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1 Kuramochi Youichi
When Sawamura finally, finally deigns to appear for practice that day, Isashiki is already furious.
He puts on his best mean face and goes up to her and is about to meanly yell at Sawamura for her gall when he notices it.
He takes one look at it, then at her face, and back to the piece of otherwise perfectly functional, innocuous garment hanging off her waist, almost aggressive in its obviousness in place of her usual training pants.
He takes in her unspeakably unconcerned expression, then takes a hanging moment to be completely overcome by the sheer ignominy of dealing with delinquents for underclassmen, and goes to throttle the only possible perpetrator.
(Well, not the only possible perpetrator.
But Isashiki bullies what he could.)
So he goes, nearly strangling Kuramochi when he grabs him by the collar and violently shakes him, spitting, “Kuramochi you vindictive son of a bitch we didn’t do anything to deserve this shit I hate you for life what kind of fucked up game are you playing with Sawamura anyway?”
Kuramochi chokes, saying that he was not expecting this either; he only won the stupid bet.
It doesn’t matter Kuramochi himself doesn’t even remember what the bet was about, or how it came to be.
Or how he’d won it.
(This stinks of the other possible perpetrator.)
The point is he’d won and Sawamura – loud earnest ideal-driven but mainly loud obnoxious annoyed the fuck out of everyone Sawamura – had lost and now she will do the punishment.
(Though who exactly being punished is, at this point, unclear.)
Isashiki throws Kuramochi to the ground and marches to deliver his grievance to the Coach.
“This is unacceptable,” Isashiki says.
Their Coach – cold-blooded, merciless Coach – who gives him an equally unacceptable look because he doesn’t care if Sawamura shows up in a horse suit as long as she throws the damn ball, tells Isashiki that a) he’s being ridiculous, b) it’s a skirt, not napalm, c) go back to basic conditioning with the babies if he doesn’t start doing something at least vaguely useful stat, and to emphasize point a) he’s being completely ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
Of course Isashiki’s being ridiculous; fucking Sawamura is wearing a fucking skirt.
Isashiki’s entitled to be ridiculous.
Because even at school and classes, Sawamura compulsively wears one-leg-rolled-up training pants under the school skirt; it surprisingly has less to do with her disliking skirts and more to do with how she thinks the pants makes her ready for all the important things, like baseball and baseball training.
Or impulsive tree climbing and running away from the morning inspection teachers.
Who, speaking of, had given up trying to get her into anything else just like they had given up trying to keep Furuya awake during classes, but she’s wearing them now and the teaching staff as a whole appears to be unspeakably touched and are crying a little because of it.
And then, they are crying louder for the world is cruel and so is Sawamura because she is wearing a skirt and it is still not the uniform skirt.
Which raises an entirely different question of where exactly the skirt had come from.
Kuramochi isn’t entirely sure either, and is too chicken to try and find out, but it had been there and it had been perfect and somehow it didn’t occur to him that the skirt was obviously not made with all of Sawamura’s five feet nine height in mind.
It also didn’t occur to Kuramochi that Sawamura is a girl without an ounce of fragile femininity in her thus she doesn’t feel the need to be embarrassed by an admittedly very, very incredibly measly skirt because a) Sawamura is so disconnected with concept of shame that it’s a literal non-issue for anyone involved, b) just because she doesn’t wear it normally doesn’t mean that she hates it or anything, and c) Sawamura unlike them actually remembers that she’s a girl and hey, girls wear skirts sometimes. Surprise!
Isashiki then spends the rest of basic conditioning (with the babies, because Coach is pissed at him) alternatively screaming at Kuramochi and also at everyone else because why isn’t Tetsu, or Chris, or their heartless Coach, or the Prime Minister of this fucking country, someone, anyone doing something about it because no one’s getting any shit done with Sawamura prancing around in that… that “fucking indecent piece of tripe paper”.
(No one even laughs at Isashiki’s vocabulary. Obviously this is very serious.)
Sawamura, because she is Bakamura and is shameless by default, doesn’t seem to find anything amiss despite the fact that everyone’s either staring too hard or trying too hard not to stare as she bends and athletically stretches and whoops around the bullpen; fists swinging above her head, shirt rising to her ribcage, revealing stomach that is toned and flat and sweat-slicked.
The entire affair is utterly bizarre and unnecessarily cruel because Sawamura is both unexpectedly and completely unnecessarily hot sometimes and they’re never certain as to whether or not she knows it.
And it is a truly good thing that Sawamura either doesn’t know or she knows and just doesn’t care because then no one would survive it.
(Sawamura is never going to be pageant material – she’s either too tall or too thin or dishevelled – but sometimes, just sometimes, when she takes the mound, diving headfirst into those dangerously critical moments of the game, when she would move with such sudden litheness which she summons like a particularly heavy liner, turning solemn in a way she never is outside the field, and tongue-thickeningly sinuous especially when she knows she’s got her batters cornered.
Everyone in the club generally overlooks Sawamura’s more in-your-face signs of femaleness (because sanity, and more importantly, slips of cleavage) and honestly, out of sight is out of mind.
And Sawamura makes it so easy by being sloppy and loud and baseball-crazy and just so motherfucking loud (Isashiki’s words, and maybe theirs too) and once made one of their managers stop crying by making farting noises with her fist.
It helps when Sawamura doesn’t act differently than the rest of them, and doesn’t expect to be treated differently, but doesn’t mind it when they do (curfew, separate locker rooms, sleeping on the other side of the school), as long as they let her pitch and pokes fun and maybe some humility into Furuya.
(And occasionally hit Miyuki. Especially the hitting.
Which they all secretly approve, because Miyuki Kazuya is an asshole, but also an untouchable sort of asshole who doesn’t let anyone else come close.
Except Sawamura, apparently.)
She does the same amount of training, eats the same amount of food, is still the most annoying fucker to ever walk the holy ground of Seidou and her transition into the team had been as peaceful as it could be with Rei-san’s calm deliverance, sprinkled as they were with unexpressed threats of deaths by fire.
And Miyuki.
(Mostly though, mostly from Miyuki.
Who was smug as fuck and instead of breaking the news to the team like a normal person, for the sake of nothing more than fucking with them because he is, again, an asshole, had put up an eye-watering sparkly pink banner in the mess hall that read “Congratulation! It’s A Girl!” which confused the fuck out of everyone for weeks.)
The point is: Sawamura makes it easy to forget that she’s a girl.
A sorta hot girl.
The kind of hot that most of them wouldn’t even be able to work up a nerve to talk to if she hadn’t decided to play baseball instead of, say, wear skirts more often.
Like now.
Practice game that day is a bit of a blur to all of them. Everyone spends it in a daze, not quite grasping what is truly happening between dolefully trailing after Sawamura as if they’re helpless against it and the evil look-don’t-touch. But-better-if-you-don’t-look. At all. Glare Isashiki-senpai is shooting them from the other end of the court.
Kominato the elder hasn’t said anything yet. Which is sort of new.
(But his camera phone hasn’t stopped flashing. So maybe not that new.)
The Coach, who would remain tranquil if the meteor which destroyed the dinosaurs comes down upon them right now, has a look on his face that says he is ashamed to know them for their utter unproductivity.
The moment is broken when Sawamura suddenly starts shouting again, this time in utter glee, because Furuya the Resident Delicate Little Shite has fainted after losing another staring match with the sun and now no one’s going to fight her for the mound and Miyuki’s undivided attention.
(Not that she doesn’t have it usually, but now even more so than usual it seems.)
And then, it hits Kuramochi like one of Furuya’s decidedly less delicate straight pitches to the face.
The bullpen.
The fucking mound.
Miyuki.
Fucking Sawamura’s gonna fucking pitch. In that fucking skirt.
The realisation hits them just a teeny bit too slow and Sawamura is already putting on her mitts, eyes narrowing like honing missiles that land on Miyuki as if his face is a bright yellow target dot that has done her a lifetime of wrong.
(Knowing Miyuki, it might even not be wrong.)
