More Than A Shadow

It's Not As Easy As It Looks

"Why is this so hard?" Azusa asked, complaining as she grew more exasperated. She was cleaning the dirty metal baseball bats with a cloth. "This is literally such a menial task! So why is it harder than it looks?" she said through gritted teeth as she wiped harder with each word.

Being manager was not as easy as she thought it would be. Since she always helped Mei with everything from catching his pitches, helping him practice, to cleaning his personal equipment at home, she thought it would be a piece of cake. But taking care of one person doesn't compare to taking care of an entire team.

Even if Mei's personality is worse than two teams combined.

"Maybe because the players use it a lot," Haruno, who was sitting next to her on the ground offered. "At least look at the bright side."

Azusa snorted. "Which is?"

"That we're almost done," Haruno replied with a small smile.

"No, you're not," Sachiko said, standing behind them.

Haruno shuddered at her presence.

Azusa shot daggers at the older manager. "Why not?"

Sachiko smirked while crouching down on the ground and took a baseball bat. "There is a smudge here," she said, pointing to a faint black smudge on the base of the bat. Then she dropped it to the ground and took another one. "And this one has a smudge here," she pointed to another faint black smudge on the top part of the bat. "You're doing a sloppy job."

"No, we're not!" Azusa argued. "There's almost nothing there!" she exclaimed while pointing to the spot that Sachiko was referring to.

"I don't want 'almost nothing' I was nothing!," the pigtailed manager said with air quotes. "It has to be spotless."

"But no one can see that," Azusa insisted.

"Azusa-san," Haruno whispered to her in fear since she was defying the older manager but Azusa didn't care.

"But I can and that's all that matters," Sachiko said in a firm tone. "Now stop wasting time arguing with me. You still have to clean those up and also these," she added while putting a bucket of baseballs in front of them.

The two first-year managers went pale as they gasped in horror.

"W-we have to clean the baseballs too?" Haruno asked.

"Yup," Sachiko replied with a cheeky grin.

Azusa narrowed her blue eyes at the manager. "And what are you going to be doing in the meanwhile?" she asked with disdain.

Sachiko raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"She didn't say anything!" Haruno exclaimed, covering Azusa's mouth. "We're going to work as hard and fast as possible senpai," she said with a nervous laugh.

"Good," Sachiko said in a flat tone before turning around to leave.

As soon as Sachiko was nowhere to be seen, Haruno released Azusa.

"Why did you do that for? I needed answers since she's been really hard on us since day one!" Azusa angrily demanded.

"What were you thinking?" Haruno asked her in turn. "Talking back to a senpai? Do you want to get in trouble?"

Azusa rolled her eyes as she huffed in exasperation. "I'm not scared of her."

"But I am," Haruno said. "So don't do that again!"