Chapter Text
◆◆◆ ??? ◆◆◆
The cicadas were chirping.
There was sweat on his brow, dripping salty on his lips. Vision boxed in by the helmet; the straps of the right-side shoulder brace chafed over spine. As Hibari shifted his stance, the synthetics of his hand-me-down gloves grazed the metal bat’s handle.
He’s biding for an outside pitch. Or something to the corner of the strike zone—thirty-three inches of potential clang waiting to soar and hit the fences. Past the visor, the second-string pitcher was a smudge of silhouette against sun-flare. The front leg came up, the elbow pulled back. Hibari sucked a breath between his teeth—it was just a practice match, he knew, he knew, but the rush was unmistakable—he’s gonna hit it. There went the elbow, one fine movement, wrist-flick—
Molars clenched, he set his toes straight and swung through the strength in his arms. The ball wasn’t sitting straight in his vision. Too close, too fast. The ball wasn’t sitting straight in his vision because—
It wasn’t an outside pitch.
◆◆◆ LATE MAY ◆◆◆
Watarai Hibari
◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆
THUD.
Arms splayed, Hibari flops back into the grass on the edge of the field. Sun-warmed by late spring, the sky stretches overhead, blue and unhurried. Clouds—drifting in slow, wispy streaks—are pieced into mosaic by the chain-link fence. The rainy season hasn’t quite ended yet, but spring trudges steadily on toward a humid summer. Go figure.
Bench—again. ‘Cause he can’t throw straight, they say. Which isn’t true, not at all. Then they say, ‘cause he’s got a weird form that stalls inside throws. Which—is maybe kinda true. Hibari lifts his wrist up to the light, and hikes his sleeve. The fabric of his brace sticks to the ball of his wrist. Perfectly fine wrist at that. Same as any other. You’d think they’d quit hounding a guy who’s made it.
Made it, they snort. Nobody here’s made it, Watarai.
We’re all just corpo slaves.
Hibari’s brow knits, own words echoing back. Hey, amateur is better than nothing, right? Where’s your passion?
It plays out the same every time. He can see it now, too, in his mind’s eye: turning and snickering amongst themselves, a snide ‘okay, country boy’ leaking from the corners of their curled mouths. Would it kill a guy to dream?
“Jerks,” Hibari mutters to the sky. Further into the field, the game rises into an uproar. Turnabout of some kind. Sure, whatever. “Not like I have to be there.”
Now that they’ve pulled him off the mound, they won’t put him back up there for the rest of the practice game. Bunch’a cheats, every time. Hibari hadn’t even done a thing to deserve it—or, he’s pretty sure. They won’t give him a shot for longer than three innings. If the catcher stopped calling insides, maybe used his change-ups to advantage—but no.
He’s not a team player, they say.
Hibari rips his helmet off his head and knocks it aside. “Jerks,” he repeats. Who’s not playing for the team, really? The sky does not answer him.
The field is dingy—someplace on the outskirts of Tokyo. Municipal; metal benches for stands and floodlights that only work on a coin flip. Hibari rolls onto his side and kicks the fence: it jingles like packed change. He doesn't care about the dirt smearing his flank; there's so much dust in the air he's already brown anyway.
“Excuse me…”
Jolting, Hibari shoots upright. At once, critically aware that he—a fully matured, adult man—is writhing around in the dirt like a tantrumming toddler. The thought rosies his cheeks.
“Watarai,” the stranger says, “You’re the pitcher, are you not?”
Hibari squints, eyes narrowing. So he knows this guy? At the very least, this guy knows him. Black hair, glasses, neat posture. A tad too polished to be loitering around a third-rate baseball ‘team’.
“I’m the pitcher,” he echoes, head cocking. “Yooooouuuu’re…”
The whole of it is vaguely familiar—specifically, the sense of mismatch. Wearing one of those short-sleeved, zip-up hoodies, and cargo shorts. It strikes something in the depths of his memory as gape-worthy. Prim and proper, this guy’d never be caught dead in casual-wear on campus. Not—
“Ah,” he jabs a finger, “Shikinagi?!”
A few inches taller, Shikinagi Akira—of high school; two years ago—offers but a dry, exasperated snort.
“You forgot?”
