Badminton is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Some people consider it to be the second most popular sport in the world to participate in, only behind the sporting giant, soccer. It is an extremely fast-paced game that puts every single part of the human body to the test. Some badminton professionals retire in their mid-thirties as it puts strain on their bodies.
The rules are very simple. It operates a lot like tennis, with rackets, a net and a court. However, there are a few differences with each of these. Firstly, the rackets are a bit longer at the metal shaft, with a skinner head and stringed area. The net is not touching the ground, as it is roughly five feet high, and only starts from about halfway up vertically, but you are not allowed to hit the shuttlecock underneath the net. The shuttlecock replaces the tennis ball in this case, and it is a plastic shuttle with a ball top and coming out from that is a plastic white cone with feathers on the end for flight. The court is also smaller, being forty-four feet long and seventeen feet wide (twenty feet wide for doubles).
How do you win? The whole badminton match is set up between three games, in the best of three scenario. The first team to win two games wins the entire match. You win a game by scoring twenty-one points faster than your opponent, but just like in tennis, you must win by at least two points for the game to end, so this number can go higher. The shuttlecock can't bounce back up like a tennis ball. Once it hits the ground, that's it.
No second chances.
There are five different formats for badminton. Men's singles. Women's singles. Men's doubles. Women's doubles. Mixed doubles. All five formats are very competitive, and each match is harder than the last one to win.
The ranking system is very important too, as it decides who gets to play in the Badminton World Tour Finals in December. Players consistently play in other Opens and competitions all year round, and the more games and Opens they win, the more their ranking goes up. Only the best eight players from each format get to play in each, with the last person or team standing becoming the Champion for that year. So even the eighth best player in the world can still be crowned the Champion of badminton.
Japan is one of the best teams in the world when it comes to badminton. As of writing this novel, they have won each format of the Badminton World Tour Finals once, minus mixed doubles, since its creation in 2018. However, more teams constantly charge in for the title of the best nation in Badminton. It is extremely hard to say what national team is the best, as there is no real 'team'. Just players fighting for their lives on the court.
The only way a team could be crowned the best in the world was if they completely dominated the Badminton World Tour Finals. As in, they won every single format in just one year.
And that's exactly what Japan was trying to do.
Ten men in walked in the front door of the building of the Japan Badminton Organization. They all looked very serious, as if they were heading to a crowded funeral of a lost loved one. Their black suits suited the vibe perfectly. All the men were on the older side, with the youngest man being in his late forties, and the oldest being just over seventy.
They turned in unison down the long winding corridors, like soldiers marching into battle. They had completed these turns hundreds if not thousands of times together. As the leading directors of the organization, they had gotten to know each other very well. They even considered themselves friends to one another. Unfortunately, the formalities stopped as soon as they entered the building
One man looked around the corridor that they were currently walking down at a brisk pace. Every single one of them looked identical. The walls looked so bleak and bland, with the color being a brownish red from knee height down, and an awful looking beige above that line. It was so easy to get lost in the building. He had gotten lost quite a few times before he was elected as a director. Now, that he was in the building a lot more often, he never seemed to get lost anymore. Every mundane corridor just leads to another mundane room. It felt almost tedious traversing the long straight corridors.
The ten men finally got into the main meeting room, in the heart of the building. The air was musty, and it was incredibly hard to breathe.
The man in front of the group switched on a lever, and the lights flickered on slowly. Nine of the men behind him got to their seats without delay, with five of the men settling for chairs on the left, and the other four took the seats on the right. The table in the middle of the chairs was a long-elongated oval, and it was quite old, as some loose wood chippings had gathered on the table where somebody picked at it, presumably due to boredom. The last man walked around the table and up to the very end, where the last chair faced the door. It was in the middle, not on either side of the table.
The man sat down and sighed. The chair creaked as he leaned back in it. Despite being cushioned, none of the chairs were comfortable at all. And he had to sit in that chair every single meeting, as well as his colleagues in the other old chairs. It wasn't easy being the President of the Japan Badminton Organization, but finally, after years, he felt like he had a breakthrough. He put his elbows on the desk, and held his head on his knuckles, before speaking to his associates.
"My friends," he began. "The badminton world keeps growing. The players from each country just keep getting better and better. At first, our only rivals were China. However, now countries like India, Indonesia and South Korea are catching up, if not surpassing us. Even Europe is progressing, with Denmark, Spain and France having their own decent players. Japan needs to stand out."
The nine other men nodded in agreement, with one man on the fourth seat on the right (second last from this side of the table) nodding more enthusiastically than the others. The President decided to continue his statement.
"What sport is Japan best at? We could say baseball or sumo-wrestling, but these sports are very niche compared to giants like soccer, golf, basketball and badminton. We are so close to being at the top of the badminton food chain. We just need a little…push. Which is why Initiative Ninety-Nine was created. Mr. Kozuka? I will give you the honors."
The excited man from before stood up slowly and looked around at his colleagues. Finally, his idea had come to full fruition. It had taken five long years, but it was finally developed. Satoshi Kozuka worked for the company for years. He was in his late fifties, with white wispy hair coming out of his nearly bald head. His black suit was elegant and well-tailored, not a speck of dust or a single stain on it. He took pride in his appearance, even though he was just slightly overweight due to a lack of exercise. There wasn't much time to get exercise where he worked. It would also explain why he was very pale, and he looked older than he actually was.
"Thank you, Mr. Maeda," he replied. Although the men were friends outside of work, they always stayed professional in the workplace and treated each other with respect and addressed each other with proper titles. "For the past five years, we have all agreed that the Initiative Ninety-Nine was the way to go."
As Satoshi was speaking, he put a heavy, black briefcase on the table. He popped open the clasps on the sides and opened the lid. Inside the briefcase there were ten identical microchips, surrounded by soft, black foam to keep them secure. They looked very similar to an SD card in a phone, while having the color scheme of a motherboard in a computer. The director gave a smile to his colleagues, who smiled back at him with corporate greed. They had been told about this Initiative Ninety-Nine before, so they were well versed in how the system worked.
"There was ten of these made. One for each of us. We get to choose only one young talent each, so choose wisely. Don't choose a player that is valuable or actually successful, then their sudden rise to the top seems suspicious. Pick a random badminton player from high school. That way, they can't track their previous achievements, and they can just assume that they were a prodigy in school."
"Good thinking, Mr. Kozuka," the President smirked. "This might have been your first good idea, well, ever," he laughed, breaking the professionalism for a moment. The ten men laughed in unison. This idea was going to make Japan the greatest nation to play badminton ever.
And pull them in a massive profit.