A water droplet suddenly fell on my skin. I looked up, seeing that the grey clouds had gotten a lot darker and more of them had begun to fill the sky. The only thing I hated about baseball practice in the fall was the endless amount of times we had been rained out on.
Sometimes, we could practice while it was raining, but only if it was light. If the rain was heavy, then practice was cancelled.
I looked over at the relief pitcher on the mound, who was looking up at the sky. He frowned. "Stupid rain," Nico said. "It's going to mess up my hair."
"I'm going to mess up your face if you don't pay attention," I said.
Daisuke sighed. "Can't you two ever get along?"
Let's see. Would I ever get along with the person who made my life in middle school a living hell? The person who was still trying to get a reaction out of me?
The answer was no. No, I would not. Not now, not in a month, not ever.
I ignored Daisuke's question, because it should be obvious what the answer was by now, as I looked back at Nico. He was still paying attention to sky, huffing every time a raindrop fell on him.
"Can't you pay attention?" I asked.
Nico, finally, looked over at me. "Alright, give me a sign."
I crouched down behind the home plate and signed for him to throw a low slider, outside. Nico did exactly that, though I had to reach a bit to catch the baseball as oppose to letting it fall directly into my glove.
I threw the baseball back to Nico. "Your control sucks."
"Yeah, I get it," Nico said. "You say that every single time I throw a pitch. Not everyone can be as talented as Shrimpy. Besides, my speed makes up for my lack of control."
I snorted and crouched back down. "Whatever you think."
We were only able to get through a few more pitches before the rain really picked up. It was up to the point where Daisuke said we had to put practice on hold. Most of us went to the dugout, where Ray had been sitting with his dog on his break.
The only two that didn't come to the dugout to get dry were Maddox and Mo. They always made things more difficult, to be honest.
"Maddox! Mo! Get your butts to the dugout now!" Mason called. "I don't need you getting sick and whining like little babies!"
"But we don't want to," Maddox said in a whiny voice. Mason glared at them, something he did not do often unless he needed someone to listen to him. He was always a friendly and cheerful person so when he glared at someone, it was serious.
Maddox and Mo quickly headed into the dugout. "Geez, Mason, you don't have to give us that look," Mo said. "It scares us."
"Exactly," Mason said.
Ray was sitting on one of the benches in the dugout, his dog Kotaro sitting on the ground in front of him. Being a German shepherd, Kotaro is quite large, so Ray was able to have his arms wrapped around his dog despite Ray sitting on the bench and Kotaro sitting on the ground.
I sat down beside Ray, rubbing Kotaro just underneath his ears; his favourite spot to be pet.
"How bad is the rain?" Ray asked.
"Bad enough to cancel practice," I said.
"Well, duh," Ray said. "But, like, how bad? It sounds like hail to me. Is it hail? Wait, never mind. It probably just sounds like that because it's hitting the metal of the dugout roof."
"It's basically torrential downpour," Nico said. "It messed up my hair. It took me a long time to get it perfect this morning."
"It wasn't the rain that messed it up," Ray said.
Nico frowned. "Scott, tell him to stop being mean to me."
Scott was drinking out of his water bottle, but he started drinking a lot slower once Nico asked that. When he finally finished drinking out of the bottle, he looked at Nico. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
"You're so mean to me, Scotty."
"So what are we going to do now?" Giovanni asked. "There's no way the rain is going to let up any time soon."
"Yeah, and I don't want to walk all the way home in this weather," Sterling said.
"We could head over to my and Mason's house since it's just down the street," Daisuke said, crouching in front of one of the equipment bags. "Hey... What's this?"
"What's what?" Mason asked, leaning over to get a closer look at whatever Daisuke had.
"It's an envelope," Daisuke said. "Addressed to the team."
"Ooh, maybe we're getting a sponsorship," Nico said.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure they would contact Daisuke directly," Sterling said.
"And they wouldn't have left an envelope here," Daisuke said, opening the envelope to take out whatever was inside, which, of course, was a letter. He read it to himself, not giving a single indication about what the letter was about. The only thing I guessed was that it must have confused him because he just had his eyebrows furrowed.
"So? What is it?" Maddox asked. "Is it a love letter?"
"A love letter?" Sterling asked with a scoff. "Seriously? It's addressed to all of us. Who would write a love letter to all of us?"
"Yeah, and if Nico's involved, my first question would be 'Why'?" Mo asked.
"You know what? I'm going to quit the team if you continue bullying me," Nico said.
"Go ahead," Sterling said. "You're not even our starting pitcher."
"Alright, back off," Mason said before looking at Daisuke. "So what is it? Who's it from?"
"I... It's... I don't know," Daisuke said. "Whoever wrote it just said to expect more letters or even texts from them, telling us to do certain things by a deadline. Or else we have to suffer the consequences."
"Who would do something like that?" Johan asked.
"And when did they leave it here?" Stetson asked. "We've been here all day."