Kuramochi watches, line of sight dramatically tunnelling, in slow-motion, as she folds her knee close to her body, swings back her left arm in that impossibly showy posture, and pitches an admittedly rather fantastic cutter that Kuramochi is pretty certain no one in this part of Japan could manage to similarly pitch or hit.
The ball swishes, and so does the skirt.
Someone weakly calls for strike; the batters don’t even care anymore.
Kuramochi’s brain shut down a little.
Shuts down a lot.
He looks at his members. His brothers.
Because in the face of this crisis, they stand strong together as fire-forged brothers-in-arms.
Chris-senpai is overseeing all this with blank, soulless eyes and oh god, Kuramochi has broken him; not even his injury had managed to put that devastated, hopeless look on his face.
Kuramochi is so fucking disowned.
Isashiki-senpai is squawking and seething in equal measure; glaring at Kuramochi like everything is his fault.
Which, fair.
Yuuki settles on looking awkward.
Tanba settles on looking incredibly awkward.
Ryousuke has his eyes open; Kuramochi’s going to have nightmares.
In the background, Masuko and Kawakami try to discreetly wipe away the blood trickling from their noses.
(They certainly try, but Isashiki-senpai notices so it’s basically hopeless.)
Haruichi scurries over to Sawamura, completely red in the face as he gently, but urgently, tells her to never ever do that again, not in skirts, ever, and tries to herd her off the bullpen.
Sawamura’s confused, but because she has a (definitely not) secret soft spot for Harucchi, like everyone else in this club, she is about to get off the mound when Miyuki suddenly bursts into a sing song.
“Hyuuuu-hyuu, Sawamura-chan,” Like he couldn’t whistle or something. The bastard. “I can see your panties from all the way over here. It has stripes.”
Slap.
2 Furuya Satoru
Why no one is surprised when they see Sawamura and Furuya shouting at each other (or rather Sawamura is shouting; Furuya is calmly but intensely contradicting her and managing to impossibly appear more unreasonable in comparison) in front of the communal bath of all places it’s because this is their life now.
Life of grossly talented pitchers with massive egos and impressive set of lungs crowding bathroom hallways, hopelessly arguing about everything, and making life infinitely more complicated than it should be considering that they’re basically playing a complicated version of catch ball.
“Oh come off it, Furuya, you don’t have to pretend to be all manly and stuff,” Sawamura snorts, all lofty in a way that someone does when looking for a fight. Which she is. “I mean, being that high-maintenance is kinda sad. But there are worse things to be in life. Like a wuss. But oh wait, you’re already that.”
“No,” Furuya says slowly, on the onset of a tranquil temper tantrum. “I can stay in there for forty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds.”
“That’s a load of bull,” Sawamura folds her arms under her chest. The gesture naturally bringing their attention to her boobs. Which, y’know. Not huge or anything, but hey, boobs. Kuramochi manfully fights the juvenile urge to say hi. “I bet you can’t even last the one-hundred count.”
“Can too,”
“Pfft. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Furuya scowls. “Just because you can only stay in there for thirty-nine minutes and sixteen seconds, which is definitely a lie —”
“Excuse me,” Sawamura bristles, hackles rising, while everyone else stares blankly, thinking to themselves that they would never, ever challenge her to a sauna match because they are smart, sensible modern men with a sense of self-preservation. You know, unlike Furuya. Who is obviously lying. And why. “Am I seriously hearing this from the guy who passed out twice during practice and has to be ferried away like a princess by Harucchi?”
Well, it was a little embarrassing to watch admittedly.
Just a little.
“He wasn’t ferrying me. He was helping me up.”
“Yeah? Well, it looked an awful lot like that to me.”
“He was helping. Me. Up.”
When it’s starting to look like they’re about to slapping one another like a pair of hysterical, ill-tempered fifth graders, Chris and Yuuki exchange twin looks of eternal suffering.
And then Chris is sighing and stepping forward because he is the default fix-it for anything concerning Sawamura.
(Well, him and Miyuki.
But Miyuki is definitely not going to be of any help at this point so it’s all Chris.)
“Sawamura,” Chris says, snagging the back of Sawamura’s collar and pulling her from probably physically tackling Furuya to the ground. Furuya wouldn’t be able to come out of that without injuries. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at the bath?”
The girls’ bath. Somewhere. Far. Far away from here.
Chris’s voice is hardly above his normal speaking level, but Sawamura immediately stops yelling and turns around.
“Master!” Sawamura gushes, bright and moving in to crowd Chris like an overeager, needy puppy.
A demented, half-feral Pavlovied zombie overeager, needy puppy.
“What are you two fighting about now?” Chris says, impressively unfazed.
“Master, Furuya says he can stay in the bath for forty-two minutes twenty-three seconds,” She whines at Chris before turning narrowed eyes on Furuya. Distrustful little thing. Why the fuck are they even fighting about this? And who the fuck even count the times? “He’s obviously lying. I mean, he can’t even look at the sun without fainting. Like a wimp.”
“I do not faint. Like a wimp,” Furuya says indignantly, aura flaring. For someone so slow, Furuya is apparently as easy to offend as a sleep-deprived lady on a very particularly vicious PMS. To the surprise of absolutely no one plus the actual girl in their midst. “And I can stay in there for forty-two minutes twenty-three seconds.”
“Prove it!”
“Sawamura, calm down—”
“You’re on,”
“Furuya, stop goading—”
“If you lose,” Sawamura says, pointing at an incredibly amused looking Miyuki, Chris telling her that it’s rude to point at people Sawamura, which goes unheard, “then the bastard will be catching for me after dinner.”
“—goddamn listen to me you two—”
“Fine by me,”
Furuya reaches for his belt.
“Oh you’re sooo going down, pretty boy!”
Sawamura makes to pull her shirt overhead.
“Oh for the love of—”
Later, if asked, though Seidou as a whole would rather not be, anyone would say that it’s only Chris’s inborn reflex and experience as a catcher that has him reacting bodily before his mind does when he grabs Furuya’s wrist and Sawamura’s forearm like he’s the badassest motherfucking ninja.
And like a scene in a movie featuring said badass ninja, time stops. It could’ve stopped forever for all they care.
Highlighted with Furuya’s half-down fly and Sawamura’s exposed middle; hint of white cotton under her blue shirt.
(Which. Is probably. Her. Y’know. Bra.)
The high-pitched squeak Tanba produces would have been absolutely hysterical if everyone else hasn’t felt equally unmanned at this point.
Yuuki looks on strangely calmly and wide-eyed, which is probably why he is their leader.
Masuko’s jaws drop, which Kuramochi kindly scrapes off of the floor for him because he’s looking dumb.
(Kuramochi then not so kindly slaps him when he continues to look dumb because that shit is embarrassing.)
Ryousuke has one hand covering Haruichi’s eyes, but is otherwise appearing like he’s very content with his life.
(Which makes one of them.)
Kawakami doesn’t have a big brother to do it for him, so he covers his eyes with his hand in utter mortification. And then peeks through the gaps.
Miyuki though.
Miyuki looks like Christmas comes early into the room and they’re not even sure about his religious affiliation aside from maybe the sadistic, Satan worshipping cult that Kominato Ryousuke is definitely the head of.
“Master?” Sawamura says. Like there’s nothing so fucked up about this, about stripping in front of her horde of seniors. She also hasn’t lowered her arms. “Is something wrong?”
Chris looks like he wants to scream yes, yes something is wrong, a lot of things about this is a lot of fucking wrong. But because he’s Chris, he just calmly clears his throat – twice – and pointedly tugs down Sawamura’s shirt with a look.
Sawamura, predictably, doesn’t notice.
“Sawamura,”
“Yes, Master?”
“Why don’t you go the bath—the girls’ bath—and—” Chris struggles, makes an utterly awkward and ultimately useless hand gesture, “—and go take… take a bath. There.”
