After the opening ceremony, Zhang Han and his teammates crossed paths with players from Ichidai Third High School and Inashiro.
Zhang Han had half-expected them to come over. Those two programs had every reason to be unsatisfied with how things had ended at Koshien, and there were enough hot-headed personalities on both rosters that some kind of provocation or pointed comment wouldn't have been out of character. It wasn't a childish thing to anticipate. It was simply knowing the kind of people involved.
But they didn't approach. They watched the Seido players get swallowed by reporters and cameras, then quietly filed onto their respective buses and left Jingu Stadium without a word.
That restraint bothered Zhang Han more than any provocation would have.
When people who have something to prove go quiet, it usually means they have decided to let the games do the talking. The surface indifference was almost certainly a mask for something running much deeper. If Seido's bracket brought them face to face with either team in the knockout rounds, the match waiting on the other side of that silence was going to be difficult.
The Seido players had delivered something extraordinary at Koshien. Their names were known now in ways they hadn't been before. For Inashiro and Ichidai, watching that happen from the outside, failing to reach it themselves, that kind of thing didn't disappear. It settled in and waited.
They would find their moment to respond. Zhang Han was certain of that.
After the reporters were finally handled and goodbyes exchanged at the stadium, the team returned to school. They hadn't even had a chance to change out of their uniforms when Coach Kataoka and Manager Ota directed them straight into the conference room.
"Our next opponent is Seisenji."
A ripple of unease moved through the room.
This wasn't new information. They had known for days who they were facing, and at the time, the reaction from Coach Kataoka and Manager Ota had been entirely calm. Their composure had been read as a signal: the opponent wasn't worth significant concern. A team like Seido, even with its overhauled lineup, should handle a relatively unknown program from East Tokyo without too much difficulty.
That reading, it was now becoming clear, had been wrong.
Something in Seisenji's profile had disrupted the coaching staff's original assessment, and the fact that Kataoka and Ota had called this meeting at all was enough to put everyone on alert.
"They came through the group stage with three wins. Their scoring wasn't high, but their defense held up throughout. Their pitcher, Nishikawa, sits at around 120 kilometers per hour. The speed isn't remarkable. But across three games, he has given up exactly one run, and that came from a fielding error behind him, not from anything he allowed himself."
The scorelines from those three games were projected for the room. 3-0. 4-1. 2-0. Nine total runs across three games, and the single run conceded had nothing to do with Nishikawa's pitching.
On paper, the offensive output placed Seisenji in a manageable bracket. Against Seido's lineup, the numbers didn't look threatening. That had been the initial judgment, and it hadn't seemed unreasonable.
But that judgment had been made before anyone had looked closely at how Seisenji actually played.
Four of the original First-string's core players remained in the current lineup. Isashiki Jun, who had often worked in the background without standout moments, was one of them. The other three had been performing at a level that drew genuine comparisons to the team that had reached Koshien. Yuuki and Zhang Han in particular had been cited in at least one widely circulated piece by a respected baseball reporter who had taken the time to analyze the batting order in depth. His conclusion was that the three core players didn't simply add to each other's value; they multiplied it. Remove any one of them from the lineup and the impact on the other two would be significant. The real strength of Seido's offense wasn't any single individual. It was the way those three functioned as a connected unit.
The reporter had gone further, suggesting that calling Azuma Kiyokuni the nation's best hitter was actually a narrower statement than calling Yuuki, Zhang Han, and their connecting piece the nation's strongest batting core. A team built around all three was something qualitatively different from a team built around one dominant bat.
With four returning core players anchoring a new roster, even with the overhaul of graduation, the current Seido team was still estimated to be running at roughly eighty percent of its former capability. More than enough to handle a first-round opponent from East Tokyo.
Except that after genuinely studying Seisenji, the coaching staff had found something they hadn't expected.
The players were passionate. Every one of them was clearly giving their maximum in every game. But passion alone wouldn't have prompted this meeting. What had surprised Coach Kataoka and the coaching staff was what existed underneath the passion.
Calm. Methodical. Precise.
Every step Seisenji took looked like it had been planned in advance. They knew their own limitations clearly. They knew what they could not do. And with that self-awareness as a foundation, they had built an approach that squeezed every possible advantage from what they actually had. Their individual abilities were modest. As a collective, they had developed something that had its own distinct identity.
A team that loved the game and had also found its own style was a different kind of problem from a team that was simply talented or physically strong. Coach Kataoka and his staff knew this from experience. Talent could be countered. Style required a different kind of preparation.
"Seisenji used to go out in the first or second round," Takashima Rei said, tapping her baton against the display. "For a program like that to suddenly develop this kind of coherence, there has to be a specific reason. Someone has changed this team."
She brought the baton down to rest on a single name.
Nishikawa.
"Height 171 centimeters, weight 55 kilograms. By the physical standards of baseball players, he is notably lean. His ball speed tops out around 120 kilometers per hour. He works with two breaking balls: a forkball that drops downward, and a sinker that breaks sharply toward the inside corner late in its path."
Taken individually, those numbers and that repertoire described a competent pitcher. Not an exceptional one. Nothing in that profile explained how he had suppressed three separate teams without allowing an earned run.
"His endurance is exceptional. He pitched all three group stage games."
That landed with more weight in the room than some of the earlier figures had. Pitching through three games in temperatures above thirty degrees Celsius, across an extended stretch of days, was a genuine physical accomplishment. Most pitchers would be managing fatigue by the second game. Most wouldn't volunteer for the third.
"He was a marathon runner in middle school."
"That would explain the stamina. But marathon runners don't usually look like that. Athletes at any level tend to carry more weight relative to their height. 55 kilograms at 171 centimeters is genuinely thin."
Takashima Rei absorbed the question without breaking her rhythm. Rather than answering it directly, she kept moving through the file.
"His marathon results in middle school were ordinary. No awards, no notable finishes. He only picked up baseball after entering high school. He became a substitute pitcher in his second year."
The detail about his marathon record made the previous question answer itself. He hadn't been a serious competitive runner. He had simply built the kind of endurance that long-distance running develops as a byproduct, without ever reaching a level that showed up in results. That explained both the stamina and the lean build.
He had come to baseball late, developed quietly without anyone paying much attention, and had apparently used the time since to transform a struggling program into something that was now sitting across from Seido in the first round of the Autumn Tournament knockout stage.
"The person responsible for what Seisenji has become," Takashima Rei said, "is almost certainly him."
An amateur. Someone who had only picked up the sport after high school had already started.
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