The first-string players of Seido had walked into the intra-squad game carrying damage they had not fully recognized, and the third-year seniors showed them the shape of it immediately.
Chris had been back for less than an hour and was already reading them more clearly than they were reading themselves.
Kuramochi went down first. Then Kominato. Both handled efficiently, without drama.
Zhang Han came up third with the weight of everyone's expectations and his own confidence in his understanding of Hidezawa's pitching. That confidence was not misplaced in theory. He and Hidezawa had been genuine teammates — close ones. Zhang Han knew the pitching characteristics. He had faced Hidezawa in practice countless times and carried a real read of what Hidezawa's decisive pitch looked like when it was coming.
What he had not accounted for was Chris.
The pitch selection never gave Zhang Han what he was looking for. Each delivery went to the locations he was least comfortable with, forcing him into reactive, defensive swings. He managed to foul several pitches off and keep the at-bat alive, but he could not get the ball in front of his body. The at-bat had no shape — just him scrambling to handle pitches he had not prepared for in locations he did not want.
Then an easy pitch appeared. Clean, hittable, sitting where he could reach it.
Zhang Han swung immediately.
The ball carried to the outfield and came down in a glove. He saw whose glove it was before he fully processed what had happened.
Kou Shunmin. His former roommate.
The picture assembled itself at once. The sequence of uncomfortable pitches had not been a coincidence or a test of control. It had been construction. Chris had built toward a specific conclusion, guiding Zhang Han through a series of frustrating near-misses until the moment when something easy appeared felt like relief rather than suspicion. By the time Zhang Han recognized the trap, he was already standing at the plate having jumped into it.
He had never genuinely understood before how strong these seniors were. Not in the abstract sense of knowing their records and their reputation — in the real sense of standing across from them with a bat in his hand and finding out.
Three up, three down. Sides changed.
Now the third-year seniors would bat, with the first-string's main players on defense.
Kataoka sent Tanba to the mound to start.
Tanba had shown problems in the Inashiro game, and those problems had not disappeared in the days since. His fastball had lost some of its pop, and his control had developed inconsistencies that did not belong to his better self. And yet he still wore the number one uniform. Kataoka and the coaching staff had not moved from their position on that. Whatever Kawakami and Zhang Han had shown, Tanba remained the ace candidate they were most invested in. This game was a chance for him to demonstrate what he could do.
Tanba was aware of what this opportunity meant and approached the mound with the specific motivation of someone who intended to prove something.
He did not get far before the lesson arrived.
Captain Tanaka, batting first for the seniors, dropped a bunt and reached base without incident. Clean execution, exactly the kind of high-percentage play that a veteran player ran without needing to think about it. The third-year seniors watching from the side erupted into fist pumps. Tanaka had done exactly what they had expected, and watching it happen in real time was still satisfying.
Hidezawa followed with a single.
No outs. Runners on first and third.
Behind the plate, Miyuki's expression had shifted. On the mound, Tanba wore something similar. They had both known intellectually that the seniors would be strong. Knowing it and watching Tanba's good stuff get hit cleanly were two separate experiences, and the distance between them was uncomfortable.
Yamada, the third batter, bunted. Miyuki had anticipated it and Seido's response was prompt — but a half-beat short of what it needed to be. Tanaka scored from third.
The seniors led 1-0.
In the stands, Takashima Rei watched with her arms folded and a slight smile that was more amused than unkind.
"They're teaching the juniors hand-in-hand," she said. "Step by step. How to attack."
Manager Ota nodded along beside her, having arrived at the same observation through different words.
Coach Kataoka said nothing. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it there.
One out. Runner on second base.
Azuma Kiyokuni stepped in.
"Don't throw anything soft at me, brat. If you do, I'll blast it out of the park."
The remark landed the way Azuma's remarks usually did — carrying enough truth to be irritating and enough affection to prevent the irritation from fully forming into anger. His teammates knew him. They had long since made their peace with how he communicated.
Tanba had less peace with it than most.
He had a temper, and being lectured at while standing on the mound with something to prove was not a combination that produced patience. He pushed aside his high-breaking curveball — his specialty, the pitch he had spent months developing — and threw a fastball. A direct answer to a direct provocation.
Azuma Kiyokuni looked at it coming in and snorted.
"Tender like a little chick."
He swung.
"Boom."
The sound was different from the sounds baseballs made when they were merely hit well. The white ball climbed and kept climbing, departing the field with the unhurried certainty of something that had decided to go far and encountered nothing along the way to change its mind.
Two-run home run.
The scoreboard moved to 3-0.
Azuma Kiyokuni rounded the bases and delivered his verdict as he came through.
"The team that made the Top 8 at Koshien was us. Not you. You're still far from it."
He said it without cruelty. He said it because it was true, and he meant for it to be heard.
At first base, Yuuki had been absorbing it all. The strikeouts in the first inning, the seniors moving through Tanba like a demonstration, the home run, the number on the scoreboard. All of it sitting on top of everything that had been sitting there since the Inashiro loss.
Something inside him found the limit of what it was going to absorb quietly.
He let it out.
"Ah!!!!"
The sound he produced was not shaped into words. It did not need to be. It cut through everything in the vicinity with the clarity of a single, uncomplicated statement — that he was done being still about this, that the weight had been carried long enough in silence, that there was a different way to respond to being behind.
His teammates felt it move through them.
The things Azuma had said were not wrong. The team that had reached the national Top 8 had been built by the seniors. The current first-string was new. They had good players, real talent, a real foundation. But they were just setting out, and they had been treating a loss like it was a verdict on everything they were, rather than information about where they still needed to go.
Zhang Han felt the shift in himself at the same moment.
His own response to the Inashiro loss had been too much. He had let one game freeze something in him that should have been moving. That was immature. He could see it plainly now.
This cannot continue.
Yuuki's voice had done what Azuma's words and Tanaka's patience had not quite managed — it had returned the team to themselves.
In the second inning, Yuuki got a hit first. Isashiki Jun followed with back-to-back hits. Miyuki added a single. Two runs came in before the inning was done.
3-2.
They were still behind. The seniors were still stronger than them in too many ways to pretend otherwise. But something about the scoreboard now felt different from what it had felt like ninety minutes ago.
The current Seido first-string had real gaps. Tanba's condition, Kawakami's shadow, the ceiling questions that had not yet been answered. But underneath all of that was a foundation that was actually there — something solid enough to build from.
They just had to be willing to start building.
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