The summer air was heavy over Chengdu Stadium, the kind that clung to your skin and made even breathing feel like work. Floodlights burned white against the dusk sky, and a thousand voices pulsed like a single heartbeat.
"Li Wei! Li Wei! Li Wei!"
The chant rolled across the stands like thunder.
He stood on the mound, fingers wrapped tight around the baseball, sweat trickling from his temple down his jaw. His glove hand trembled just slightly — no one noticed except him.
This was it. Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. Bases loaded. Tie game. Regional Finals.
Everything he'd worked for — every morning practice, every sacrifice, every drop of sweat — led to this single pitch.
He looked toward the dugout. Coach Ren gave a slow nod. His teammates held their breath.
The batter stepped up — Tan Kai, the district's top slugger. Broad shoulders, cold grin. The kind of player who feasted on pressure.
Li Wei exhaled, adjusting his grip. His mind whispered the mantra drilled into him for years:
> Fastball inside corner. Trust your arm. Control the moment.
The world narrowed — just the mound, the bat, and the heartbeat pounding in his ears.
He wound up. The ball left his hand like lightning.
CRACK!
A sound sharper than thunder split the air.
The crowd's roar didn't come immediately — there was a second of absolute silence, that cruel moment where reality catches up.
Then — roaring.
Li Wei's eyes followed the ball's impossible arc, climbing and climbing until it vanished into the dark sky beyond the left-field wall.
Home run.
The stadium exploded.
Tan Kai threw his bat aside, teammates rushing him, fireworks firing overhead.
Li Wei didn't move. His glove hung loose at his side. His heartbeat stopped — not literally, but in that way that time stops when something inside you breaks.
---
Later, in the locker room, the air smelled of sweat, liniment, and quiet defeat. The laughter and cheers outside were muffled, distant, cruel.
Li Wei sat on the bench, still in full uniform. His hands were chalked with white dust, trembling slightly.
Coach Ren put a hand on his shoulder.
"You threw a good game, kid," the coach said softly. "One pitch doesn't erase that."
Li Wei nodded, but he didn't believe it.
He could still hear the sound — the crack. It echoed behind his eyes like a gunshot.
His teammates changed silently around him. Nobody blamed him aloud, but their eyes said enough. The golden boy, the prodigy, the ace of Chengdu High — beaten.
That night, Li Wei lay awake staring at the ceiling fan spinning slowly above his bed. The sound of that bat never stopped replaying. He thought if he closed his eyes, maybe it would fade. Instead, he saw the white ball flying, vanishing into the dark — again and again.
And that's when the silence became heavier than the noise.
---
Rain hammered on the rooftops the next morning. The same newspaper headline glared from every stall:
> "Golden Arm Crumbles: Chengdu High Falls in Finals."
Li Wei didn't buy a copy, but he saw his own photo anyway — the shot of him standing frozen on the mound, head down, while the batter celebrated behind him.
He wondered how many people cut it out to laugh at.
He stuffed his hands into his jacket and kept walking.
At school, no one spoke to him.
Not out of cruelty — out of discomfort. The way people avoid the smell of smoke after a fire. His teammates avoided his eyes. His coach had already returned the district trophy to the case, now gleaming behind glass, almost mocking him.
When practice resumed the next week, he didn't show up.
Then he didn't show up again.
By the third week, Coach Ren visited his classroom. Li Wei looked up as the door slid open.
"Li Wei," the coach said quietly. "If you walk away from this, it'll haunt you longer than that pitch."
Li Wei said nothing. The coach sighed and left.
That was the last time they spoke.
---
The days blurred together after that.
He spent more time at the river near his neighborhood, skipping stones. Sometimes, he'd bring the old baseball glove his father bought him when he was ten. The leather had cracked around the seams; he'd used it so much the palm was almost smooth.
He'd lift it sometimes, thinking about putting it on again, then set it down. Always set it down.
That's where Zhao Mingyu found him one afternoon.
"Skipping rocks again?" she called out.
Her voice carried easily across the water. She was balancing on the small stone embankment, holding a bubble tea in one hand and waving with the other. The sight made Li Wei smile despite himself.
Mingyu had been his best friend since childhood — the kind who punched him when he cried and then handed him candy afterward. She was sharp-tongued, competitive, and somehow always knew when to appear.
"You're late," he said quietly.
"I wasn't aware you were keeping track of time." She hopped down beside him, handed him the drink. "You look like a ghost."
"Feels like it."
They sat in silence for a while, watching the river. The late sunlight shimmered on the surface, and a soft wind carried the scent of street food from the city nearby.
Finally, Mingyu spoke.
"You know, one bad game doesn't erase ten good years."
He chuckled bitterly. "Tell that to the crowd. Or the headlines."
"I don't care what the headlines say," she shot back. "I know you. You're the kind of idiot who can't sleep if his team loses a warm-up match. The one who'd practice until your hands bled. That doesn't disappear because of one mistake."
Her words hit harder than he wanted them to. He looked down, tracing circles on the plastic cup.
"What if I can't throw like I used to?" he said. "What if I never get it back?"
"Then find something new to throw at," she said, dead serious.
