Editing Kamisama no Memochou:Volume 5 Chapter 4

“Enough already, give that Kusakabe Masaya a call.”

Of course, once Kusakabe Masaya heard about this, he was flabbergasted, and clicked his tongue about twenty times or so.

“Nemoto Kiichi was a baseball player from a famous school in Kyoto, and in his second year, he became their ace pitcher.”

Alice buried her face in the pile of dolls, and after a while, I turned back, and saw her eyes. Nemoto Kiichi. Nemo-san, so she’s referring to that Octy?”

“There were still records in the magazines and news. It was said that a relative of Nemoto Kiichi owed the gang lots of money, and he had to obey. The details of how the match fixing happened came out too.”

“He did it. Nemoto Kiichi was a pitcher with such an ability, but he had to do so to earn money.”

“It was thirty years ago, and there was no scorebook. There is nothing to indicate Nemoto Kiichi’s pitching profile. What pitches does he have? How much he sweated, what he said; everyone had long forgotten about him.”

I watched them bicker worriedly, and at this moment, another car appeared by the riverbank. It’s a white wagon, and when the door opened, there were four middle aged men dressed in floral shirts. From what I could tell, they too was yakuza. A man wearing a cream-colored summer suit and sunglasses stood out; it was Kusakabe Masaya . So, these guys are the umpires? It might sound recreational, but this certainly seemed formal. They even had their umpire gear and facemasks prepared.

She grabbed my arms as she said so, while Kusakabe Masaya eyed us unhappily.

I got around the back net, and stood between Octy and Kusakabe Masaya .

Kusakabe Masaya too narrowed his eyes behind the sunglasses, and shrugged.

We left the important booking of the field to the enemy, and that was the grave mistake we made. It was all Octy’s plan. Kusakabe Masaya gave a look at the four umpires, who from afar had such a conversation, “Guess we have to start now.”

The headwind came down the cycling track by the riverside, and finally brought us cheers and the sound of the bats. I could only sense Nishimura-san’s body heating up. The bicycle ferrying both of us went down the green, grassy slope, and we both hopped off, falling over. The brown skinned girl seated at the bench was the first to notice us, “Mr Assistant!” and she stood up, waving at us. However, I looked past Meo’s shoulders, towards Kusakabe Masaya , and was gasping for breath.

“This isn’t a joke. I’m a player-manager. Nemoto Kiichi. You’re a baseball player from Kansai, you should be very familiar with the first Mister Tigers, Fujio Fujimura. Now experience the terror of the words ‘I’ll pinch hit’.”

Meo looked shocked and excited as she hopped out from the spectators stand, and ran onto second band. I glanced aside at Kusakabe Masaya who was behind the net, his sunglasses unable to disguise his heinous look. The home plate umpire too looked back at him, but he did not indicate anything; perhaps he agreed to let her participate.

Octy’s half-opened mouth was shaking. Perhaps he really didn’t want to believe this. But I did find the record in the game. Entering the name Nemoto Kiichi in ‘PWLB’ would result in a player profile, and that was our intel.

“That game has a public database. Do you know that everyone can add new data into the database? In other words, someone added a ‘pitcher Nemoto Kiichi’ into the database.”