Making Waves (2)
“What’s this, Matsuda? A second-year pitcher out here?”
“·····”
“Did I see him last year? I can’t quite remember. But to pull the ace for this…”
“Ball’s coming.”
“Anyway, you guys from the same hometown are something else.”
Top of the sixth, practice game between Seisho High and Taira High.
Iwate Jun, Taira High’s third-year outfielder and number-three hitter, stepped into the batter’s box.
Facing him was Seisho’s battery: second-year pitcher Hongo Yukihisa and third-year catcher Matsuda Masahiro.
Matsuda and Iwate had both come out of the same middle-school baseball club in Sendai, and they’d crossed paths a fair bit back then.
Hmph.
Iwate settled into his stance and eyed the pitcher on the mound.
Practice game or not, with the summer tournament right around the corner, he had no intention of losing.
The score sat at 1–4 in the top of the sixth.
They were down three runs, sure, but looking at Seisho’s soft mound, a comeback felt well within reach.
And it’s not even like they’re taking us lightly.
He’d already been pissed that they hadn’t managed to crack Seisho’s ace, Maejima Genta—who he’d heard was in rough shape—and now they were throwing a second-year at him?
He’d crush this kid’s pitches and wipe that smug look right off their faces.
Bring it.
The tall pitcher wound up.
But to a hitter recognized even in East Tokyo, that meant nothing—
Huh?
The ball came in right at eye level. Iwate’s bat swung on pure instinct.
Whap!
“Strike!”
“Huh?”
What the hell?
A fastball with ridiculous life on it.
It wasn’t even in the zone—high and tight—yet his bat had come out anyway.
The ball had hop at the end, and it carried the kind of raw intimidation you’d expect from a wild animal.
Damn it.
The pitcher’s interval was short.
No time to think before the next one was already on its way.
Whap!
“Strike!”
Another fastball.
It painted the outside corner, and Iwate swung through empty air again.
Whap!
Third pitch.
This time Iwate’s bat stayed on his shoulder.
“Strikeout!”
“·····”
It had been a fastball on the hands.
The umpire called it in the zone.
No way.
Iwate stood there, dumbfounded, and could only turn silently toward the catcher he’d spoken to earlier—Matsuda.
“Ball’s got some heat, huh? Tough to hit?”
Taira High’s cleanup hitter, Toya Masashi, asked from the on-deck circle.
“From the box it looks even better. And…”
“Yeah?”
“Ah, never mind.”
Iwate didn’t want to throw out some half-baked comment that would just mess with their approach.
That rising sensation on the fastball.
No point planting ideas that could screw with a hitter’s plan.
“That last fastball?”
“One-forty-eight.”
“Solid velocity for a second-year, sure, but Iwate Jun just walked back without even putting a bat on it?”
“Maybe a fluke?”
“Iwate’s strong against heat. And he’s not the type who strikes out easy.”
“True enough…”
Sports Kagawa reporter Sekiya Kenji rubbed his eyes and tried to refocus on the game he was watching with his junior.
He’d gotten a strange feeling the moment Hongo Yukihisa first took the mound. But to punch out the first batter—and East Tokyo power hitter Iwate Jun at that—on three pitches?
“Wonder how he’ll look against Toya Masashi.”
Among the hitters set to play in the East Tokyo Koshien prelims, Taira’s cleanup first baseman Toya Masashi led the pack in high-school home runs.
Could Hongo show the same stuff against him?
Whap!
“No!”
A high fastball. Whiff.
Toya’s bat never came close.
“One-fifty.”
“·····”
Hongo had been throwing one-fifty since his first year.
The velocity itself wasn’t shocking.
But still.
That smooth, rock-solid delivery that looked like a pro’s, plus the raw power behind it.
The way he’d painted both edges of the zone at will against the previous hitter and toyed with him—that command.
Whap!
“Strike!”
“One-fifty-one! Senior, this is something else.”
