Why He Played Baseball

Why He Played Baseball

The two downstairs started chatting about everyday matters. Kōshū was surprised by how well he got along with Hayakawa, and Hayakawa clearly felt the same way.

But under the same sky, different people had different fates. Take Sasaki Rōchi upstairs, for example. He was completely thrown by Coach Ninomiya's soul-searching question. "Sasaki-kun, did you know that before you joined, there were already six shortstops on the team?"

"I found out during training today." He nodded obediently, not daring to look up, though he could not help checking his coach's expression.

"Then with you, that makes seven shortstops. What are your thoughts on that?"

Trying to figure out what the coach meant, Lang Zhi braced his left hand on his leg while nervously rubbing his left elbow with his right. "Actually..." He rushed to answer first. "I kind of want to switch to second base."

Coach Ninomiya froze for a moment. He opened the notebook beside him, which he had not touched until now, and flipped to a blank page. "Why? Could you explain it to me in detail?"

"Huh?" He had not expected to be asked. A jumble of images flashed through Lang Zhi's mind, including what Kōshū had just told him.

Maybe just talk to Coach Ninomiya.

Before he could organize those images, the words had already slipped out. "When I was in third grade, I joined the Baseball Club..."

Coach Ninomiya was briefly surprised. He had not expected him to start from so long ago. Though the child across from him looked embarrassed, as if he wanted to swallow his words back, he still wrote down the time and participants at the top of the page. "Mm. And then?"

"I joined the Baseball Club..." Lang Zhi still had not figured out how to say it, so he repeated himself to buy a little time to think. "Actually, I did not want to join before that. My parents had already been divorced for a long time, and my biological mother never really wanted me to see my dad. So whenever it was visitation week, she would take me to a card room. She would play cards while I played arcade games. But later, a classmate told me that if I played baseball, my dad would be able to find me. That was why I joined the Baseball Club."

Coach Ninomiya looked up at Lang Zhi twice, his expression turning solemn as he nodded.

"And it really was just like he said. The place where I played baseball was close to Dad's clinic, so not only during visitation weeks, but basically every day, Dad would come watch me train. I became a shortstop because the shortstop at the time happened to quit the club. It went on like that for several years. When I was in sixth grade, I fell asleep in the locker room after training one day. When I woke up, it was already dark, and for some reason, the door had been locked." Lang Zhi lowered his head as he remembered, not noticing Coach Ninomiya glance at him again and seemingly mark a few key words.

"So I had no choice but to climb out the window. There were no cars left at the time, so I walked to Dad's clinic. Luckily, there were still people there. Dad took me back to his house to sleep. By then, my biological mother had remarried, so afterward I often went to Dad's place, and she stopped caring about me. In the second semester last year, I finally officially moved in with Dad. Then I transferred to Magnolia Middle School and kept playing baseball. When the coach asked my position, shortstop was the only one I had played. But not long ago, for some reasons, I actually quit the club without telling Dad. Dad is terrible at baseball, but deep down he is a hot-blooded idiot. He always hoped I would play baseball with my new brother and stuff. I could not tell him I had already quit, so I just came here." Lang Zhi secretly looked toward Coach Ninomiya, only to find that he was still writing with his head lowered.

"Sasaki-kun, you just said that you wanted to switch to second base. But from the way you told that story, I can sense that you are actually doubtful about playing baseball itself. Is that right?"

Lang Zhi lowered his head in silent agreement. In truth, when he said he wanted to switch to second base, he had merely guessed that the coach wanted him to move somewhere else and came up with that excuse on his own.

"Sasaki-kun, I think you have a misunderstanding. Whether you want to play baseball now has nothing at all to do with whether you played baseball before. I am going to say something medical now. Sasaki-kun, people are made of cells. Like all living things, cells have childhood, old age, and death. So why does a person usually maintain a relatively stable total number of cells? Because when old cells die, new cells immediately take their place."

Lang Zhi nodded vaguely, feeling as though he were in science class.

"A person's epidermal cells renew themselves every twenty-eight days. Aside from nerve cells, the renewal cycle for the human body's other cells is one hundred and twenty to two hundred days. So, Sasaki-kun, how long does it take before every cell in a person's body, apart from the brain, has been replaced?"

Shaking his head, Lang Zhi inexplicably felt a little afraid.

"The answer is six to seven years. We define a person's death, in the universal sense, as the death of that person's body. But at the cellular level, a person goes through many deaths in a lifetime. Only the last one makes a bigger fuss."

Coach Ninomiya put down his pen. "Haha, you are still young, but I am already old. The older one gets, the more one can feel the truth of this. So, back to what I said: all the reasons you keep using to deny that you should play baseball are the reasons you chose baseball before. At different points in time, people are free. You can freely say that you do not want to play baseball, but the reason must be based on your current feelings—that you have judged that you truly do not want to play baseball. It cannot be because you started playing baseball for certain reasons before, but those reasons no longer exist, so you do not know what meaning baseball has for you now."

He raised a hand and counted on his fingers. "For example, I used to want to see my father through baseball, but now I can see him every day. Or I used to play shortstop because nobody else did, but now too many people play shortstop, so I do not want to play it anymore."

"And Sasaki-kun, set aside all your past experiences. Suppose you are only a beginner. Like your father said, playing in the same Baseball Club as your brother, exchanging experience at the same position with a group of people—would that appeal to you?"

