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The dirt field behind school was empty. Not empty as in it had been cleared of random kids playing whatever, which you needed to do, especially on Saturdays, if you wanted to use it properly, no. In fact, a gaggle of kids was playing an elaborate variant of tag that involved intricate paths and sigils drawn over a good third of the field. Instead, it was completely empty of Akatsuka High baseball club members.
Except for Jyuushimatsu, who squinted at the field in the bright sunshine.
He adjusted the duffel bag strap digging into his shoulder. His hands felt restless with the sleeves of his baseball uniform snug to his wrists. The sleeves, the scratchy seams, how the cut of the pants kept giving him wedgies — he loathed them all, but he was proud to wear the uniform. Even if he didn't have to wear it to practice. Even when it made it obvious he was at the wrong field.
One of the kids — they were tiny, definitely elementary school, maybe first or second grade? — paused to eye him carefully. A heated argument drew their attention back to the game. Arbitration of the labyrinthine rules seemed to be half the fun.
A kid got ruled out, and the game continued.
Picking a corner, Jyuushimatsu put his bag down and got out his bat. Dad had gifted it to him for their 17th birthday, and he had carried it with him everywhere since. Everywhere he could, which was mostly to practice. The club had its own bats, but those weren't for playing around, so Coach had given him the OK to practice swings with his own bat in the back whenever it got hard to stay quiet and still.
The cicadas were a wall of noise, rendering the playing children into a silent film.
Jyuushimatsu raised his bat over his shoulder, and started swinging.
Somewhere around the fiftieth swing, he could unclench his jaw and relax into proper form instead of trying to beat the air to death. Another twenty, and he got his breathing under control, and could focus enough to refine his swings. He kept his eyes fixed to where the pitcher’s mound would be, and imagined different pitches coming his way. Fastball, curveball, sinker.
Swing and reset. Swing and reset.
A voice behind him cut through the rhythm.
“Oh? Jyuushimatsu-kun?”
Jyuushimatsu grit his teeth together. He made sure to put more power behind his next swing. Exaggerate the arc, lug it back to his shoulder, the way that wouldn't be good for a game but looked mean.
The voice chirped, closer than before.
“What are you doing here?”
Jyuushimatsu raised his bat with a snarl.
“None of your business, so fuck off!”
“Huh?”
“I said —”
He spun around — and his bat nearly slipped from his hands.
“T-Totoko-chan!”
Totoko stood with her arms folded behind her back, in a white blouse and a dark green pleated skirt, not that different from her school uniform. She smiled cutely, but something in her eyes made him feel more hunted than everything else these past few months.
“Uhh… uh… s-sorry about that, I, uh, thought you were… someone else.”
“It’s okay!”
She giggled, light and cheery. She kept smiling, and she kept staring. Like she was expecting something.
“Uh…” Jyuushimatsu racked his brain. There was nothing but dead grass and dirt around. Over on the paved path, a group of friends was walking past the field. They laughed loudly over nothing.
“If you’re looking for Ichimatsu, I don’t know where he is.”
Totoko’s posture changed.
“Why would I be looking for him?”
Jyuushimatsu put his bat across his shoulders and hung both his hands from it.
“Aren’t you… isn’t he…”
He lowered his head. The sun felt hot on his shoulders.
“Seems to me you’re running in the same circles now.”
Totoko didn’t say anything. Her smile dropped away, and she stepped up to him, making him jump back.
“Why are you here?” she asked. Her voice was still bright, but it rang flat.
“You have practice, right? The baseball club is training on the main field right now. I saw them on my way here. Why aren’t you there?”
“Ah, uh, they didn’t — I mean —”
Kutsushima had told him they had to use the spare field again. Scheduling the fields between the many sports clubs had been mayhem since the meteor strike had taken the main field out of commission. Thinking about it now, there hadn’t been any construction noise for the past two days, had there.
“I’m practicing my killer line drive. Can’t do that near others.”
Totoko kept her eyes fixed on him and pointed to the other end of the field.
“There are small children right there.”
Jyuushimatsu stopped motioning with his bat. He didn’t have a ball, so it had been a flimsy play to begin with.
“Ah! Well, it’s —” he stammered, scratching his neck, “— I misheard, so, and when I realized, well — it’s too late now anyway!”
He could hear his voice get too loud. Gritting his teeth, he shouldered his bat, and went back to swinging it.
This year, the club had gotten serious. They had a lot of strong players, and had been getting real wins. They had a real chance of going far in the prefectural tournament — and Jyuushimatsu had barely seen any of his brothers outside classes for over a month, because he had a real chance of getting to play in a real game.
He had never missed practice before. The baseball club was the one thing he had locked down. The one place where he wasn't a lost cause.
“Is it fun?”
“What?”
“Swinging your bat. I’ve seen you do it for hours. Is it fun?”
Jyuushimatsu wiped sweat from his face. A horrible feeling gnawed between his shoulder blades, tight and brittle.
