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Seeing Furuya off the field was a rare sight for Sawamura. If he wasn’t on the mound, he was stewing in left field or the dugout, taking the chance to mumble that he was ready to pitch at any time. If they weren’t in a game, he was in the bullpen, the slam of his heavy pitches ringing out boldly through the area. And if practice wasn't on, well, then they were both out running on the field, Sawamura losing to Furuya’s long limbs but winning out against his low stamina, until they were both left panting against dew-soaked grass.
Even then, Furuya was quiet, chest rising and falling in virtual silence compared to the noisy gasps Sawamura produced, with his breathless proclamations – about how he’d won whatever race their run had sprouted into from beginning to end, how it was Furuya who dropped to the ground first – drowning out the few other noises he might have made. Furuya was a mumbler, a sidler, a soft individual overall despite the sheer power that his skills held. Though his tone was mild, the declarations he made certainly weren’t, forever to Sawamura’s annoyance.
Places away from the world of baseball were places that neither of them particularly frequented, but within them Sawamura found that Furuya’s muted demeanour extended further than he was used to. There was no burning aura of passion, and while Sawamura didn’t doubt that thoughts of the mound were always running through Furuya’s vacant mind, here in the back of the classroom he was calm.
Sawamura had only crossed the hall to the other classroom to return a volume of manga he’d borrowed from one of the girls in there, dog-eared and tear-stained and about a month later than he said he’d return it, but returned nonetheless. He must have underestimated the time he’d spent getting away from Kanemaru (chiefly wrangling the next volume of the manga he was currently returning away from him, both of them hollering dibs until they were red in the face) because the classroom was empty when he arrived, save for Furuya sat beside the bookshelf. Although Sawamura’s entrance to the classroom was as noisy as everything else he did, Furuya only gave him a sweeping glance before flicking the page of the book he was holding.
“Furuya!” he hollered, in a tone more suitable for calling from outfield to home plate than from one end of a classroom to the other. Furuya didn’t even flinch. “You better not be ignoring me!”
“I’m reading,” he said, not looking up.
Sawamura squinted at the cover of the book, marching over to get a better look. Furuya drew it closer to himself, defensively, almost, but Sawamura was undeterred; he leaned in and glanced down, able to see the colourful illustrations covering most of the page. “A book about animals?”
“Animal facts,” Furuya amended, and after a moment he adjusted the book to properly show his sudden company the various images of tigers on the page.
Sawamura drew up a chair beside him and leaned over his shoulder instead of hovering above him, squinting at the book. “The only tigers I know are Hanshin ones!”
“Hanshin? Tigers aren’t native to Japan.”
“They’re a baseball team.”
“Oh.” Furuya’s momentary excitement at the prospect of Japanese tigers disappeared. It returned a moment later as he flipped to the next page, adorned with pictures of big white bears, snouts seeming to curl into friendly smiles. A certain kind of tension seemed to leave his shoulders, tracing the shape of one with a slender finger.
If he hadn’t spoken, Sawamura would have thought that he’d forgotten he was there entirely. But after a moment, Furuya quietly told him, “Polar bears are my favourite.”
“Don’t you have them in Hokkaido? It’s snowy there, right?” Sawamura knew all too well how Furuya suffered the heat, used to the colder reaches of his birthplace. If it was cold enough for him, surely it was cold enough for polar bears.
“No. Polar bears live in the Arctic. And in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia… not Hokkaido.” His gaze remained on the glossy pages, but it was apparent that the information he provided was memorised. After a moment, he murmured with a wistful tone, “I always wanted to see one.”
“Don’t they have zoos where you’re from?” Sawamura questioned. He tilted his head to look up at Furuya, who nodded, though his steely blue eyes darkened a shade as he closed the picture book and stood up, heading towards the door before Sawamura could object.
“Nobody ever wanted to go with me.”
---
“Furuya!” Sawamura’s loudness was a little more appropriate this time, since Furuya was a lot further ahead of him, but he still had people covering their ears and cringing as he sprinted after him, haphazardly yelling apologies to anyone he inconvenienced along the way.
