Gathering

For five straight days—the second day, the third day, and so on—Sendou pored over his old sealed-away notes, past Koshien game recordings, and the Major League highlight reels Coach Nakanishi had given him, complete with explanatory audio, as well as Little League and Little Senior League game footage.

On Saturday night, the sixth night, at ten o'clock, Sendou took out another game disc and watched it while saving it to his computer.

At first, Sendou showed no reaction, until one side's consecutive coordinated stolen bases made his eyes light up.

"Found it! Hee!" Sendou flashed a toothy grin as though releasing a breath. For the past week, he had been reading Coach Nakanishi's introductions to various techniques and aimlessly watching game footage, hoping to find some inspiration. He knew Akagi Middle School had only two years left. Since it was two years, they had to find a way to get results quickly.

"Then..." As he spoke, Sendou began searching through the recordings he had saved to his computer after watching them.

"Where did it go? Aido, Aido... Found it!" It was footage of the Wildcats' games from the past few years.

After watching for two hours—

"It's decided, then. The future of the Akagi Middle School Baseball Club." Sendou thought to himself.

"I'm so sleepy. Time for bed!"

He picked up his phone and sent a message to the group: Gather at my house tomorrow at one in the afternoon. Then he went to sleep, clearly intending to sleep in. Every day after school ended at three, Sendou had to watch game footage and deal with someone's endless math questions.

The workload was still enormous. That was also Japan's educational style: deciding for yourself what to do, thinking for yourself about how to achieve it with help from the people around you. It was an educational model led entirely by the student.

However, Sendou's independence came from his previous life. In that life, he had always lived by making all his own decisions.

Sendou was a very lazy person, and that habit had always followed him. When he realized that everything came especially easily to him in this life, his interest in all sorts of matters began to plummet, further feeding that habit.

Recently, though, coaching had reignited his interest and allowed him to throw himself into it completely. The more deeply he immersed himself, the more he discovered its profound depths. He found it incredibly interesting, and so he stuck with it.

By the time Sendou woke up, it was already noon. His grandfather and grandmother had gone somewhere unknown, perhaps to tend the fields. Sendou did not really understand such things.

So he quickly washed up, took ingredients from the refrigerator, and started cooking. As a complete foodie, he had never spared any effort when it came to eating. It was probably the only area that had kept him interested enough to study.

Through recipes and numerous secret techniques his father had spent money gathering in China and sending over, Sendou had continued working hard.

Today, he had merely fried some potato chips and made a few simple snacks. Well, in Sendou's eyes, "simple" meant four huge plates of food and a basket of potato chips...

Afterward, he returned to his room and watched the baseball game playing on the huge screen mounted on the wall while eating various snacks and drinking beverages.

"Excuse me!"

At that moment, Sawamura and Wakaba had arrived at the entrance hall of Sendou's house. After entering, they followed etiquette and offered a greeting the owner could not possibly hear, then headed straight upstairs.

The careless Sawamura directly opened Sendou's bedroom door and saw him holding a drink in one hand and eating potato chips with the other, his eyes on the television. Hearing the sound, Sendou turned around, still with a chip hanging from his mouth.

"Hey, asshole! You told us to come over this afternoon with just one message, and here you are enjoying all this food by yourself? I'm so jealous!" As he spoke, Sawamura took two steps forward, dropped to his knees in front of the table, grabbed all kinds of food, and began wolfing it down.

"Don't eat so fast! You bastard, did you even wash your hands? I'll kill you!" Sendou was unusually startled by Sawamura's reckless behavior, then cried out in horror, fiercely protective of his food.

"I'll eat even if it kills me!"

"Bastard, go wash your hands!"

"It's fine. I washed them at home before coming here."

Sendou did not answer. He began fighting Sawamura for the food as well. Startled by Sawamura, he had completely lost his usual calm.

He had entirely forgotten that he and Sawamura could not possibly finish so much food, and that he had made it as snacks for the next several days.

Wakaba stared at the scene in dumbfounded silence. She found it hard to imagine that Sendou, who was usually mature, steady, intelligent, seemingly in control of everything while caring about nothing, could act like this.

Sawamura often ate Sendou's food, but this was the first time he had been so aggressive that it triggered Sendou's food-guarding instinct and made him so anxious that he lost his composure. Mainly because Sendou had been a little tired recently, and his judgment had declined somewhat.

This farce ended quickly. Eating like that only made people eat less than usual.

"Hahaha..." After finishing, Sendou leaned against the sofa and laughed softly.

"What are you laughing about?" Sawamura's tone had clearly calmed down as well.

"Hahaha... It's nothing. I just find this situation kind of amusing. I'm inexplicably happy, so I feel like laughing."

"I really don't get you, but I do feel much better."

"Wakaba, have some too. Even if you added all those guys together, there would still be enough food. I can't believe I was actually intimidated by this guy's momentum just now."

"Yeah, Wakaba. Sendou's cooking is super delicious," Sawamura chimed in.

"Okay. I want to wash my hands first. Where's the bathroom?"

"It's downstairs. You'll find it easily!" Sawamura said.

"Hey!" Sendou said, sounding as though he were making a retort.

"Oh, right, Wakaba. If you see anyone else arrive, make them wash their hands before coming upstairs," Sendou added.

"Mm!" Wakaba said before heading downstairs.

As soon as Wakaba went downstairs, she really did happen to see someone arriving at the entrance hall. So, following Sendou's instructions, she had them wash their hands with her.

Before long, everyone had arrived. But with so much delicious food before them, they naturally ate first and talked later.

Around one-thirty, everyone had more or less satisfied the hunger in their stomachs.

Sendou opened the game he had watched the night before, preparing to show it to everyone.

"Watch this game first. After that, we'll talk about the rest. This game contains my vision for the future direction of the Akagi Middle School Baseball Club. Watch it carefully, and then I'll explain the training plan and arrangements afterward!"

He said that before starting the playback, then turned on the DVD.

After two days of corpse pose, I felt much better. I hadn't fully recovered, but at least thinking was no longer difficult. Yesterday, someone suspected I had diabetes, but the blood glucose meter showed that I had low blood sugar. It was an extremely awkward scene. No wonder I'd been so sleepy lately.