Chapter Text
October 18th, 2009
Under the cover of mid-Autumn night, the new moon absent in the sky overhead, and as far from the prying eyes of the sleeping players and coaches as possible, the managers of Seido’s Baseball Club snuck out and into the club’s supply shed. Umemoto Sachiko, her short twin-ponytails sticking out from under a black-knit hat she’d acquired special for tonight’s foray into juvenile delinquency, crept side-by-side with Natsukawa Yui, who’d just opted for a face-mask as her bangs already covered half her face. As the two arrived first, they quietly and made doubly sure no one was around. Arriving second, Fujiwara Takako took in her kohais’ appearances with amusement before unlocking the door and ushering them inside just as their third year senpai, Nakama Shizuru, arrived.
Nakama was a bit of an oddball, conventionally attractive with medium-length black hair and perpetual smile on her face, but perpetually dressed down, an absolute airhead when it came to her schoolwork but an utter madwoman when it came to the team’s needs and routines, fiercely protective of her underclassmen and always ready to lend a hand. She was great, but let’s just say it was probably a good thing she didn’t seem to have any aspirations for after high school, which was weird to say about someone who’d enrolled in a nationally-ranked institution.
“Doesn’t this feel... weird , to anyone else?” Takako murmured, looking around. She’d been working with the club since last year and was well aware the players could get up to some hijinks left to their own devices, but she would never have pegged her fellow managers as the kind to be sneaking about in the dead of night. That was, of course, until their fourth—now former, retired with the rest of the third-years—manager had pulled them aside at breakfast and proposed utter insanity.
No one responded to her question, implicitly arguing that, no , this seemed like a perfectly valid solution to their problems.
The reason for their gathering in secret was, in her opinion, more than mildly absurd; still her senpai and kohai had insisted and played along, respectively. So naturally, since nothing else seemed to be helping their team find a proper ace (especially after Tanba’s injury yesterday), they would resort to witchcraft...
“Do we have everything?” Nakama whispered, casting a conspiratorial once-over around the room.
Everyone nodded and collectively withdrew a small menagerie of knock-off ritual supplies, as their senior had bid them bring, while she cleared off and pulled one of the supply tables into the center of the room to set up on. Their senior had, apparently, found a collection of old scrolls in her grandmother’s attic a few weeks back and had just been waiting for an excuse to jump straight off the deep-end ever since. Their senpai was... stupid? insane? Trying to lift their spirits (no pun intended) with a bit of fun and mysticism? Yeah, that sounded much better than the alternatives...
The room momentarily fell into total darkness as Natsukawa covered the only window which had until then been letting in any light from outside, just as Umemoto lit the candles. Their dim glow cast faint, golden light across the girls’ faces and long shadows along the walls behind them as each took a second to evaluate their life-choices (and collective sanity) one last time before plunging into the night’s questionable itinerary.
What was the worst that could actually happen, anyway? (They could burn down the supply shed, those candles were open flames after all!)
All things considered though, as far as dark rituals went, this all seemed pretty tame. The blood had been swapped for wine (and then that had been swapped again for grape juice once they’d realized none of them could get their hands on any alcohol), and the “spiritual talismans” had been replaced with a combination of tea-soaked mailing envelopes each containing one of the aces from a deck of regular playing cards and decorated with regular paint like a kids’ art project. The rice was real, but kami knew Seido had enough of that to spare, and no one was going to miss the hand-full of dirt from the A-field used to weigh the envelopes down in a basin of votive oil Nakama’d placed in the center of the table alongside four kanauwa.
In total, the whole thing was a mess; this had to be a joke, right ? Even if some higher power was watching, there was no way this would actually garner favor... But at the same time, farcical as it may have seemed at first, the setup was starting to look more like an altar by the minute, especially once the oil was lit.
The four of them watched in silence as the paper burned. Takako was pleasantly surprised there didn’t seem to be much smoke, and what was generated appeared perfumed. As they watched, each figured the least they could do was offer a small prayer.
“Spirits, please, if you can hear this, it’s not for my sake, but the team-”
“-everyone says we need a true Ace to go to Koshien, so-”
“-even if it’s not this year, recruiting a pitcher who’s earned national acclaim would really-”
“-help if they were already here; or if not, someone who’d be ready as soon as they arrived...”