He looks absolutely miserable, but Sawamura’s smile brightens like a thousand-watt bulb, like she always does whenever Chris so much as acknowledges her and occasionally tells her to stop stalking him and do her homework properly.
Just another mundane, mildly exciting day at Seidou.
“Yes of course, Master,” Sawamura chirrups, sweetly amiable in all her whatever-you-want-Master and blissfully unaware of Chris’s internal agonies.
Her expression changes abruptly when she turns to Furuya. She sticks out her tongue, tugging at the skin under her eye.
Furuya twitches violently.
Childish, absolutely childish.
Except a child would probably be easier. At least, there wouldn’t be threats of heart attacks because of random appearances of lace borders.
Sawamura turns on her heels to leave and maybe take her proper bath in the proper female bath, or preferably somewhere in Brazil and spare them all the pending aneurysm-waiting-to-happen—
And comes face-to-face with Miyuki.
Who is staring rather intently at her and blocking all escapable pathways.
She eyes him warily, flight or fight instinct warring on her incredibly mobile face. Which is sadly a sign of someone who has long knows Miyuki and Miyuki’s lowkey shitty personality and handles him on a fairly systematic basis. “What are you staring at, bastard? Lose something?”
“Yeah. Yeah, actually I do,” Miyuki grins at her. Takes a step forward.
Sawamura takes a step back.
They think it’s the first time anyone of them has ever seen belligerent, fearless Sawamura who fears nothing except maybe a very upset Wakana, or a mildly upset Coach Kataoka, does that voluntarily.
Sawamura is glaring now. “W-What?”
Miyuki’s smile is positively immoral. “My mind in those curves.”
Yuuki and Chris groan simultaneously as they watch Sawamura’s stunned face grows redder and redder and—
Slap.
Masuko and Tanba warily watch Sawamura storms away because they are the only sane ones around here anymore.
“God, Miyuki. You have some serious balls, man, I give you that,” Kuramochi says to Miyuki.
Miyuki, who looks gleefully unrepentant even with a swollen red cheek that would undoubtedly raise some very awkward situations tomorrow with everyone.
Ryousuke drops his hand from Haruichi’s eyes. And whips out his phone.
Yuuki pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs forlornly, “Must you rile her up every time, Miyuki?”
Miyuki grins wider in response because he’s crazy.
Isashiki, who was missing from the whole debacle, pokes his head from a corner with a frown. “Did someone do something to Sawamura? She just stormed through the mess hall looking like she is contemplating murder. Like straight-up, bloody murder. I think someone cried.”
Furuya, in all this, remains stubborn but pensive. Then he opens his mouth and says, incredibly mulishly, “But I really can stay for forty-two minutes twenty-three seconds.”
Haruichi sighs and gently tells him to button his fly now.
Before he remembers that they’re supposed to take a bath and Furuya has to take it off anyway.
(For the records, Furuya does not make the one-hundred count.
Then, someone (Miyuki) betrays him and tattles. Sawamura spends the rest of the week cheerfully alienating Furuya’s shattered pride.)
3 Sanada Shunpei
The thing about Sawamura is that she’s extraordinarily careless.
Wakana, who has a sorta text-buddiey thing with Kuramochi, one that is going absolutely nowhere unless Kuramochi gets his head out of his ass, says it’s just how she is: lethally clueless, incurably a tomboy, well-meaning, but more than anything else is just careless.
So very, very careless.
Even her old teammates, who she knew in diapers and grew up together with little boundaries between childhood friends, attested to this.
It’s a problem. Her problem. Their problem more than her problem, because a problem requires a certain degree of actually acknowledging it as a problem, which Sawamura evidently doesn’t.
But the rest of them do.
And that is the biggest problem.
Except for the rain. This fucking rain.
The rain that led the on-deck Seidou and Yakushi players scramble for shelter when the coaches called for a break and yelled at them to go inside where it’s warm and dry and less likely for any of them to die from hypothermia.
(They’re not risking anyone dying.
Which would have been very touching if they didn’t tack the “before the Koshien” bit in the end but, eh, they take what they can.)
So to the warm and dry inside they go, all the way bitching about the rain and subtly bitching about one another like high school clique queens because they’re all for sportsmanship.
(The coaches are totally doing it anyway. And they’re the adults.)
By the time they’re inside, they’re already down to openly and no less pettily throwing shades on misplaced masculinity, baseball ability, uneven length of legs and, at one point, uneven length of eyebrows, which nearly enticed an all-out brawl, when Sawamura storms in and starts shaking her wet hair like a bad-mannered puppy.
The water go everywhere, unruly strands escaping her braid and sticking to her neck and forehead. Her cheeks are dirt smudged and flushed, chest heaving, and eyes bright and body wired from leftover adrenaline of a game.
The white jersey makes her look radiant almost, even when covered from head-to-toe in mud after that whack job of a sliding stunt she pulled ealier. It’s also soaked to the skin and the fabric is rendered faintly see-through underneath the bright fluorescent light of the hallway so they can see the straps of her blue sports bra and the slender outline of her form.
Sawamura scowls at her now incredibly clingy shirt and reaches for the hem of it, lifting away and wringing the water out.
Everyone look—
They look.
Of course they look, they’re all teenage boys. Practically little terrorists in the making, Isashiki spats.
(Though Furuya doesn’t, because he has once again passed out halfway into the third inning and Seidou has passed the point of being embarrassed about it.)
(Neither does Todoroki Raichi, not because he’s passed out, but because he is what he is.)
For a moment, they could only look on, helpless; Seidou at least is used to this, somewhat, sadly, used to Sawamura being careless and an unintentional peek show and generally being an accident waiting to happen because they know she truly doesn’t mean it and she couldn’t stop what she doesn’t know she’s doing.
But Yakushi certainly isn’t.
And it’s – jarring; Sawamura out there on the field being loud and obnoxious and throwing freaky pitches and Sawamura who’s still loud and obnoxious but also being unknowingly hot.
Yakushi thinks it’s unfair that Seidou seems to get all the good stuffs, because a) hot managers, b) really, really hot assist coach, c) awesome clubhouse, and d) really hot relief pitcher.
It makes them really, really bitter rivals.
In the midst of all this, Sanada, because he is a true gentleman unlike the rest of them, steps up and takes off his own jersey – naturally, as if people actually do that outside of shoujo manga – because he remains miraculously drier than the rest of them since ikemen don’t fear water and shit, and tactfully drapes it across her shoulders before her own teammates even remembers it.
(Isashiki will bitterly complain endlessly later that Sanada was probably just trying to show off his biceps or his shoulders in a stretchy compression shirt or—
Or something.
The great big pretty boy prat.)
Sawamura looks confused. But says thank you.
Sanada nods slowly, ignoring his own teammates who are giving him the stink eye to end all stink eyes because he always ruins all the fun.
(He’s also the only one between the lots of them who gets to talk to girls without getting snubbed.
But that’s neither here nor there.)
Sawamura pulls the jersey closer, fiddles with the zipper.
Sanada adjusts his cap.
They spend a moment standing there being cinematically awkward like a famous lead scene from a certain movie, cheeks flushing and not meeting each other’s eyes, looking away when they do, in the middle of the rain (or out of it), while Sanada’s team watches on enviously like a bunch of uncredited extras.
Seidou as a whole looks like they’re witnessing a train wreck in motion.
All they’re missing are fireworks and a baby unicorn.
Isashiki, who can’t take it anymore, growls. Forces himself between them.
Chris steps up and pointedly zips the jersey all the way up until Sawamura’s gasping because she can’t breathe, can’t breathe, Master, choke.
“Umm,” Sanada says carefully, because Seidou’s captain is staring at him now, coolly unimpressed and frighteningly judgemental. “Perhaps we should take a break and, uh, she could… take… take a shower? Err. Dry up?”
Isashiki twitches violently. “If you think for one second that we’re going to let her use your locker room—”
“We can borrow the girls’ tennis locker room,” Sanada says quickly, raising his hands in a way that universally means either don’t shoot or please come away from the ledge slowly. “Their court’s across from ours. They won’t mind.”