Somewhere in the gap between then and now, they fell out of touch. Drifted, though they were never particularly close to begin with. Shikinagi always came with Seraph a shadow’s length behind, and Hibari hadn’t ever been the sort to stay settled in one clique. But he’s still got Shikinagi’s number in his phone—wedged between Seraph and someone else’s. The latter’s been out of service since before graduation.
“I didn’t forget,” Embarrassment deserted, Hibari grins. “I’m just so surprised! What’re you doin’ here?”
“Are you so suspicious of simply visiting a friend?” Shikinagi replies, breezy.
At that, Hibari squints. Behind him, his team clamours—probably struck out or something. Who cares?
“You would’ve shown up sooner if that were the case,” Hibari shoots back. “Right?”
Without missing a beat, “Who’s to say I didn’t just hear you’ve been around?”
At that, Hibari offers a noncommittal hum. “I’unno, it’s kinda hard to believe coming from you.”
He’d always had the impression that Shikinagi was rather shrewd. In networking, if nothing else—but you don’t get to being student president without more than the average savvy. Honour student and all.
Shikinagi’s service smile flattens into one more real. “Your instincts are as good as ever,” he huffs, and adjusts his glasses on his nose. There’s a whiff of nostalgia in the lilt of his tone. “I’m, truthfully, merely curious. What’s your number, Watarai?”
A distance behind, someone is calling for a three-point homer. There’s a clang Hibari does not hear.
“...Twenty. Why’re you asking?”
For a moment, Shikinagi gauges him. Hibari spies his own reflection in the shine of his lenses—dirt-smeared and sweat sticking.
“The qualifiers are coming up,” Shikinagi says instead. “Will you be playing?”
Metal nipping, Hibari squeezes the fence’s chain links, brows drawing taut. “...Probably not.”
“That’s a shame,” Shikinagi notes, lips twitching upward in the direct opposite of sympathy. “Did you want to?”
“Of course I want to,” mutters Hibari, glancing away. The dead heat of the coming summer is settling early in the air. “What’re you getting at?”
“I’m the manager for another team,” says Shikinagi, in that seditious way particular to a predatory politeness. “Small-time, but scrappy. They used to be a high school team in Hyogo, but the funding got cut. Some bigwig bought out the license—so the team’s corporate now.”
Hibari spares a glance over his shoulder. The team members are spread out. His helmet sits neglected in the grass, winking in the light.
“They still have a soul,” Shikinagi adds softly. “Very ambitious.”
The qualifiers are soon, and there’s nil odds Hibari will even get so much as a close-up look at the diamond.
He side-eyes Shikinagi. “What’s your point?”
At last, Shikinagi’s service smile returns full-force—this time honest in its sly wolfishness. On the back of Hibari’s neck, his hairs raise in an inverse domino. So much for ‘merely curious’.
“We’re down a pitcher,” he leans in, one conspiratorial inch. “If you’re interested.”
Tensing, Hibari’s knuckles bleach. There’s a quiver in his tendons that’s making his feet cold.
“...Interested,” he recites slowly, testing the vowels. “Okay, sure. Say I’m interested…”
But, last he heard—way back around graduation—Shikinagi and Seraph were staying in Tokyo. This isn’t Tokyo. This shitty field is over an hour out, with potentially hundreds of prospecting pitchers between points A and B. So…
“But why are you all the way out here? I can’t believe it’s just to pick me up.”
“It’s really just to pick you up,” Shikinagi reassures. “Actually—I asked Seraph first if he wanted to play,” —he pauses to scoff fondly— “he told me, ‘if it’s going to be sports I want to play basketball,’ and then recommended I find you.”
High praise coming from Seraph, who seemed to have a foot in every sports club. But—
“There’s nothing special about me.” It’s admittance, of some kind.
He remembers—back in third year—a conversation halted midway, by a man in a jersey and a snapback cap. Scouted. Not Hibari, but the boy next to him. Two years later, Hibari was slurping a bowl of instant ramen when he saw him televised, playing Major League.
Makes sense. The Hibari of today gets it. “I can’t even throw right.”
“Seraph doesn’t seem to think so,” counters Shikinagi, instant and matter-of-fact. “He’s something of a mule, but I’m rather certain of his judgement.”
The coach hollers an inning change, but Hibari can only worry his lip. Any more, and he’s going to put a hole in it. Instead, he forces a nervous chuckle to buy himself time.