A second-year touching one-fifty-one was impressive enough, yet it made you look past the radar gun for everything else.
What on earth was going on here?
Command, plus the kind of stuff that made two of the best hitters in the Koshien race swing at air.
Hongo’s fastball was on another level.
And then—
Just as Sekiya was turning something over in his mind—
Whap!
“No!”
A pitch that looked like it dropped straight out of the sky. The batter’s bat cut nothing but air.
Even at a glance, the distance between bat and ball was huge.
The splitter Hongo had thrown almost casually when he first appeared.
That was it.
And it looked nothing like the reports they’d had.
“Strikeout!”
The umpire punched him out.
Sekiya swallowed hard at the sheer dominance.
“That pitch was insane.”
“Yeah. If he can throw that fastball and splitter whenever he wants, can any of the West Tokyo hitters even touch him?”
A fastball with serious life, a splitter with a huge drop.
Only six pitches, and the sharpness—the killing power—was already clear.
“Woooooo Hongo!”
“Back-to-back Ks against Taira’s cleanup!”
“Why’d you only come back now!”
“Did he go study baseball in America or something?”
The Seisho alumni watching from the side went wild.
“Getting pretty loud over there.”
“They’ve got reason.”
Last summer’s 2024 Koshien prelims.
Seisho had been rated as finally having their year thanks to a stacked lineup, but their weakness had always been the mound. In the end, the lack of a true ace had sunk them.
Even in NPB, where six-man rotations are the norm, the value of an ace is sky-high.
So in Japanese high-school baseball—where one pitcher can carry an entire tournament—an ace was something beyond ordinary importance.
And yet.
The destructive stuff Hongo was throwing right now.
It was enough to let Seisho’s fans feel the first real glimpse of the ace they’d been waiting for.
Whap!
“Strike!”
“Huuuh…”
Taira High’s number-five hitter, third-year Suzuki Fumito, let out a sigh after taking the first pitch.
He’d planned to watch it. Instead a fastball jammed him on the hands and stole strike one.
“·····”
Hongo.
Catcher Matsuda Masahiro flipped the ball back to the pitcher whose pitches he’d been receiving.
He’d been working with Yukihisa ever since the kid joined the first team recently.
Yukihisa was the low-maintenance type.
He owned his mistakes right away and stayed aggressive.
I still don’t know what the hell happened to him.
Even the Yukihisa who’d been around until last summer hadn’t exactly been a model of diligence. He’d mostly just grumbled his way through Seisho’s brutal training and barely kept up.
Masahiro had been the starting catcher since his first year, and he’d kept an eye on the underclassman because the kid had real promise.
Then came the derailment that disappointed everyone.
And now he’d come back completely different.
He threw himself into every team session, and his individual work was even more intense.
Systematic weight training, plus flexibility work that left the rest of the roster staring at what his body could do.
The current Yukihisa was a walking example even for the first-team guys.
Whap!
“Strike!”
“Tch.”
This time a diving splitter.
Suzuki’s bat spun through empty air.
“·····”
0-2 count.
Overwhelming advantage for the pitcher.
Masahiro set his mitt on the outer edge against the right-handed batter.
The sign he flashed was for a slider.
Let’s see it.
Masahiro thought back to the second day he’d started catching for Yukihisa.
In the last red-white game, Yukihisa had hung a slider right down the middle and nearly given up a homer to him.
He’d been so pissed about it that in bullpen work he’d fired more than thirty sliders in a row into Masahiro’s mitt.
That brilliant outing that had earned him the first-team call-up.
Yet instead of getting cocky, Yukihisa had obsessed over that one mistake pitch.
Masahiro watched the batter choke up on the bat.
But Yukihisa was already into a powerful windup.
That fluid delivery cracked like a whip, and the ball broke hard.
Whap!
“Strikeout!”
“·····”
Nice pitch.
A slider that bit perfectly off the outer edge.
“One-thirty-one! That break just now—”
“He’s got a slider too?”