As the last bits of paper burned away, the four of them exchanged small smiles, before collectively deciding it was out of their hands at this point. It was late, technically early at this point, and they’d had their mysterious rendezvous. Unbeknownst to any of them, however, just as Nakama blew out the candles as they were packing up, across the field in room 208, a certain first year jolted awake.
Only it wasn’t the first year who woke up...
♠ ♠ ♠ ♠
(July 31st, 2011)
The mood as everyone piled out of the buses and gathered their gear from the under-storage compartments was, in a word, triumphant. Norifumi still couldn’t believe it, if he was being honest. They’d won. For the first time in seven years , Seido would be going to Koshien .
‘And I still couldn’t help at all, leaving everything to the second years...’
Still barely keeping track of everything happening around him, the third year relief pitcher was jockeyed about, ambling through the motions, barely catching the individual congratulations of the alumni and teammates alike.
The dining staff had outdone themselves preparing for the impending festivities—granted, they’d also done so the year before much to everyone at the time’s chagrin—and from the looks of it Zono had no intention of letting anything even potentially spoil.
‘He’s going to make himself sick at that rate.’ Norifumi thought idly, wandering over to warn the younger Kominato and finding himself between Ono and a seated Furuya in the process, when who else but Sawamura’s voice carried above and beyond the ambient excitement.
“EH? WAI—! Hold on, hold on, holdon! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU TWO, MY ESTEEMED SENIORS?!...”
Norifumi was briefly alarmed, whipping his head around much like a couple others, trying to assess what had provoked their Ace to make such an exclamation. They were met with a bemused gathering of, of course, Chris, Miyuki, Okumura, Asada, and Kuramochi around him.
“Calm down, Ace,” Kuramochi chuckled, “we’re just praising you.” The ‘Please don’t sound so surprised.’ went unsaid.
“Could you say it ONCE more, so that it’s in no uncertain terms for me?” to many, Sawamura’s plea might have sounded joking... but ...
“Sure, I’ll say it as many times as you want.” Chris’s tone was warm, though it betrayed a deeper understanding of the problem on full display than most were comfortable touching with a ten-foot-pole. Nearly everyone who’d gotten at-all close to Sawamura during his first year’s hearts seized at how unused he was to receiving unabashed positive feedback.
Meanwhile, Kataoka and Ochiai looked on at their seeming-antics with a mix of pride and reluctant consideration, respectively, speaking quietly among themselves.
‘To think, we all-but shunned him at the start...’ Granted, everyone had had growing to do at the time, something about most of the team’s first impressions of Sawamura hadn’t quite added up in hindsight after actually getting to know him. ‘We should count our blessings he didn’t cut his losses and abandon Seido, the way things went last year...’
Shaking Norifumi from his dark thoughts, Seki suddenly ran up, paper in hand, and exclaimed; “They’re calling your return-throw a miracle, Furuya! See! It already made Headlines! Here Look!” He pointed out the line for them to read, and sure enough, beneath the headline: ‘HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL WINNERS: SEIDO HIGH’ , it detailed Furuya’s hurling the ball from deep into left-field all the way home. There was a long pause as Furuya himself read it over, but his expression wasn’t of pride, or even excitement at the recognition.
For a moment, Norifumi was concerned their kouhai had zoned out more than actually reading, before finally, the other pitcher simply muttered: “I’m just so glad... that Ono-senpai and Nori-senpai’s summer isn’t over yet, and that we can play together some more...” Effortlessly flooring everyone around.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MAKING US TEAR UP LIKE THIS, FURUYA!?!”
“Stop crying, Ono.” Norifumi chided softly, though to no avail, before turning back to face his fellow pitcher. “I know between the two of you—” Sawamura and Furuya —“there’s no place left for me, but of course I’d be happy for a chance to pitch at Koshien.”
‘He’s right. Our summer isn’t over. I’ll still have a chance to help...’
But of course, Furuya had to go and casually pull his heartstrings too, shaking his head emphatically before locking eyes with him: “I cannot put into words just how reassuring it is to know you’re there to have our back, Nori-senpai...”
Cue the tears.
“NORI?!!!” Sawamura’s cry from across the room drew more attention to the situation than he’d probably intended.
“Hey, you two, why are you weeping like you’ve experienced the greatest satisfaction in life already?!” Asou wailed, “Come back to us! Our real fight is only just beginning!”
