Chapter 360 - 360: Little Notebook
The streetlamp cast a small circle of light, and Zhang Han sat inside it with a notebook open on his knee.
He would read a page, pause, pick up his pen and add something, then move on. The surrounding campus was quiet. Most of the Seido players had gone back to rest in preparation for tomorrow's game, and the instructions from the coaching staff had been clear: no extra practice tonight, conserve energy, sleep early.
Some of the second-year upperclassmen had done their extra practice anyway. It had become too routine to skip simply because someone asked them not to. Manager Ota's advice had been heard and acknowledged and then set aside, and the usual drills had been completed before anyone made a move toward the dormitory.
On the way back, they spotted Zhang Han under the streetlamp.
Isashiki Jun stopped first, squinting at the solitary figure with the focused expression of someone trying to determine what kind of situation they had walked into.
"What are you doing out here by yourself?"
The group gathered around him with the natural curiosity of people who had nothing else requiring their attention. Kominato Ryosuke, Masuko Toru, Tanba, Sakai, all of them drifting into the circle of light.
Isashiki Jun leaned in to look at the notebook.
"Is this kid secretly writing love letters?"
"With his face, he's not exactly lacking in that department," someone observed. The assessment was accurate. The letters arrived two or three times a week without much effort on Zhang Han's part, and the ones writing them had not required encouragement to do so.
"Then he's reading them. I didn't think he'd be like this in private."
Isashiki reached over and took the notebook before Zhang Han had a chance to react. Zhang Han started to reach for it, then registered that Kominato Ryosuke had appeared directly in front of him with his eyes slightly narrowed, and reconsidered. On the internal list of people at Seido who were both unpredictable and not worth provoking, Kominato ranked very close to the top.
Isashiki stared at the notebook with a puzzled expression.
"What language is this?"
"Chinese characters," Zhang Han said. "It would be surprising if you could read it."
"I don't know about all of it, but these names I recognize. Carlos, Shirakawa." Isashiki looked up. "These are Inashiro players."
"That's right."
"You're out here organizing Inashiro's data the night before the game?"
Tanba, who had been quiet until that moment, also looked at Zhang Han with visible surprise.
Zhang Han explained without making much of it. The habit had come from his Matsukata days. Before each significant opponent, he would write down their tendencies, habitual approaches, and the countermeasures he was considering. The process of writing forced the information into a more organized form than simply reviewing notes taken by someone else, and it gave him something to return to if his thinking needed anchoring during the game itself.
The group processed this for a moment.
"Didn't the Director already go through all the Inashiro data with us?" Sakai asked.
Zhang Han looked at him with mild surprise.
"When a teacher lectures in class, do you take notes, or do you just listen and assume you've got it?"
The room-temperature silence that followed answered the question.
"Are you telling me," Isashiki Jun said slowly, "that this entire time we thought you were some kind of natural genius, you've actually been out here doing homework?"
The comparison to protagonists from sports study anime followed immediately, several voices contributing overlapping references to baseball notebooks and tactical analysis and fictional characters who won games through preparation rather than instinct.
Zhang Han accepted the commentary with the patience of someone who had grown used to his upperclassmen finding entertainment in his habits.
"If you praise me any more, I'll actually start to believe it. I'm just being prepared."
The awkwardness that had occasionally still surfaced in interactions between Zhang Han and the second-year core had not been present tonight. The shift was something that had happened gradually rather than at a specific moment, nudged along by the dinner incident with Masuko and by the accumulated shared experience of the tournament games.
Whatever distance had existed at the beginning of the season between the first-year who had come in and immediately become central to the team's identity and the second-years who had their own established relationships with each other, it had closed.
Standing under the streetlamp, passing a Chinese-language notebook around and making jokes about study habits, the group felt entirely like the same team.
Coach Kataoka had made his pitching decision for tomorrow's game known earlier in the evening. Tanba would start. Zhang Han and Kawakami were to stay ready, and the instruction had been delivered with the directness that characterized everything Kataoka communicated to his players: if the situation required either of them, they would be called without ceremony.
Beyond the pitching rotation, the pre-game address had been brief and to the point.
"We win tomorrow's game with the strength of the entire team."
He extended his hand when he said it, and the room responded to the gesture and the weight behind it with an energy that confirmed what most people already understood about Coach Kataoka's particular effectiveness with players. Technical preparation and tactical instruction were things multiple coaches could provide. The ability to stand in front of a group of teenagers preparing for the most significant game of their season and make every one of them feel that the outcome was within reach was a rarer thing.
The circle under the streetlamp stayed together for a while longer, the conversation moving through topics that had nothing to do with baseball before the group eventually split off toward the dormitory.
Tomorrow was going to require everything they had.
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