Isashiki remains unconvinced and unmoved and he keeps miming disturbingly realistic throat slitting motions, but Chris nods at Yuuki and that’s really all the good judgement call Yuuki ever needs in life these days.
“Sawamura, go shower and get changed into something drier,” And for good measure, because if Sawamura suddenly decides to strip here no preamble, well, it wouldn’t be the first time it happens. “In the girls’ tennis locker room.”
“But I’m fiiiiine,” Sawamura whines. “I’m not even that cold.”
“You’re fucking shivering,” Isashiki grouses, forces rather than observes. “In fact, you’re going into pneumonia right now. Like, you’re dying.”
“I’m not going to catch either one any faster than any of you, senpai,” Sawamura says, as usual being annoyingly reasonable at the most inconvenient of times. “I’m from the countryside, you know. A little water ain’t gonna take me down.”
“That’s good to know,” Yuuki says.
“But yeah, okay. Wet underwear. Even I can admit that’s totally not fun.”
“That’s good to know too,” Yuuki says, with slightly more soulless eyes.
“Now we can’t have you sitting around in wet underwear for too long,” Kuramochi says with a meaningful look at his suddenly motionless seniors, playing from the if-I-can-say-it-then-it-is-not-an-issue let’s-all-please-be-adults-here angle. “Idiots don’t catch cold. But you’re, like, a—a super idiot so you’re going to catch a—a super mutated cold or something and you’re gonna contaminate everything.”
“If we’re going by class ranking then Furuya’s gonna catch it first—”
“Just go, Sawamura,” Chris says.
Sawamura goes. Of course she goes, because Master says so.
But she first turns to Sanada, looking uncertain. She fiddles with the zipper under her chin, saying, “Umm. The jacket—”
“—is yours. Keep it,” Sanada says, grinning boyishly. It makes the corner of his eyes crinkle and Isashiki makes a strangled noise of offence.
“Oh. Um,” Sawamura looks startled. Oddly touched. She starts twisting the hem again and she’s… blushing. Blushing. “Thanks. I guess.”
She scrubs her cheeks and looks incredibly like a girl what the fuck and of course Miyuki chooses exactly that moment to waltz into the room like a hound dog from hell smelling blood.
Miyuki, who was smirking and now no longer, takes one look at Sawamura, then at Sanada, at Sawamura, the jacket, seemingly drawing some sort of most likely frighteningly accurate conclusion there, and then his face goes equally frighteningly blank.
Which is never a good thing.
He laughs, unnecessarily mean, and his voice when he speaks is so fucking cheery that Chris and Yuuki wince. “Dude, Sawamura, you two look like so gay doing that do you even realize?”
Chris slaps his own forehead.
Kuramochi rolls his eyes.
Sanada frowns.
Sawamura gapes at him for a second, before she flushes, first in embarrassment, before it suddenly turns to a chilling sort of fury and then—
Slap.
Yakushi’s players appear to be surprised and frightened; Seidou’s are not surprised but maybe a little frightened.
(They are teenage boys; the palm up of a woman is alien and carries all the menace in the world.)
Miyuki’s face snapped to a side. He turns back to Sawamura and gives her a cool, rigid look.
Sawamura glares at him like she wants to either cry or break Miyuki’s face. Or cry and then break Miyuki’s face anyway.
After all, no one wants to be put down like that in front of a boy she better admires in terms of pure baseball skill set only and Sawamura actually looks a little hurt and Miyuki is going to be so fucking guilty about it later when Sawamura’s not talking to him and everyone will spend the next week second-guessing their moods and tip-toeing around them.
But at least Sawamura’s not looking like a flustered fucking maiden anymore and the guys surreptitiously clap Miyuki on the back for taking one for the team. Even Tanba looks sympathetic.
Isashiki is on the other hand brazenly giving Miyuki the thumbs up.
Sanada is still staring even after Sawamura slams shut the door, keeps staring until someone clears his throat rather pointedly.
He turns to see the Seidou first-stringers glaring at him and looks like a – a mortified disgustingly pretty boy Bambi caught in the headlight.
(If Isashiki has his way, he’s gonna run the whole fucking car over him. Backtrack. Run him again.)
“So, uh,”
Sanada coughs, sheepish, slipping into a slouch with a hand in his pants’ pocket and rubbing the back of his neck and it looks so magazine cover’s model-like that Seidou members are pretty convinced that he must practice it in the mirror to trap unsuspecting enemy pitchers into his wiles.
Why the fuck is this guy playing baseball anyway? And why is he so good at it that they can’t even bitch about it?
(Sometimes they bitch about it anyway.
They just seem a little pettier doing it.)
“Sawamura is—”
“No,” Chris says, folding his arms.
Sanada frowns, but his sort of embarrassed flush is unfairly charming and Seidou is appropriately concerned. “I was just—”
“No.”
4 Kominato Haruichi
Everyone instinctively holds their respective breaths when Sawamura finally – finally – stomps off the bullpen, raging black clouds in her wake promising stories of murder.
So many cruel and unusual murders.
No one dares to move, or speak.
Or breathe.
“What,” Isashiki finally says into the impregnable silence following her dramatic exit, looking spellbound by the whole debacle, “the fuck is her problem today?”
“She’s been like that all morning,” Kuramochi whispers.
“She nearly stabbed Kanemaru with a fork at breakfast,” Miyuki says dazedly. Like maybe he thinks he’s a little in love with a girl who threatens people with eating utensils. “I think I’m in love.”
Everyone ignores him.
“She stabbed Zono with a fork after breakfast,” Masuko supplies timidly.
“What.”
“She, uh, kinda carried it around with her,” Masuko pauses uncertainly, “Umm. Today. The fork?”
“I’m in love,” Miyuki declares soppily, disturbingly full of convictions.
Everyone pointedly ignores him.
“What. The fuck,” Isashiki says to Masuko, who shrugs helplessly.
“You know that nasty, sexist teach from homeroom?”
“That prick who was picking on Kominato’s little brother for being a girly little faggot with girly faggot hair during morning inspection?”
Who would be deader-than-dead once the older one goes after him, is left unsaid.
“Well, I heard Sawamura-chan kinda… snapped. She dived over the desk, socked him in the face, called him six different kinds of bastard and got suspended,” Masuko reports, because he secretly channels Gossip Girl. “They kinda wanted to ban her from practice too, but the Coach ain’t having it.”
“I’m gonna marry her,” Miyuki says.
Everyone is still resolutely ignoring him.
“She said something to Kawakami. Now he’s crying.”
“She said no to Chris-senpai,” Kuramochi says. “Chris-senpai. Who is her god.”
Everyone gasp audibly and turn to Chris with scandalized, wide-eyed look.
Chris, perpetually slightly embarrassed by his teammates’ dramatics, shrugs helplessly; he’d asked Sawamura to form battery for practice – the first years had literally begged him to; the poor souls, hoping that Chris would perform a miracle, or make a sort of peace offering, or perhaps use Chris as a sort of peace offering (Chris is not certain how he feels about being used like such by these youths who are his juniors) – and Sawamura had declined.
Declined. Chris.
But.
But at least to Chris she’s polite, they tell him. Not everyone is so lucky; Furuya still sullenly walks around with a bright, flaming red hand print on his cheek that everyone’s trying hard not to stare or ask.
“What happened to you?” Yuuki stares and asks, because he’s not everyone, but Yuuki also looks like he really doesn’t want to know what happened to Furuya and is only asking out of captainly duties because they have manuals for these things.
Furuya mutters something intelligibly and looks away.
“That’s incredibly informative.”
“Ahaha, apparently Furuya here told her that she looks like she’s gained weight recently because her forty yards sprint with the tyres was a bit off and said that she should cut down on the desserts,” Miyuki says, draping an utterly invasive arm over an utterly unwilling Furuya’s shoulder.
They wince in unison; really now, even Furuya should’ve known better than to come between Sawamura and her desserts. He could’ve gotten away unharmed if he’d stopped at her weight.
