Chapter 72: Home Run King
What did three hundred kilometers per hour mean?
It meant a Shinkansen at full speed.
It meant that the instant the white baseball left Mechamaru's machine, the air burst with a shriek so sharp it stabbed straight through the eardrums. The pitch no longer looked like a ball. It looked like a shell.
Utahime shot up from the stands, all color draining from her face.
"That is not baseball!"
Her voice cracked with genuine alarm.
"Yami, dodge!"
But Yami did not move.
He did not flinch.
He did not even blink.
In that instant, the world inside his eyes stretched and slowed.
The drifting path of dust.
The trembling flow of air.
The seams of the baseball spinning so violently they seemed ready to tear themselves apart.
Everything became clear.
Perfectly clear.
[Total Concentration Breathing.]
Yami drew in a quiet breath.
Fresh air flooded his lungs, then raced through his blood like fire. Every muscle fiber awakened. Every nerve sharpened. His heartbeat settled into a steady rhythm, and the whole body beneath his skin seemed to come alive in one smooth motion.
Then he swung.
To everyone watching, it looked absurd.
Too slow.
Ridiculously, unnaturally slow.
It was less like a batter meeting a high speed pitch and more like an old woman lazily swatting at a fly with her cane. There was no explosive burst, no forceful step, no sense of urgency at all.
Kamo froze behind the plate.
"What is he doing...?"
Even Mechamaru, watching through the machine's camera feed, went blank for a second.
At that speed, forget a three hundred kilometer per hour pitch. He would not even catch a badminton birdie.
The bat kept moving.
Slow.
Steady.
Almost gentle.
Then it met the ball.
Boom!
The explosion of sound hit like thunder crashing across open ground.
For one dizzy instant, everyone's vision seemed to blur. The bat that had looked so sluggish a heartbeat ago suddenly broke through some invisible boundary the moment it made contact, releasing a force so violent it felt less like a swing and more like a detonation.
Bang!
The baseball did not even have time to compress.
The instant it touched the bat, it was swallowed by a violent wave of pressure and hurled back with even greater speed.
Rip!
The air screamed.
The white ball became a streak of burning light, a meteor tearing across the sky with a blazing trail behind it. It crossed the field in less than a blink, soared over the outfielders, cleared the fence with insulting ease, and then kept going.
Straight out through the barrier surrounding Jujutsu High.
Gone.
Silence.
The entire field went dead.
Only the faint trembling of the bat in Yami's hand proved that anything had happened at all.
The umpire slowly raised one hand, face pale.
"Home... run?"
Even he sounded unconvinced.
That was no home run.
That was a launch test.
In the stands, Miwa stared with her mouth open, too stunned to notice that the katana she treasured had slipped from her hands and fallen into the dirt.
"Is that... really Special Grade level...?"
On the pitching side, Mechamaru's thoughts stalled completely.
His strongest machine.
His most powerful custom setup.
It had just been treated like nothing.
Like a bug swatted out of the air.
At the plate, Yami still held his follow through, expression calm, posture balanced, as if he had merely completed a routine exercise.
Then he lifted his eyes toward the mound.
"Are we continuing?"
His voice was casual.
The tone of someone asking whether there would be seconds at dinner.
From the loudspeaker mounted on the machine came Mechamaru's strained reply.
"Of course!"
There was fury in it.
And disbelief.
"That had to be luck!"
No one believed him.
Probably not even Mechamaru himself.
Still, the machine roared again.
The second pitch came.
Boom!
Another home run.
The third.
Boom!
Home run.
The fourth.
The fifth.
The sixth.
There was no suspense left in the game.
Every launch from Mechamaru's machine came screaming in with enough force to crack bone. Every swing from Yami answered with that same dreadful thunderclap, followed by another ball disappearing into the distance like a meteor shot out of a cannon.
This was not baseball anymore.
It was execution.
A one sided slaughter carried out with a metal bat.
