Maki's question landed the way his questions tended to: directly, and without much concern for whether the person on the receiving end had been thinking about the topic.
Yagi had not been thinking about it. He turned it over for a moment, then offered the honest answer with a wry smile attached to it.
"I don't have your kind of talent. Getting an invitation from Sensen at all was already more than I had any right to expect."
The hypothetical simply didn't apply to him, and he knew it well enough not to pretend otherwise. But the question was interesting in the abstract, and someone who genuinely loved baseball couldn't dismiss it entirely.
"What if, though? Say both schools had sent you an invitation. What then?"
Yagi thought about it seriously for a few seconds.
"I think I would have gone to Seido."
The reasoning was straightforward for someone who cared about the sport the way he did. If a program of that caliber had seen something worth inviting in him, the only honest response to that recognition was to go and find out how far it could take him. He couldn't construct a version of himself that would have turned that down.
"But that's just a fantasy. Nothing like that was ever going to happen." He redirected the question toward the person who had raised it. "What about you? With your ability, schools must have been lining up. Why here and not somewhere stronger?"
Yagi asked with genuine curiosity rather than any intention to provoke. The two months of watching Maki develop had made the question increasingly unavoidable. The raw material had always been there, he now understood in retrospect, buried under a frame that hadn't yet caught up to the height. But the ability underneath it was not ordinary, and ability like that tended to draw attention from programs that were looking for it.
Maki's expression, which generally ran toward flat and economical, shifted into something with more heat behind it.
"If Seido had invited me, I would have gone without thinking twice."
He said it plainly, as a statement of fact rather than a complaint.
"But they never did. Not once."
The fuller picture was one Maki didn't elaborate on at length, but the outline of it was clear enough. The recruitment officers from several powerhouse programs had looked at him and reached similar conclusions: the height was unusual, the frame was concerning.
Too thin to project forward with confidence, and unable to gain weight despite what he ate. The physique raised questions that his pitching at the time hadn't yet fully answered, because the characteristics that were now making him difficult to hit had not yet emerged completely enough to override the physical concerns.
The powerhouses had been interested but not committed. No formal invitation had arrived.
Seido had not even reached the stage of interest. They had not approached him once.
For someone who had grown up watching Seido, who had wanted to be part of what that program was building, the absence of any contact from their recruitment staff had landed as something specific and lasting. Not devastation, but something that sat in him and didn't dissolve. He was now on the opposite side of the field from the players Seido had chosen instead of him, and that fact had become fuel.
Zhang Han. Miyuki. Two first-years who had arrived at the program he had wanted to join, occupying the space he had imagined for himself. Were they genuinely stronger than him? He didn't know yet. He was going to find out.
"On that field tomorrow, I'll make them regret it."
The flames behind the words were real. Maki was not someone who expressed himself with much volume or variety, but when something came through, it came through clearly.
Yagi sat with this for a moment and found himself reassessing how much he actually knew about the person he had been sharing a bullpen with.
He had not known any of this was sitting underneath the quiet exterior. The revelation was useful, in a practical sense. Tomorrow's game was going to be the most demanding thing Sensen had faced in this tournament, and a pitcher who was carrying that kind of specific motivation into it was a better resource than one who was simply going through professional preparation. Whatever personal history Maki was carrying onto that mound, it pointed in the right direction.
The following day, the Round of 16 elimination game between Seido High School Baseball Team and Sensen Academy was scheduled to begin.
Before the first pitch, Coach Kataoka gathered the full Seido roster.
The tactical discussion had already happened the previous day. Personnel decisions had been communicated. This gathering had a different purpose.
"Today's opponent is not what we faced in the first two games." He let that settle for a moment before continuing. "In those games, the resistance we encountered had limits. Their strength couldn't genuinely threaten us. If we play our game, that remains true. But if we are careless today, there is a real possibility we get eliminated."
The room held the statement without deflecting it.
Coach Kataoka had glanced across the field at Sensen's dugout while speaking. Ugai stood there with the mild, unhurried expression of someone's approachable grandfather, the kind of face that suggested patience rather than ambition. Coach Kataoka had seen enough of Ugai's work over the years to know exactly how misleading that impression was.
Ugai had built Sensen from nothing, working against recruitment disadvantages that would have discouraged most coaches from trying. He had never beaten the West Tokyo powerhouses, but that record was partly a function of the structural gap between programs that had resources and history and a program that had been constructed by accumulation over decades of modest means. What Ugai had consistently done was make the powerhouses work for it, and in recent years the work required had been increasing.
Coach Kataoka respected that. He also recognized that respect for a coach's process and underestimating the team in front of you were two different mistakes.
"Get your heads right, give everything you have, and go win."
For today's rotation, Coach Kataoka had made a specific decision. The first pitcher for Seido would be Kawakami, a first-year whose profile was built around precision rather than velocity.
He could hit corners with his fastball and replicate the same accuracy with his breaking pitches, a combination that became genuinely difficult to handle when paired with a catcher who knew how to use it.
Miyuki behind the plate would be the other half of that equation, and the combination of a pitcher who could consistently execute to a specific location with a catcher who could design sequences worth executing held real promise.
The dugout watched the opening of the game with anticipation.
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Note: Gotta be honest, didn't think it would cross 100 PS this week, but thanks for the support guys. Also, the story becomes a little weak around this part, but only this match and gets better right after. All I can say is just hang on for a short while.
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