The outfield hums like a big green amplifier. Chalk flares white under cleats; the infield dirt has been combed into tidy ripples that will be wrecked within minutes. A classmate waves a hand-painted banner that sheds flecks of paint every time he pumps his fist; another cups her mouth and tries to turn her voice into a trumpet. The sun leans on the backstop and pretends it's a spectator.
Kaori and I slide into a gap along the first-base line, pressed between a cracked fence post and a clump of sophomores who have decided their job today is to yell "LET'S GO" until the phrase means something new. Kaori's already on the balls of her feet, sleeves shoved to her elbows, clapping like applause is cash and she intends to tip generously. I keep my hands in my pockets, a compromise between showing up and hiding.
"Participation includes noise, Piano-kun," she says without looking at me. It's not scolding so much as a nudge shaped like a sentence.
"I'm making internal noise," I say, and get an eye-roll that contains more warmth than most hugs.
Tsubaki is in right, hat brim low enough to shade intent, ponytail swung through the hole like a flag that chose discipline. From here she reads as straight lines and angles: shoulders squared to the diamond, knees loose, weight ready to lean toward anything. She scans the bleachers out of habit—the quick accounting a player does to locate wind, sun, coach—and her gaze trips across us the way a hand catches on a nail.
We lock eyes. My stomach does that bad elevator lurch; my face, traitor, arranges itself into encouragement. I lift both hands and smile thumbs up like an idiot version of a coach.
She startles. It's tiny—just a soft widening of the eyes—but on her it rings like a dropped coin. Her chin tucks down; a breath later she looks past me as if the bricks over our shoulders are thrilling. Her shoulders claim new casualness. The top of her bat taps her cleat twice: ritual stitching the moment back together.
"Cute," Kaori murmurs, equal parts mischief and fondness.
The inning rolls over. First batter for us swings out of his shoes and discovers the air is heavier than it looks. Second lays down a bunting attempt so tentative even the ball refuses the invitation. Clap, groan, clap. Kaori whistles; somebody answers from the far side with a counter-whistle that has no pitch discipline at all.
Then Tsubaki steps into the box.
Her pre-swing has a grammar: tug the strap, test the dirt, blink the left eye, breathe. The catcher sits low, glove a square mouth. The pitcher shakes once, twice; the catcher wiggles a signal only his mother would understand, and the boy on the mound decides he is the kind of person who throws a rise on the first hello.
The ball leaves his hand looking polite and reaches the plate with an upward grin. Tsubaki can't help herself; the bat scythes along a path that would have been perfect an inch lower. Whoosh—nothing but air, the sound of paper tearing. Strike one.
The bleachers manufacture pep because that's what they were built for. "You got it," "good eye," the lies teammates tell to keep one another from dying of honesty.
Tsubaki steps out, resets. The pitcher likes what he felt and does not pretend otherwise. Here comes the twin: same arm slot, same late hop, same rude little lift. She chases again—less fooled, more stubborn—and misses by the width of a regret. Strike two. The ump is a man stamping passports.
My pulse climbs into my throat. I see the twitch in her grip she gets when she wants to murder the ball for being smug. I see her jaw notch the way it did in middle school when she'd decided the outfield fence was a dare. Kaori's hands slide together like she's praying in a religion that tolerates snacks. Around us, a line of first-years begins chanting her surname on a rhythm that does it no favors.
The diamond shrinks. The breath of the crowd clots into a single weather system, and then it drops away entirely. The noise thins like someone pulled a fader. The field goes gray at the edges. My brain, polite monster that it is, drags me sideways into a room I didn't choose.
It's the week after Maihou. Not the smiles, not the handshake, not the polite compliments from adults who admire children like they admire a well-made clock. After. Back door of the hall, loading ramp with the echo of a laugh that doesn't belong to anyone anymore, sun sagging toward evening with a bad taste in its mouth. My blazer hangs wrong because I put it on wrong; my tie has decided it likes asymmetry.
Tsubaki stands square in front of me, breath a little sharp from running down stairwells to find me first, hair debating with the wind. There's a cream-colored envelope in my hand thick enough to be a future. "So?" she says, and her voice tries for light and misses. "Europe."
"It's just a letter," I say, folding the corner down like I'm trying to make it forget its name.
"It's a door," she corrects, stepping closer the way you step closer to stop an animal from bolting. "You won. You earned it. You're going." Her eyes say the other thing out loud in the space between us: Let something good survive. Please.
"I'm not—" I start, and she slices a hand through the air, impatient with my usual tricks.
"Don't start with the noble martyr noise. You worked for this. She..." The word catches; she swallows, changes lanes without signaling. "You can't throw this away and call it grief."
"I tore it up," I say, the way you admit to a petty crime in a confession booth. "I'm not going. I won't go. Not now. Not ever."
