No Matter How Many Times (3)
Pop!
"Nice."
"·····"
At the school's pitching practice facility, I was working with my battery partner, senior Matsuda Masahiro.
Pop!
"Ball."
"Hoo."
It had been a slider aimed at the outside zone, but it ran away on me. Being able to snatch easy counts with off-speed stuff out of nowhere was the only way to climb higher.
Pop!
"Alright, last one—pitch five!"
Matsuda said.
"Haa·····"
Keeping my mind locked in this hard was exhausting. I had to save strength for the actual game, so going full power at a hundred percent was out of the question. Instead I focused on keeping the same form every single time.
It wasn't just throwing, either. Weight training and flexibility work tore my body apart, and I couldn't slack on batting practice either, which only made me more tired.
Pop!
"Velocity's still there. Good."
But.
Pop!
"·····"
Better to push my body to the absolute limit than sit around feeling powerless. That sensation of wanting something desperately and knowing deep down you simply couldn't do it—that feeling of being useless in this world—was the same as dying.
Right now it was hard, but once training ended a strange excitement always rose up.
Fun.
Yeah. That was the exact word.
"Splitter."
"·····"
I poured every last scrap of focus into the final pitch.
Pop!
"Damn."
The diving splitter. Matsuda barely snagged it.
"Still a nightmare to catch."
"Thank you for your hard work."
With that I finished the last pitching session before the West Tokyo final.
"Hm?"
When I stepped outside, everyone was already swinging bats.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
"Hoo·····"
My eyes met those of first-year catcher Yamada Tetsuya.
"Ah, Hongo-senpai."
"You're working hard."
"Yes, well."
This kid.
Yamada hadn't worn the catcher's mask once during these preliminaries and had only stepped into the box as a pinch hitter for a single at-bat. Making the twenty-man roster as a first-year was already impressive, yet he never showed frustration over the limited chances and just kept grinding every day.
"You never know when you'll get an at-bat. And it might be a crucial moment."
"·····Yeah."
I nodded at Yamada's words. You never knew when that moment would come, but if you weren't ready when it did, you couldn't save it.
"Uooooh!"
Whoosh!
"Hoshino! Keep it down a little."
"Sorry!"
"·····"
The other first-year, Hoshino Daisuke. He'd earned a spot on the twenty-man roster for his raw hitting power, but from what I heard he'd only been striking out. Last game he'd come in as a late pinch hitter and swung three times before walking back. That was probably why he was so fired up now.
"Alright, everyone gather up!"
"Yes!"
"Let's go!"
"Come on, Yamada."
"Yes! Hoshino!"
"I got it!"
Hoshino took one last swing before joining us.
"Hmm·····"
The coach's call. Final meeting before the game.
"That's how it is."
"·····"
When Seisho High baseball coach Maeda Katsuyori finished speaking, every player simply nodded without a word.
"Hongo."
"Yes!"
Coach Maeda called Hongo Yukihisa's name. He had just announced that Yukihisa would start tomorrow's West Tokyo preliminary final against Soun High School.
Yukihisa rose with a crisp reply. Coach Maeda stayed silent a moment longer, then opened his mouth again.
"Coming back in a difficult time and becoming a pitcher I can confidently hand the mound to—I'm grateful for that."
"Ah, yes."
Yukihisa's eyes widened for a second before he managed to answer.
"·····"
Cringe as hell.
Any remark that still tied him to the original Hongo Yukihisa's past made the current Yukihisa squirm with secondhand embarrassment. The real him would never have skipped baseball practice for nearly a whole year.
"Without Hongo we never would have made it this far."
"Throwing like that against Naruse isn't something just anyone can do."
Even his teammates piled on. Yukihisa half-wondered if the whole team was trying to kill him with awkward praise. Then again, they could kill him after they reached Koshien for all he cared.
"Alright, everyone head out."
"Understood!"
The meeting ended there. After locking in the starting lineup and going over the expected opposing starter and hitter tendencies, it was finally over.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Once the meeting and individual training menus wrapped up, a few players still kept swinging under the full moon late into the night. At this stage there wasn't really any internal competition left, yet they swung as if refusing to lose to one another.
Whoosh!
"·····"
And Yukihisa was among them.
This time for sure.
The quarterfinals and semifinals had been huge stages, yet he hadn't produced anything at the plate. Tomorrow he would bat sixth again—a spot you simply couldn't ignore. Beyond just doing his job, a raw desire to destroy the opposing pitcher was rising inside him.
I know.
The Seisho baseball players were truly passionate. More than just aiming for college or the pros, the special stage of Japanese high school baseball itself poured endless fuel into them. High school years that would never come again. They had no choice but to throw everything into it.
