The next day, true to his word, Takami showed up at 12:00 sharp. With him he had brought a couple of older spiral notebooks filled with illegible writing. Database notes, he said. After booting up the giant modem, Toa sat in silence watching Takami leaf through his notes. After an awkward ten minutes, the database was up where he had left off just a couple of hours before. He had to admit, he was proud of himself. He had pretty much figured it out. Yet, instead of praise and admiration for a job well done, all he got from Takami was a blank horrified look.

"What did you do? It all compiled." He looked like he was about to cry. He did not expect that.

Takami grabbed Toa's chair, and without a word, rolled him aside, taking his place in front of the computer.

After about twenty minutes of watching Takami type, mutter to himself, and groan, Toa began to get impatient. "How am I going to learn if you do it all yourself?" he asked, doing his best to not sound impatient. He couldn't afford to lose the other man's help at this point. He just wanted to play a more active role.

"After you read those." Takami said, gesturing to the notebooks on his desk. "They're pretty dumbed down, so you might understand them." At that, Takami tied up his hair and got back to typing and muttering.

Itsuki worked at the code for the better part of two hours before the program was up to snuff. He had the algorithm laid out, all he had to do was flesh it out. Looking over, he noticed Tokuchi had started on the first few pages of the second notebook, his own page of notes beside it. At least he was doing something. Deeming his work on the program done for the day, he suddenly stood up to stretch, causing Tokuchi to jump a bit. Itsuki stopped himself from smiling. It was kind of refreshing to see Tokuchi be vulnerable for once. "I'm pretty much done for now" he said. "Go ahead and look that over" he said before leaning in very close. "But don't touch anything." Tokuchi blinked slowly up at him, as if to question him. "If I have to fix one more compilation error, you are on your own," he finished, before swinging his bag over his shoulder and heading toward the locker room.

On his way, he noticed Oeda walking with a couple of other interns. "Hey, Oeda!" He called, catching the other man's attention. "How old are you?" he asked.

Oeda looked a bit frazzled at the attention. "I'm 21," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious" Itsuki replied as he turned to go to the locker room. As he left, he noticed the impressed looks the other interns were giving him. Thankfully that kind of attitude never lasted long with them.

"I can't believe he's only 20." Itsuki muttered to Amami as they stretched.

"Why?" Amami asked. "That's not terribly young." "Kawanaka started at the same age , and I don't hear you making a fuss about that."

"Yeah, but Kawanaka never gave me as much trouble as Tokuchi did" Itsuki muttered.

"He made you work for it" Amami stated as he stood up. "Maybe you should give Tokuchi some space. You've been in his office more often than not lately."

"It's nothing," Itsuki said, standing up to join him. "I'm just helping him out with a database".

Amami raised one eyebrow delicately at him, and then made his way towards the batting cages.

For the remainder of practice, Itsuki couldn't bring himself to concentrate on his drills, despite the batting coach's repeated pep talks. He had Tokuchi on his mind, and he could think of little else. He knew he was back there in his little broom closet ruining his code. He knew it. Tokuchi had said he would keep his grubby little paws off it, but the likelihood of that happening was pretty low. After half assing his way through his batting drills with both a live pitcher and the pitching machine, he made his way towards Tokuchi's office with no pretense of taking the long way to the parking lot. If he didn't check his code now, it would nag at him all night, and by the looks of his schedule that week, he needed that sleep.

After rounding the corner, Takami saw that the door to Tokuchi's office was already open. Fearing he already had company, Takami slowed his pace and listened for voices. Hearing none, peered into the office. There he was, scrolling through the code, most likely reviewing the damage he had done. He didn't seem to notice him though.

Itsuki paused there in the doorway, waiting for the moment where Tokuchi would fuck up, where he would try to touch his code. He did not have to wait long.

Unaware he was being watched, Toa scrolled through the lines of code. He had read through the notebooks several times, and he had a general idea of what he was looking at. Just as he was about to finish, he noticed what seemed to be a misplaced backslash. He could probably get rid of that. It was out of place, and would probably not be missed. Just as he placed his cursor over it, ready to hit the backspace key and erase it from this plane of existence, he noticed a reflection in his monitor. Before he could even react, Takami's fingers dug into his shoulders causing Toa to jump as he leaned in very close from behind him.

"What are you working on there?" The other man asked, with an edge to his voice. "You're not deleting anything, are you?"

Toa had to gather himself before he replied. He was not expecting Takami back this soon, let alone soon enough to catch him editing the database.

"It's out of place" Toa muttered.

"You're out of place" Takami retorted.

"That doesn't even make any sense" Toa said as Takami rolled his chair to the side.

Takami leaned down in front of the computer and surveyed the damage. Thankfully, he didn't find anything out of place. Toa had probably just recently decided to survey it, and hadn't had enough time to do any damage. As he scrolled through the lines, Toa wheeled himself closer to peer over his shoulder. After another few minutes, Itsuki stood up, satisfied.

"I guess you didn't have enough time to really do any damage, did you?" he asked, nudging Toa aside as he made his way out of his office.

"I was looking it over" Tokuchi said.

"Sure" Itsuki said. "Just do me a favor. Don't edit it without me". Seeing Toa shrug his assent, Takami turned to leave, satisfied. "See you tomorrow" he said as he walked off, leaving Toa to stare after him.

After Takami's departure, Toa sat in silence for a minute. That had been weird. He stood up and powered the computer down. There was no point in looking over the code anymore. Takami would probably sense him opening the program and come back to harass him some more. After looking around his office one last time, he locked up and headed home.

Later that night, Toa lay awake in bed, unable to fall asleep. There really was no reason for it. He had woken up early, and had worked all day. Usually he was gone by now, but for some reason, he just could not relax. Rolling over onto his side, Toa thought over his day. He had gotten to the stadium in time to attend a couple of coach's meetings, and after that, he had worked through the new grievance system. He hadn't had time to think over how he was going to bring the team together in a way that could be neatly packaged and presented to the head coaches for approval. He knew better than to try and use the same tactics again. What had worked with the Lycaons would not work here. Using his definition of teamwork would most likely divide the team further. He couldn't motivate them with money or mvp status. Really, he was just there to tell them to stop being bastards, and that didn't sit well with him. He didn't appreciate being forced into the role of a hypocrite. After ruminating for what seemed like hours turned out to be minutes as Toa rolled over again to glance at his clock. He had to be up in a few hours, and he did not like the idea of heading out for a fifteen hour work day with no sleep. This job would be the death of him.

Toa rolled over one last time onto his back, and did his best to clear his mind. He started evening out his breathing, and let himself relax. Once he got in the right headspace, he would fall asleep quickly. After a few more minutes, he was still as awake as he had been for hours. This kind of stress was foreign to him. He used to thrive in stressful situations, but now they were doing this to him. He had too much to do. He had too much to do before that damn database. Yet that was the one assignment he didn't really mind, despite his total lack of knowledge about computers. He did get to see Takami. Strangely enough,he didn't mind his assistance.

Toa quickly banished the thought from his head. That kind of sentimentality was not needed here. Toa closed his eyes and tried to relax.