“Fair way to come for Seraph’s word. What if I’m a let-down?”
And, like everything else today— “That matters less to me than it does to you.” —it bounces right off Shikinagi’s impenetrable demeanour, and tumbles at Hibari’s feet. Ball in his court. Against the fence, Hibari flexes his wrists.
Shikinagi peers up at him, glasses flashing.
“You want to play, don’t you?”
Clang.
There goes a home-run.
◆◆◆ EARLY JUNE ◆◆◆
What does it say, that taking the offer is laughably easy?
When Hibari informs the coach of his resignation that afternoon, all it earns is a flippant hand-wave and a few jeers from the team. Qualifiers haven't started yet, so he's not handing anything in 'cept his uniform the next day. The dirt will never quite wash out of white—kinda sad, but he did his damn best. His defection bids no losses. He knows he wasn't valued enough for it to matter.
It doesn't even take him a day to pack up.
It should feel worse than it does—but between casual jobs and the commute and the general staying afloat, there's little in the way of attachment. The squirmy discontent melts with the scenery streaking by in the train window. Gear tucked against his side in a sports bag, his guitar is slung over his back and his suitcase between his feet. Beaten and worn, the backpack he's been using since high school perches atop it. The teeth of one of the zippers is bent out of shape.
He takes his collection of myriad bags to a sparse apartment closer to central Tokyo—Akira offered to hook him up with a landlord. And hell, why not? It's better than making the commute: one, two hours just to arrive, let alone get back before the trains stop running altogether. His month's term is about to end anyway, so the contract cancellation is a breeze. It's fine. The bonus is, there's probably even more temp jobs nearer to Tokyo's heart.
It's just migration.
The new place is small; enough. Rent's cheap, but he won't spend any more time here than he did in his last, so no big deal, right? That's freeter life for you. What matters is that it's close to the new team's home turf. One day to resign, one day to move. One day to settle—pass around his resume to a few places here and there; tape it to a couple streetlights.
By the fourth, he's plugging the directions Akira scrawled on a notepad into his phone. There's a soda pop fizz that tastes an awful lot like apprehension bubbling in his chest.
It's a bus ride and a bit of walking. With his baseball bag slung over his shoulder, he follows his phone past a conbini on a corner, trotting down a narrow street lined with vending machines. The air tastes of river mud and truck exhaust, punched through with cicada tune. An air plane rumbles overhead. When the concrete starts patching through with mortar, the vending machine avenue gives way to a chest-high brick wall that opens out into a spread of ground and sky. No doubt about it, this is it.
And the team’s home turf is—charming, in a way.
It's not the same as the rented two hours on a municipal pitch. Six thousand yen each night—thirty thousand for an hour. Sounds cheap, but adding practices, games, lights, tournaments—it piles up. So the fact this team has anything at all, scuffed though it is, is something.
A plot of land by the river; grass-and-dirt field with more wind-rattled, chain-link fences. Bare bones: white chalk lines, paint-peeled benches, nets strung up behind the home plate. Patched twice over with squares of mismatched nylon, the backstop sags in the middle. Down the first-base line, the netting gives up entirely, so outfielders might be taking turns chasing strays into the weeds. The dugouts are benches under corrugated tin awnings, and the team—
Is that the team?
Gathered on the grass at the edge of the pitch, cross-legged in a cluster like schoolkids on a field trip. And wolfing down what looks like a spread of conbini lunches. There's a white-haired guy in a black cap, a number of girls and a number of guys—orange hair, red hair, black hair, pink-blue-brown-blonde—what might be a rabbit or something, and—
Shikinagi, legs crossed on a folding chair, spots him over the tops of his glasses. He leans in toward the white-haired guy—the coach, presumably—and his mouth moves. They both look over. One pair of slitted reds under white bangs, and one pair of dusk blues under frames. And then thirteen more pairs of eyes in gradual succession, as heads start turning.
Well. It's always awkward being the new kid.
Shikinagi waves him over. Hands on hips, the coach straightens. Nothing for it.
Baked dry underfoot, Hibari walks the rough trail of dirt from the gap in the fencing to the dugout. There's gravel tucked in the edges of the grass. Someone's left a Pocari Sweat rolling loose by first base. Carefully, he steps through their ragtag playground scattering—every tilt of the head meets another stiff stare-down; a black-haired fellow with a feline face mischievously elbows an orange dude eating a burger—until he's face-to-face with Shikinagi again.
