The next thing I tried was baseball. After soccer, it seemed like the next best way to make money, right? That was my only reason.

In fact, if we’re talking just about Japan, pro baseball players might earn even more than soccer players.

So, with that shallow reasoning, I started playing baseball in middle school.

I just joined the baseball team at my local middle school.

To cut to the chase—yeah, it was more useful than soccer.

As a pitcher, time magic wasn’t all that helpful, so I focused on batting.

The moment the pitcher threw the ball—strictly speaking, the instant the ball left the pitcher’s hand—I could stop time. At the very least, this let me tell whether it was a fastball or an off-speed pitch.

Then, with a quick glance at the catcher’s mitt, I could at least see what kind of pitch they were calling for—whether the ball would actually go there or not was another matter.

Even professional pitchers don’t always hit their spots, so the fact that amateur middle-school pitchers often missed their targets was a bit of a downside.

Still, this was a huge advantage. Knowing whether it was a fastball or an off-speed pitch, plus roughly guessing the location, made a big difference.

First, I became way better at hitting off-speed pitches. Since breaking pitches are designed to throw off a batter’s timing, once I knew it was an off-speed pitch, I could reset my timing and swing—making it much easier to hit. Of course, if the pitcher had multiple types of breaking balls, I had to adjust for each one, but just being able to reset my timing was already a massive advantage.

But there was also a pretty big drawback.

If the pitcher threw a fastball while time was stopped, I didn’t have enough time to adjust my swing.

If I started my swing before stopping time, the bat would keep moving during the frozen time because I was holding it. And if time stopped for even a full second, I’d finish my swing before time resumed.

From an outside perspective, it would look like the batter started swinging the moment the pitcher began his motion—only to complete the swing at an impossible speed—and then the ball would just fly past the plate like nothing happened. A bizarre, completely pointless phenomenon.

So, I practiced trying to hit fastballs after time resumed, but I mostly ended up either getting jammed or swinging late. No luck.

With breaking balls, I could reset my timing and adjust, but with fastballs, I had to commit from the start. Maybe someone with insane bat speed could pull it off, but my physical abilities were just average.

As a result, I became a batter who was insanely good against off-speed pitches but hopeless against fastballs. Naturally, pitchers started throwing nothing but fastballs at me… and so on.

Game over!

But I wasn’t about to give up that easily. My plan to lazily become a superstar wasn’t just for show.

First, the countermeasures: The biggest limitation was that I could only stop time a maximum of 10 times per day. And if I wanted to avoid headaches, I had to keep it to around 7 uses. So, I couldn’t just spam time-stop for every pitch.

Because of that, I usually didn’t use time magic and instead focused solely on swinging for fastballs.

Even if an off-speed pitch came, I’d swing with full force as if it were a fastball (and whiff).

Since pitchers and catchers don’t like throwing fastballs to batters who are obviously sitting on them, this strategy slightly increased the chances of them throwing me a breaking ball—even if the scouting report said I was good against them.

So, until I had two strikes, I’d just commit to swinging for a fastball with everything I had.

If a fastball came, I could hit it decently well. If it was an off-speed pitch, I’d whiff.

Once I had two strikes, I’d use time-stop and hope for a breaking ball. If it was one, I’d win. If it was a fastball, well… I’d lose.

Using this method, I managed to maintain a batting average over .400—way better than most of my teammates.

Oh, and just so you know, unlike in pro baseball, a .400 average in amateur ball isn’t that impressive.

There are guys who hit .500 like it’s nothing, and occasionally even .600 hitters.

In regional tournaments, you get everything from sandlot-level teams to future pros, so power hitters can really pad their stats.

So, while I was decent, I wasn’t anywhere near pro material. And unfortunately, I wasn’t good enough to get scouted by powerhouse high schools either.

Still, baseball was the only sport where time magic gave me even a slight edge, so I kept at it.

Maybe someday I’d find a better way to use time magic to get ahead in life. But it was starting to seem like baseball wasn’t the answer.

So next, I decided to try that thing you’ve all been waiting for.