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6.
“So this is it,” Tanba says, hands slung in his pockets, half-slouching like he did when he was a first-year. The way he gestures toward Ryousuke, however, is new, arm fully extended and not folded in for fear of elbowing someone in the neck with his impressive reach. “That’s it, that’s the end.”
Tanba’s changed, outwardly and inwardly, and Ryousuke’s hard-pressed to find a word for it--not hardened, though his cheekbones have certainly hollowed out, but clearer, like he’s starting to see something in himself that may or may not have been there all along.
What matters is that whatever-it-is is there now.
“It’s only the end if you want it to be,” Ryousuke quips, lifting a hand as Jun and Tetsu round the corner, dusting sakura petals from their shoulders. Jun appears slightly rumpled, but Ryousuke chalks that up to Jun’s inability to remain still during the long farewell speeches delivered by faculty and valedictorians.
“Fuck this uniform, I’m sweating out of my armpits,” Jun greets them, tugging his collar loose and unbuttoning his blazer.
“Baseball weather,” Tetsu says calmly, and plucks an extra flower out of Jun’s hair.
Chris’s voice materializes near Tanba’s left. “It seems fitting for it to be today, of all days.”
“The kinda spring day that feels like it could be forever, yeah,” Jun says, somewhat wistful. “Yeah, you’re right.”
The sun is high in the sky, and Ryousuke feels like he’s seen this scene before, kids clustered around a chain-link fence, summer in their blood and sunshine on their skin. The Captain will make his final speech, and the Vice-Captain will cry, as he tends to do, and they’ll close in for a final dogpile of a hug. Ryousuke will look at Tanba across the huddle, and then at Masuko, and then at everyone else, and in their faces will be the same fierce, radiant love for the field, love for the game, for the three years dividing then from now, that chasm of time into which they poured their best efforts and still came up one out short.
“Come back often, Ryou-san,” Kuramochi had said the night before, watching Ryousuke box the rest of his things with packing tape. “We’re gonna miss you, man.”
Behind their backs and to their faces, the upperclassmen had called them “the lean year.” In a recent sports article, “yet another season of drought.”
“Who are we?” Tetsu rasps, throat closing around the words.
There’s that split-second after the call, that moment before the response in which everyone inhales, breathes deep, muscles tensing in preparation for the chant.
Side-by-side with his team, Seidou’s name on his lips, Ryousuke decides that there are worse things to be.
5.
The bus ride back to school is turbulent, wheels bumping over cracks in asphalt and players smothering tears in their sleeves, with their caps. Ryousuke’s leg cramps spasmodically, like it’s carrying the tension of the game beneath the skin, tendons pulled wire-taut across bone.
The outside world swims by, the bus a submarine in the post-game current of traffic, a captive and quickly thinning capsule of air, how much longer to breathe, how much longer before all systems red?
As the team exits the bus, Ryousuke spots Haruichi speaking to Eijun in soft tones, ushering him toward the dorms. Haruichi’s face is blotchy red but dry, and Ryousuke wants to say something vaguely encouraging, you’ve got another chance, practice hard and you’ll see Koushien, but then Ryousuke remembers that he’s all out of turns, zero-for-three at bat, time to go home.
Haruichi has never felt so distant, so different and apart. Ryousuke wonders if someday Haruichi will wear Ryousuke’s number to Koushien, if Haruichi will carry Ryousuke for as long as Ryousuke’s carried Haruichi on his mind, in his heart.
Ryousuke thinks he’d be fine with Haruichi in number four, but not today.
Tanba’s cheeks are slicked with tears as he pulls ahead of the group, towel draped around his neck. Though the distance between Ryousuke and Tanba remains the same, the number on Tanba’s back blurs into illegibility.
4.
Ryousuke knows that it’s been a rough couple of months for Tanba, from his rising ERA to the threat of first-year up-and-comings at his back, eying the ace number. Today, his fledgling forkball falls short of Miyauchi’s mitt over and over again, curving out of the zone or dropping too early, too late.
“Again,” Miyauchi says stoutly, but eventually Tanba shakes his head, calling it quits.
Tanba doesn’t meet Ryousuke’s eyes when he exits the bullpen, sweat running down his face, staining his front. No one knows how to help Tanba when he’s in one of his moods, not even Chris, who’s been slipping and slipping since his shoulder injury. It’s no surprise that Tanba’s roommates report him missing around nine P.M.; Ryousuke hunts Tanba down himself, makes some noise and clinks his juice can against the doorframe of the indoor practice ground.