By the time the ninth ball vanished beyond the barrier, Kyoto Jujutsu High had gone completely numb. No one bothered chasing the hits anymore. They only stood there staring at the sky, watching each white streak disappear farther and farther away, silently counting how many times reality had just been insulted.
"That's the ninth..."
Kamo took off his mask and dropped onto the dirt with the look of a man whose spirit had just been broken in broad daylight.
"What is even the point anymore...?"
As long as Yami stood at the plate, a run was guaranteed.
Not through skill as they understood it.
Not through cleverness.
Not even through luck.
Just through an overwhelming absurdity that crushed all resistance.
And right when Kyoto's morale was nearing total collapse, there was still one person on the field with enough enthusiasm to frighten everyone else.
"Magnificent, my brother!"
Todo stood in the outfield with his arms spread wide, face shining with almost religious fervor.
"Again!"
He thumped his chest.
"Send one toward me! I want to use my face to personally feel the weight of the soul contained in my brother's swing!"
Miwa nearly had a heart attack.
She threw herself at Todo's leg and hugged it with all her strength, trying to anchor him to the earth.
"Are you insane, Todo senpai?!"
Her voice was halfway to a scream.
"That is the kind of hit that could blow away a Special Grade Cursed Spirit! You will die! You will absolutely die!"
Todo continued to struggle forward anyway, looking like a man ready to sacrifice himself for a deeply stupid cause.
"For friendship, what does death matter?!"
"Everything! Death matters a lot!"
Miwa looked ready to cry.
Not far away, Nobara planted her hands on her hips and stared at the whole disaster with dead eyes.
"Kyoto really is full of lunatics."
Megumi, standing nearby, answered without expression.
"You say that like Gojo sensei isn't ours."
"That's different," Nobara snapped. "He's our lunatic."
Yuji, meanwhile, looked ready to explode from excitement.
"Yami! Again! That was amazing!"
Maki adjusted her glasses and let out a low whistle.
"At this point, calling this baseball feels disrespectful to baseball."
Up in the stands, Utahime covered part of her face with one hand.
She had already expected nonsense because Gojo was involved. What she had not expected was to witness Kyoto's worldview being beaten to death with sports equipment.
Beside her, Principal Gakuganji sat motionless, fingers locked tight around his cane. His eyes never left Yami.
No cursed energy.
No visible cursed technique.
Only breathing, overwhelming precision, monstrous physical force, and a calmness that made it all even more unsettling.
The more he watched, the clearer it became.
Yami was not merely talented.
He was an anomaly.
And anomalies like that were dangerous precisely because they did not fit into the systems meant to classify them.
On the field, Mechamaru finally stopped the machine.
Its barrel glowed faintly from strain. Thin smoke curled from a vent on the side. He had driven it to its limit, and the only result was nine consecutive reminders that no amount of machinery could compensate for a difference this ridiculous.
The loudspeaker crackled again.
But this time, nothing came out.
There was simply nothing left to say.
Then, at last, a familiar laugh rang out from the stands.
Gojo had finally stopped enjoying himself enough to stand.
He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, still grinning shamelessly, and gave the field a lazy wave.
"All right, that's enough."
His voice carried easily across the diamond.
"Game over. Tokyo wins."
The moment he said it, the entire Kyoto side visibly relaxed.
Several students nearly sagged to the ground on the spot. The relief in the air was so strong it almost felt physical.
This had not been a friendly match.
It had been a public lesson in the destruction of common sense.
As Yami stepped away from the plate and began walking back toward the dugout with the bat resting over one shoulder, every pair of eyes followed him.
He looked completely calm.
No arrogance.
No excitement.
No need to show off.
That made it worse.
Because everyone there had seen what he could do now.
The boy named Yami had taken something as ridiculous as a baseball game and turned it into another display of raw, unquestionable dominance.
No cursed energy.
No special effects.
No elaborate technique.
Just one impossible swing after another.
In Kyoto's eyes, there was only awe left now.
Awe, fear, and a kind of reluctant admiration they could not erase.
Because when power reached a certain point, everything else became meaningless.
.....
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