“I see,” Yuuki says. Pauses. “And what happened to you?”
Miyuki laughs, both cheeks an angry, pulsing red colour which would in exact dimension fit a certain pitcher’s hand.
“Apparently Miyuki-chan told her not to worry anyway because the weight distribution is evidently perfectly distributed,” Ryousuke says serenely. It seems that Sawamura’s morning stunt has gone along well with him; Ryousuke seems pretty taken. “And also it’s filling out the uniform quite nicely.”
Tanba eyes Miyuki warily. “Sometimes, I honestly don’t know if you’re doing it on purpose because of incredibly disproportionate bravery or you’re just incredibly very sick in the head.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Miyuki says mysteriously before gleefully shooting over to where Sawamura is fuming and half-terrorizing the poor, cowering first years before anyone can get a say in.
Sawamura turns murderously to him when he calls her, but then Miyuki produces something from his pocket and—
—and Sawamura melts?
She’s… not smiling or anything – in fact, she’s still scowling – but her shoulders loosen a little and she begrudgingly accepts the offering and even lets Miyuki annoy her for a bit longer without trying to stab him with the fork they all now know she is carrying.
“What did he just do?” Masuko says, appropriately awed.
“I think he gave her chocolate,” Haruichi says approvingly.
He can’t say that they could count on Miyuki-senpai would do the right thing all the time because Miyuki-senpai sometimes does things just for the sake of doing it and offend someone in the process. But at least they can always count on him to know what to do when it matters.
He’s going to be a good captain one day.
“He’s using food?” Isashiki sputters.
“He’s using Royce,” Kuramochi says disgustedly, while still watching the pair in morbid fascination. “This should totally come with a subtitle: Taming Angry Disruptive Puppies 101, Use Fucking Expensive Chocolates.”
“You sound unbecomingly jealous, Kuramochi,” Ryousuke says pleasantly. “Do you want expensive chocolates too perhaps? Should I give you some?”
Kuramochi gapes at him, aghast and embarrassed all at once. “Ryou-san! I’m not your puppy!”
“But seriously,” Isashiki says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I only yelled at her twice today. Twice. She nearly bit my head off.”
“I tried to Boston Crab Hold her,” Kuramochi grumbles. Rubbing at his arm, feeling the phantom pain. “She nearly broke my arms.”
Haruichi sighs. Surely, his senpai-tachi couldn’t be this clueless. “Eijun is unwell, senpai. You were aggravating it.”
“I was not!” Isashiki and Kuramochi say indignantly.
Yuuki frowns, folding his arms. “Sawamura is unwell?”
“It’s been a rough day for her it seems like,”
“But she seemed to pitch like… like usual,” Tanba says cautiously because he has a healthy amount of fear of retribution. “I mean, she pitched really, really well today. She’s been dishing it so hard she practically blistered through.”
Really, really well is really, really polite euphemism for really, really fucking scary. Not even Furuya on a good day is so terrifying.
“Well, that’s a given,” Haruichi replies plainly. “Didn’t Rei-san say to expect this the first month Eijun joined?”
“Why would she tell us to expect a totally unpredictable violent homicidal streak?”
Haruichi blinks, because Rei-san did tell them to expect a totally unpredictable violent homicidal streak. Was he the only one listening? Or notice that Rei-san occasionally has the same totally unpredictable violent homicidal streak?
“Senpai, she’s a girl.”
“No shit,”
“It’s been months. Surely you must’ve noticed it by now,” Haruichi says, just slightly desperately. “I mean Miyuki-senpai notices.”
And his brother obviously.
He turns to said brother.
Ryousuke fluffs Haruichi’s hair, but is ultimately unwilling to help.
“Dude, Miyuki notices everything,” Like, everything.
“And notice what?”
This is going nowhere.
Haruichi turns again, pleadingly this time, at his older brother. No such luck; Ryousuke is smiling benevolently like Haruichi is not about to be scarred for life.
“Okay. Okay, senpai. Look,” Haruichi says, with a last dirty not-look at his twisted, doting older brother. “Do you have a sister? Or someone who takes over the bathroom that everyone else needs to use in the morning and occasionally threatens your livelihood for minor offences that normally would not even register on them every other day of the month?”
Haruichi watches Kuramochi and Chris rapidly lose colours, appropriately mortified in their realisation. Thank god for small mercies.
“Some of us, yeah. What does that have to do with Sawamura being weird today?”
They look so confused. Haruichi is pained. “No. No, just… asking. Alright then. Um. What about, uh, health class?”
“Yeah, we have them last year. It was boring as hell though.”
Haruichi’s actually thinking something in the line of sex ed. Which couldn’t be boring. They’re all teenage boys. Embarrassing and awkward and gross maybe. Life-long traumatizing, even.
But boring?
“Did the teacher ever talk about female biology? Fertility awareness perhaps? Follicular phase of the oestrous cycles?”
“What the fuck is that? Fruit cake?”
Ryousuke snorts loudly in the back; Haruichi is going to disown him.
“… I’m talking about menstrual cycle, senpai.”
“Oh. Oh, that,” Isashiki wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, that was gross. Still not seeing what that gotta do with—”
Haruichi shoots them his best esteemed senpai I respect you dearly but are you fucking serious right now look. “I do not know how say this without being condescending. Senpai, Eijun is a girl.”
“Like I said, no shit—” And then it clicks. Haruichi was starting to think that they’re being obtuse on purpose to torture him. “Shit. Shitshit. You mean she’s—?”
“Yes,”
“She got—”
“Yes,”
“Oh my god,”
Haruichi gives them a pitying look. “I know.”
Isashiki clutches his cheeks, looking the parts of a violated maiden. “I didn’t need to know!”
“Actually, senpai, you do,” Haruichi says. “It’s going to save your life next month. At least, if you survive this one.”
His glory-hound seniors are now gaping at him unattractively and slightly hysterically.
“You mean this shit is gonna be a repeat thing?”
“You say it like it’s gonna be a nuclear apocalypse,” Kuramochi mutters rather feebly.
Haruichi looks utterly unimpressed. “If it’s a nuclear apocalypse, senpai, at least death will come swift and painless.”
Slap.
At the now tragically familiar sound, they all turn to where they last saw Sawamura and Miyuki; Sawamura is walking away, expensive chocolate in hand, while Miyuki is on the ground but at least miraculously alive.
“So,” Kuramochi says to Yuuki after a long silence. “Fucking expensive chocolates.”
“I’ll tell the Coach to put in on the club’s budget for next month.”
4.5
“You know,”
Haruichi looks up at his brother.
“For all that Sawamura hits Miyuki-chan and claims sexual harassment,” Ryousuke smiles, “isn’t it fascinating that he’s the only one who never really forgets that she’s a girl?”
“No,” Haruichi says. “No, we are not talking about this, nii-san.”
5 The Maid Uniform (and Narumiya Mei)
“You’re a girl?”
Sawamura raises an impressively unimpressed eyebrow at Narumiya Mei. “Yes?"
“Mei,” Harada scolds. “I thought I’ve told you before.”
“He wasn’t exactly paying attention,” Tadano says quietly, leaning back as far as he could into his seat even as he stares, wide-eyed and unblinkingly, at Sawamura. Because hearing and seeing are totally different things and the skirt is somehow as intimidating as her fastballs in the hot zone. More intimidating, because a ball, you either hit it or you don’t. But this is an entirely different field for him. “He never really paid any attention.”
“I’m sorry,” Shirakawa says, suddenly as self-conscious and awkward as they’ve ever seen him, “But have you always been… were you… I mean, were you born female?”
“Biologically, yes,” Sawamura frowns, looking up from her fake menu thing, hooking both hands on her waist and tapping her right foot in that incredibly condescending way that only females could manage through the phases of evolution. “What? You got a problem with that?”
Shirakawa and Tadano furiously shake their heads.
Kamiya raises his hands, signalling that they’d come to enjoy the school festival in peace. Not make enemy with their… well, enemy.