Meanwhile, Seki just laughed; “With Furuya, you never know what he’s thinking, so when he does put it into words, his destructive power is off the charts!”
As the evening wound on, eventually the alumni had to take their leave and the team began to retire for the evening, retreating back towards the dorms.
“You pitchers are scheduled to visit Higuchi-sensei tomorrow... I’m also thinking having you two—” Sawamura and Furuya again—“refrain from pitching for a little while could do some good.”
‘That’s never going to go over well with—’
“No pitching?!” Sawamura, of course. “But I wanted to work on my Number Nine a little more... No to mention other stuff I wanted to test...”
Norifumi fought to hide a snicker at Miyuki’s expense, having to wrangle their Ace, when the sudden clang of a metal Thermos clattering to the ground caught everyone’s attention.
Turning around, they found Sawamura’d apparently fumbled Okumura’s handoff. “Oops!” he shot the blonde an apologetic smile. “Sorry, my fingers slipped...”
“Again?” The younger catcher lamented, bending down to retrieve it. “Oh well, the game is over, so you’re allowed to get as relaxed as you want, I suppose.”
“ Again ?” Miyuki’s question echoed Norifumi's thoughts, as a pit began to form in his gut. Whatever Okumura said next, he wasn’t going to like it.
“Yes. In the back of the dugout, after he’d pitched through the eighth, he couldn’t quite grab a bottle of water I gave him.”
“It’s nothing.” Sawamura tried shaking off their stares. ‘No, Sawamura, it really is...’ “And there was no problem when I pitched on the mound either.”
“But, Sawamura, that’s...” Norifumi tried to interject, but Miyuki cut him off.
“I guess it’s a good thing you all have those check-ups tomorrow, we’ll get to know for sure. For now though, let’s turn in for the night, eh? Rest is important, besides, tomorrow’s the East Tokyo Finals. I want to know who’ll be joining us at Koshien.” With what was probably supposed to be a reassuring degree of nonchalance, Miyuki took his leave, followed by Okumura, upstairs towards their room.
“He’s right, we’ll know for sure tomorrow morning, Nori-senpai, but I’m sure it’s nothing too serious...” Sawamura smiled wide, and Norifumi almost believed the other was truly unbothered; except that he was no stranger to anxiety, so the truth may as well have been written across his kouhai’s forehead for all he wore his heart on his sleeve. With a reluctant sigh, however, he agreed and the two parted ways at the stairs.
Norifumi made his own way up and along the outer hall to his own room of the past three years, number 208. ‘It’s going to be so weird moving out in the Fall.’ Opening the door, he was slightly surprised to find Kaneda and Asahi had beaten him back, and seemed to have been waiting for him.
“The ace of closers returns!” Kaneda crowed, entirely too teasingly.
Norifumi just sighed, before chiding him, “I couldn’t even close today, Coach’s orders...” If he left out that he strongly suspected he’d end up pitching a lot more in the early rounds to come, that was his business. No point in worrying anyone before they knew more.
Kaneda winced, realizing his mistake, “Right, yeah, sorry man. But at least you’ll get to pitch at Koshien!” He tried, only to stumble, adding the afterthought: “Assuming your checkup tomorrow goes well, which it will !”
“Alright you two,” Asahi chimed in. “Kaneda, I love you man, but you’re kinda shit at levity, and Nori, ignore him, he’s just chewing on his foot like always. I know just watching from the stands was nerve-wracking enough to be exhausting, and I can only imagine it from the dugout , so don’t go beating yourself up over anything. M’kay?”
Their first-year’s words effectively put a stop to things before Norifumi could get down on himself all over again for not playing.
“You know,” Kaneda murmured after a moment, “I was kind of terrified for a second there, that Boss would have to put me in had it gone into extra innings. I mean, after the eighth, Sawamura only had one left in the tank, tops... But I’m not like you, senpai, I don’t think I could have handled the pressure of closing a game like that.”
So Kaneda had already known, or at least suspected, that’s good, given no one else seemed to have connected the dots at the time ( Norifumi included ) it meant someone would have been able to bring the situation to the Bos— Kataoka’s —attention. With Kaneda’s eyes for detail, especially regarding his fellow pitchers, Norifumi shouldn't be surprised.
