InsaneJournal

Toshimi's baseball team friends had their faults, sure. The captain was rather zealous, Mikio Seiji never seemed to be able to speak loudly enough for anyone to hear, the two players from other teams had been gloomy since realizing that they would probably be on the baseball team for the rest of the season, and Yamada Kaori kept asking Toshi to go places or do favors for her. Toshimi didn't mind, really--at least Kaori had shown up this time (and Shirai Reizo was notably absent so far), and compared to the other group of people that kept asking her to meet at strange places for various things? Yamada Kaori was much less work. Today the request had been to bring her baseball mitts and a baseball to Skypark. Toshimi could tell where Kaori had been going with this, and thought it was a bad idea--there were plenty of ground-level parks in the city to practice throwing!--but went along with the plan anyway. It hadn't gone as disastrously as Toshimi had thought it would. Although her friend's aim wasn't on a level to be compared with hers, she'd yet to actually hit any passerby, and as long as they stayed in the center of the park and didn't go too close to an edge...

Or so Toshimi had thought. After an afternoon of a fully average game of catch, Kaori revealed what might have been some kind of secret throwing arm only activated once every 1000 throws, or something along those lines. The baseball sailed far above the synthetic sakura trees, over the heads of the others in the park, and towards the edge. Toshimi eyed it--thankfully, it did not seem to be going over the railing, so she ran to try and catch it. It was moving fairly slowly, as pop flies often did. Toshimi caught up to it and jumped to get it. Unfortunately, as talented as Toshi was at pitching, she was by no means a perfect fielder. Although her glove made contact with the ball, rather than catching it, the upward force from Toshi jumping into the air knocked it back upward.

And this was enough to send the baseball over the railing and down, down, down, down, down into the city below. Toshimi stared for a moment, stunned, then smiled and turned back to Kaori. "Kaori-san, did you see the...." But her teammate was not standing where she'd thrown the ball; in fact, she was nowhere in sight. "...eh."

Toshimi smiled, sighing a little bit. She had other baseballs if she needed to play, but the one that had been thrown over the fence was particularly nice, and had been one of her favorites. How much would it be to replace it? And then, how much did she have left from the last time she'd received spending money? She counted on her fingers. If she convinced the arcade manager to give her some 100 yen coins...Toshi shook her head. It was too impractical; just looking for the ball would be easier. She left the park and took the elevator down to the side of the building where the baseball had gone. Toshimi looked around. There didn't seem to be anyone calling a paramedic for a sudden baseball-related injury, so that was good. But she didn't see a baseball anywhere on the street, and there wasn't anyone holding a baseball and looking confused in the area either.

"Um, excuse me," she said to the closest person, "did you see a baseball around here? A baseball with blue stitches instead of red?" The person shook his head and kept walking. Toshimi put on a big smile and started asking others in the area, "A baseball? Blue stitches? Have you seen it anywhere...?"