The two arrived into Florida around 11pm and made their way to the hotel. Ken put his bags down and went straight to the gym, he was already well rested thanks to the sleep protocol and needed to move his body after the long flight.
Daichi didn't sleep well on the plane, so he went to bed first.
Ken broke into a run on the treadmill, getting his heart rate up while his mind began to wander. Tomorrow morning they would head to Publix Field to join in Spring training.
He would need to make it clear from the beginning that he was there to stay. This meant not only did he need to pitch well, he also needed to be on point with his bat.
Over the past year or so, his batting had improved tremendously, leaving his pitching feeling stagnant. The SSS+ rating had not budged in almost 2 years, and although his skills allowed him to pitch above this, Ken believed such a thing would not cut it in the Major League.
But with his constant Image Training over the past month, Ken had begun to feel he was close to a breakthrough. All he needed was the right push in order to make it past the hump and jump up to the EX grade.
Ken believed the reason his pitching had become stagnant was because of the lack of pitching. Back when he was in Japan, he was pitching upwards of 250 balls a day.
Yet in America, sometimes it was not even a quarter of this. Of course this was because there were strict regulations in place for College and the MLB for rest and recovery.
'I will need to start pitching more outside the image training as well if I want to improve…' He thought to himself.
With his fatigue management skill, Ken could easily increase his volume to at least 200 a day without fear of getting injured. For anyone else this would be impossible.
Ken worked out for around an hour and a half before heading back up to his room to shower. He thought about entering the Image Training again, but decided not to.
He needed to be in top shape for the training tomorrow, that was far more important.
Ken used his sleep protocol skill once more and drifted to sleep.
Ken's eyes opened and he found himself in an unfamiliar house. The furniture was modern and the rooms large, it seemed even bigger than the apartment that Ken and Ai had looked at in downtown Detroit.
In a daze, Ken walked around the large house.
"Hello?"
He felt weird. Why was he here? He couldn't even remember what he was doing earlier.
It was only after he made his way outside that he finally saw someone laying by the pool with his shirt off. In the afternoon sun, sight of his muscles were even more obvious.
However, something was far more shocking than this man's physique. He gazed upon the face, instantly recognizing himself.
'W—What the hell?'
"Honey, I'm home~" A sweet voice called out from the house, rousing the other Ken who was laying down.
"I'm by the pool, you should come join me." He called out, wearing a grin.
Ken turned, and what he saw made his jaw drop. A woman with dark hair and emerald eyes walked out of the house and down the stairs. She was wearing tight workout shorts and her figure was magnificent.
'Is that… Amelia?"
He could only watch on as Amelia descended the stairs and walked over to the Ken on the lounge chair. Unexpectedly, she put her leg over him and sat on his lap, dipping her head and kissing him deeply.
"W—WHAT!?" Ken almost died from shock. He looked around, half expecting Ai to walk in and bust the two of them. Immense guilt gripped his heart and he became panicked.
"Did you hear that noise?" Amelia lifted her head and looked around cautiously.
She stared directly at Ken, however she shook her head in the next moment. "Must have been the wind."
Only after his heart calmed down did he finally understand what was going on. His face turned bitter, "This is an alternate universe isn't it?" he muttered to himself.
He had thought that with the help of sleep protocol he could prevent this from happening, but it seemed that this was not the case. Perhaps every time it had happened before without sleep protocol was a coincidence.
Ken slapped himself in the face, trying to wake himself up. However, he had no hands, nor did he have a face to slap. It was as if he was a spirit, viewing the world through its eyes.
Seeing himself and Amelia being so close made him feel as if he was betraying Ai. He turned and walked back into the house, Ken had no intention of seeing anymore.
His eyes moved to the front door of the house and he got an idea. Making his way forward, he reached out to grab the door handle, but quickly remembered he had no hands.
'If I'm ethereal, maybe I can just walk through the door?' he thought.
And so he did. The moment his body passed through the solid door, his eyes opened.
Ken sat up quickly, his first move to look down at his hands. Thankfully, they were indeed there.
He looked around the room and recognized the hotel he had been at the night before. A quick glance at his phone showed that it was 5am.
Without a word he got off the bed and got ready, shaking off the weird feeling from his dream. It had truly been bizarre to see himself and Amelia as a couple, though he did not doubt it could have been a possibility in another life.
'There's no time to think about such things… I have a job to do.' He thought in his heart.
As he went down the lift, he saw Daichi waiting for him, his expression mirroring his own, filled with determination.