Her face empties. It's not dramatic—no gasp, no slap, no shouted monologue for the stagehand lurking in the alley. It's worse. Disbelief trips, bruises into hurt, collides with anger and can't find a place to stand. "Y-you... w-what...?" She looks at my hands like her memory is lying to her. Her jaw works, then gives up. The hope in her posture has nowhere left to live....
That moment sticks to me like a label soaked and peeled but never fully gone. The look is a scar that didn't ask permission.
The present slams back in with the ugly grace of a door kicked open. Leather pops; wood complains; somewhere a sophomore drops a soda and it clatters all the way down the bleachers like coins changing their mind. The pitcher coils. Tsubaki squares, one heel grinding just enough to write a small dark word into the dirt.
He comes high again—humble arrogance, daring her to repeat the mistake. She waits half a heartbeat longer than a smart person would and lets all that irritation in her wrists do what it wants.
Contact.
Not a perfect barrel, not a majestic flight into somebody's picnic. More a hard insult—low, mean, skipping toward the hole between short and third like it knows something about the geometry of panic. The fielder charges a hair too fast, takes it on the heel, juggles his own nerves. The ball pops away a meter and acts coy.
Tsubaki is a streak. First in a handful of explosives; second on a lean that would get a lecture in any sport that loves knees. The coach at third windmills like a man summoning wind. She doesn't need the sign; you can read go in the angle of her neck. The relay comes in cleaner this time, hands to hands, the arc tight, the catcher planting a wall at the dish because the rulebook allows it and he likes feeling important.
She could hold. She won't. Of course she won't.
She drops into the slide a breath too early because bravery is hurry with better PR. Dust lifts in a halo that tastes like old pennies. The tag sweeps across her hip; the world becomes contact points and nothing else—shin to dirt, glove to thigh, toe to plate. The plate is a rumor under the cloud; the umpire is a throat that wants to be a gavel.
"OUT!"
The word hits the bleachers like a hammer. Everything else—cheers, groans, the clatter of cleats—arrives late.
————————
I heard the word before I felt my body again.
"OUT!"
It hit like a stamp. The cheers rose up around me a half-second late, and for a moment it seemed like everyone had agreed to move underwater. I grinned fake and big enough for a yearbook and let the dirt fall off me like confetti I hadn't asked for. Someone tugged my elbow; someone else hit my helmet; the catcher said "nice try" in that bored way boys do when they win. I stood, pretended my foot wasn't yelling into a pillow, and jogged toward the dugout with the gait of a person who thinks swagger is a painkiller.
Coach caught my shoulder and said something about "good try" and "That's how it is," and I nodded the way you nod when you're translating from a language you don't plan to use. The bench smelled like dust and rubber and the last three years. I clapped for the next batter because that is the job, and when the inning collapsed, I trotted out to right like my legs were on a delay.
We lost. Of course we did. It was the kind of loss that teaches you nothing except how to count. And her final game of the middle school season.
The line at the plate was a parody of politeness. We dipped our chins at boys who had discovered they were invincible for the next twenty minutes. The banner came down with a slap; the freshmen's chant died of embarrassment mid-echo. I stuffed my bat into my bag and cinched the strap with my teeth because my hands had become stupid, then climbed out past the chain-link because the gate jammed and I didn't want to wait for anyone's help. On the other side of the fence the world turned back into a street.
Kashiwagi fell in beside me before my body could decide whether to limp. She didn't look at my foot. She looked at my face, which is worse.
"You okay?" she asked. Neutral tone. Her eyes gave it away.
I made a noise that could mean anything. "I'm starving," I said, which was true and therefore not helpful.
"You ran through that stop like it owed you money," she said. "Coach will print a lecture and staple it to your forehead."
"Staples bounce off me," I said, managing half a grin. My breath measured wrong in my ribs. The ankle had decided to become a fist; my sock was turning into a tourniquet by millimeters.
We walked a few steps. I waved at a group of first-years who waved back too hard, their smiles wired on with hope. Someone's mom offered oranges; I shook my head. If I opened my mouth for anything, the wrong thing would come out.
Kashiwagi followed my glance down the sidewalk and snorted softly. "Have your boyfriend cheer you up," she said, casual like dropping a coin in a jar.
I stopped because my brain didn't know what to do with the word. "My—what?"
She hiked an eyebrow. "You know who. The ghost boy you keep pretending you don't see." Before I could produce the correct legal response, she bumped me with her shoulder—gentle, on the good side. "I'll text you notes from the postmortem. Go home before your ankle gets ideas." She stepped away, weaving into a clump of teammates who needed a person to make jokes, and left me with the street's thin breeze and a foot that had started whispering plans.
Boyfriend. Right. As if we were simple.
