"First batter. Shortstop. Kuramochi."
Kuramochi had not expected to come up to bat again in the same inning. Two outs, runners on first and third, and the leadoff spot cycling back around with the score already at five to zero in Seido's favor. He stepped into the box and assessed the situation with the particular focus of someone who had already decided what he was going to do before his name was called.
He bunted.
The reaction in the stands suggested that a meaningful portion of the crowd had not anticipated this development. Seisenji's players, watching from the dugout, had a collective response somewhere between disbelief and something close to personal offense.
They were already sixteen runs behind, in spirit if not yet on the scoreboard. They had made their peace with the result and were genuinely trying to enjoy what remained of the afternoon. The reasonable expectation at this point was that the winning side would let the innings play out with some measure of dignity for everyone involved.
Seido appeared to have other plans.
As Kuramochi laid down the bunt, Masuko and Asou were already in motion. The Seisenji fielders had practiced their defense diligently, and their individual movements were reasonably sharp. What became apparent very quickly was that the gap between practicing defensive fundamentals and executing coordinated team defense against a lineup operating with tactical precision was considerable.
The plays Seido was running required fielders to make decisions in sequence, each depending on the previous one having gone correctly. Seisenji's defense had been built to handle direct situations. It had not been built to handle the kind of layered movement that Seido was now deploying, and the difference showed with almost painful clarity.
Masuko crossed home plate. Sixth run.
The inning continued.
By the time the hitting came back around to Zhang Han, Yuuki had already cleared the bases. The scoreboard read eleven to zero.
Eleven runs in a single first inning.
Coach Kataoka stood in the dugout and looked at the field and reached a quiet conclusion. He had misread the situation earlier, specifically the part where he had interpreted Seisenji's high spirits as competitive determination rather than what it actually was: a group of players who had already decided the result and were simply enjoying the experience. His instruction to press harder had been based on a threat that wasn't really there.
And Seido had responded to that instruction by scoring eleven times in one inning against a team that just wanted to play baseball and go home with a good memory.
He signaled to Zhang Han.
It was time to ease off.
Zhang Han had already arrived at the same conclusion by looking at the other dugout. What he saw there wasn't a group of players who had been broken. It was a group of players who had played hard, gotten thoroughly beaten, and were sitting with the experience in a way that was more philosophical than anguished. Driving the score higher against them felt less like competition and more like something else.
"Ping!"
"Pop!"
"Out."
The ball went directly into a fielder's glove without requiring anyone to move. Zhang Han's performance in this regard was convincing enough that nobody watching from the outside would have had reason to question it. He had practice with this particular skill.
The broader truth was one that rarely got discussed openly in the sport. In manga and anime, the loudest argument was always that maximum effort was the highest form of respect. In actual baseball, once a result was secure, the winning side pulled back. They had always done this, they would always do this, and the scores that would otherwise appear on scoreboards if they didn't would be genuinely staggering. The talent gap between elite programs and grassroots schools was real enough that a team choosing not to moderate its output was the only thing standing between a manageable loss and a historically embarrassing one.
Nobody talked about it much. Everyone did it.
The innings that followed told the story of that moderation in numbers. One run in the second. Two in the third. Two in the fourth. The scoring never fully stopped, partly because Coach Kataoka couldn't ask players in their first official high school game to simply stop competing, and partly because even a restrained Seido lineup was more than Seisenji's defense could consistently neutralize. The gap was too fundamental for half-effort to fully contain.
Four innings complete. Sixteen runs ahead.
Zhang Han's other at-bats after the grand slam had been deliberately unremarkable. The balls he hit were of genuine quality in terms of contact and trajectory. They simply found fielders' gloves rather than gaps, and they did so with a consistency that suggested precise placement rather than misfortune.
Coach Kataoka watched this quietly and felt something between amusement and genuine admiration.
Most players showing mercy still protected their personal numbers. A batting average mattered. An on-base percentage mattered. These numbers followed a player into college recruitment conversations and professional evaluations, and the instinct to protect them even while dialing down the intensity was understandable and nearly universal. It was why the scoreboard had still climbed even after the decision to ease off had been made.
Zhang Han did not appear to be operating under that concern. He was hitting the ball directly to fielders with a precision that required more control than simply putting the ball in play would have demanded. He was actively choosing where his outs went.
The pitching side of the ledger told a cleaner story.
The original plan had called for a relay, multiple pitchers working through the game to distribute the workload and give different arms some experience. Zhang Han's performance had made that plan unnecessary. Two walks issued across the entire game. One base hit allowed. No earned runs surrendered. The velocity that had bewildered Seisenji's leadoff hitter in the first inning had never stopped being a problem for them to solve, and with fewer total innings faced, their hitters hadn't accumulated enough looks to adjust meaningfully.
Into the fifth inning he went, now facing the bottom of Seisenji's order as the lineup turned over.
The noise coming out of the Seisenji dugout was genuine and loud, encouragement offered freely and with real feeling even as the scoreboard offered no corresponding reason for optimism. It had no measurable effect on what happened on the field.
Eight pitches. Three batters. Two strikeouts. One infield grounder handled cleanly by the defense.
The inning ended before it had properly begun.
As a pitcher making his first appearance in a Seido uniform, Zhang Han had produced something the record book would note and the coaching staff would quietly file alongside everything else they were learning about what this player was capable of when given a new challenge and enough time to meet it.
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