But then Hayakawa added, "What happened before Kōshū entered the First String—more precisely, what happened with the previous generation's ace. In our first game after the new team was formed, we hadn't practiced working together at all, so we made practically every mistake possible. Wild throws from third to first, dropped balls by the second baseman and shortstop... Naturally, we lost. But Senior Nozawa, the previous ace I mentioned, smiled after the game and comforted the captain. He said, 'I'm not afraid of getting hit. As long as you can catch my pitches, I'll dare to throw them. Let them hit it. If they don't, how will my teammates get the chance to make so many mistakes?'"
"Pfft—" Everyone secretly listening to Hayakawa held their laughter in their chests.
"Of course, the upperclassmen chased him around half the field trying to beat him up. When an ace like that passed down his experience to the next ace—Kōshū—what he talked about most was 'keeping a normal mindset.' There are no pitches that never get hit, and no ace who never gives up runs. The real way adversity affects people is by trapping them in the prison of their own thoughts. And the lock on that prison is hung there by the person trapped in adversity with their own hands."
By this point, everyone around him had fallen silent. Hayakawa himself became a little embarrassed. He had just told a bunch of high school upperclassmen about Little League matters; they probably found it boring.
But he still insisted on wrapping up his point. This was also the hook he had used to get Narumiya Mei to keep listening. "So Kōshū followed this principle of 'keeping a normal mindset' very well, which was why he... Urgh, urgh, urgh."
Narumiya Mei had indeed been