“Are you asking for real?”
Totoko looked at him straight, unflinching.
“Why else would I ask?”
To laugh at me.
He pulled the brim of his hat down. There were no clouds in the sky. The sun made everything lighter than black glow, blurring things together. The bleached dry grass at the edges of the field, the colors on his baseball uniform, the expression on Totoko’s face.
Not that he’d ever been good with those.
But it was Totoko. They had practically grown up together.
He would go mad if he couldn’t trust people he grew up with.
“… no. It’s not fun the way playing baseball is fun. But it’s… good.”
“Good?”
Jyuushimatsu nodded. “Mhm.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Totoko tilted her head. Her eyes were on the bat. Jyuushimatsu had never been good at reading people’s expressions, but he’d scanned enough faces to try and spot the miniature warning signs he’d memorized that he had gotten pretty good at that part. He recognized the tightness around her mouth, the strain at the corners of her jaw.
He’d seen it on Ichimatsu’s face day in, day out, ever since he’d started spending all of his time going out with his friends.
“Want to give it a try?”
“Huh?” Totoko startled. She opened her mouth to decline, but closed it again. Her hands clenched at her sides.
Jyuushimatsu offered the handle of the bat to her. She took half a step back, but her eyes stayed fixed on it.
“It’s okay. Nobody’s around to see. And I won’t tell.”
“… okay.”
She curled her fingers around the handle. Jyuushimatsu let go, and she raised the bat in front of her like a sword, taking it in.
“Do you need me to teach you?”
She shook her head, her long hair waving along.
“No.”
She set her feet apart, lined up her knuckles, and raised the bat over her shoulder. She looked less like a baseball player and more like a beast curled up, ready to pounce. Jyuushimatsu jogged backwards a safe distance away.
Woosh!
Totoko’s first swing was startlingly fast. Her form was good, better than expected, but it was completely overshadowed by her ferocity. It felt unlikely that she was visualizing pitches to hit. Jyuushimatsu backed further away.
“Rrgh!”
She swung the bat, twisting her body to deliver the full force of the motion. The sun brought out a deep, dark golden glow from her hair when it fanned out.
On the next swing, her hair flew into her face, sending her sputtering it out of her mouth.
“Ah!” Jyuushimatsu reached a hand out, but stopped, when she locked the bat under her arm and pulled out two hair ties.
“ORA!”
Her pigtails bounced, and her bat whistled through air. Jyuushimatsu couldn’t help but to throw his hands up and cheer.
“Home run! Out of the park! Queen of baseball!”
He smiled, and smiled, and smiled, and so did Totoko when she turned around, slightly out of breath and red in the face, bangs in disarray.
“Oh, that was refreshing!” she giggled.
“The best, the best!” he laughed back.
She gave him the bat back, and he gave her a towel to wipe her face. She pulled out a compact and touched up her makeup. She undid her pigtails, and fanned herself.
“Wow, that made me really thirsty.”
“Let me buy you some juice!”
When they got to the vending machine, Jyuushimatsu realized he didn't have any money on him. Totoko bought them both juice — the machine didn't have grapefruit, but orange was good too —and they drank in comfortable silence.
Just as Jyuushimatsu thought how it felt like how it used to be when they were kids, a group of girls walked up to the vending machine.
“Totoko-chan! Is he bothering you?”
Like a switch was flipped, a beautiful smile clicked on Totoko’s face.
“Not at all.”
The girls flocked around her, wedging him away. He didn’t know any of them, but the tall girl with short bangs gave him a sharp look.
“Aren’t you Matsuno? I don’t know what bullshit you were trying to pull, but —”
“Woah, Emi, it’s obviously not the sleazebag! Not all of them are bad,” a girl wearing an apron dress said. “Maybe he’s the one who hangs around Yanagida-kun?”
“I don’t think that one plays baseball,” a girl with short hair piped in. She turned to talk to him. “Hey, which one are you?”
Jyuushimatsu bristled. He clenched his fist around the duffel bag strap.
“Who's asking?” He stepped up to the girl, jutting his chin up.
“Huh? Something wrong? Cat got your tongue?”
The girl shrunk back. Jyuushimatsu scoffed.
“Get out of my way.”
He shouldered past the flock and marched down the path back towards the field. His face felt hot, and something burned in his chest.
He couldn't hear what Totoko said, but he could hear the choice she had made from the cooing of her admirers.
“No way! A weirdo like him? You’re a saint…”
“As expected of our heroine!”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that — please, let me buy you a drink!”
Jyuushimatsu gripped his bat through the thick canvas of his bag. It was hard to see. The sun beat down on him. It made his eyes feel gritty, filled them with weird sparkles.
He didn’t know why he thought she might have made a different choice. He couldn’t remember when they had last talked, if they even had ever actually talked outside of him fawning over her as a part of a pack of six.
Why would she, when his own brother hadn’t?