As the bullpen cart rolled toward the mound, the stadium lights surged to life—an unnatural white glare that felt like it was burning straight through my retinas. My vision filled with the sight of a packed stadium. Our team, FutureTex, had no stake in the division race, no shot at the playoffs. We were perennial bottom-dwellers. And yet, not a single seat was empty. Not one. That alone was unnatural.

  On the way to the mound, I was hit by a wall of sound—cheering so loud it felt like it could crush bone. But it wasn’t natural. It didn’t fall from the sky like real crowd noise. It pressed in from all sides, like a physical force—uniform, overwhelming, and eerily consistent. Whether a batter grounded out or I struck someone out with a knuckleball, the reaction was always the same. No variation. No surprise. Just emotion, tuned to a single frequency, optimized like a program running flawlessly in the background. It was like watching a mass game—choreographed, synchronized, and soulless.

  I’ve always felt a visceral disgust toward the Re:FAN system that fuels this stadium’s frenzy. No one really knows how it works. Is it neural manipulation? Hyper-precise acoustic engineering? Even we on the field are kept in the dark. But every time I step onto the mound, a sharp, crawling vibration runs through my body. Every single time. That can’t be a coincidence.

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  Then, for a moment, I locked eyes with someone in the front row. But they weren’t looking at me. Their eyes were glassy, unfocused. They weren’t watching my pitch—they were watching something inside their own heads. Something the system was feeding them. A synthetic euphoria. They screamed with passion, but their focus hovered just millimeters above reality. I don’t know if that feeling was real or imagined. But something about it felt true.

  I stepped onto the mound and grabbed the rosin bag. Even here, there was no scent of dirt. No grit. Just a sterile, managed space. The only thing that felt real was the dull pain in my fingertips— A constant throb, born from the unnatural strain of throwing a knuckleball. It doesn’t wreck my shoulder, but it tears at my fingers and nails.

  The cheers echoing through this stadium are nothing more than the reproduction of dead data. Too perfect. Too repeatable. And so, standing at the heart of this dead euphoria, I quietly took my set position— To throw one unpredictable pitch into the machine.