Chapter 24

Short Summary
Tokuchi has Kojima’s injured arm wrapped in a white bandage to trick the Mariners' pitcher into throwing where he wants. The Lycaons win the game.

Long Summary
In their second game against the Mariners, Kojima comes on for the first time in the season. The Mariners send on their ace reliever, Tomosaka, who feels confident. He thinks about how he grew up watching and admiring Kojima, but finds him un-intimidating with his injured arm.

Tokuchi tells Kojima there’s no point going on with his injured elbow, and suggests he must be thinking of retiring after this game. The others are shocked by his attitude. Imai yells at him for being ungrateful, and Tokuchi tells him not to use ‘pissy words’. Tokuchi has Kojima wrap his injured arm in a thick white bandage, then tells him the first pitch is going to be a fastball aimed at the outside corner. As he goes on to bat, Tomosaka notices his wrapped-up elbow and thinks he must be more injured than he thought.

Ideguchi asks Tokuchi why he’s so confident about the first pitch and Tokuchi says the white bandage will show up really well against the dark fence. Kojima gets into a ‘closed stance’ on the plate and the commentators guess he must be expecting an outside throw. Ideguchi sees how blatantly obvious Kojima’s intentions are and says there’s no way a pitcher would throw exactly where the batter wants him to. Tokuchi tells him ‘wait and see’.

Tomosaka sees the stance and decides to go with a ‘brushing ball,’ high and on the inside. He throws, but the ball goes low and outside, completely the opposite of his aim. Kojima hits it and gets a home run. The Lycaons win the game.

Ideguchi says he doesn’t get it, and Tokuchi tells him of an experiment he heard. An accomplished marksman shot 50 bullseye targets, until a priceless antique jar was placed a metre away. Although such a distance should cause no problems for such an accurate shooter, he started missing the mark by several centimetres, in the direction away from the jar. Tokuchi says this same ‘psychological repression’ caused Tomosaka to throw in the opposite direction from which he was aiming, for fear of harming and ending the career of a legendary baseball player.

The fans start booing Tomosaka as he walks off and Ideguchi says he feels bad as he probably won’t be able to recover from that for a while. Tokuchi says the team have the wrong idea about winning. It’s not about good luck or exceeding the other team in strength, but about making your opponents taste defeat, kicking them when they’re down and trampling over their corpses. If they want to make it to the top, the Lycaons will have to steel themselves.

Tokuchi pitched for 12 innings, and after this game his salary is now 735 million yen.

In his office, a calm Saikawa remarks that it was a good game. He gets Tokuchi on the phone and congratulates him for his performance. He reminds him of the third clause of their One Outs contract and says he wants to increase the rate of tomorrow’s game by 20x. This’ll mean Tokuchi wins 100 million yen for every out, and lose 1 billion yen for every run.

Characters

 * Tokuchi Toua
 * Kojima
 * Ideguchi
 * Tomosaka
 * Imai
 * Saikawa- Owner of the Lycaons
 * Oikawa