Their very much female enemy.
Their very much female enemy in a French maid uniform. And stockings; stocking that flirt dangerously with that ever elusive lace border of Area A, as Japanese fascinating otaku culture dictates.
(Somewhere inside the classroom-turned-maid-café, from the table with the most uninterrupted view to Sawamura’s station, someone breaks a glass.
“That dress is fucking short; is that supposed to be that fucking short? And maids wear them? What kind of morality do maids have these days anyway?”
“It’s an artistic interpretation that transcends even the modernism of fetishists, Jun-senpai. And you’re gonna get us kicked out if you keep scaring the customers away.”)
Shirakawa and Tadano’s alarm aside, Kamiya honestly thinks it doesn’t suit her all that bad; he actually doesn’t mind how she looks in pants but knowing someone a girl and knowing someone is a girl who looks cute in a dress and has a wicked four-seamer definitely put things into perspective.
At forty-five angles perspective even, Kamiya catches a glimpse of garters.
“The dress quite becomes you, Sawamura-san,” Kamiya says smoothly, giving an entirely too sincere up and down. “My sincerest compliments.”
Sawamura is apparently thoroughly unmoved by compliments unrelated to her pitching skill and probably her uncanny talent in catching horn beetles and perfect imitation of different degrees of cow noises. “Thanks, I guess.”
(They hear another glass break.
“I’m gonna kill that lecherous fucktard.”
“Jun, calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? I am calm; I’m the motherfucking Zen. But did you see at how he looked at her, Tetsu—oh for fuck’s sake, will you put down that damned shogi manual already?”
“Can I have some more pudding please?”
“Goddamit, Masuko, we’re not here to eat pudding!”
“Yeah, we’re here to spy on Sawamura.”
“It’s not spying. It’s—It’s tactical observation.”
“This… is sad. You’re sad. Hilarious, but… but sad. Y’know.”)
“Look,” Sawamura says, waving the little order note in her hand. “Are you gonna, like, order anything? Soon? Because I have this thing I could be doing and—”
“How are you a girl?” Narumiya demands, shooting to his feet.
“Excuse me?”
“Mei, you’re being rude,” Harada calmly says as he stands and bows, smacking Narumiya’s head against the table in lieu of actually kowtowing with the same quiet competence he carries everywhere. “I apologize, Sawamura-san. I swear he’s usually better trained than this.”
“But. But,” Narumiya whines, muffled against the table and arms flailing. “Those pitches. Those sliders. You mean you’re a girl and you can pitch those kinds of balls? What kind of a girl are you?”
“You know what? I’m gunna hit you with this tray over here sooo hard—”
“Marry me,” Narumiya says. Completely seriously.
Pause.
Sawamura – stares at him. Everyone else stares at him, too; Kamiya even looks a little impressed.
(Smash.
“Uh, senpai, I’m just saying, but if you break another glass we’re gonna get forcibly removed by the nice waitresses—”
“He fucking said fucking what?”
“He said marry—”
“I know what he said!”)
“… What?” Sawamura finally manages, blinking.
“I said marry me,” Narumiya passionately snatches Sawamura’s hands, utterly without shame and like he’s embarrassingly ready to go down on one knee right here in front of everyone.
Which he does.
(“Whoa, bad touch alert! Bad touch alert!” Kuramochi hollers, frantically drumming the table with his pudding spoon.
He is not helpful the least.)
“We can make beautiful, four-seamers pitching babies together! We can even form our own team and you can teach them bunting every Tuesday and we will take over the league and conquer the world league and—”
And Isashiki is already there, shoving Narumiya away by the face.
“Back off, you sneaky little shit,” Isashiki says.
Narumiya whines, makes grabby hands.
Kamiya does not even miss a beat as he whips out his phone, waving it at Sawamura, “So can I have your email please?”
“That goes for you too, you sneaky unlittle shit!”
Kamiya laughs cheerfully and Shirakawa shoots Kamiya a nasty, nasty look from the side.
“I’d appreciate if you refrain from touching her,” Yuuki says wearily as he walks over to them. “We have enough incidents as it is.”
Harada nods, at least for his part looking two parts rueful and one part fucking done with everything. “I’m terribly sorry for this. They’re not usually so... rowdy.”
Shirakawa and Tadano look down on their lap and appear to be properly contrite. Despite not doing anything.
Narumiya is still waxing poetic about the wedding-that-will-never-happen for as long as Isashiki is alive.
“No one is getting married!” Isashiki snaps.
“But we are!” Narumiya exclaims passionately though groundlessly, “We are in love!”
“You’re not!” Isashiki shouts, head inching forward like he’s looking for the right angle to bash it into Narumiya’s face. Yuuki wills it with all his being that it is not to be. “Sawamura, tell him you’re not going to marry him!”
Sawamura blinks. “I’m not going to marry him,” she repeats dutifully.
“You’re not?” Narumiya says, crestfallen.
Isashiki puffs up smugly.
“Yeah, no, of course I’m not marrying you,” Sawamura says plainly, but utterly savagely, and if she were the type, she’d be rolling her eyes. “For one thing, you’re too short. And secondly, I kinda hate you. A little.”
Narumiya proceeds to look so stricken they almost feel sorry for him.
Almost.
“So that’d be just weird,” Sawamura continues, because she is secretly cold and heartless. “Besides if I’m marrying anyone, then it’d totally be someone like Master, coz he’s, like, y’know, crazy awesome.”
Seidou releases a relieved breath as a unit, because there’s absolutely nothing new there and it’s a perfectly normal, Sawamura answer.
“Or maybe someone like Sanada-san,” Sawamura tacks on thoughtfully.
“Sanada?” Narumiya whispers, looking fainter.
“No,” Isashiki says.
Sawamura pursed her lips, whining, “But why not—”
“Because I said so,” Isashiki says, hands on his waist like he’s Sawamura’s mom. Well, Sawamura’s mom with a goatee. “Now shut up, take their fucking order, and make yourself useful and pour tea or something so they don’t kick the whole club out.”
(“Jun-senpai, you’re the one who’s about to get the whole club kicked out.”
“Zip it, Kuramochi.”)
Sawamura grumbles sullenly, before turning back to the Techies.
Completely ignoring Narumiya.
Who is currently dying from heartbreak and having to endure some cheerful, mean-spirited fork poking from Kamiya.
“Are you going to order now?”
“Sanada,” Narumiya whimpers again, apparently shocked into being catatonic. Which is a blessing, all things considered.
“Yes, we are,” Harada says, pointedly opening his menu and giving a loaded look towards his teammates, who immediately settle down like chastised pre-schoolers.
Except for Kamiya, who seems to enjoy unapologetically antagonizing Isashiki’s blood pressure by continuing to smile unashamedly and trying to flirt with Sawamura.
Which, Kuramochi thinks, good luck with that, because it’d be like flirting with a wall. A wall that ocassionally hits back.
(Sawamura does not ended up beating Kamiya once though, which Isashiki is not too happy about.)
Narumiya’s eyes are blank and soulless, but at least he’s quiet now.
Harada proceeds to deal with ordering amazingly efficiently.
Trusting Harada to keep his teammates in line, Yuuki gives him a speaking nod of truce – no email addresses or numbers pass anyone’s hand, no blood spilled, Yuuki counts it as a win – and snags Isashiki back by the collar to their own table before he blows a blood vessel. How many times does he need to remind Isashiki that it’s not healthy?
“Alright that’s enough, Jun. Let Sawamura do her job.”
“No, it isn’t fucking alright!” Isashiki hisses, glowering at Kamiya and, when the Kamiya quite deliberately nudges a spoon on the floor, politely asking Sawamura to pick it up for him, sputters quite spectacularly and thrashes against Yuuki’s surprisingly inescapable hold. “Lemme go, Tetsu! I’m gonna kill the lech! I’m gonna kill all the lechs in this world! Fight me!”