I leaned against the low wall by the hedge and breathed until the sharp part rounded off into a heavy ache I could carry. You learn to triage. You learn which muscles lie best. I pulled my cap off and let the sweaty ponytail breathe; the back of my neck felt like a stove set on low. I wanted water, a time machine, and five minutes where nobody looked at me like I was a map they'd lost.
When I glanced up the path again, there he was—walking like gravity meant more to him than it does to other people. Blazer wrong, tie sullen, hair pretending it hadn't met a comb this week. His face—God—his face had the gray to it that only shows up after too many nights done wrong. Not dramatic. Just emptied out. If he were a building, there would be lights on in exactly two windows and the rest of the floors would be dark.
He didn't wave. He didn't do that polite half-smile he performs for teachers. He just stopped in front of me and took inventory with his eyes, which was almost worse. He looked at the shoulders (fine), at the hands (steady), at my mouth (lying), and then he looked at my ankles like he was reading a chart no one else could see.
"Don't," I said out of reflex.
He tapped my bad ankle with the toe of his shoe.
It was a light tap. An insult more than an action. My leg answered like he'd set off fireworks under the skin.
"AH—!" The sound came out too big, too clean. It bounced off the hedge, ran across the street, and made a dog down the block decide he had something to add.
Kousei's mouth didn't change, but his eyes said, there it is. "Knew it," he said, like he was marking something in a notebook.
"Stay away from me, creep," I hissed, grabbing the fence to keep myself from kicking him with the other foot out of pride. Pain had turned hot, the kind that makes you sweat in weird places. "Touch me again and I'll—"
"Hold still," he said, as if he were the one with seniority and a whistle.
He set his school bag down, rummaged, and produced an elastic roll of athletic tape and a soft ice pack that had probably lived at the bottom of some dugout cooler five minutes ago. He held them up like a villain in a cheap commercial. I wanted to laugh; I wanted to cry; I wanted to take them and also bite him.
"Absolutely not," I said, aiming for aloof and landing somewhere near panicked. "If you wrap me, I owe you something."
"You already owe me for the scream," he said. "Sit."
I sat because the curb looked too much like a suggestion I didn't want to fight. He knelt on the pavement and I tried not to look at his hands. They were steady in the way I trust more than anything else about him, and that made me angrier than if they'd shaken. He pressed the ice to the swelling until my skin argued, then swapped to his sleeve for a barrier and pressed again. The first sting settled into a bearable cold; heat leaked into the pack and away from me in tiny sighs.
"You look worse than I do," I said, because I can only be quiet for so long before the truth starts to chew on me. "At least I have an excuse, what's yours?"
He didn't look up. "I'm operational." He said it like a mechanic.
"That is not a human sentence," I muttered, and then hissed when he tested the angle of the joint with two fingers. "I will end you."
"This will help," he said, completely unmoved by my homicide plans. He started to wrap, securing the figure-eight with a concentration he used to save for Chopin. The tape whispered as it unrolled. The smell of the adhesive reminded me of tournaments and early mornings and all the times his uncle scolded me for not warming up right while feeding me onigiri.
When he finished, he slid the ice in under the tape, snug. "Okay," he said, sitting back. His eyes flicked up, finally meeting mine. Something soft and awful passed through me.
"Okay," I echoed, and hated how small it sounded. "Now get away from me before people start thinking you're helpful."
He stood and then crouched again, turning his back to me. "Get on."
"No." It came out fast, automatic. "We are not doing the backpack thing. I can walk."
"You can walk until the corner and then you'll swear at a storm drain," he said. "Get on."
"Bossy....," I grumble , because I needed to have the last word about something today.
"You can fight me about it," he said mildly, "or you can not fall down in the middle of the street." He glanced over his shoulder. "Three... two..."
I threw my bag over his opposite shoulder with a growl and climbed onto his back, the motion making my ankle howl and my pride do something worse. His hands caught under my thighs like he'd been planning for it all along. He stood without stagger. He's stronger than he looks; I hate that I forget.
He took a step. Another. The ice pack shifted against the tape; cold pulsed, numb then ache, ache then numb. His blazer scratched my bare forearms in a way that felt almost like an apology.
"I can always tell when you're in pain," he said, quiet enough that the hedge didn't get to hear it.
"Yeah?" I dug my chin into his shoulder so he wouldn't see my face. "Then look in a mirror, smart guy." I wanted it to sound like a joke. It didn't.
He didn't answer. The silence between us went warm. We passed the vending machine that never has the right flavor; it flashed light on his cheekbones and the deep crescents under his eyes. The campus behind us gave up the ghost of the game and went back to pretending it was a place where people learned.
"Where's Kaori?" I asked, because someone had to say her name so it didn't turn into a superstition. "I thought she'd be trying to carry you instead of me."