But.
Yukihisa thought: no matter how badly they wanted it, none of them could possibly want it as desperately as he did.
"Thank you."
"Take care!"
Ding-a-ling!
A convenience store in the middle of the night. I bought a cream cheese roll and a fruit sandwich and stepped back outside. Hunger had hit me out of nowhere and forced me out.
"·····"
I'm not a kid.
Was I actually nervous before an important game? Even so, I skipped anything fried so it wouldn't mess with tomorrow's condition. Every time I came here the fried chicken on display looked tempting, but something about convenience-store oil never felt clean·····
"Hm?"
No one should be calling me at this hour, yet my phone rang.
"Hirose?"
It was Hirose Satsuki.
"Hongo-kun! You're still awake?"
"Ah, yeah, about to sleep."
I didn't bother mentioning I needed snack time. We had exchanged numbers, but beyond the occasional messenger chat we didn't talk that much. So why call this late?
"You've got a big game tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah, uh, that's right."
Hirose bringing up the game herself.
"You're definitely going to win!"
"Uh····· yeah, thanks."
She called just to say that? Kind of her. I guess that was how popular people operated.
"Wanna hang out after the game?"
"Ah·····"
How do I even answer this.
If we won tomorrow we'd get a little free time. Meeting Hirose briefly wasn't impossible. But if we lost? I didn't want to see anyone in that state. Still, that was my personal issue. Using "I'm pissed we lost so don't meet me" as an excuse felt pretty lame.
No, wait—is it?
I thought it over while walking.
"Let's do that."
"Really? Awesome! Where do you wanna go? Ikebukuro? Shibuya? Or maybe Harajuku this time?"
"Ikebukuro sounds good."
"Got it!"
Might as well pick somewhere a little closer and less crowded.
"Seriously, fighting tomorrow!"
"Yeah, fighting."
I ended the call with Hirose.
"Haa."
Exhausting. I felt a little bad for her, but the mental drain was unavoidable.
"·····We're going to win."
Tomorrow we win for sure. I couldn't even allow the assumption of losing. The anxiety inside me had already started calculating whether I'd still meet Hirose after a defeat, but I had to twist that thought by force.
"Hoo."
I picked up my pace toward home.
Hirose.
A girl who appeared out of nowhere. I'd wanted to cut every connection that wasn't baseball-related, yet somehow this girl named Hirose Satsuki had shown up. Especially the type of high-school girl who looked like she loved going out—I'd never planned on hanging around someone like that. But while I was fumbling around, well·····
Friends.
We'd become friends, I guess. Back in Korea I'd had people I could call friends too, but somehow they'd drifted away and disappeared. This time, somehow, one had appeared instead. Was that just how friends worked?
Being with Hirose was honestly fun. The unfamiliar feeling made me tense without realizing it, but after spending time with her and heading home I'd never once felt bad.
But.
I had no intention of getting drunk on a pretty, well-dressed high-school girl. Japanese high school baseball might not be a pure stepping stone to the pros, but for me this stage was a battlefield. Plenty of people had already assigned real value to Japanese baseball, Koshien, and the national championship title. In the end it was a fight of taking and being taken from. Since I'd stepped into this world, I wanted to be the winner.
Soun High.
On TV those guys looked like they played baseball happily, joyfully, almost romantically. Then as Seisho's starting pitcher, I would crush them and keep moving forward.
"Waaaaaaaah!"
"·····"
I was on the mound throwing warm-up pitches. As expected the stands were packed. This wasn't even the national tournament proper—just a preliminary final—and still they could cheer this passionately. Was there any country besides Japan that could do that? When it came to baseball, I believed there wasn't.
"Hongo! Please give it everything!"
"It's been forever since we saw Koshien!"
"Hongo! You're the king of Tokyo!"
"Leading off, right fielder, Kuzaki."
"·····"
Any second now the game would start. The umpire would call play ball, and I would throw.
"Play ball!"
Just looking at the batter lit a fire under the competitive drive that already overflowed inside me.
This isn't good.
I needed to stay calm, yet I couldn't quite manage it. I used my body like a whip and fired toward the mitt.
Pop!
"Strike!"
Pop!
"Strike!"
Dominating the first batter. As a pitcher, almost nothing crushed the opponent's morale quite like this.
Pop!
"Strike three!"
"Waaaaaaaah!"
"Hongo! Let's go!"
"The devil's splitter!"
"Those hitters couldn't touch you even if they were reborn!"
A little more.
Unleashing high-velocity heat, snapping off breaking balls at will, and sending batters back to the dugout on strikeouts. And the roar of the crowd. All of it kept setting me on fire.