The shade cuts the glare from the sun. "All settled?" is what Shikinagi starts with.
Somewhat breathless, Hibari manages a, "Yeah," and then a stilted, "Um. Thanks."
He catches the gawk of a man with purple splashes and a mole by his lip, and flashes a nervous smile. There is a sound like a distant, dying kettle. The rose-clip girl and the guy with horns start laughing.
Amicable and oblivious, Shikinagi goes on, "Coach, this is Watarai Hibari. He's the one trying out with us today."
Trying out, mouths Hibari. His nose scrunches. You never said anything about tryouts.
But the coach gives him a once-over that's surprisingly mild. Shorter than Hibari, up close—gangly, skinny long limbs. They have that in common. There's not an ounce of muscle on him, and he has this ghostly complexion, with dark eye-bags that make him look like he crawled out of a grave.
"Can you sing?" asks the coach.
A beat passes.
"Can I—" Hibari's tongue ties. He glances at Shikinagi, who only purses his lips and raises his brows, trying not to smile. "Sing? Uh, yeah, why?"
"For morale," pronounces the coach. Despite five centimetres' difference, the coach peers down his nose and strokes his imaginary beard. "You a pitcher?"
Hibari nods stiffly, eyes plate-wide, hooked on the length of those nails. More like claws. Wild. His stare drops to the coach's feet. There's that rabbit again—a small, fluffy white thing standing bipedal, with a comically-sized helmet that must be custom-made for its tiny head. Cute, he wants to eat it.
"You got a problem with Lunlun?"
Head snapping up, Hibari shakes in vigorous denial.
The coach hums. Then his taloned hand shoots out—Hibari flinches so hard he very nearly yelps—and claps Hibari's shoulder. The grin he gets his big, wide, and double-fanged.
"Alright, let's see what you got." Withdrawing, he turns and claps sharply. The team is already dusting off their knees. "Practice game! Let's go, let's go!"
A series of whoops go up, and Hibari's stomach flips with them. Coach turns and jerks his head toward the pitch.
"You're on the mound, new kid. Sic 'em."
Sic 'em? Whoa.
The response comes lopsided and silly on Hibari's face—manifest of the ticklish fluttering of a racing pulse. The air is prickling with a burgeoning summer. His wrists flex, he wets his lips. The calluses on the pads of his fingers ache to throw. He likes these guys, they've got personality.
This is different, he can feel it.
◆◆◆
There's sweat on his brow, dripping salty on his lips. Breathing so heavy it lives at the top of his throat, vision glazed over with heat haze. The mound is marked from digging heels. Sundown, just coming off the trial match's last inning, Hibari wipes his hand on his pants, fingers red with fresh blisters.
From the feline fellow with 'SAIKI' stitched on his jersey, he gets a thump on the back. And a motherly smile, from a woman with a red, scaly tail—'Dola'. She's a dragon, apparently. Who knew.
He wasn't given an answer right away.
Shikinagi must've packed himself up and discretely slipped off, because he's already gone when Coach is declaring 'karaoke after-hours'. And who is Hibari, to say no to karaoke, of all things? There's a place nearby—of the hole-in-the-wall sort, with the red eighties sign and the piped neon. Fifteen bodies squeeze in through the entrance and spill into a private room.
Shinsoku belts it. From the booths, Hibari whoops and hollers alongside the cohort, shaking tambourines and maracas. They're familiar with this—the team, that is. Some sort of regular bonding activity.
"We're all alright at singing, I think," says the blue-eyed girl with the hibiscus clip. Macchia, if Hibari is remembering right. "If nothing else, we've got our voices to back our spunk."
"Practiced conversationalists?" jokes Hibari.
She hums. "Coach is real good at trash-talk, if that counts."
Hibari snorts.
Everyone gets a shot at the machine—except for the coach, who sits in a corner with his face crumpled like it physically pains him to be here. 'Smells like sweat and carpet cleaner,' is his complaint, and then guzzles down a strawberry milkshake. Cool. Hibari learns the squeaky voice he'd been hearing all day belonged to Lunlun. There are weirder things in the world.