He shrugged, and the motion jostled me. "Do I look like I have a tracker?" There was a ghost of humor in it, the kind that knows how to act like humor while the boat is sinking.
I smacked his shoulder with the flat of my hand. "Don't be a jerk." And then, softer, because it was going to rot my tongue if I didn't say it: "She'd worry less if you didn't look like... this."
"Like what," he asked, not offended.
"Like a haunted coat rack," I said. "Like your soul is two coats too big." My throat went hot. "Like you're not eating, and you're not sleeping, and you're pretending it's fine because 'operational' sounds like a plan."
He kept walking. Streetlights decided to matter one by one. "Thank you," he said after a minute.
"For what?" I snapped, because gratitude is sometimes worse than insult.
"For being with me." His voice wasn't brave; it was tired in the honest way, the way that almost let me cry. "I know I make you worry. I want to be the one worrying from now on. I might be an unreliable piece of crap, but—"
"Don't say that," I said into his shoulder, and my hands tightened around him like the words were something I could keep from falling out of his mouth by force. "Don't you dare. Not about you. Not to me."
He was quiet a beat. Then he tried to pull us both back toward the surface. "You're so light," he said, and the smile was in it even if I couldn't see his lips. "Sometimes I forget you're just a small girl."
I yanked his hair gently because he deserved it. "What's that supposed to mean, weirdo?" My face went hot in the stupid way. "Call me small again and I'll suplex you."
"Maybe the season's making me feel funny," he said, which is Kousei for I said something truer than I meant to, please don't look at it too closely.
We turned onto the quieter street that leads to my building. The trees are terrible at confidence; they whistle when the smallest wind bullies them. A scooter zipped past trailing the scent of batter and oil, and I almost asked him to stop so I could buy something fried and orange and punish my stomach for being attached to me.
The silence stretched. I let it. I listened to his breathing, which was even but a little deep, like walking and thinking at the same time was work these days. His shoulder bones felt sharper under my forearms. My ankle throbbed in a slow pulse now that the anger had bled out of it, and each pulse made space for another thought I didn't want.
We lost.
It arrived like a verdict. Not even the kind you argue with. The kind that writes itself down and files itself away under Of course. My chest went tight around it, and then the tightness broke with a sound I didn't mean to make.
"I hate this," I said, not to him and entirely to him. "We lost."
He adjusted his grip and didn't pretend to have a fix. "I know."
"It was my fault," I said, and the words were smooth with repetition; you could string them on a chain and sell them as beads. "I went. I shouldn't have gone. Everyone worked so hard. I wanted to be a star and instead I was a traffic cone."
"You read the relay right," he said, steady. "You wanted a run. That's not a crime."
"I slid like an idiot," I said. The heat climbed my face and made everything feel like bad weather. "And then I—" I sucked a breath through my teeth because the pain at the word then punched from the ankle up. "I can't even be properly injured. I'm dramatic and useless."
"You're neither," he said. He slowed a fraction so a couple with a stroller could pass, then sped up again. "You're loud about everything except pain."
That did it. The thing I'd been holding in my throat—the hot, stupid, choking thing—barreled up and out. I pressed my forehead to the back of his neck because there wasn't anywhere else for my face to go. "I hate this," I said again, louder, and then the words lost shape and turned into water.
We turned down my block while I cried on his back like a child, and if the neighborhood could see me I hoped it choked on its opinion. The tears weren't pretty; they were all snot and hitch and this is not fair. "We lost and it was my fault," I repeated, as if repetition could turn into understanding if I made it brave enough. "Everyone worked so hard. Coach will—" I hiccuped. "—coach will try to be nice about it, which is worse, and the first-years will pretend not to be disappointed and I'll have to be someone's example about grit and I hate that word, I hate it, I hate—"
Kousei let me pour it into the street. He didn't tell me to breathe. He didn't tell me it wasn't my fault. He carried me like that's just a thing he does on Thursdays, and the corner store's neon sign hummed an ugly halo over both of us. The ice pack dripped down the back of my leg in cold lines. A cat watched us with contempt and approval.
Somewhere between "I hate this" number nine and "I hate me" number one, I ran out of enough air for either. The crying didn't stop so much as give up. My breath kept working like a machine that wants to retire and isn't allowed. The ache in the ankle had settled into an argument I could walk away from someday. The ache in my chest took longer.
"Why does this feel okay," I asked the back of his collar. My voice sounded small and stupid and truer than I intended. "Everything's wrong. But—" The but hung there, a tangled string with no kite.
"Because I'm here," he said, and it should have been arrogant and it wasn't. "Because you're not alone." The words weren't a line; they were an inventory.
I closed my eyes because if I kept them open, I would have to witness myself. Everything is collapsing, I thought, and the thought didn't hurt like I expected. Somehow, right now, it's okay—because he's here.