"Hey hey heeey!! It's 13-9!! Your forkball is pretty pathetic there!!"
Kamijou held a short broom in his hands and swung it back and forth as he egged Fukiyose on.
"Shut up!! Don't just ignore those 9 times you lost… And if I had a proper hardball, things would be different!!"
Since they had introduced a new rule where the loser of each round had to spend 5 minutes weeding as hard as they could, Kamijou and Fukiyose had gotten so fired up they had forgotten that the work would be a lot easier if they just both worked on it together.
While Kamijou was swinging the bat in a good mood, Fukiyose was gripping the white ball and her shoulders moved up and down as she panted for breath. She then checked the time on her phone.
"There's only 30 minutes until we have to leave… But that's more than enough time to turn this around!!"
"Hey, are your pitches actually dropping like they're supposed to?"
"I already told you they were! They're forking like crazy!! Why can't you see the ball jerk down suddenly right in front of you!?"
"Ehh? It just looks like a parabolic arc to me…"
"Pay more attentiooooooonnnnn!!"
Fukiyose yelled as loudly as she could and threw the ball.
In response to the white ball roaring towards him, Kamijou began the motions for a full swing.
(A forkball…)
He finally reacted to Fukiyose's words and corrected the trajectory of the broom down slightly.
But the path of the ball didn't change.
It continued on straight.
"Damn it…See? You're not doing it right!!"
He tried to bring the trajectory of the bat back, but it was too late.
The bat moved slightly upwards, but didn't quite make it to the path the white ball took.
Even so, he could tell the handle of the broom made contact with the edge of the ball.
"Gwohhhhhh!!"
Kamijou yelled, but he could feel in his wrist that he hadn't hit the ball solidly.
The white ball grazed the broom handle, its trajectory changed slightly diagonally upwards, and it flew behind Kamijou.
(Damn, I missed!)
There were no fouls in this game. If the ball hit the bat and went in front of him, Kamijou won. Anything else counted as Fukiyose's win. They decided between strikes and balls by sight.
One annoying point was that the loser had to go retrieve the ball. And since the loser also had to weed for five minutes, going to retrieve a distant ball was a real pain in the ass.
While still holding up the broom being used for a bat, Kamijou began thinking up a plan.
(Dah. It was 13 – 9, right? I guess I have 10 losses now. Maybe I should purposefully take forever retrieving the ball so we run out of time while I'm still ahead.)
But then he heard an odd noise from behind him.
"…?"
Kamijou had no idea what just happened, but just from seeing Fukiyose's shocked expression, he started going pale.
(??? What's behind me?)
Kamijou turned around.
He saw inverted triangle glasses with grass and dirt stuck to them.
Oyafune Suama was standing there and she had clearly been hit straight in the face by the white ball.
The ball would have hit Suama in the stomach, but Kamijou's bat had altered its trajectory enough for it to head straight for her face.
"…"
Oyafune Suama took a long, deep breath, but her body was clearly trembling.
By the time Kamijou started freaking out, it was too late.
Suama came rushing towards Kamijou and her fist swung down at him. Kamijou bowed down in apology without noticing what she was doing and miraculously managed to avoid her fist. Filled with the anger from both the ball and from having attacked the air, the math teacher stomped down on Kamijou's back with the pointed heel of her pumps.