"The score is 3-2! Seido's offense doesn't appear to be finished. Mr. Fujita, do you think Seido can tie it in this inning?"
The commentator turned to the guest beside him.
For a quarter-final level match, inviting a professional commentator was not standard practice. That was something reserved for the semi-finals, when the venue moved to Jingu Stadium and Tokyo Television broadcast the games live.
But this was Inashiro against Seido, and the viewing public had made their feelings about it very clear. Online, fans from across Tokyo — not just West Tokyo, but East Tokyo as well — had openly called it a final brought forward. Roughly seventy percent of the city's baseball fans agreed.
Tokyo Television had noticed. They could not broadcast it live due to scheduling, but recording it was another matter. They paid to bring in a professional commentator, and it turned out to be the right call. Without someone to frame what was happening on the field, many ordinary fans would miss the significance entirely.
The Kuramochi and Harada collision at home plate was a perfect example. To a casual viewer, Harada had simply lost his footing, dropped the ball, and handed Seido a run. Lucky bounce, nothing more. But Commentator Fujita had kept his eyes on Kuramochi throughout, and his breakdown of what had actually happened shifted the crowd's understanding entirely.
The Seido player who moved like a monkey had just executed a change-of-direction technique at full sprint that a professional catcher would struggle to contain. People in the stands began to understand what they had witnessed, and the applause that followed reflected it.
Harada, whose face had been flushed with embarrassment, felt some of the tension leave him as the commentary landed. He knew the truth already. In that situation, with that time window and those movements, there had been almost nothing he could have done differently. If the same play came again, he was not even confident he could stop it. The only real answer, he decided, was to position earlier and seal the plate completely before Kuramochi got close.
"The probability of Seido scoring again is still quite high," Fujita said plainly.
"There is a runner on second base, and the fourth batter who drove in a run earlier is stepping up now. Both of these players had standout performances at Koshien, and what we are seeing today suggests they have only grown since then. They are more composed. More mature."
Yuuki Tetsuya and Zhang Han. If Narumiya was committed to facing them directly rather than pitching around them, Fujita was genuinely uncertain Narumiya could get through both. Players who made that kind of impression at Koshien were never ordinary. Nobody in the stadium understood that better than Inashiro's own players.
On second base, Zhang Han was doing his best to look threatening. He shifted his weight, leaned toward third, wore the posture of someone about to go.
Harada and Narumiya read it immediately for what it was.
Zhang Han was already on second base. Advancing to third would not change the situation dramatically enough to justify risking an out. He had no real reason to steal. The threatening stance was purely designed to pull at Narumiya's attention and complicate his focus.
Narumiya scoffed quietly.
Did they think he would fall for that twice?
He had already forgotten, apparently, that it was precisely because he had been drawn in by Zhang Han's movement the first time — eager to cut him down at first base — that Kuramochi had been able to score.
If he had been patient, if he had waited and watched rather than reacting, Seido might not have their second run yet. But there were no second chances in a game already in motion, and Narumiya had no interest in dwelling on what had passed.
He brought his attention back to Yuuki and cleared everything else away.
"Whoosh!"
The ball came in like a shot. Yuuki tracked it, gripped the bat tight, and swung with full force.
"Ping!"
The contact was immediate and violent. The ball rocketed past Yamaoka Riku at first base before he could move a muscle. He could only watch it land in front of him and bounce away.
The speed was startling. If the ball had stayed fair, it would have been a clean extra-base hit, dropping into open ground directly behind the first baseman with nobody positioned to cut it off.
"Foul!"
Yuuki stood in the box and radiated something that felt close to inevitability.
Narumiya and Harada exchanged a look. Neither of them said it aloud, but both of them understood it. Getting Yuuki out with standard pitching was not going to work. His swing had only sharpened since Koshien. There were no obvious gaps in his approach. Even with Narumiya's velocity and movement at their current level, ordinary pitches alone were not going to be enough.
They needed something else.
"I didn't expect to have to use it this early," Narumiya muttered to himself.
But he did not feel regret. If anything, facing an opponent this difficult made the moment more worthwhile. His new changeup had been built for exactly this kind of wall.
He set himself on the mound and threw with everything he had.
Yuuki picked up the ball leaving Narumiya's hand, raised an eyebrow slightly, and timed his swing. The bat came through in a clean, practiced arc.
No contact.
Yuuki's chest jolted. Something was wrong.
"Thwack."
The sound of the ball settling into Harada's glove reached him a moment later. Yuuki's eyes were still carrying disbelief when he heard it.
A changeup. He had swung through a changeup.
The count stood at two strikes, zero balls. Seido's cleanup hitter had been pushed to the edge.
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