Sasaki Rōchi's mind went blank, yet his thoughts became incomparably clear. The threads wrapped around him and the weights tied to them were peeling away bit by bit. He thought of Kōshū's expression whenever he mocked him for overthinking. He thought of Shen Qing. Her face was slowly covering his biological mother's face. Over the past few months, memories of elementary school, which had once lasted six whole years, had rarely come to mind. Another kind of memory was gradually squeezing into that storage space, while every second of his new life remained clear.

"I think... that sounds pretty good."

Coach Ninomiya lowered his head and continued writing. "Mm. Then your defensive position will remain shortstop. I think it is still too early to discuss a six-month plan for you as a shortstop. Go back and think it over properly first. Adapt to hardball with the Infield Coach."

After receiving his dismissal, Lang Zhi immediately fled as if his pants were on fire. As he shut the office door, he vaguely heard voices from downstairs. Looking down, he saw that it really was Kōshū and Hayakawa.

"Damned big brother—" Coach Ninomiya's words—it is still too early to discuss it with you now—filled his head, making him both embarrassed and frantic. Forgetting that he was still outside the coach's office, he cried out loud.

"Huh?" The two downstairs were startled and looked up together, only to see a short figure cover his mouth like a thief and dash down the stairs.

"We're going home!" He rushed up to Kōshū with a flushed face and pulled him away.

Kōshū had long forgotten about telling him that talking to the coach would stop him from overthinking. His mind was entirely on the Scorebook Hayakawa had mentioned. Still, he did not shake free. Letting himself be dragged away, he turned back and waved.

"I'll send you a study guide later," Hayakawa said understandingly behind them.

Grandma Gu Yue watched the two brothers tugging at each other while carrying their things and said with great satisfaction, "Are you going home? I'll let your mother know right away."

"Yes, thank you."

"Go straight home, okay? Don't go wandering off to strange places."

"Got it. Goodbye, Grandma Gu Yue."

After seeing the two brothers off, Grandma Gu Yue checked today's roster. "Only Hayakawa-kun is left. Is he staying this late again?"

By the time they got home, their highly proactive mother was already organizing the new large refrigerator, while their father, who had been shooed aside, was sorting through several pages of paper.

"We're back. What's this?" Kōshū curiously leaned closer and found various ingredients categorized according to nutrients.

"Welcome home. We're going shopping in Yamazaki later."

"Why so suddenly?"

"There's only one week until school starts. The club gave us nutritional requirements for school meals. I've never made bento before, so I'll use this week to experiment." Shen Qing's words conveyed distress, but her tone was full of anticipation.

Not understanding what was going on, Lang Zhi saw Kōshū's shoulder bag slip off his shoulder. In an extremely grave tone, Kōshū said, "Maybe don't. You finally managed to stir-fry those few dishes properly. I don't want to develop an eating disorder."

Shen Qing confidently straightened up. "It'll be fine, don't worry. I've decided to buy a seasoning scale and add everything strictly by the gram."

"Ah, is that so?" Kōshū picked up his bag and headed upstairs absentmindedly.

Lang Zhi was also completely occupied with his own concerns. After showering and going upstairs, he walked straight into Kōshū's room again.

Kōshū was lying on the bed, studying how to use the Scorebook, and did not pay him any attention.

"Hey, what are you looking at?"

Lang Zhi turned the chair toward the bed.

"How to use the Scorebook."

"Oh."

Silence hung between them for a while.

"Is the Scorebook interesting?"

"..."

"If you have something to say, just say it."

"Well, it's nothing. It's just that you told me to talk to Coach Ninomiya..."

"Huh?" Kōshū was about to sit up and argue, but then remembered that he really had said something like that. "Oh. Then what?"

"Mm... How should I put it? I've decided now. I should keep playing baseball. After all, I'm average at studying, and baseball is the only thing I can really say I'm good at."

"Mm, is that so? That's good, then. Coach Ninomiya is pretty impressive."

"Mm. Dad said he asked Grandpa to contact Coach Ninomiya. Apparently, they worked together at a medical school before. Come to think of it, I remember classmates in elementary school saying that Kinoshita Little League was hard to get into. Anyway, since I've joined, I should work hard."

Kōshū glanced sideways at the boy, who was unusually serious. Seeing him awkwardly scratch at his face and head, he did not tease him. "Mm, that's true. If you have nothing else to say, hurry back to your own room."

"Cheapskate." Lang Zhi stood up and maliciously gave the swivel chair a hard shove. It spun several times before hitting the desk and stopping, while the short boy's door slammed shut with a bang.

Kōshū looked back at his phone. The sense of control he had over his life now made him feel much more at ease.

Step by step, keep moving forward. This family looks pretty stable for now.

Next chapter preview: Miyuki did not appear in this chapter again. The next chapter still needs to cover the pitching test, so I will try to squeeze in a chance for Miyuki to appear.

Answering in advance, in case anyone wonders, "Why make Lang Zhi's past so miserable too?" It mainly comes back to the line in my introduction: "the rebuilding history of one family after another." A rebuilt family must have two broken families behind it. As the child most easily hurt, he has lived for twelve years. For his twelve-year "life," around six years of pain already accounts for half his life.

The future family storyline will fill time with good memories, and the painful memories will take up less and less of his life. That is the truth behind "time heals all wounds." That saying should really be changed to: "Happy time heals all wounds."