He laughed, but it was hollow. "Easy for you to say."
"Of course it is," she said, nudging him. "Because I still believe you can."
For a second, he met her eyes — steady, fierce, refusing to pity him. That, more than anything, hurt and healed at the same time.
She stood up, brushing the dirt from her skirt. "Come to the next game," she said. "Just watch. You don't have to play."
"I'm done with baseball," he murmured.
"Then come say goodbye properly," she replied, and walked away.
---
He didn't go.
A week later, he heard that Chengdu High lost in the semifinals without him. Nobody asked him to return. Nobody visited.
He packed his bat and glove into a box and shoved it under his bed.
Days became weeks, weeks became months. The world moved on.
Mingyu still visited sometimes — talking about her studies, about university plans, about the world beyond Chengdu. She always asked him if he'd found something new to do.
He always said, "Not yet."
By the time a year passed, the glove had gathered dust, and Li Wei had almost convinced himself that version of him — the pitcher, the dreamer — was dead.
He turned seventeen that summer. No celebration, no cake. Just another quiet evening at the convenience store where he worked part-time, counting coins and watching rain streak down the glass door.
He'd forgotten what adrenaline felt like.
Until that night.
The rain that night was soft, the kind that didn't fall so much as drift — fine threads of water weaving through the neon light.
Li Wei stood behind the counter of the small convenience store, half-watching a muted television that played highlights of an international cricket match.
He didn't understand the game.
Men in helmets swung at a hard red ball; sometimes they ran, sometimes they didn't. The crowd roared at moments that seemed random.
Still, something about the sound — that clean crack of bat against ball — made his chest tighten. It wasn't the same as baseball's sound, but close enough to wake ghosts.
"Another shift over, Wei?"
It was Mrs. Liu, the store owner, locking up the registers.
He nodded, taking off his apron. "Yeah. I'll close up."
She smiled kindly. "You work too much, boy. Go live a little."
He smiled faintly back. "I'm saving for something."
He wasn't. But it was easier than explaining that he didn't know what else to do.
---
Outside, the streets glowed slick with reflected light — the red of traffic signals, the gold of passing taxis, the blue wash from street signs. Chengdu at night always seemed more alive than he was.
He walked his usual route home, backpack slung over one shoulder, hands deep in his pockets. The hum of mopeds and late-night chatter followed him for a while before the road narrowed into quieter blocks.
He turned a corner — and stopped.
A man in a black suit was standing beneath a flickering streetlamp. No umbrella. No phone. Just standing.
Li Wei slowed, instinctively cautious. The man's hair was short, his shoes too clean for this part of town.
"Li Wei," the man said, his Mandarin accented — faintly foreign, like someone who had lived overseas.
Li Wei frowned. "Do I… know you?"
The man smiled slightly, not answering. From his coat, he took out a slim red envelope sealed with a gold emblem shaped like a dragon curling around a cricket ball.
He extended it toward Li Wei.
"What is this?"
"An opportunity," the man said. "One you won't find anywhere else."
Li Wei didn't take it. "If you're selling something, I'm not interested."
"I'm not selling," the man said evenly. "I'm offering. We've been watching you."
Li Wei blinked. "Watching me? I haven't played baseball in a year."
The man's eyes narrowed slightly. "Baseball, yes. You were… promising. But this isn't about baseball."
"Then what is it about?"
The man stepped closer, the streetlight catching the edge of his jawline. "It's about cricket."
Li Wei laughed out loud. "Cricket? That weird game with the flat bat? I don't even know the rules."
"You'll learn," the man said, his voice calm, confident — the kind of tone that made refusal feel irrelevant.
"You have reflexes, control, arm speed. You broke records in your district. What you lack isn't talent — it's direction. We can fix that."
Li Wei frowned, the rain gathering on his lashes. "Who are you?"
The man smiled faintly. "My name doesn't matter. The program does."
He tapped the gold emblem on the envelope.
> The Chinese Cricket Project.
Li Wei hesitated, looking at the dragon insignia glimmering under the streetlight. The envelope was damp at the edges but still perfectly sealed.
"What's inside?"
"Instructions," the man said. "And a choice."
Li Wei still didn't move. His gut said this was insane. He didn't even like cricket.
But for some reason — maybe the way the man said "we've been watching you," maybe the fact that someone still remembered his name — he reached out and took the envelope.
It was heavier than he expected.
The man smiled, just once. "Open it when you're ready to stop running from that pitch."
And then he turned and walked into the rain, his black coat disappearing into the gray mist.
Li Wei stood there for a long moment, the city sounds distant, unreal.
He looked down at the envelope again. The dragon's eyes seemed to shimmer in the light.
He thought of the ball sailing over the fence a year ago. The silence that followed. The version of himself that vanished with it.
Maybe, he thought, this was his second chance.
He slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket and walked home, the rain soaking his hair, the streetlight fading behind him.
As he walked, the sound returned — not the sound of the home run this time, but something new.
A different crack, distant and rhythmic — the echo of bat against ball.
He couldn't tell if it was memory or fate.
But for the first time in a long while, he didn't feel completely empty.