“I’m sure, if it had come to it, you’d have done great. But Asahi’s right, no more down-talk, tonight’s a good night.” His roommates smiled, nodding their heads, and putting baseball aside they spent the next hour just winding down; they talked about everything, and nothing at all, before finally each turning over in their beds and falling asleep.
Their Summer wasn’t over yet, nothing was over yet.
‘If only last year’s qualifiers could have gone as well...’
October 19th, 2009
Norifumi was having the falling nightmare, the one everyone has some version of at some point or another, but this time it felt... more ... like the air was half-solid, trying to smother him as he fell/sank through an endless void. And then the void wasn’t a void at all, as the past—or was it next ?—six hundred and fifty days of his life flashed through the expanse as he watched, all the while flooded with the phantom sensations of working his body to reach new heights and the aftershocks of emotions (good and bad) as he and the team struggled to make their dreams a reality.
It was too much, obviously, six hundred a fifty days compressed into a highlight-reel, and even that was a lot. Norifumi wanted to scream, but was drowned out by the echoes from beyond and around him.
Then the reel seemed to skip and loop back, as though the fabric of his personal reality were curled back over itself, briefly flashing by a few scenes as if it’d over-shot its destination before zeroing-in and match-cutting across and through itself.
Norifumi was suddenly awake and very confused. His skin felt cold, being uncomfortably damp with sweat, and his stomach churned rendering him both strangely hungry and vaguely nauseous, all while the rest of him felt like he’d been tackled repeatedly. Which was to say, everything hurt.
A quick glance around revealed he was still in his room, though a far neater version of it than he’d seen in a while. Surely he hadn’t slept through Asahi and Kaneda trying to tidy up; love his kohai though he might, they were loud left to their own devices. Looking again, Norifumi noticed Kaneda’s bed was empty. Not made-up-and-hadn’t-been-slept-in empty, but hadn’t-been -used -in-months empty.
‘Something is off...’ The tell-tale creaking of Asahi rolling over and sitting up in the bed above confirmed he at least was still here, but: “Damn, where’d Kaneda sneak off to?”
“Who’s Kaneda?” Norifumi’s mind ground to a halt—skipping over itself trying to place that voice and figure out who he was alone ( or not much ) in his room with in the dead of night—because that wasn’t Asahi. Panic took over and Norifumi was moving as far away from the source of that voice as quickly as possible, which entailed bolting directly backwards, out and over the foot of his bed, opposite the ladder down, and toward the door.
Or, at least, it entailed trying to as he unexpectedly collided with something (his dresser) which shouldn’t still be there; he’d enlisted Kaneda and Yuuki-senpai’s help moving that next last year precisely because he’d finally gotten tired of sometimes running into it during similar mad-scrambles out of bed to particularly early morning practices. And, now it was going to fall on top of him...
‘Excellent escape, Nori, flawless execution...’ His inner-monologue’s sarcasm was more biting than it’d been in a while, as he reflexively curled in on himself to shy-away from the impending collapse. Except the dresser didn’t come crashing down; only the lower drawers slipped out, while the loose papers and clutter in the free-space did make it to the floor, as a sturdy arm halted its momentum and stopped the upper drawer from vacating its tracks.
“We’re definitely moving this out of your line of fire after this.” Heaving the offending furniture back upright, Norifumi’s now-savior appraised his condition. “Are you alright, Nori-kun?”
Like a bucket of ice-water, the other’s identity crashed over him; “Tetsu... san?” What was Yuuki Tetsuya , or at-least a damn-good lookalike from his second year, doing here? Was he staying overnight after celebrating too hard? Then again... ‘Why wouldn’t the Captain be here? It was his room too... ’
Something in his voice, maybe the hitch in his address or blatant confusion in his tone, or maybe something in his body-language as he uncurled to look up at him, obviously put the elder on even higher-alert than the near-accident already had. Crouching down to eye-level he swept the clutter out of his way before he was suddenly a lot closer, his amber eyes tracking as Norifumi’s followed, focusing on him without error or deviation. He ignored the startled squeak at their sudden proximity.
It was uncanny, the likeness, except this was really Yuuki, right ? Everything’s there: the hair, the hard-focused lines on his forehead and intense brow-line, his features drawn, taught and concerned. Norifumi groaned, leaning his head back against jostled hardwood, feeling the inevitability of a headache in his near-future. His stomach made its displeasure with its emptiness known, but there wasn’t exactly anything they could do about that at the moment.
