Tanba was stunned.

He was not the only one. A considerable number of Seido’s players felt the ground shift beneath them. Just moments ago, it had looked like Miyuki was about to take care of Carlos. And yet, in that strange, impossible instant, the run had scored anyway.

3-1. The gap was still two runs.

All of Seido’s previous efforts felt suddenly hollow. The louder the laughter coming from Inashiro’s supporters, the deeper the humiliation cut. It was a complicated feeling, and nobody on the Seido bench seemed to know what to do with it.

Inside the dugout, faces were grim and mouths were shut.

The players on the field had not performed poorly today. Even Tanba’s pitching had held to its usual standard — it had not fallen apart. But for some reason the game simply was not going their way. Everything they reached for seemed to slip at the last moment. And everything Inashiro attempted, even the risky plays, seemed to find a way through.

The play at home plate alone could not be explained by anything other than bad luck. By everything they had seen, Carlos should have been out.

“This game feels cursed.”

Even Manager Ota muttered it under his breath.

Coach Kataoka did not agree. He surveyed his players on the field in cold silence and said nothing.

In his view, the feeling of bad luck had nothing to do with luck at all. It came from something much simpler — the gap in strength between the two teams.

In their previous games, the opponents Seido had faced were so far behind them that high school baseball had started to feel almost routine. But that perception had been shaped by the teams they had faced, not by some ceiling Seido had reached. The players who had been to Koshien — Yuuki, Zhang Han, Miyuki, Isashiki — were adapting and performing close to their ceiling. The others were not. And as long as that was the case, the team would remain on the back foot.

The question now was what to do about it. How to reignite what was fading.

That was the problem Kataoka turned over in his mind.

Across the field, inside Inashiro’s dugout, Coach Kunimoto’s gaze had settled on Tanba.

It confirmed what he had suspected before the game. Those Seido players who had been to Koshien were a genuine threat. If they were allowed to keep operating freely, the final result was anyone’s guess. He needed to push for an absolute advantage, and he needed to do it now.

The clearest path to that was through Seido’s weakest point.

Most people looking at Seido’s pitching staff from the outside would not immediately identify it as a weakness. Three pitchers, all seemingly capable. On paper, it looked like a strength.

But Kunimoto knew better. Each of these pitchers had real problems beneath the surface. Left to pitch freely, each one could cause damage — even against Inashiro. That was precisely why the plan had always been to dismantle them one at a time. Remove them from the game systematically, before they could find their footing.

Now it was time to send Tanba off the mound.

Kunimoto gave the signal.

His players felt a jolt of surprise. They had just scored a third run. Moving the strategy into its next phase already — was that not too soon? Was it too ruthless?

A moment later, most of them decided it was exciting.

One out. No runners on base.

Stepping into the batter’s box was Yoshizawa, Inashiro’s third batter. A second-year. A power hitter with genuine home run capability. And yet, after settling into his stance, he showed no intention of swinging for the fences. He squared to bunt.

The stands were confused.

“One out, nobody on. A bunt? Are they serious?”

Tanba on the mound was more than confused — he was irritated. He did not understand the logic. But he did not need to understand it. He just needed to get this guy out.

“Whoosh!”

He threw and immediately charged forward off the mound, anticipating the bunt.

He ran several steps. Nothing came.

“Thwack!”

“Strike!”

At some point during the pitch, Yoshizawa had pulled the bat back. No bunt. Just a called strike.

Tanba was breathing harder than he should have been.

The third inning had barely started. He had thrown somewhere around thirty to forty pitches total. That should not have been enough to wind him, even accounting for stamina being his weaker quality. He should not have been feeling this way yet.

He could not see it clearly from where he stood. But Zhang Han, watching from the outfield, could see it perfectly.

It was the rhythm.

Inashiro’s offensive rhythm was relentless. It had not let Tanba breathe once. The pitches were not scattered across long pauses — they were continuous, stacked one on top of the other. And throughout all of it, runners on base and batters in the box had been layering pressure on him without pause. Every single pitch carried weight. There was no reset, no moment of calm.

Inashiro had clearly built this strategy well in advance. They had simply not revealed it until now. With Yoshizawa’s fake bunt, the last veil had been pulled back. They were no longer hiding it. They were openly grinding Tanba down, consuming his stamina pitch by pitch, play by play.

Once stamina ran out, mechanics would break down. Once mechanics broke down, Inashiro would go after him without mercy. The objective was no longer to chase runs. It was to force every one of Seido’s pitchers onto the mound — to drain the entire staff before the game was decided.

This was a strategy aimed directly at the fact that Seido no longer had an ace like Hidezawa to anchor them. It was a move to cut off their source of strength at the root.

Zhang Han had heard for a long time that Kunimoto was a formidable coach. He had even seen it firsthand in the Summer Tournament, where Kunimoto’s in-game decisions had been sharp and well-timed. But Zhang Han had always quietly suspected the reputation was inflated. An excellent high school coach, certainly. Superhuman, probably not.

Before, the third-year players — Azuma Kiyokuni and the others — had absorbed most of the pressure. Zhang Han had never faced Kunimoto’s chess moves directly. He had watched from a distance and not felt the full weight of them.

Now he was feeling it.

And the difference was immediately clear.

Every coach Seido had faced before had managed the game by reacting to the scoreboard and the situation in front of them. Kunimoto was different. He was not targeting the situation. He was targeting people.

“Ping!”

After several more pitches, Yoshizawa found a fastball he liked and made contact. The extended back-and-forth had not only worn on Tanba — it had spread quietly to the fielders as well. You could not sustain total alertness indefinitely. When you did not know which pitch would actually be put in play, you had to stay ready for all of them. One or two pitches, fine. Five or six, manageable. But once the number climbed high enough, the focus began to slip in small ways.

This time, it was simply unexpected that Yoshizawa would swing when he did. By the time the fielders reacted, the ball had already bounced and skipped away.

Yoshizawa had not even been trying to get a hit. He had been trying to wear Tanba down and force him off the mound. The base hit was an accident, an unexpected bonus. He took it and went straight to first base.

One out. Runner on first.

On the mound, sweat was running freely down Tanba’s forehead.

He had not collapsed. He was still standing. But the vicious cycle had him in its grip, and everyone watching could see it. The pitch count had already passed fifty. According to Seido’s own scouting data on their pitcher, once Tanba crossed seventy pitches, the quality of his pitching would begin to deteriorate noticeably. He could not sustain his opening standard beyond that threshold.

He was not there yet. But he was moving toward it faster than anyone had planned.

“Timeout — Seido requests a pitching change!”

************************************

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