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SEIDOU DEFEATS YAKUSHI IN FINAL ROUND; HEADS TO KOUSHIEN
By now, the newspaper clipping is something of a relic; the paper has yellowed and the ink has faded over the years. But it isn’t as if the condition really matters — Youichi won’t take it down. It was taped to his wall when he was in the Seidou dorms, and when he was playing for his university’s team, and here it hangs now, in his shoebox of an apartment in Kokubunji.
It hangs on the wall adjacent to his bed and sometimes, on the nights when he finds it hardest to sleep, he can roll over and look at it and remember who he’s fighting for and — perhaps more importantly — who he’s fighting with.
It feels something like a promotion, a rite of passage in his work, when Kataoka asks him to go scout a game in Edogawa when Takashima takes the day off to go to her cousin’s wedding.
“Some great players have come from the Edogawa Senior League,” Kataoka tells him.
“Yeah.” Youichi knows. He played for three years alongside the one who could’ve easily been a pro baseball star, had he not suddenly dropped off the face of the earth during his last year at university.
Where are you, Miyuki Kazuya? Youichi asks himself sometimes. He knows that things don’t always go according to plan, that life isn’t so textbook . But their time on Seidou’s team was a bond that hadn’t broken between anyone else — even Chris, when he had gone to school in America, had found the time to keep in contact with his old teammates — except for him.
But here they are — six years since they graduated on a cool day in Tokyo, six years since they parted ways with the promise of meeting again on the field. Six years, and Youichi hasn’t heard so much as hey, I’m still alive! in three.
I’m going to be in town next week to watch the Edogawa Dragons game , he sends, after some deliberation.
After four days pass with no response, Youichi stops waiting.
When Youichi arrives, it’s overcast; by the time they reach the top of the seventh, it’s started to rain. There’s no way , Youichi realizes. The first train home is as good as gone and he doesn’t particularly have a desire to sprint through the mud to try to make it. Even so, it’s not something to dwell on; he’ll make one of the later ones, because it’s not like he’s in a hurry to get back.
There was a convenience store that he’d passed on the way to the game and, well. He could probably use a coffee right about now.
He’s in the middle of deliberating between one can of coffee and another, slightly bigger, can of coffee, when a voice cuts through his thoughts.
“Hiding out from the rain in here?”
It’s too familiar — there’s no way, Youichi thinks, that you’re supposed to hear a voice you haven’t heard in three years and know exactly who it is before the end of the very first syllable.
“Captain,” Youichi says, not without some bite, and then, “oh, wait. You haven’t played in three years, have you?”
“Coach,” Miyuki greets back, pretending to be cool as he always has. Youichi hates it. “That’s what you are now, right?”
“Assistant coach.”
“Not the point,” Miyuki says, reaching in front of him and plucking a can of coffee from the shelf. “Stranded here after the game?”
“Yeah,” Youichi admits. “The train I was supposed to take leaves in three minutes.”
“Tch.” And then, “If you’re waiting for the rain to stop, you can wait it out at my place.”
Well. Youichi hadn’t been planning an impromptu hang out with his ex-captain ( ex-best friend ) after being ignored for six days — never mind the past three years — but it’s not as though he has many options. It’s loitering in a convenience store for hours, sitting in the pouring rain, or quality time with Miyuki. In truth, none sound particularly appealing at the moment, but. He can get over his irritation at never getting a text in response. It’s better than standing in the rain until his underwear is soaked through.
Miyuki waits, face passively expectant as always, as though he already knows the answer. As if he still knows Youichi, after these years.
He probably still does. Youichi doesn’t want to think about it.
“Yeah, okay.”
Above the low chatter of the radio, Youichi can hear the tires on the gravelly road as water sprays.
They don’t say anything.
Miyuki slows to a stop at a sign and reaches for his coffee, one wrist draped over the steering wheel as he gropes blindly for the can, eyes still fixed on the empty road before him.
Tch. Guy invites Youichi to his home, but can’t even look him in the eye.
“Why were you at that FamilyMart, anyway?” he asks, finally breaking the silence. Quiet j-pop tunes aren’t cutting it anymore.
Miyuki does spare him a glance this time, quick and out of the corner of his eye.
“I wanted coffee. And I had some other things to pick up.”
Ah, Youichi thinks. So after three years, Miyuki Kazuya is still full of as much shit as always.
“We’ve passed three more FamilyMarts,” he says, “and a Lawson. All of which are closer to your home than that one.”
Not so much as a flinch. “I was in the area.”
Really, Youichi could laugh.
The interior of MIYUKI STEEL’s apartment isn’t anything luxurious. It’s simple, utilitarian. Perhaps Youichi shouldn’t be surprised, but he is, a little bit. Miyuki Kazuya could have had anything. He could have had a brilliant career as a top professional baseball star.
