Miyuki looked at Zhang Han, and sothing shifted in his expression that hadn't been there before.
Zhang Han probably hadn't noticed it himself. But the person standing in front of Miyuki now was aningfully different from the one who had arrived at Seido not so long ago. The change wasn't in his ability or his work ethic. It was in sothing harder to na, sothing that lived in the way he talked about the team and what he wanted from baseball.
Before, Zhang Han's feelings toward Seido had been rooted in gratitude. He had been given an opportunity and he intended to honor it. Baseball itself had been sothing he loved the way a person loves a pursuit that fits them well, a serious hobby, one that had opened an unlikely door for him, but a hobby nonetheless. The idea of building a life from it had probably never crossed his mind in any serious way.
But that framing was gone now. He no longer spoke about Seido as sothing he owed a debt to. He spoke about it the way soone speaks about where they belong.
"Are you thinking about playing professionally?"
Miyuki asked it directly, without buildup.
Zhang Han didn't answer imdiately. A beat passed, then another. He turned the question over.
"I don't know. That's a problem for after graduation. Right now, I just want to practice hard and dominate the nation with the team."
Miyuki's mouth curved upward.
The goal itself had expanded without Zhang Han seeming to notice. It had stopped being about reaching Koshien and beco about reaching the very top of the country. The ambition had quietly outgrown its original container.
What a team they were becoming.
"That path isn't a smooth one."
"That's why you hack through the thorns and keep moving forward."
Miyuki gave a genuine thumbs up.
"How is the pitching practice coming along?"
"A bit faster than my right hand was at the sa stage. I can mostly hit the strike zone now."
"What about your form? Has it been corrected?"
"From the beginning. I started with the most standard form possible."
"Want to try catching for you?"
"I'd genuinely like that."
They changed into their gear without any further discussion and got to work.
"Thwack!"
"Strike!"
"Strike!!"
"Strike!!"
Three consecutive pitches, all landing in the zone. Miyuki caught each one cleanly and said nothing for a mont, simply processing what he was feeling through his mitt.
The stiffness in Zhang Han's delivery was obvious. He wasn't used to leading with his left hand, and the unfamiliarity showed in how he carried the motion, like soone walking a familiar route in the wrong shoes. The power wasn't fully releasing.
And even so, the ball speed had already passed Tanba and Hidezawa.
No wonder Coach Kataoka and the coaching staff had been so deliberate about developing this. The talent sitting in that left arm was not sothing you ca across often.
"Once you fully adapt, your ball speed should reach around 150 kiloters. Whether it climbs further than that depends on your talent. But even 150 on its own is a serious weapon."
Zhang Han wasn't afraid of competition for the mound, and now Miyuki understood exactly why. With velocity like this waiting on the other side of adaptation, there was no reason to be afraid of anything.
"It still feels awkward."
Zhang Han, characteristically, was not satisfied.
The coaching staff's analysis had concluded that he was a natural left-hander by disposition, but his family had redirected him toward his right hand from an early age. His left hand had spent years playing a supporting role, rarely asked to do anything that required its full capacity. Now, suddenly being required to build his entire pitching identity around it created a disconnect that no amount of effort could shortcut. The body had its own tiline for unlearning.
"There's no quick fix for that. You'll just have to let yourself get used to it gradually."
Miyuki said it without pretending otherwise. Adjusting for feel wasn't sothing that responded to instruction. It simply required ti and repetition, and there was no way around it.
They continued, the sound of the ball eting the mitt settling into a steady rhythm.
Neither of them noticed the figure standing at the entrance to the indoor facility until Zhang Han had thrown several more pitches. Lean, tall, quiet. Standing just inside the doorway, watching.
"Tanba-senpai?"
Tanba Kouichiro looked at Zhang Han with an expression that carried the full weight of whatever he had co to say.
"I will not give the Ace to you."
He said it with complete seriousness, then turned and walked out without waiting for a response.
The silence he left behind lasted a few seconds.
Zhang Han stood holding his glove with a mildly helpless expression. Miyuki, in contrast, looked thoroughly entertained.
"You've just been directly challenged by the senpai with the strongest claim to the Ace position. Brief comnt, if you don't mind. How does it feel?"
Zhang Han gave a wry smile.
He hadn't gone looking for this. It had found him anyway.
"As for the challenge, I accept."
Senpai or not, backing down wasn't sothing he was built for.
Miyuki's smile widened.
Before Sawamura had left the school grounds that afternoon, he and Zhang Han had exchanged contact information. That evening, Sawamura sent nothing. No ssage to Zhang Han, no ssage to Takashima Rei.
By the following day, Takashima Rei's confidence had developed a small but noticeable crack in it.
She had intercepted recruits before, players that other schools had been building toward, and she had done it cleanly and without apology. Having played that ga herself, she knew it could be played against her too. She had tid the visit carefully, using a car for the entire journey so that no one outside the school would have seen Sawamura arrive. There should be no trail to follow. No one else should even know he had been here.
And in Nagano Prefecture, Sawamura's options had quietly narrowed. The incident from the sumr tournant, the slap that had derailed his recruitnt prospects with several schools in the area, had left him with very few doors still open. Outside of Seido, his realistic path was a standard public school enrollnt with no baseball scholarship attached.
There should be no surprises.
Sawamura was probably working through the fixed-form pitching adjustnt right now. Progress on sothing like that took weeks, not days. Results would co slowly. She needed to be patient and let the process run.
Stay calm.
She settled on that and held it.
What she didn't know was that the boy on the train back to Nagano was not practicing anything. He was sitting with his head resting against the window, watching the landscape change, caught sowhere between the world he had co from and the one he had just been shown.
The day kept replaying itself in fragnts. The catch. The swing. The broad-shouldered senior who had so much hidden power beneath the surface. And the three of them, Miyuki crouched behind the plate, Zhang Han stepping into the box with that quiet certainty, and that senior whose reputation turned out to dwarf everything Sawamura had ever imagined about high school baseball.
The savior of the Seido High School Baseball Team. The Koshien super rookie. The current top high school slugger in the nation.
He had stood on a mound and pitched against all of them in a single afternoon.
That was the kind of thing he used to dream about.
The decision, if he was being truthful with himself, had already been made. He had known it sowhere in the back of his mind for most of the train ride. He was ambitious. He always had been, even when ambition looked a little like stubbornness from the outside. Playing baseball in the countryside his entire life was not sothing he could honestly accept. If baseball stayed a hobby because he never pushed it further, that was one version of a life. It wasn't his version.
He wanted more than that.
He wanted Tokyo.
But every ti that thought settled, sothing else rose up alongside it. The faces of his friends from Akagi. The mory of dragging them into baseball in the first place, of promising them, loudly and repeatedly and with complete sincerity, that he would take them all to Koshien together.
He had said those things. He had ant them.
How did a person go back on sothing like that? How could he beco a traitor?
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