Then, at the end of the long lineup, Hibari is staring down his perfect score with his whole body vibrating, breath a tangled knot against his gums. The mic is warm in his palm after changing hands.
His veins sing. He hasn't sung like this in a long time.
And when the party disperses at the karaoke box's mouth, Coach slinks up beside him; a shadow peeling off the wall.
"Hey, you ever think of going into music or something?"
At once, Hibari's heart drops. The day's accumulated damp nips a degree off body temperature.
The words are forced out light, "Why do you ask?"
"Well," starts the coach, and in a surprising show of discomfort, draws out his next vowel. "'Caaaaause I thought, you're clearly real good at singing. Can't help but wonder, why baseball." His gaze drifts out to nowhere. "You could go big with a little luck, with a voice like yours."
At first, Hibari doesn't answer. The team is passing by—'seeya!', 'bye, coach,' 'catch you tomorrow,' 'later, new kid,'—like a school of fish around stones in the river. With how Hibari's feet stick to concrete, he could make a wonderful stone.
He tries for a laugh. It slants awkward, loud in the low-volume, summer-night ambience. Cicada whirr, and trucks thundering down roads somewhere distant.
"Am I not cut out for the team?"
Coach's eyes snap back to him. "No-no-no,"—he scoffs—"It's not like that at all. Everyone's got their reasons. It's just," he's nodding along to his own words. "I figured, music suits you. Why baseball?"
If he could hold a guitar or a bat, which would Hibari choose? A bat—it's not even a question, when the question is one or the other. But what coach asked is why, not which. Dreams, he thinks, or something like. Trace it back—something about dreams, maybe. But when he thrusts his hands into the soup of his exhausted mindscape, they come up empty.
They… come up empty.
Hibari hums. Ruminates. Scuffs his sneakers on the pavement. His cleats are in his bag with the rest of his gear, so the road's muck only mars his sole. Guitar or bat? Bat. But if he knew the reason—why doesn't he know? Still, the coach waits, expectant.
"I just wanna throw, I guess." The strap of his bag rashes his shoulder when he shifts its weight. Out loud, it feels like a lacking reply. The added 'I dunno' is too juvenile to tag on. "It's all I've really thought about doing. It's more important to me."
Why why why. He doesn't know. Shikinagi might, he quips at himself. Manipulative bastard. Shikinagi knows everything.
It's only a joke.
"…I see," mutters the coach. After a long pause, he scratches idly at a spot behind a pointed ear.
The words tilt, hanging so obviously in the silence that they threaten to rip free new dread. Hibari lifts his wrist and thumbs over his knuckles idly. There's blotches of red where the glove he's been using since high school chafed his ulna. It's an old and battered thing, that glove. Why hasn't he replaced that yet? A lot of whys he hasn't dwelt on, before now.
Rejection, huh? Hibari picks at a hangnail. All this trouble, and for what? At least with his old team, he warmed the bench. What now? Drifting stupid? Great. Thanks, Shikinagi. He owes Hibari reimbursement for all the temp jobs he left behind. And a month's worth of rent, at least.
"Hey," prompts Coach, a tad gentler than before. Intonation canting funny like kindness is embarrassing and strange. "Everyone's got their reasons. If you really want to waste your talents and pitch on the mound, feel free. Shinsoku will take you."
"Right," mumbles Hibari. His fist clenches. Unclenches. He blinks. "No, wait, I don't really get it. Can you say that again?"
Did he hear that right? Or is he misinterpreting that weird roundabout of a sentence?
"You wanna pitch? Then pitch for us." Coach punches his shoulder as he breaks rank, cocky fanged grin and a taloned peace sign.
"The only people we don't deal with are slackers," he snips haughtily. Hibari cannot know how hypocritical this is of the coach to say, as the distance between them widens. "See you tomorrow. That's your first practice."
And as Hibari manages an oh, okay, see you—the coach swings into the alley. When Hibari blunders after him, there's no-one on the street.
Oh. Okay. Uh. He cups his hands around his mouth: "SEE YOU TOMORROW!"
A flock of magpies on the power-lines caw, annoyed, spread their wings and dip off into the sky. They vacate in a flock, beating back the cloying humidity. Hibari stays where he is, mouth parted. What was that the coach said?
You wanna pitch? Pitch for us.
Holy shit. Take-off.