Sekiya listened to his junior call out the gun reading.
The velocity barely registered; it was the vicious angle that sent a shiver through him.
Fastball, splitter, slider—and maybe more still in the bag? No need to look any further.
A high-velocity heater that painted every corner of the zone, a splitter that fell off the table, a slider that snapped hard away.
At this level…
He wasn’t just promising. He was already close to finished product.
Hoping for more evolution from here almost felt greedy—and he was still only a second-year?
“Another K!”
“Three in a row!”
“Nine pitches, three strikeouts against Taira’s three-four-five.”
“Taira’s cleanup is national-level.”
“Is this real?”
The stands were in an uproar.
Yet the pitcher himself, Hongo Yukihisa, simply walked off the mound with the calm of someone above it all.
“·····”
Sekiya Kenji, there on assignment, lifted his notebook.
And the game rolled on.
Before long it was the top of the ninth.
“Hongo!”
“Hang in there!”
“One more batter!”
The score: Taira 1, Seisho 6.
Still holding the Seisho mound was none other than Hongo Yukihisa.
Gulp.
“·····”
Sekiya Kenji watched with trembling hands.
He wasn’t particularly a Seisho fan. Yet right now, somehow, he found himself rooting for the pitcher on the mound.
That image of an ace dominating hitters from the hill—no Japanese baseball fan could help but revere it.
Whap!
“Woooooo!”
“S-Senior!”
Hongo’s blazing high fastball.
Sekiya clenched his fist without realizing it.
Four innings, forty-six pitches, one hit, no walks, ten strikeouts, zero runs.
That was Hongo Yukihisa’s line for the day.
“Huh?”
“Just like I heard, Hongo-kun.”
The day after the shutout outing.
I found myself hearing something unexpected from third-year manager Fukada Riko.
“Two o’clock, though? Even so.”
“That’s already the compromise because we figured you wouldn’t listen. It’s the set rule, and it’s what the manager and coaches decided, so complaining to me won’t change anything.”
“·····”
I’d thrown close to fifty pitches in a real game yesterday, so they were telling me to head home early today.
Sundays were weight-room rest days, sure, but there was still more I could be doing.
“You know rest is part of a pitcher’s job, right?”
“·····Yes.”
“While you’re at it, go grab something good to eat, hit the shopping district, or maybe a date?”
“As if.”
I shot back at Fukada-senpai’s teasing and turned away.
She wasn’t wrong about needing proper rest. Injuries aside, overworking the shoulder meant I couldn’t give bullpen sessions a hundred percent either.
Well, damn.
Back in Korea I’d lived in a dorm, so being alone had felt normal. Suddenly being told to go home by myself left me unsure what to do with the free time.
“Hmm…”
I scratched my head.
Maybe I’d swing by a baseball shop later.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
The rumble of a train passed by.
Nerima Ward, where Seisho High sat in Tokyo, was pretty quiet by Tokyo standards.
So if you wanted the real downtown, you usually headed to the nearest hub—Ikebukuro—or pushed farther to Shinjuku and the like.
“·····”
I made it as far as Nerima Station before deciding to just turn around.
Wandering with no clear purpose never sat right with me.
Having wasted the time for nothing, I trudged back toward home.
“Hm?”
I hadn’t taken more than a few steps when something snagged my eye.
A cat?
A calico was licking itself clean.
Guess Japan really did have a lot of strays.
But still.
Unlike the usual alley cats I’d seen, this one was small. Not quite a kitten, but smaller than you usually saw. Rare to spot one like that.
“Awwww, so cute!”
“Huh?”
The sudden voice right beside me nearly made me jump.
“·····”
I turned.
A blonde girl in a white skirt had appeared.
“Is it a baby? Where’s its mom?”
She was smiling to herself and snapping photos.
“Ah?”
“Hm?”
“·····”
I’d let out an “ah” without thinking, and she registered I was there.
But this girl… I felt like I’d seen her somewhere before…