“You really shouldn’t be doing that,” Ryousuke says mildly, popping open his juice can.
Tanba freezes like a deer in headlights, pitching net quivering after his last throw. “I’ve almost got it,” he says at last, frustrated. “I keep--it’s right there, right there, if I reach out I can take it--”
“Do you want to hurt your arm?” Ryousuke inquires, and sips his juice. Tanba winces, clearly thinking of Chris. “Tomorrow’s a new day, you know.”
“A new day of nothing,” says Tanba, bleak. “A new day of me rolling pitches into the dirt.” He begins to pace, looking every inch caged, trapped. “I want to get better--no, I need to get better, for the team, for when Chris comes back--”
“And this won’t make you better. This is ‘beating yourself up,’ Tanba.”
“I just want,” Tanba mumbles, and passes a dusty hand over his face. “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Ryousuke agrees, rising to stand. Tanba shuffles past him, ashamed and dirty and bone-weary, and Ryousuke reaches up to karate-chop the back of his head. Tanba ack’s, but lets Ryousuke cup the curve of his skull, the soft hair at the nape of his neck.
“I’m sure Chris would appreciate the sentiment, but it’s no good, playing for someone else.” Ryousuke waits for a reaction, Tanba’s skin warm beneath his palm. “You are your own player. Remember that.”
3.
During summer training camp, the new short-stop outlasts Ryousuke’s uncharitable initial estimate, which is more a testament to Short-stop’s will than his skill.
Tanba thinks Short-stop deserves a minor upgrade from “Short-stop” to “Kuramochi,” and Ryousuke grudgingly admits that he’d misread Short-stop, figured him an upstart with a big mouth when he’s got the punch to back up the bite. A wild swing, not yet a neat right-hook, but a good one that could take people out if thrown in the right direction.
Tanba sends Ryousuke tiny surreptitious looks all through dinner, like he’s egging Ryousuke on, wants to see Ryousuke make a new friend.
Ryousuke sets down his tray. Ryousuke has enough friends.
Tanba frowns across the tables. Tanba thinks it wouldn’t hurt to make a new one, especially because Ryousuke and Short-stop are current partners.
Some random trivia: Ryousuke always loses to Tanba in jan-ken-pon and matters of the heart.
The next day is a rainy off-day, and Ryousuke locates Short-stop out on the back porch with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, panting like a dog after his rather fierce workout regimen in the indoor exercise room.
The weather is hot and sticky despite the downpour, and Short-stop’s mesh shorts cling to his thighs, shirt glued to the back of his neck. He’s letting the rain hit his feet, but Ryousuke notices that the hem of his shirt is dry, tucked carefully out of the way.
Ryousuke places a bottle of water a few centimeters to Short-stop’s left and Short-stop tips his head back.
“Hey,” Short-stop says, a stray forelock curling in his face.
“Hey,” Ryousuke replies. He’d anticipated a more aggressive greeting from Short-stop, maybe a glare or a scowl, but all he gets is a furrowed brow and a gruff intensity that plays itself down, conceals its edges. “Fancy finding you out here.”
Short-stop laughs, a startling burst of sound. “Where d’you expect me to be, dragging a tire through the field?”
“I had you pegged as a work-’til-you-drop type,” Ryousuke concedes, thinking of Maezono’s enthusiastic shouting, first-years pick up the pace!
“Yeah, I dunno, I think that’s more you and less me.”
Ryousuke’s caught between wanting to agree and disagree and walk away from someone who feels more like a change-up than a fastball.
“Maybe if you worked harder you’d get somewhere with your plays,” Ryousuke says sweetly, tone acidic. “After all, hard work begets results.”
“But you gotta draw a line between hard work and suffering that’s only suffering, right? Like, it’s gonna be that much harder if you crash your car.” Short-stop drums his fingers on the porch, and carefully reaches for the bottle between them, an unopened peace offering. “Also, why d’you hate me?”
Ryousuke wants to go back to Tanba and report his lack of success in friend-making, retire from the business. “I don’t hate you.”
The bottle cap comes off with a crack! “No, c’mon, man, I don’t care that much, I just wanna know.”
“I don’t hate you,” Ryousuke repeats, “but I think your laugh is annoying. And you’re fast, but that’s meaningless if your legs don’t know where they want to go.”
Short-stop takes a moment to consider, swallowing a mouthful of water. “Fair ‘nough,” he says, nodding decisively. “Now my turn.”
“What?”
