knocked on the bedframe. As though some aura had instantly caught in their throats, the two bouncing children fell silent at once. Kōshū pushed the game console he had just pulled out back into place and said, "Tonight—we cook."

"Huh?!!"

Half of the professional knowledge involved in this chapter was made up by the author, and the other half was also made up.

It was so cold today. I started wearing gloves this morning.

------Work Complaint Mini-Theater

And sure enough... the project bonus was only 500. Even with that 500, the manager said it all had to be contributed. The total for several people came to 1,800; half would go toward a project team dinner, and half to the department... We had to take money already in our pockets back out? So the company no longer had team-building funds?

I'm seriously speechless. So when they asked for opinions, I said directly that the project team would not have dinner and everyone could just take the money. After that, everyone had a huge problem with the manager. But then she pulled the move of "self-sacrifice," saying she would not take a share, and instantly seized the moral high ground.

Our momentum immediately weakened a lot, and we could not exactly refuse to give her anything. After discussing it, we decided to set aside some budget to buy the manager a gift, but there was not much money—only 150. What could that even buy?

So I chose rice, flour, cooking oil, and tissues—something practical. Last time, I used my project bonus to buy rice, oil, and laundry detergent, and I still have not finished using them... Such a bargain. The last time I bought laundry detergent was last time.