But he’s here, working at his father’s vaguely dingy steel company.
“It’s no Mandarin Oriental,” Miyuki says, “but it’s home.”
Youichi can see that it is, in the small ways. In the way that all of the table chairs are tucked in meticulously, but the wall calendar’s pages haven’t been turned in two months. The dishes drying on a rack by the sink.
“It’s…”
Miyuki looks at him as if he knows what Youichi is going to say. He hates it.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Miyuki says as he opens a cupboard to reach for some glasses, “this isn’t where anyone thought I’d end up.”
“Well, yeah,” Youichi admits. “You were amazing. Any pro league team would have taken you. They were practically lined up. And then you just—”
“And then my father had a heart attack,” Miyuki cuts in, and Youichi bites his own words.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t realize—”
“He had a heart attack,” Miyuki continues, “and so I packed my bags and moved back home, because he needed someone to look after him, and he needed someone to look after this old place.”
Isn’t there some worker you could’ve left the place to?
“He built this place up from the ground, you know,” Miyuki says. “He came from nothing. Made this life for himself. It meant a lot to him. Means a lot to me.” He clears his throat, opens the refrigerator to look for something, or maybe nothing. “Bathroom’s just through that door and to the right,” he says.
Youichi takes his cue.
When he returns, Miyuki is seated at the table, thumbing at his phone and sipping from a glass of orange juice as if their last conversation didn’t happen. “Your train leaves in three hours. We should probably leave in two if you want to get there a little early.”
“Yeah,” Youichi says, and takes the opposite seat. He’s not really sure what else to say.
Three years, and Miyuki has built back the walls that Youichi had torn down, brick by brick, in high school.
“Seidou’s doing really well,” Miyuki says. “You’ve got a good catcher in your hands.”
“We do,” Youichi says. And then, “He’s not as good as you were.”
Miyuki’s eyebrow raises. “This is his second Koushien, isn’t it? And he’s only a second year.”
“Yeah, but.” But he doesn’t get people the way you do. But he can’t strike fear into a batter with a glance. But he’s not you.
“Yeah,” Miyuki says as he takes the empty glasses to the sink. A moment later, a lower voice. “I know.”
They stay quiet, for the most part, on the drive to the train station. The rain, after dulling to a light sprinkle, stops completely, and the only thing Youichi can hear is the click click click of the turn signal and the quiet sound of ONE OK ROCK on the radio.
They’re about to pull into the driveway when Miyuki says, finally, “I wanted this, you know.” And then, “I didn’t always, but when it happened, I knew. There’s nothing else I would’ve wanted for myself.”
“I just wish you’d told me,” Youichi says. “Told one of us — you didn’t have to do this alone.”
They’re at a stop, now, pulled up to the curb where they will inevitably part ways again.
“He was my father,” Miyuki says. “It was no one’s burden but mine.”
“It was all of ours.” Youichi pauses, but really, he doesn’t even need to think about what to say this time. “We’re a team. Still are. Don’t forget — don’t forget who’s fighting alongside you, Captain.”
Miyuki presses his lips together and then, after a moment, says, “Okay.”
Youichi unbuckles. “I guess this is goodbye, then. Thanks for the ride and — don’t let it be for another three years. Not again.”
“Okay,” Miyuki says, and that’s that.
The car door closes with a click behind Youichi and as he heads toward the entrance, head high, he wonders if Miyuki actually will pull through this time.
“Hey!”
He turns around to see Miyuki’s face through the rolled-down window.
“Do your best,” he says. “For baseball. For both of us.”
And with that, the window is rolled back up, the car pulling away from the curb.
Youichi can’t help but smile, a little, as he turns his back to move forward — and he will keep moving forward, this time.
There’s no more seventeen-year-old Miyuki Kazuya. That Miyuki is gone.
But this one is worth a chance.
It’s started to rain again, when Youichi looks out the train window. He closes his eyes; he could use some rest.
And it’s not like he’s ever really minded the rain, anyway.
SEIDOU HIGH TO FACE IKUEI IN FINAL ROUND OF KOUSHIEN
What does it feel like? one of the reporters asks Head Coach Kuramochi Youichi. To lead Seidou’s first string to the same stage he had stood on so many years ago? How did he do it?
It feels great.
He feels alive, the summer heat beating down as he watches from the dugout while his team reaps the reward of their blood, sweat, and tears over the past months. He feels proud, because they’ve made it this far, and he knows how much they’ve put into it, because he’s done the same before.
As for how?
“I promised someone,” he tells the reporter. “An old teammate. I promised him that I would always do my best for the baseball that we both love.”