On the Reason for Playing Baseball

On the Reason for Playing Baseball

The two downstairs began chatting casually, and Kōshū unexpectedly found that he got along well with Hayakawa—of course, Hayakawa felt the same way.

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

"I found out during today's practice." He nodded obediently, not daring to look up, but couldn't help sneaking a glance at the coach's expression.

"So that makes seven shortstops with you. What are your own thoughts on this?"

Rōchi tried to gauge the coach's intent, his left hand propped on his leg, his right hand nervously rubbing up and down his left elbow. "Actually—" he blurted out first, "I've been thinking about switching to second baseman."

Coach Ninomiya was indeed taken aback. He opened the notebook that had been sitting untouched beside him, flipped to a blank page, and asked, "Why is that? Can you explain it to me in detail?"

"Huh?" Caught off guard by the follow-up, Rōchi's mind flashed with a jumble of images, including what Kōshū had just said to him: 'Maybe talking to Coach Ninomiya will help.' So before he could organize all those images, the words tumbled out: "In third grade of elementary school, I joined the baseball club—"

Coach Ninomiya was surprised that he'd start from so far back. Though he could see the embarrassment flickering across the kid's face, as if he wanted to take it back, he still wrote down the time and the person's name at the top of the page: "Mm, and then?"

"I joined the baseball club—" Still not sure how to explain, Rōchi just repeated the previous sentence to buy himself some thinking time. "Actually, I didn't want to join at first. My parents had already been divorced for a long time, and my biological mother didn't really want me to see my father. So during visitation weeks, she'd take me to a mahjong parlor, play cards herself, and let me play video games. But then a classmate told me that if I played baseball, my father could find me. That's why I joined the baseball club."

Coach Ninomiya looked up at Rōchi twice, his expression growing serious. He nodded twice.

"Just like he said, the place where I played baseball happened to be very close to my father's clinic. So not just during visitation weeks—basically every day, my father would come watch me practice. I played shortstop because the previous shortstop had just quit. That went on for a few years. In sixth grade, one time after practice, I fell asleep in the locker room. When I woke up, it was pitch black, and for some reason, the door was locked." Rōchi kept his head down, recalling, not noticing that Coach Ninomiya had looked up at him again and seemed to mark a few words.

"So I had to climb out through the window. There were no trains running by then, so I walked to my father's clinic. Luckily, someone was there. My father took me back to his place to sleep. By then, my biological mother had already remarried. Later on, I started going to my father's place often, and she stopped caring about me. In the second semester of last year, I finally moved in with my father officially. I transferred to Magnolia Middle School and kept playing baseball. When the coach asked about my position, I'd only ever played shortstop. But not long ago, for some reasons, I actually quit the club. I didn't tell my father. He's terrible at baseball, but deep down, he's a passionate idiot. He always hoped I'd play baseball with my stepbrother and stuff. I couldn't bring myself to say I'd already quit, so I just came along." Rōchi stole a glance at Coach Ninomiya, who was still writing something with his head down.

"Sasaki-kun, you just said you wanted to switch to second base. But based on what you've told me, I can sense that you're actually already doubtful about playing baseball itself, aren't you?"

Rōchi lowered his head in silent admission. In truth, saying he wanted to switch to second base was just him guessing that the coach wanted him to move to another position, so he'd come up with that on his own.

"Sasaki-kun, I think you have a misunderstanding. Whether you want to play baseball now has nothing to do with whether you played baseball before. Let me get a bit medical here. Sasaki-kun, humans are made of cells. Cells, like all living things, have their childhood, their old age, and their death. So why do people generally maintain a relatively constant number of cells? Because when old cells die, new cells immediately take their place."

Rōchi nodded vaguely, feeling like he was in science class.

"Human skin cells renew themselves every 28 days. Apart from nerve cells, the renewal cycle for other cells in the human body is 120 to 200 days. So, Sasaki-kun, how long does it take for every cell in a person's body—except the brain—to be completely renewed?"

Shaking his head, Rōchi felt a strange sense of dread.

"The answer is 6 to 7 years. We define a person's death, in the common sense, as the death of their body. But purely on a cellular level, a person experiences many 'deaths' in their lifetime. Only the last one makes a big fuss."

