Chapter Text
The Prologue
It all started with rather innocuous text received by Takashima Rei, the super competent Assistant Coach/Talent Scout from the renown Seido High School Baseball Team. Since she was very busy marking the latest batch of English tests from her third year students, she was only going to spare a quick glance at the top of the range smartphone the school provided her with. Instead, Rei did a double take when she saw the sender’s name displayed on the screen: Momoe Maria.
Suddenly forgetting all about the tests, she extended her hand towards the phone, noticing how it was shamefully trembling a little. In spite of that, she still managed to unlock the screen and, tapping on the text notification, she read the message. It was a very short one:
Rei-san, please call me whenever you read this.
Feeling a shiver down her spine, she let her finger hover over the phone while she internally debated what to do. She could try to ignore the message and carry on with her packed schedule, hoping that by pretending she had not seen the message it would just disappear. She even contemplated actually deleting the darn thing for a second or two before she finally came back to her senses:
‘No,’ she told herself resolutely, ‘ignoring her won’t do you any good and you know it.’
She quickly tapped on the touchscreen, bringing up Maria’s contact details and before she could persuade herself to do otherwise, she pressed the green button which would place the call.
‘Wow, that was quick!’ was the answer she got.
‘Hello to you too, Momoe-san,’ Rei replied with only a hint of sarcasm.
‘Sorry,’ Maria replied, ‘I wasn’t expecting you to call me so soon, after all, you’re a busy person.’
‘From what I hear, you’ve been rather busy yourself,’ Rei countered, feeling rather proud of her calm tone of voice, ‘also, I know better than to ignore you for too long,’ she added for good measure.
‘I’m not that scary, am I?’ Maria asked her.
Rei didn’t grace that with an answer, instead, she said:
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ Maria said confirming Rei's worst fears.
‘Okay,’ she forced herself to say, ‘I’m listening…’
Ten minutes later, she regretted doing that because, just as she remembered, listening to Maria was never a good idea. The younger woman could probably talk an Eskimo village into buying a year-long supply of ice and that explained the reason why Rei had somehow agreed to arrange a practice session between Seido’s current first string and the brand new baseball team Maria had cobbled together from a bunch of first years, all hailing from a school the name of which still made Rei break into the sort of cold sweat she associated with an utter and crushing defeat: Nishiura High School.
To be continued…