“You are not going to start a bar brawl at Sawamura’s class cafe project and cause trouble for her very nice classmates just because you have delusions about her endangered chastity,” Yuuki says as he sits Isashiki down.
“Hell yeah I am! Because this is fucking ridiculous!” Isashiki glares as another smarmy, smirky jerk-whatshisface from another school cheekily drops their spoons when Sawamura passes their table on her way to the kitchen. It seems like everyone is suddenly taking cue from Kamiya. “How many of them are going to keep dropping their fucking utensils like a box of tart?”
“Look at the bright side, senpai,” Kuramochi cheerfully says around a mouthful of cream, “At least no one tried the classic lift-her-skirt-with-a-spoon yet.”
“Oooh, lace!” A very familiar voice exclaims, “How naughty, Sawamura-chan!”
“Gah!”
Slap.
“Ah,” Kuramochi inflicted with the serenity of a monk, sucking on his dessert spoon. “Never mind.”
+1 Miyuki Kazuya
“So, Sawamura’s really money today.”
---
“God, she really killed the rally.”
---
“What’s your bet on her trying at no-hitter?”
“Goddamn it, man. If Sawamura’s trying for a no-hitter, you’re not supposed to jinx it!”
“Sorry, sorry!”
---
“It’s just that she has these… these really crazy eyes and I just thought—”
---
“Eijun’s on a roll, but how long do you think she can keep it up in this ninety-five degree? She’s no long reliever and she’s been at this since third inning.”
“We can’t afford to pull her out. With that number four power-hitter to do the clean-up, someone like Furuya’s as good as a cousin.”
(Coach Kataoka shoots a speaking look at Furuya, who sulks unhappily from his seat but otherwise says nothing; he was still slightly shaken by power-hitting number four.
He also got a little fastball happy as a conditioned response and it hadn’t helped.)
“Eijun’s not going to last very long if she keeps at this tempo though.”
“No, we maintain the tension. Keep her in play for as long as she’s able, but the moment she starts slipping, we’ll switch her in for Kawakami.”
---
“Deuce!”
---
“They’re trying to keep the hitter honest,”
“He’s laying her off!”
---
“… Tell Kawakami to warm up.”
---
“So all base loaded with two outs. That’s a full house.”
“If she screw up and it’s a jack, things are gonna go tits up and grand salami.”
---
“She walks him! She walks him! She’s forcing the play!”
“It’s a 3-2-3!”
---
“Out!”
---
“She did it! Bakamura actually did it!”
---
“You little bitch!”
“Sawamura!”
---
…
---
“Jun, calm down—”
“That son of a bitch charged the mound, Tetsu! He fucking charged the mound with a bat!”
“I know but you need to calm down—”
---
“Sawamura!”
---
“Sawamura!”
Kuramochi is there before anyone else. Which is, like, one second faster.
“Oi oi, Bakamura!” Kuramochi kneels beside her prone, sprawled form on the ground. “Are you okay? Can you hear me? Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Ooooh, my heaaaaad,” Sawamura moans, rolling slightly to her side.
“She’s avoiding a math question!” Masuko exclaims, “She’s going to be okay!”
Isashiki slaps him up the head.
“Are you okay, Sawamura? Is anything broken?” Yuuki asks, coming to beside her as Rei-san touches Sawamura’s arms, shoulders, elbows, shins, head, spine. Wrists.
He looks at Rei-san shaking her head, sighing with relief. It could’ve been worse, could’ve been the worst; the hitter who charged her had been easily three times her size.
“I don’t think there’s any,” Yuuki says. “But we should get you to the hospital just in case.”
“No,” Sawamura says, pushing herself into sitting position. “No, I can still pitch.”
“Sawamura, don’t be obtuse—”
“But we’re so close,” Sawamura turns large, pleading eyes to Yuuki. “So close, Leader. Please, I can do this. Just one more pitch, and we’re out of clutch time. I can take them out, I swear. We can win this.”
For a second, Yuuki looks hesitant, eyes flicking to the gash on the side of her forehead, all for a second before he shakes his head. “No,” he says firmly. “No, you’re going to the hospital.”
He glances at the Coach, who is talking to their opponent’s coach, manager, and captain. Coach looks as placid as ever, but his eyes are livid and Yuuki could only imagine the verbal stripping he is unleashing upon them.
The other side appear grave, stricken, obviously apologetic, but Yuuki can’t help but bitterly think that, if Sawamura had been injured a little worse, hadn’t come out quite so whole, their remorse wouldn’t have made a difference.
The Coach signals it’s Yuuki’s call.
Yuuki’s call it is then.
Yuuki turns back to Sawamura. “Go to the hospital, Sawamura.”
“But Leader!”
“No buts, Sawamura,” Chris says. He touches the gash on her forehead, withdrawing his hand when she winces. “You’re bleeding. You can’t even see straight. Not that you usually do, but we’re not letting you back into the game in this condition—”
“It’s just a scratch! I can still play!”
As if to prove a point, she swipes at the wound on her forehead with the back of her hand and smears the blood everywhere.
Masuko looks closer to fainting than she ever does.
“It’s bleeding like a tap, Sawamura!” Kuramochi says incredulously, because Sawamura’s always been dumb, but now she is officially dumb and crazy.
“So slap a Band-Aid on it and be done with!”
“That’s gonna leave a scar, isn’t it?” Isashiki says, wide-eyed. “It’s gonna leave a scar, and you’ll never become a bride because no one’s gonna want to marry you now—”
“I don’t mind!”
“—and you’re going to remain a menace for the rest of our lives,” Isashiki says. “We. We mind! Because of course you’re going to take this lightly, but a face is a girl’s—”
Sawamura’s face does this thing where it shuts down so suddenly, they could almost feel the whiplash.
“Is this because I’m a girl?” Sawamura asks, voice hoarse, causing Isashiki to click his teeth together in shock.
“Sawamura,” Chris starts, in his best soothing-the-aggravated-puppy voice because the last thing they need right now after an injured Sawamura is an upset, injured Sawamura.
“No, really. Because really if this is about me being a girl—”
“It’s not!”
“—then don’t bother,” Sawamura says, more closed-off than any of them has ever seen. “Because I know the risks; senpai-tachi know the risks. It’s never been a problem before so it’s not gonna be a problem now.”
Sawamura shoots them a mulish, defiant glare from under her fringe.
“Isn’t that right, senpai?”
For a moment, no one answers.
In some ways, Yuuki thinks vaguely, he always knew that this Sawamura’s-a-girl-and-we-are-all-for-gender-equality-but-why-are-we-not-acknowledging-it-properly thing is going blow up in their face and it’s gonna be really ugly because in real life, Sawamura’s a girl rough-housing it with the boys.
Yuuki is startled out of the hazy, panic-induced trance when Sawamura suddenly yelps.
He looks down, seeing Miyuki halfway straddling Sawamura’s knees, holding down her jaws and forcibly knocking their forehead together so hard they have to wince.
(But at least, the spell is broken and everyone is actually very thankful for that.)
“Oww! What the hell, bas—?”
“It’s not because you’re a girl, Sawamura,” Miyuki tells her in a voice that gets to her the most, in the only voice that would get her quiet and focussed faster than her grandfather. Or Chris.
Because when it comes down to it, Sawamura listens to Miyuki the best.
“It’s because you’re a girl and a teammate. Of course they will fuss about it, just like they will fuss about Furuya, Kuramochi, or Masuko if it happens to them,” Miyuki says calmly, a bruise already blooming on his forehead, which is smeared red from all the blood. Miraculously, it doesn’t show on Sawamura’s. “But I’m not gonna lie by saying that you being a girl doesn’t make them extra nervous. You’re like one third the size of that son of a bitch.”
Sawamura’s brows furrow; her eyes are defiant but she is silent otherwise in that preternaturally calm manner when she is taking in something in a pinch situation.
“Now I want you to go with Rei-san and Kanemaru to the hospital and get your thick skull checked for any concussion and your shoulders and wrists for anything—”
“He’s a clean-up hitter!” Sawamura says, “You said it yourself that we need a breaking ball!”
