Zhang Han didn't talk a great deal, as a rule.
But when he did, there was something about the way he spoke that kept people from feeling lectured or pushed. He laid out the pros and cons to Sawamura in the same tone he might use talking with a friend over a meal, unhurried, without any pressure underneath it. From beginning to end, he never once made a direct attempt to convince Sawamura of anything. He simply explained what he saw and left the conclusions where they landed.
Sawamura's thoughts, quietly and without fanfare, had begun to shift.
"Stance?"
The word landed immediately. Sawamura could be spectacularly unobservant about a great many things in the world around him, but the moment anything touched baseball, a different kind of attention switched on. He had caught the key point in Zhang Han's words almost before Zhang Han had finished saying them.
Zhang Han paused, genuinely caught off guard by the speed of it.
Had he been underestimating Sawamura this whole time? There was more going on behind those wide, earnest eyes than the surface suggested.
He nodded regardless, because this was exactly the direction he had been heading. Whether Sawamura ended up joining Seido or not, Zhang Han had already decided he was willing to help this baseball-obsessed teenager avoid some of the unnecessary detours that came from having no one experienced to learn from.
"As the core of your team, its manager, and its Ace, what do you think pitching is actually for?"
"Momentum!"
No hesitation. Not even a beat of consideration.
Zhang Han stared at him.
"As long as you have momentum, all the difficulties stop being difficulties."
Of all the answers Zhang Han had been prepared for, that was not among them.
"Have you ever won a game before?"
"In the last game of the Summer Tournament, we almost won. It was only by one run!"
Sawamura said it with real excitement, as though the memory of coming that close still carried heat.
Zhang Han felt something cold move through him.
He was hearing about this for the first time. The Akagi Junior High School Baseball Team, not counting its founding year, had been running for roughly a year and a half, close to two years. In all that time, through official games and practice matches alike, they had not won a single one.
The question that surfaced immediately was not about baseball. It was about endurance. He genuinely could not picture what it felt like to play for two full years without a single win, to show up again and again to a sport that kept giving back the same result, and to keep going anyway. Put in the same position, Zhang Han was not sure he could have held on.
Then again, thinking about it from a different angle, the love Sawamura and his teammates carried for baseball was probably of a different order from most players. And if the people following Sawamura were willing to stay through all of that without the pull of results, then the force of Sawamura's personality and passion had to be something genuinely unusual.
Sawamura looked up, projecting confidence in the way someone does when they are not entirely sure the confidence is warranted but have decided to wear it anyway.
Zhang Han considered his words for a moment and said, "Your answer isn't entirely wrong."
The relief that moved across Sawamura's face was immediate.
He had no idea that this was a technique. Zhang Han had no particular habit of agreeing with people to be kind. Starting by acknowledging something in the other person's answer was simply a way of finding the right entry point, of making what came next land without unnecessary friction.
"Momentum matters enormously in a pitcher-batter showdown. At the highest level, between genuinely top players, its importance multiplies several times over."
Sawamura nodded with conviction.
He was confident, but he wasn't someone who confused confidence with ability. He knew perfectly well that there was a significant gap between himself and what the word "top players" actually described. And the senpai standing in front of him was, if his read on the situation was anywhere close to correct, exactly that. Being told his instinct had something right in it by someone at that level meant something real to him.
"But a baseball game can't be carried on momentum alone. A player's condition shifts with mood and circumstances. You can't bring full intensity to every game and every single pitch. In high school, it's single elimination. One loss and it's over. In that environment, I think fundamental skills matter just as much as momentum. Starting with something like pitching form."
Sawamura's posture changed almost without him noticing. He leaned in slightly, his expression settling into something focused and serious, his eyes on Zhang Han, waiting.
His attitude, Zhang Han noted privately, was good.
"You're the strongest batter on your own team, right? What kind of pitcher do you find hardest to deal with?"
"A powerful one."
Zhang Han absorbed this.
He and Sawamura, it was becoming clear, did not naturally arrive at the same destination when following the same thought. Of course powerful pitchers were difficult to deal with. That wasn't the question.
"I mean what type of pitcher is hard for you to handle."
"One with really fast pitches. There's a school in our area, their Ace throws these pitches that just..." Sawamura made a sound and a gesture that communicated the general idea while communicating very little specific information.
Zhang Han waited. Nothing more useful arrived.
He quietly gave up on the guided approach and shifted strategies entirely.
"Let me describe a situation and you tell me if it sounds difficult to handle. A pitcher with no readable expression, whose motion looks identical on every single pitch, regardless of what he's about to throw. If you stepped into the box against someone like that, would that feel harder to manage?"
Sawamura actually thought about it this time, turning the image over in his mind before nodding slowly.
Yes. That would be harder. If you couldn't read anything in the opening movement, you had no thread to pull on, no way to start guessing what was coming or where it was going. It was like facing someone in a contest of skill and not being able to see their hands.
"That's what I meant when I said you haven't had professional coaching. If someone had worked with you properly, you would already know what a fixed pitching form is. In simple terms, if your delivery looks the same on every pitch from the batter's perspective, they have no way to read your intentions from your body before the ball leaves your hand."
Sawamura's brow creased.
"Can batters actually do that? Read where a pitch is going from the pitcher's motion?"
The idea required a level of observation and reaction time that seemed almost fictional to him.
"Don't underestimate high school baseball. In Tokyo alone, not counting the rest of the country, there are at least twenty batters capable of doing exactly that. Azuma-senpai, who you faced earlier, is one of them. I'm another."
What struck Sawamura as barely believable was, to Zhang Han, simply a description of the baseline. He wasn't overstating it in the slightest. Even after all the third-year players graduated, the number of batters in Tokyo alone who could do this would still clear twenty without any difficulty.
Sawamura was quiet for a moment, absorbing the full weight of that.
"You still have a long way to go."
Zhang Han said it without condescension, then moved into the practical part.
He began working through Sawamura's pitching stance with him, making corrections where he could, pointing out what needed to change and roughly how. The deeper issues couldn't be undone in a single afternoon. But if Sawamura could get a real grip on fixed-form pitching in the half year before he entered high school, he would arrive at whatever program he chose with a foundation that would save him a significant amount of time and effort later on.
That was worth giving him now, regardless of where he ended up going.
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