Chapter Text
At Seidou High School
It was just another day at Seidou for our Takashima-sensei; however, this proved her wrong the moment she entered the teacher’s office. Rather than the normal sight of teachers doing their work at their own desk, the scene that greeted her was her colleagues gathering together to discuss what she believed to be a baseball match.
If this had been other teachers, then she wouldn’t be that surprised, but this group of teachers made up of old teachers that cared about nothing but academic. She deserved to be surprised when these old geezers suddenly became an expert on Baseball without her knowledge.
Rei approached the group wanting to ask about their discussion. Those old geezer were more than happy to share the content. She thought they were talking about the pro league, but it was actually about a middle school summer tournament. Well, it was about one middle school team to be exact.
Now Rei was really confused on what is it about this team that caught these people’s attention. That confusion turned into amazement when they told her about this team’s background after seeing her confused face.
‘Now this is something else! I will need to look into it as fast as possible, or else this gem will be stolen away!’
“Oh right, Takashima-sensei! You are the scout for the baseball team, aren’t you? You have to consider this boy. All school would do anything for him to attend their school. If you can make him attend Seidou, the principle won’t go against your club ever again!”
“It won’t be just not going against the club! He will increase the club’s fund to the maximum and worship all of you!!”
This situation kind of scared her a bit. She did think about scouting the boy, but what is this talk about the principle would worship them? They were also seem to think of this boy as a god or something. Oh well, she will look into it later. She had something more pressing to do that is preparing to go to Nagano. They told her that the team had made it to the final, and if she was wrong, the final round for Nagano was tomorrow. She needed to be hurry!
It was only later after she returned from Nagano that Rei do her research on the boy. He didn’t have any achievement prior to this year in sport, but Rei realized that the group of teachers that day made up of Maths, Physics, Sciences, and even Literature teachers. She decided to try the academics forum and voila, there were tons of articles about the unrealistic achievement of Sawamura Eijun from a very young age. She now understood why the principle would worship them if Sawamura-kun came to our school.
‘I absolutely need to make this boy choose Seidou! I will be damn if he choose any other school!’
The season of summer tournament was finally here. The team wasn’t nervous like before. They were actually very exciting about all of this. They had faced most of the schools that would be in this tournament, but they were looking forward to see how much they have grown from when they first met.
The matches went well. They won all of their games, and now, they were in the final round facing the powerhouse team of Nagano prefecture for the ticket to Koshien. They had established themselves as a dark horse of this season. Well, some of the schools already knew about this and had prepared themselves before, but the other schools and the audience didn’t know a thing about them. They thought that this newly created team would lose in the first round, but they actually destroyed their opponent in such a brutal way leaving the opposite team going home with no point.
They did come closer to losing in the semifinal; however, they still win the match with a few points ahead of their opponent. They continue their win streak until the final round, but it seems like they might have a taste of their first defeat soon.
‘Damn it! As expect of a powerhouse, it’s really hard to beat them. We might lose in this round.’
It’s the final inning. They were at the end of the top of the inning. Eijun and the team defended against Hokubu making them unable to score another run.
The score now was 6-7 in the favor of Hakubo.
Everything depends on the bottom of the inning. If they fail to score a point now, their dream to koshien this year will be over.
‘Everyone is at their limit right now. They are losing to the pressure in the stadium. It looks like I will have to increase the difficulty of the training after this, but… it might be still not enough.’
No matter how hard their training is, they still wouldn’t be able to win against the powerhouse school because of their lack of experience and the lack of their own exclusive strategies against their opponent.
‘I will have to look into information gathering and train someone on the team for that role. But it would be better if we could recruit a new member just for this. I can’t afford to divide their attention like this.’
It was time for Akagi team at bat. The members were really tense right now. Hakubo’s pitcher was the strongest pitcher they had faced so far. All of them except for Eijun had a really hard time hitting his pitches, with a few lucky hit somewhere in between. They really didn’t have the confident of winning this match at all with Eijun almost at the end of the batting line up.
Their thought proved to be right, as their three batters was strike out one after another. They all lined up to congratulate the winner, but they were all spotted with a frustrated and teary expression on their face. This was all true for other members even for Eijun, but he recovered faster than the others.
After they all got on the bus back to school, the team still had the same expression on their faces, “Quit mobbing like this. It’s not like I expected us to actually be invincible, so stop this and get ready to analyze our play today. I want all of you to go through the mistakes you have made and what you could have done better”, announced Eijun.
He has realized one thing about his team is that they depended on him too much. They lacked the ability to make their own decision in an unexpected situation like today. He will have to make a mental notes to look into how to train a human’s mind, yet another thing to add to his growing to-do-list. He really need to train someone as his assistant ASAP.
What Eijun didn’t noticed was that there was someone who has been watching him throughout the match.
“Kataoka-Kantoku, I need to talk to you about something”, Rei just came back from Nagano, and the first thing she did was to search for the head coach of Seidou Baseball team. She needed to speak to him about what she just found. She know full well that they were not the superior position. They needed to do whatever it takes to make one uncut gem to choose them.
“Of course, please take a sit”, thankfully the coach was already in his office, so they didn’t need to waste any more time to relocate.
“Before anything, please watch this match tape”.
Without explaining anything, Rei started the tape. Tessin was a bit confused: however, he trusted his partner, so he watched the tape without any complain. And the saying to trust your gut is really true because what he saw was an uncut gem waiting to be discover.
“Takashima-sensei, where did you find this boy?” asked Tessin without taking his eyes off the boy in the tape.
Rei now had a winning smile on her face. She knew she won Tessin over now, “He is from Nagano. I heard of him from other teachers in the office, and I decided to check him out. Kataoka-Kantoku, we need to have him on the team!”
“Of course, he has a lot of potential, so we can’t have him taken away to other schools”. If they allowed the other schools to have this kind of potential on the team, they can already imagine how heard the tournament would be.
“Well, there is one problem. We would need to have the principle’s help on this”. This statement confused Tessin. Why would they need the principle’s help on this matter, “Please explain, Takashima-Sensei”.
“I believe it will be faster if I just show you this”, Tessin was shown what was supposed to be the boy he had just watch in the tape receiving a trophy for what seemed to be a maths competition.
“Sawamura Eijun-kun just happens to be a genius among geniuses. There are many prestigious school around the world wanting him to attend their school.”
“I see. Indeed, we will need to speak with the principle. This boy will want to make a deal with us when we scout him. Better be well prepared.”
The principle of course wasn’t at the school in this hour, so they had to wait till the next day to speak with him. The principle had star in his eyes thinking about all the fame he would have if the Sawamura Eijun choose to attend his school, so he agree to whatever method they use to recruit him.
Later on that week, Eijun was in his room reading a book about coaching when his grandfather knocked on his door, “Eijun, there is a woman here to see you. She said she is a scout.”
This might be a huge event for other household, but this is a normal event was the Sawamura household, “Got it, Jii-chan. I will be down in a sec.”
When Eijun finally arrived at the living room of his huge Japanese style home, Eijun saw a stern looking woman sitting on the sofa across from his grandpa. Eijun caught on some sight that she might be a bit shock at the moment although it was not really visible.
That was exactly what Takashima Rei was feeling at that time. When she arrived at the supposed address of Sawamura Eijun, she was not expected to be in front of the largest house she ever seen in this life. This Japanese style estate was so gorgeous you could say this was an ancient palace. Rei was basically shaking in her seat although she wasn’t showing it on the surface.
‘Sawamura Eijun might be even more than what he show to the public!!!!’