“Exactly. And you can’t exactly pull anything of that sort right now and I need a pitcher who can put out—”
“I’m your pitcher, bastard!”
There is more hurt and load in there than any of them really want to think or talk about; this thing between Sawamura and Miyuki, no one is ever, ever gonna touch with a ten feet bat thank you very very much.
“And I’m your catcher,” Miyuki acknowledges. “That was our deal, Sawamura; I make the call. You obey.”
“Yeah, well, I’m the closer,” Sawamura hisses, looking halfway between punching Miyuki and a straight-up heartbreak. “I’m not the ace right now. Not yet. But I’m the closer. And I will close it. I don’t want Furuya or anyone on the mound. This is my pitch—”
“Are you even listening to yourself, you idiot?” Miyuki says, voice rising. “You of all people should realize that we’re a team; it doesn’t matter whether it’s you or Furuya in the hot zone or someone else batting but the score we got is worth the same—”
“It’s not the same and you know it!”
“No, you listen to me,” Miyuki snaps, still holding her face in his hands though he is also shaking her, setting off the rest of the team in panic. “You’re going to be useless if you’re injured at this point, Sawamura, and we don’t need a dead ball on top of anything else right now. Not so close to Koshien. Do you understand?”
Haruichi crushes a gasp under his fingers.
Ryousuke raises an eyebrow.
Chris and Yuuki exchange a look over their heads.
Sawamura… blinks.
Tanba glowers at Miyuki, like he’s about to grab him by the collar. “Miyuki, that was completely unnecessary—”
“No,” Sawamura says suddely, stunning all of them into silence.
“No. No, it’s okay, senpai,” Sawamura says, with a shaky half-grin. She has a split lip and it’s bleeding so, okay, it looks more creepy than comforting. “The bastard’s right. I understand. I’ll… I’ll go and get checked-up. I don’t want to be a… a dead ball or anything.”
Tanba stares at her, utterly at a loss and no one blames him.
Isashiki is twisting his fingers together, furiously signing at Yuuki to do something you useless leader.
“So, uh,” Sawamura rubs the back of her head sheepishly, seemingly to deflate and is avoiding looking at Miyuki. “A little help?”
She raises her arms, like a literal brat asking for up.
Tanba and Masuko grab an arm each, carefully pulling her up and trying not to notice when Miyuki stands up and deliberately moves away, forehead smeared with blood, not his, but it’s as if he’s stung anyway and refuses to ouch.
Yuuki helplessly thinks, not again.
Tanba and Masuko hold Sawamura up as Rei-san tells them that she and Kanemaru will be taking Sawamura to the hospital now.
She also pointedly tells them that that they are not to come before the game is officially over and when they do come, they will not terrorize the hospital staff for the room number because they will ask for it civilly, like normal and functional members of the society do.
Kanemaru is berating Sawamura as he slips an arm under her shoulder, corners of eyes tight with concern.
Sawamura just nods, distracted and not at all there, and with Isashiki staring after her like he just accidentally kicked her puppy over a very steep cliff with jagged rocks on the bottom, and Miyuki looking he’s just retreated to an untouched place, and everyone is waiting for something to give, Yuuki can’t take it anymore.
“Sawamura,” Yuuki calls.
She turns her head, looking more despondent than any of them has ever seen. Not even when she failed that last pitch against Yakushi.
“You are not a dead ball,” Yuuki tells her, sternly. Because if told something sternly enough, Sawamura is so simple she’d just take it at face value. He’s just not sure between him and Miyuki, who she’d listen to more. The odds are definitely against him though. “You’re not. You will never be a dead ball. Okay?”
Sawamura looks stunned for all five seconds before she grins, “Okay.”
She gives them a truly obnoxious thumbs-up as Rei-san, Kanemaru, and one of the managers drag her away. Sawamura proceeds to chatter at Rei-san, who continues to watch her like a hawk through her nodding along.
Miyuki watches her go with a shuttered look in his eyes, sloppily wiping the blood on his forehead with the back of his hand and swiping the stain on his pants before pulling on his mask and turning to Kawakami.
“Come on, Nori. It’s your turn.”
Kawakami blinks once, twice, rapidly. Pointing at himself as Miyuki walks past him. “M-Me?” He squeaks, glancing at a stormy-faced Furuya and the Coach, who is staring at Miyuki speculatively. “I-I mean, sure, Miyuki, but what about Furuya—”
“Nori!”
“Coming!”
Yuuki watches Miyuki thoughtfully as Miyuki bad-temperedly strides towards the dish, everyone instinctively taking a wide step back as he passes through.
He glances at the Coach, who shrugs unconcerned that Miyuki doesn’t even ask for so much as by your leave. Okay then.
Yuuki sort of gets it though. Everyone does, because not even Furuya is saying anything.
Gets that if Miyuki choose Furuya now, perhaps not any other time but right now, Miyuki and Sawamura are never going to mend ever again. The price of breaking a power battery is something that Seidou can’t afford right now.
And for all his frivolousness, Miyuki has only ever been serious about two things in his life: baseball, and his battery with Sawamura.
Yuuki turns to Chris, head titled to one side. “Why didn’t you say anything, Chris?”
Chris looks up, offers him a placid half smile. “Yeah, like what? There’s nothing I can say that will make it better or worse and Sawamura obviously needs to hear one of them.”
And Miyuki obviously knows what he’s doing when it comes to Sawamura, is left unsaid.
Yuuki wonders if Chris is ever bitter about that, the way Furuya is sometimes bitter about that. The way, apparently, Sawamura is bitter about that.
Miyuki’s officially Furuya’s and Sawamura’s somewhat Chris’s, but in some ways, Sawamura and Miyuki are each other’s before they’re anything else.
“Well,” Yuuki says. “You could’ve said she shouldn’t be so hard on herself?”
Chris gives him a look, lips twitching slightly into a half-smile.
“I’m her catcher, Tetsu,” Chris shakes his head. He is calm; Yuuki would like to think he is only imagining the complete lack of compromise in his tone. “That would be an insult for every pitch I’ve taught to and caught for her.”
“True,” Yuuki says musingly. “You battery pairs have the weirdest sense of loyalty to one another.”
Chris laughs, pitch the slightest bit off. “Comes with the territory, I guess,” he says. “That being said, it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling more rucked up than Miyuki right now.”
Except you maybe? You watching them like that?
Yuuki’s not about to say that he understands the way most battery pairs work; he’s a hitter at heart, but bonds between battery pairs are fascinating and untouchable. Even for those on the same field with them.
But he’s seen many pairs; Seidou has four pitchers, three of them with a frightening amount of ego, so practically a carnival already.
Yuuki thinks that maybe, the old saying is right. Maybe a battery is a little bit like being married. There are commitments and expectations and arguments.
An infinite amount of trust.
Sawamura and Miyuki are kind of fucking everything up with their messed up on-again off-again not-a-relationship.
Yuuki glances at Miyuki; shoulders rigid, hands clenching and unclenching rhythmically. He is completely in control, focus sharp as razor.
Glances at Chris, who is as distant and aloof as those dark early days of his injury.
So yeah. Okay.
Yuuki’s not going anywhere near that particular can of worms and the three (four?) of them will have to work it out on their own at one point before someone snaps and isn’t that going to be so ugly?
But for now, they have a literal score to settle.
It’s probably gonna be a bloodbath, going by the look on the others’ face, going by the look on Isashiki’s face, like he wants to send someone over to the hospital too, and Yuuki’s not really up to the inevitable drama during the hospital visit – not because he’s not worried about the brat because he is, but there would also be the awkward silences, fumbling not-apologies, Miyuki and Sawamura pretending the other doesn’t exist in the world for another week while at the same insisting on being as close as possible out of fear of actually losing sight of the other – but Yuuki can’t honestly say he’s not looking forward to it.
“Come on then,” Yuuki says, adjusting his cap. “This one’s gonna be a blowout.”