Kamisama no Memochou:Volume 5 Chapter 4

The Twenty One Balls on that Summer

At the end of summer, the white ball seemingly absorbed by the blue sky of the field captured my heart.

My summer vacation was wrecked by work. It was not about wasting my life fooling around with the NEETs or helping Alice move the Dr. Peppers around. It was actually about coordinating an event. Including the prior kidnapping incident,my summer vacation slipped away while I was running around.

I couldn't say that such a summer vacation was not fulfilling, but as a 16-year-old high school boy, I do want to lose myself in some things a typical high school student would do.

Entering November, this youthful passion continued to erupt and expand, seeking a place to vent, and then it exploded.

...At the game center.

   

As my dad was often deployed everywhere for work, I never made many friends from elementary school to middle school--if I did write such things, Alice would probably have chided me "Think about how emotionally retarded you are instead of blaming your dad's redeployment!" But in any case, I did have a period when I spent my time after school alone, at the game center

Such an illness (I don't think it's wrong to call it an illness) eased up a lot later on, one because the fighting games fad cooled off, and two was because my older sister started managing my finances, and I had no money to spend.

In other words, the passionate flames in my heart were never vanquished. With a battlefield and fuel, surely it will be blazing again.

"You'll be addicted anyway! Starting now, Vice-Admiral Fujishima?"

Soon after the second semester started, Major invited me to play an online baseball game called 'Power Playball'. Like an arcade game that can be connected to others, this game required lots of money. Thanks to the salary Yondaime gave me, my wallet became a lot fatter.

'PowPlay' (This shorthand's weird, but it's a given terminology) requires many players to register their teams with their identifiation cards, and battle online in the entire country. The best concept of this game is the massive player databse. Unlike ordinary baseball games where only a few actual baseball players are available for choice, one an automatically generate a player with unique values and fitting name just by entering a person's name. It appears to be composed based on the massive amount of online data.

For example, by entering the name of a famous racer like Senna, Prost or Schumacher, a character with high speed will be generated, while a characters named based on a professional golfer will have higher contact and arm accuracy stats, while a pro wrestler will be a power hitter. If the name entered was that of a politician or artiste, the player character generated would have unique values that 'might seem fitting'. Thus, it was a major topic on the internet, and attracted the attentions of players who weren't that familiar with baseball. Even if the name entered was an anime or manga character, the unique values generated can be rather believable; it's really amazing. If the name entered is a baseball player's, the character will naturally have the corresponding values. Even the little details like Kuwata Masumi muttering to the ball before pitching, or Kiyohara Kazuhiro dealing with dead balls will be reflected on the characters, so there had been decent revivews on it. However, the higher the values of the players in game, the higher the cost needed, so it's unlikely to put all stars like Suzuki Ichiro, Ochiai Hiromitsu, Oh Sadaharu and Nagashima Shigeo into the batting lineup. Besides, entering names of ordinary people will create characters that are somewhat decent, so quite a few people named the characters based on their own names.

The appearance templates of the players in the game are all fixed, but the uniforms can be customized with different patterns, and I too got a unique place in the game through the internet; it's not an overstatement to say that my team's famous. I had all the heroines from the Dragon Quest I to IX as my starting players, and had the image of my customized characters plastered on the uniforms, resulting in it being a subject of report by a few blogs and news stations (just to note, the team's very weak).

"As to be expected of you, Vice-Admiral Fujishima. Our 'Drive a Phoenix' team uniform shall be in your care."

"Please deal with that questionable team name first. I don't want a picture I draw be famous for that kind of team..."

"What's wrong with this name? It means 'Driving a Phoenix! Of course the Phoenix here refers to the F-14 Tomcat fighter jets missiles, nothing to do with a team that couldn't be created after losing to Rakuten in a trial..."

"Who are you trying to bluff here!? Isn't your ace pitcher called 'Horie'?"

"His strongest weapon is a forkball that falls like the stockmarket!" Hey! watch your words! "Anyway, a Phoenix has a fiery, ferocious feeling, so a dazzling golden glowing bird piccture!"

So I had an Oyakodon picture pasted on the uniform, but Major was infuriated. Didn't you want a fiery, dazzling bird!?

*