“I think you’re really fucking passive-aggressive, also you never say what you mean, also half the time I wanna be like, what’s your damage, man? But you’ve got a good arm on top of all that so I can’t really say you’re talking yourself up, and sometimes that pisses me off too.”
Deciding to make himself comfortable, Ryousuke shucks off his shoes, sticks his toes out in the rain and follows Short-stop’s lead. If settling down doubles as an admission of interest, however reluctant, Ryousuke manages to convince himself otherwise.
“And the point of that exercise was?”
“Me airing my dirty laundry,” Short-stop says curtly, chin jutting out and arms crossed over his chest. “So now we can start the way we should’ve. Kuramochi Youichi, my idols're Matsui Kazuo and my mom.”
Ryousuke rolls his eyes imperceptibly; Tanba will be pleased. “Kominato Ryousuke, and my hobbies include baseball.”
“C’mon, anyone could tell me that,” Kuramochi complains, and adds, “I’ll make you love my laugh.”
“I doubt it, though it may improve our working relationship.”
The rain pitter-patters in the space between words, droplets pinging against steel and tin, and the smell of the field hangs in the air, lovely and gray. It's hard to be prickly when everything's so toned down and indoorsy, perfect whisper weather, the resting temperature of silence.
Somehow, Ryousuke summons up enough energy to be a little homesick.
Kuramochi holds his hand over his heart, the tan line from his baseball glove cutting his skin into neat pieces. “I swear I’ll do both,” he promises. “Fix our ‘working relationship,’ and make you love my laugh.”
2.
If “eau de sweat and all-pervasive B.O.” were the name of a cologne, then Seidou’s baseball team would be well-equipped and well-stocked. If “doing the laundry once you run out of underpants” were an effective time management strategy, then the upperclassmen would never recycle the same shirt three days in a row. And if “absolutely fucking putrid” were an item on a restaurant menu, then it would look like Seidou Spirit Dorm’s cafeteria food.
At the end of the day, the “lean-year first-years” deal with the Surprise Soup and Mystery Vegetables accordingly. Isashiki spoons his spongy broccoli onto Yuuki’s plate, the others sneak juice boxes under the table to add to Tanba’s growing collection of Orange Juice! Some Pulp With Extra Vitamin C, and only “Dinosaur” Masuko goes back for seconds.
Fueled by the healthy spirit of competition, Ryousuke returns for thirds plus a half-carton of milk and sets a personal best for fastest sprint to the bathroom. Afterwards, Tanba lends Ryousuke a belt for Ryousuke’s saggy pants without a single derisive comment, and a lifelong brotherhood is born.
1.
There’s a height limit on everything, rollercoasters notwithstanding.
For example: the highest shelves in the pantry are virtually inaccessible for people downwards of one-forty cm. Certain airlines require their commercial pilots to be at least one sixty-five cm. Jumbo receives two scouting offers the day the schools in contact with Ryousuke withdraw theirs, as cordial and unremarkable as the 7 A.M. weather report: Good morning! Today will be twenty-three degrees Celsius, with early showers and a fresh dose of personal failure.
Seidou isn’t the first school that Ryousuke tests into, nor is it the last to pass him over during the recruitment process. The night Ryousuke stays up to devise an optimal strategy, all teams heard-from and accounted-for, Haruichi leans over the rail of the top bunk and asks, quietly, “Have you seen the TV special, Brother?”
Ryousuke has.
“There have been questions about Seidou’s--for lack of better word--dry years,” the reporter had started. “It’s been a little, ah, a little less than a decade since Seidou’s reached Koushien. Do you think--”
“I think that Seidou has a lot to prove,” the Assistant Coach had interjected, firm and self-assured. She’d smiled then, a slow unfurling thing in the afternoon sun, withholding as much as it gave away. “And I think that Seidou will prove you wrong.”
Haruichi’s face is like a small white moon in the dark. “That kind of school must be volcanic,” he mumbles, chin propped up in tiny hands. “The players play like wolves.”
Ryousuke knows Haruichi’s sleepy because he’s stopped making sense--volcanic, wolves--but something in the back of Ryousuke’s mind creaks like a loose tooth, a door hanging off its hinges.
Above all, more than anything, Ryousuke wants to play ball. Wants to prove his place on the field, on the bottle-glass green and the outline of a diamond in the dust, a number emblazoned across his back and the same colors scattered across a stadium.
The bedsprings groan when Haruichi pulls the covers over his head. His voice is shy and quiet and hangs in the air, tapering into silence.
“You know, any school would be lucky to have you, Brother.”
Ryousuke takes a bet, rolls the dice for a school with a name to prove and a place to claim.