Furuya didn’t respond, continuing to walk towards his dorm room, seemingly oblivious to the catastrophe that was storming up behind him. He didn’t spare Sawamura so much as a glance until he grabbed his wrist; even then he looked away again, continuing to walk regardless of the shorter boy clinging onto him.
“Furuya, don’t ignore me!” he yelled. “We’re going to go to the zoo!”
He stopped so abruptly that Sawamura stumbled. “We’re... what?”
“Going to the zoo!” He released his grip on Furuya’s wrist at last, clapping him on the shoulder instead. “Me and you, since you’ve never been! I’m finalising it right now!”
Cackling jubilantly, he rushed past him and disappeared into his dorm room, leaving Furuya feeling rather bemused but very, very warm.
“It’s hot,” Furuya said, for the dozenth time that day.
“It’s not that hot,” Sawamura objected, glancing up at the sun overhead.
“We should have come here yesterday.”
“It was raining yesterday!”
“Exactly.”
It was early afternoon and they were working their way around the zoo, which was taking far longer than Sawamura had anticipated, thanks to Furuya’s tendency to pause by every enclosure and rattle off facts about the animals within, refusing to budge until he’d reaffirmed all the facts by squinting at the little placards the zoo provided. It was hardly like Sawamura was rushing him to move, anyway, his impatience giving way to a kind of warmth he wasn’t used to feeling whenever he looked up at Furuya, expression slack in what he assumed was his closest way of outwardly showing joy; the closest thing to emotion he’d shown all day was a look of horror when Sawamura bought him a polar-bear shaped ice-cream – “I can’t eat a polar bear” – and then vague relief when he swapped it with his own fish-shaped one instead.
The warm feeling must just be the sun getting to him, Sawamura supposed. It was a hot day, not enough to warrant how Furuya looked like he was melting in his opinion, but still hot. He wouldn’t dwell on it, for he’d spotted the sign that Furuya hadn’t as they headed up a new path, a sign with a white bear painted onto it.
Furuya’s eyes widened as they headed up to the front of the enclosure and the huge creature came into view. Polar bears weren’t really white in reality, more of a creamy yellow, Sawamura thought, but Furuya looked just as enthralled. His hand impulsively darted out, just for something to hold on to in his excitement, it seemed, finding Sawamura’s wrist. His fingers were clammy from the heat or his own enthusiasm, or perhaps a mixture of both, but Sawamura couldn’t find it within himself to object. In fact, as he watched Furuya respectfully dip his head to the bear, he found that his hand slid upwards so that their fingers were linked instead.
Neither of them mentioned it, but their hands stayed like that for the remainder of the day. Furuya spent an obscene amount of time watching the polar bears, with the sun threatening to dip below the horizon before Sawamura finally had to tear him away, lest they miss their bus back to Seidou. Furuya was still glowing; it was different to the powerful, burning aura he had on the field that Sawamura was familiar with but nowhere near used to. He was still holding his hand, too, sat with their knees touching on the bus.
“Sawamura,” Furuya began quite suddenly. “I want to adopt one.”
“What?” Sawamura looked in brief alarm at the toddler swinging their legs in the seat in front of him; but Furuya was staring at the leaflet he’d picked up at the zoo, gesturing with his free hand to the back of it where a photo of the polar bears they’d seen earlier was printed.
“It says you can adopt one,” he said, eyes glimmering.
“Isn’t that just where you get photos of them and updates about them?”
“Oh.” There was a beat of silence, and Furuya looked surprisingly dejected at the fact that the leaflet wasn’t offering him the chance to bring home an actual polar bear; enough so that Sawamura found himself squeezing his hand ever so slightly, offering him a confident grin.
“But if we come back sometime and we’re really careful,” he suggested in a stage whisper, “I bet a baby one could fit in your dorm.”
That was the first time he saw Furuya smile.