Opening his eyes again, Norifumi found Yuuki glancing toward the door, probably debating going and waking someone to get help, but a nagging thought in the back of his mind told him that was a bad thing to let happen. So, he reached out and tugged at the sleeve of the captain's night-shirt to get his attention.
“I’m okay, Tetsu-sa— senpai —no need to go running for help.” ‘There’s nothing anyone could do anyway.’ “Thanks for the save, by the way.”
“Of course.” Yuuki retreated back to just squat-down in front of him rather than completely in his personal space, breathed a sigh, and shook his head in either relief or frustration that (aside from the initial deer-in-oncoming-traffic response) Norifumi seemed lucid and to have collected himself. “I’ve got to ask, though... was it a nightmare?”
“What?”
“Whatever got you frightened enough to try and escape our room ninja-warrior-style.”
“Oh. Uhh...” What could he say? On one hand, a nightmare would probably explain his response, sort-of, but he needed help trying to understand what was going on and that would just-about kill the conversation right there. “Not exactly. I... Well, you see...”
“Were you worried about Tanba-kun?”
“Tanba-senpai? Why would—?” Norifumi stopped himself short, trying to puzzle out what he was missing, why everything felt off. He was missing something, he was sure of it. But what was it? “Tanba...” Slowly, his gaze fell to his own hands and body, his knees pulled up to his chest and his back against the cursed dresser; ‘Too small.’ he thought, ‘I’m too small, and Tetsu-senpai’s too young, and still living in the dorms, in his old room, and Kaneda and Asahi are Kami-knows-where. It’s like...’ A dawning, insane, conclusion tugged at the recesses of his thoughts. It couldn’t be. But it wouldn’t hurt to check?
“Can I... see your phone... for a second?”
“Pardon?” His question seemed to catch Yuuki off-guard. “My phone ?”
“Yes. Mine was probably buried under all the everything you swept to the side earlier... I’ll have to find that later, but I just need to check something real quick.”
“What do you need to check?”
“The—” Norifumi stopped himself again. How did one admit they were trying to check the date, without sounding completely nuts? “The time?”
Yuuki blinked, disbelief clear on his face as he inclined his head towards the wall. Following his gaze, Norifumi found their wall-mounted clock read just a little past midnight. “Oh, right. I meant, the... day?”
“Monday.” Yuuki seemed determined to either not retrieve his phone, or get a satisfactory answer from Norifumi first. Which was fair, frustrating, but fair.
“Monday, the...?”
“Nineteenth.”
“Of?”
“Nori-kun, I’m starting to think I should be asking you what day it is, and please get it right.”
Norifumi dropped his head into his hands, gathered his willpower, before giving his roommate and captain—because the longer this went on the more sure he was that he was somehow horrifyingly correct, and that Yuuki was both of those things again still—his most-serious please-hear-me-out face. “Unfortunately I’m not sure I could do that right now, senpai.”
What little color Norifumi could make out on Yuuki’s face in the relative dark of their room drained away.
“It’s not what you think, I’m not concussed , at least I don’t think so. Look, I promise I’ll explain as best I can, but,” that would probably be a harder promise to keep than he’d like, but he’d do his best, if for nothing else than to avoid going insane if he was right, “I need to see for myself. What’s today’s date ?”
Yuuki was doing an admirable impression of the only sane man in the room, which wasn’t hard given they were just the two of them. But Norifumi knew the captain; if anyone was going to actually hear him out on this out-the-gate without cooking up the theory themselves, it would be Yuuki Tetsuya.
Finally, the elder relented, retrieved his phone, flipped it open, and turned the screen around so he could read. Norifumi read the date once, twice, and then again for good measure. Nothing made sense yet, not really. However, there were two things he was coming to understand as his mind sorted this new information, contradictory though they should have been:
- Tanba-senpai suffered a labral tear in his right shoulder the day before last
—six hundred and fifty-two days ago—during the third round of his first year’s Autumn Tournament... - Seido won the West Tokyo tournament yesterday
—six hundred and forty-nine days from now—earning a chance to play at the 90th Summer Koshien.
Everything in-between those two points was a mess that would, he hoped, order itself properly on its own. In the meantime ...
“Holy shit. I’ve time-traveled?”