Teaching Sawamura a single adjustment took Zhang Han over an hour.
By the time the tour wrapped up and they rejoined Takashima Rei, something about her had shifted noticeably. The warmth and eagerness she had carried throughout the day, the barely contained desire to see Sawamura commit to Seido, had quietly stepped back. When the time came to say goodbye, she didn't bring up the invitation at all. Instead, she talked about Azuma Kiyokuni.
"Thank you so much."
She said it with complete sincerity.
Sawamura blinked. "For what?"
He was genuinely puzzled. He had come to Seido, been thoroughly beaten on the mound, and had his entire understanding of baseball's competitive landscape turned upside down. If anyone had cause to be grateful, it was him. The idea that Takashima Rei was thanking him didn't fit any version of the afternoon he had been living.
"Ever since Koshien ended, Azuma's mindset has taken a real hit. Several professional baseball teams have also reached out to him privately, and somewhere in all of that, he started overestimating both his ceiling and where he currently stands. The Director and I have been worried that if he enters the professional draft carrying this attitude, he's going to struggle badly once he gets there." She paused. "Today's match was good for him. I think it can help him find his way back to the humility he used to have."
The relief in her voice was genuine.
It hadn't been difficult to understand how Azuma Kiyokuni had ended up where he was. He had gone from relative obscurity to being recognized as the strongest high school slugger in the country over a remarkably short stretch of time. That kind of shift in a person's life was bound to leave some turbulence. Under ordinary circumstances, a bit of inflated confidence would sort itself out with time and experience. But Azuma wasn't operating under ordinary circumstances. The professional draft was approaching, and walking into that process with a distorted sense of his own position could do lasting damage to the career that followed.
What had happened today on the field might have been exactly what he needed.
Sawamura seemed to want to say something, then thought better of it.
Takashima Rei let the silence settle for a moment before speaking again, and when she did, her tone had changed from the warmth of earlier in the day into something more measured and direct.
"Tokyo is different from Nagano. Even a player who gives everything they have doesn't always get the results they deserve here. We made it to Koshien this year, and several of our players had strong performances. But before that, we went several years without getting there at all. That's Tokyo. That's what this environment actually looks like." She held his gaze steadily. "If you can accept that reality, and you still want to take on the challenge, then you are welcome here whenever you're ready."
The approach had turned around completely.
This was deliberate, and Zhang Han worked it out within a few minutes of watching it unfold. A young man built the way Sawamura was built didn't respond well to being pulled. The more eagerly you tried to draw him toward something, the more instinctively he resisted it. He was the kind of person who dug in when led and stepped back when pushed. In that situation, enthusiasm was a liability. Stepping back and leaving the door open without standing in it was a far more effective strategy.
Takashima Rei had figured this out while Zhang Han was walking Sawamura through the facility.
"The decision is entirely yours. You have my number. Whenever you've made up your mind, call me, and I'll take care of everything from there."
Sawamura boarded the train alone and headed back toward the mountains, carrying an afternoon that had left marks on him he hadn't expected and couldn't quite name yet.
Zhang Han watched the train disappear and then turned back to Takashima Rei.
"You play a deep game."
Takashima Rei didn't deny it.
It had taken him a few minutes, but he had gotten there. Sawamura's stubbornness wasn't the ordinary kind. He didn't budge when coaxed and he pulled away when pressured. Against that personality, reversing the dynamic and making him the one holding the decision was the only approach with a real chance of working.
"How did your conversation with him go?"
"As you asked. The bait is in the water. As long as he works on what I showed him, his pitching speed will improve. That much is guaranteed."
It was, in its way, the first chapter of a manual handed to someone without telling them there were more chapters to come. Once Sawamura practiced the adjustment and felt his own improvement clearly, the natural question would be what else he wasn't yet being taught. The pull of that question would do the rest of the work.
"Isn't it a little underhanded, though? He's just a middle schooler."
"Underhanded?" Takashima Rei looked genuinely offended by the framing. "Sawamura has never had proper coaching. He hasn't read a single professional baseball resource. His pitching developed entirely on its own, with no structure and no guidance. We are doing him a genuine service."
She said this with the calm confidence of someone who had already resolved any internal debate on the matter.
Zhang Han conceded the point. He considered himself reasonably thick-skinned when it came to bending logic in his favor, but he could not match the particular ease with which Takashima Rei reframed something to her advantage and made the reframing feel entirely reasonable.
"Wild growth has its strengths, though. A small adjustment in the right place and his improvement will be significant."
Once Sawamura felt that improvement with his own hands, pulling away from Seido would become considerably harder. In about half a year, it seemed, a very interesting junior would be joining the team.
"I'm heading back to practice."
His part in the day's arrangements was done, and Zhang Han had no particular interest in staying to watch Takashima Rei feel pleased with herself. He turned and headed back toward the indoor facility.
Miyuki fell into step beside him.
"If I'm reading this correctly, you just taught that kid to pitch with a fixed form, didn't you?"
Zhang Han held up a thumb without breaking stride.
"You read it exactly right."
Miyuki was quiet for a moment, working through the implications.
"You realize he's very likely joining the team next year. If he develops quickly, he could be on the First-string by next summer."
"Good. The team needs pitchers."
Zhang Han said it in the tone of someone stating something self-evident.
Miyuki looked at him.
"You are also developing your pitching right now. The Director and the coaching staff have real expectations for you. They're not planning on having you on the mound for the Autumn Tournament, but by the Spring and Summer Tournaments next year, that's the target they've set. You just spent an hour helping a future rival build a stronger foundation."
It was a strange thing to do, even for someone with a generous outlook. Helping a teammate was one thing. Actively sharpening the competition for your own position was another.
"So what?"
Zhang Han's expression didn't shift.
"If my left hand has real pitching talent, I won't be threatened by anyone's challenge. If it doesn't, then I focus on batting and fielding and I make my contribution that way. Either outcome is fine. What I can't do is put my own opportunities ahead of what's good for the team."
There was nothing performative in how he said it. It was simply how he thought about it.
Most people valued the collective in the way that a shared social framework demanded, because it was the environment they had grown up inside and stepping outside it carried costs. The principle was genuine enough, but the practice was often shaped more by what was expected than by what was personally chosen.
Zhang Han was different in a way that was hard to fully articulate. His orientation toward the team wasn't something he maintained because the structure around him required it. It came from somewhere more internal, from the kind of upbringing and tradition that didn't need to announce itself. Most people he knew would lean toward the collective when forced to choose, while still doing what they could to protect their own position first. That was normal and understandable.
He simply leaned the other way, a little more naturally, a little more voluntarily.
"I'm not afraid of challenges. If I'm being honest, I actively like them. The day I stop feeling that way is the day my love for baseball has gone cold."
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