First Day of Training Camp (Part 1)

5:30 the next morning

"Get up, already! Stop dawdling! Practice is about to start!"

Sawamura, who had gotten up early, went from room to room waking everyone up. Wakaba and Fumino had gotten up even earlier to prepare breakfast.

"Ah! I'm so sleepy!" Sawamura yawned even as he did so.

"Ei-chan, forget it. Don't wake Sen-chan. He has a habit of sleeping in, so let's do self-practice first! Honestly, we should already be very grateful that he's willing to teach us!" Several people stopped Sawamura when he was about to knock on Sendou's door.

"Last night, he was like a demon, making us get up and practice in the morning, yet he doesn't care at all himself. Seriously! Let's go running! Who knows what time this guy will get up?"

So, grumbling all the while, they followed the others downstairs.

And so, it became this scene: eight boys were running, Sendou was sleeping, and two girls were cooking. More precisely, one was cooking while the other watched.

Wakaba no longer dared let clumsy Fumino help. Last night, there had been several times more dirty plates than plates holding food!!!

As the ninth player, Wakaba did not need to take part in physical training. As long as she could reliably get the easy outs handed to her—in other words, handle the basics of defense—that was enough.

"Sougetsu-san, your cooking is so good. I'm always so clumsy that I'm hopeless at it." Furuhashi Fumino walked to the window and watched everyone running.

"What are you talking about? If you work hard, Fumino, you can do it too. You just need to cook often."

"Is that really true?" Furuhashi Fumino replied listlessly, with absolutely no confidence in herself.

"It's true!"

"But I already have to struggle desperately just to study math. Sigh!"

"Huh? They're already done for. They've all collapsed on the ground."

"They're already doing very well now. At the beginning, everyone would be exhausted after just running five kilometers every morning. Before that, they had only been playing around and never trained seriously at all," Wakaba replied.

"I see!"

"Furuhashi-san! Breakfast is almost ready. Go wake Akila up!"

"Okay!" With that, Furuhashi Fumino ran upstairs.

Thud, thud, thud! Click! Knocking? That did not exist.

"Akila, how long are you going to sleep? Get up already!"

"Akila! Akila!"

"Fumino? What is it?"

"Food's ready! Get up."

"Oh! ..."

"Get up already!"

"Idiot, get out first!"

"Ah, sorry, sorry!" Fumino, who had been staring at Sendou, finally came to her senses and hurriedly ran out.

"Seriously, that airheaded girl!" Sendou said as he began getting dressed, his face full of relief.

That's right, relief. He had a habit of sleeping naked. Fortunately, Sendou was naturally calm and had not shown any sign of abnormality. Furuhashi had thought he was about to take off his pajamas. If she, with her incredibly thin skin, found out that Sendou had not been wearing anything under the blanket...

"Oh, good morning. You're back already!" Sendou said after washing up, seeing that everyone else had already started eating.

"Sendou, you bastard, it's already eight o'clock. How long were you planning to sleep? You can't even call it morning anymore!"

"To me, any time before double digits is morning."

"Just how much do you like sleeping? Seriously!"

"A lot!"

"Tei, mei!"

"Don't worry about such details! Eat, eat!"

"Hmph!" Sawamura stopped talking and ate breakfast as if venting his sulking anger on the food.

Seeing Sawamura fall silent, Sendou smiled faintly and joined them at the table.

"Alright, starting today, we'll begin practicing offense. If we can't score, we can't win, so batting is extremely important." After breakfast, Sendou led everyone to the Practice Field.

"As I said before, we'll start with bunting. There are only two things you need to master: the motion of bunting from a normal stance, along with how to combine it with feints. The second is the reverse—pulling back from a bunt stance. Later, you'll need to learn how to pretend to bunt while actually taking a normal swing, as well as Hit and Run."

"First, the purpose of the first technique is to bunt suddenly before the opponent is prepared. And when you see a bad pitch, you must be able to control your bat so it isn't judged as a swing. That way, the opponent will have to watch out for the bunt and won't dare throw too far off the plate."

"The purpose of the second technique is even more obvious. When the opponent deliberately throws off the plate because they expect us to bunt, we pull back, making the count favorable for us or even drawing a walk.

"Once you have fully mastered these two techniques, the opponent won't be able to guess what we'll do. Not only will the pitch count increase, but the chances of us drawing four balls and getting on base will also be high. It puts pressure on them mentally and in the count."

"It doesn't matter whether you understand it or not. Just practice, and that's it. Got it?"

"Yes!"

"Good. I said this guy would be your bunting coach, so Eijun, you'll demonstrate."

"Demonstrate? How?"

"Idiot, with the Pitching Machine, obviously. I'll set the pitch speed to 120 kilometers per hour, and you'll practice bunting."

"Everyone, watch his movements carefully! Bunting doesn't just use your arms—it requires coordinated movement from almost your entire body! So watch closely. Then combine that with what you've seen in all the materials before, think carefully about how you should do it based on the movement explanations. I can't bunt, so I don't have any advice for you." After saying that, Sendou went to adjust the machine.

What followed was Sawamura's bunting performance. He casually laid down one exquisite bunt after another, leaving everyone dumbfounded.

"Alright, Eijun, that's enough. Did everyone see it? The coordinated movements of the feet, legs, waist, and upper body. I'll give you three minutes to think about it, then line up and start practicing."

"Yes!"

Three minutes later

Whoosh!

Ping!

Whoosh!

Ping!

For the next hour or so, they practiced bunting. Perhaps because their stances were wrong, they could not hit well no matter what they did.

Then Sendou had everyone sit where they were and meditate, carefully considering their own movements, Sawamura's movements, and the explanations of the standard stance they had seen in the materials.

Sure enough, after ten minutes of meditation, everyone's bunting began to improve.

After repeating this over and over, it was already ten o'clock before they knew it. Sendou then had each person bunt ten more balls and took out a video camera to record everyone's bunting.

Then, at eleven o'clock, they wrapped up and went to prepare lunch. Since everyone had arrived only yesterday evening and had not had time to shop, they were short on ingredients, so they all ate ramen for lunch.

After writing yesterday's chapter, something had felt awkward. Today, after reading it over again, I found that quite a few sentences contained two "but"s, no wonder it felt strange. I simply revised some of the surrounding phrasing too. For now, this will do!