By the time Zhang Han and the others received the news and made their way from the indoor practice facility to the second baseball field, the second round between Sawamura and Azuma Kiyokuni had already begun.
The young man on the pitcher's mound stood there like a newborn calf that had never learned to fear tigers. Facing the strongest high school batter in the entire country, ranked first nationwide, he wound up and threw without a trace of hesitation. There was no caution in his posture, no second-guessing in his eyes. He looked, if anything, completely certain that he could solve Azuma Kiyokuni.
Zhang Han had been a pitcher once. He knew the mound well enough to understand that standing up there and doing what that young man was doing right now was anything but simple. It looked effortless from the outside. It was not.
It required a strong heart. The kind that didn't buckle under pressure and didn't waver when the person on the other end of the pitch could knock the ball into the next prefecture.
Sawamura had that kind of heart. That much was already clear.
A player like that didn't just contribute through his pitching. He lifted the air around him. He steadied teammates who were wobbling and made critical moments feel less like cliffs and more like steps. In contrast, Tanba Kouichiro, who currently held the most prominent spot on the team's pitching staff, fell noticeably short in this department.
Zhang Han shook his head slowly, a wry smile crossing his face.
No wonder Takashima Rei thought so highly of him. Whatever the final verdict on his actual pitching ability turned out to be, the demeanor alone made him a natural candidate for an Ace. The talent this young man carried was simply too difficult to ignore.
"Maybe the team really is about to find itself a serious pitcher prospect."
His mood, as he said it quietly to himself, was not entirely simple.
To claim he had no personal attachment to the pitcher's mound would be a lie he couldn't even convince himself of. He had started as a pitcher at Matsukata Little League. He hadn't been the Ace, but he had been treated like one. When he first joined the Seido High School Baseball Team, he had continued to think of himself in those terms, carrying that identity without much question.
He had been naive then. He hadn't yet developed the eye to measure the gap between himself and real pitching talent.
That changed during the Summer Tournament. Once Seido reached Koshien, he saw them up close. Hidezawa. Kameshima. Narumiya Mei.
He couldn't pretend anymore after that.
His pitching potential had already been stretched close to its limit. Another three years of high school, no matter how hard he worked, would not produce the kind of transformation that the gap demanded. He could squeeze out a bit more ball speed, perhaps, but the needle wouldn't move enough to matter. Reaching the top tier of national pitchers on that path was not realistic. His right-handed pitching, across his entire career, would struggle to close the distance to Narumiya Mei's level, let alone get ahead of it.
If he couldn't become the best on that path, then he would become the best on another one.
Since I can't become you, I'll become your strongest opponent instead.
That had been his most genuine thought. Not bitter, not resigned. Just honest.
When the Director and the coaching staff later suggested he try developing his left-handed pitching, Zhang Han had recognized the potential in it himself, even if he couldn't yet see how high the ceiling might go. Whatever the answer turned out to be, the fire that had gone cold started burning again. He could see a way forward.
Tanba had been part of that too, if he was being truthful about it. Zhang Han had never said it out loud, but deep down, he shared Azuma Kiyokuni's quiet skepticism about whether Tanba would ever truly be capable of shouldering the Seido pitching staff on his own. That belief, unspoken as it was, had kept a second flame lit underneath his motivation. Surpassing Tanba, at least, felt like something within reach as long as he kept working.
But standing here now, watching this young man on the mound, he felt that calculation shift.
Because the obstacle on the path to becoming an Ace wasn't just Tanba anymore. The young man in front of him was right there too. And behind him, there would be others. Players who hadn't arrived yet, who were still finding their way to Seido.
The path was narrowing.
Zhang Han found, somewhat to his own surprise, that the thought didn't depress him. It sharpened him. He had always been someone who ran toward a challenge rather than away from it, and in the end, every rival on that path was just another whetstone. That was how he had always looked at it, and he wasn't about to stop now.
Still, the mood was complicated. He couldn't quite iron it out, so instead he turned his full attention back to the mound and watched.
Sawamura's pitching form was committed. Every movement was full of intent. Zhang Han could see that immediately.
What he could also see, through the lens of his own trained experience, was that the mechanics were a mess.
The movements looked powerful on the surface, but they were cluttered with unnecessary motion. Those extra movements weren't adding anything to the pitch. If anything, they were actively limiting his ball speed, creating drag where there should have been clean transfer of energy. Zhang Han found himself wondering what kind of coach had let those habits develop unchecked for this long without correction. It was genuinely amateur work.
But the presence was real. Undeniably real.
Facing Azuma Kiyokuni, who radiated the kind of intensity that felt like standing too close to something about to erupt, the young man on the mound didn't flinch. He wound up and released.
"Whoosh!"
The white ball cut through the air.
Zhang Han's eyes narrowed immediately.
The speed was below where it needed to be. Even by junior high standards, those mechanics were holding him back, and the result showed it. And the location, right down the center of the zone, made Zhang Han's chest tighten without entirely knowing why. By instinct, he put the odds at roughly eighty percent that this pitch was about to get launched.
It didn't happen.
Azuma Kiyokuni watched the pitch come in, let it pass right by him, and didn't move his bat an inch.
"Pop!"
"Strike!"
Miyuki caught it cleanly, then tilted his head toward the batter beside him.
"That was a strike, wasn't it? The batter didn't swing."
"I was observing the pitch. Idiot."
Azuma Kiyokuni had many qualities. Patience when being needled by a first-year was not among them, and Miyuki knew exactly how to find the edge of it.
A few steps away, Yuuki Tetsuya's eyes narrowed just slightly.
His attention had been pulled in again.
He had been watching Miyuki carefully throughout all of this. During the break, Miyuki had apparently spent his time studying not just opposing teams' data but also the data of his own teammates at Seido, in finer detail than most people would think to bother with. The first time Azuma had been led by the nose, it could charitably be written off as a fluke or a moment of carelessness. But now it was happening again, with almost the same approach, and Azuma was walking right into it a second time.
This first-year junior's mind was genuinely irritating.
Zhang Han was caught off guard too. He hadn't expected Miyuki to be the catcher for this, and he certainly hadn't expected the level of seriousness Miyuki was bringing to it. Catching for some visiting kid from the countryside, and yet here he was, fully committed, working the at-bat like it was the bottom of the ninth at Koshien.
What kind of pull did this young man have?
What was it about him that made Miyuki, of all people, invest this much effort on his behalf?
Zhang Han still couldn't quite see it from where he was standing. The distance was too much to pick up the finer details of the pitching.
He moved. Closer this time, repositioning himself just a few meters away from Azuma Kiyokuni's side of the plate.
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