Coach Ninomiya put down his pen. "Haha, you're still young, but I'm already old. The older you get, the more you feel this truth. So back to the point: all those reasons you're using to deny that you want to play baseball now are the same reasons you chose to play baseball before. At different points in time, people are free. You can freely say you don't want to play baseball, but the reason must be based on your current feelings—that you truly don't want to play—not that you started playing for some reason before, and now that reason is gone, so you don't know what meaning it has anymore."

He held up his fingers, counting: "For example, before, you wanted to see your father through baseball, but now you see him every day. Or before, you played shortstop because no one else did, but now too many people play shortstop, so you don't want to."

"And Sasaki-kun, if you set aside all your past experiences and just assume you're a beginner—like your father said, playing baseball with your brother in the same club, sharing experiences about the same position with a group of people—does that appeal to you at all?"

Sasaki Rōchi's mind went blank, but his thoughts became incredibly clear. The threads wrapped around him, with their heavy weights, were peeling away bit by bit. He thought of Kōshū's expression every time he mocked him for 'overthinking,' thought of Shen Qing—her face slowly covering his biological mother's. In recent months, the memories of six years in elementary school, which had once stretched so long, were rarely recalled anymore. Their space was being slowly crowded out by another kind of memory, every minute and second of his new life remaining crystal clear.

"I think... it's still pretty good."

Coach Ninomiya lowered his head and kept writing. "Mm, then your position remains shortstop. I think it's too early to discuss a half-year plan for you as a shortstop right now. Go back and think it over first. Follow the infield coach and get used to hardballs."

Receiving the dismissal, Rōchi scrambled out of the office as if his pants were on fire. As he closed the door, he vaguely heard voices from downstairs. Looking down, it was indeed Kōshū and Hayakawa.

"You bastard brother—" Now his mind was full of the coach's words, 'It's too early to discuss this with you,' making Rōchi both embarrassed and frantic. Without caring that he was still right outside the coach's office, he yelled out loud.

"Huh?" The two downstairs were startled and looked up, only to see a short figure covering his mouth like a thief and scurrying down.

"Let's go home!" His face bright red, he rushed up to Kōshū and pulled him away.

Kōshū had long forgotten about 'talking to the coach will stop you from overthinking' and was still caught up in what Hayakawa had said about the scorebook. But he didn't resist, letting himself be dragged along as he waved back.

"I'll send you a study guide later." Hayakawa's understanding voice came from behind.

Grandma Gu Yue at the door watched the two brothers tugging at each other and gathering their things, looking quite pleased. "Are you heading home? I'll let your mother know right away."

"Yes, thank you."

"Go straight home, don't go to any strange places."

"Got it. Goodbye, Grandma Gu Yue."

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

When they got home, their highly efficient mother was already clearing space for a new big refrigerator. Their father, pushed to the side, was sorting through several sheets of paper.

"We're back. What's this?" Kōshū curiously leaned in and found it was a list of various ingredients categorized by nutritional elements.

"Welcome back. We'll go shopping at Yamazaki in a bit."

"Why so sudden?"

"School starts in a week. The club gave me the nutritional requirements for school. I've never made bento before, so I'll use this week to experiment." Shen Qing's words sounded troubled, but her tone was full of anticipation.

Rōchi, not understanding what was going on, saw Kōshū's shoulder bag slide off his shoulder. In a very heavy tone, Kōshū said, "Better not. You finally managed to cook a few dishes decently. I don't want to get anorexia."

Shen Qing straightened up confidently. "Don't worry. I've decided to buy a seasoning scale and strictly follow the gram amounts every time."

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

Rōchi's mind was also full of his own matters. After showering and coming upstairs, he walked straight into Kōshū's room again.

Kōshū was on the bed, learning how to use the scorebook, and ignored him.

"Hey, what are you looking at?"

Rōchi turned the chair around to the bedside.

"How do you use the scorebook?"

"Oh."

A moment of silence.

"Is the scorebook interesting?"

"..."

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

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

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

"Mm... how should I put it? It's settled now, I guess. I'm still going to play baseball. I mean, my grades are average, and the only thing I'm actually good at is baseball."

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

"Yeah. Dad said he asked Grandpa to get in touch with Coach Ninomiya. Apparently they used to work together at the medical school. Speaking of which, I remember classmates in elementary school saying it was pretty hard to get into Kinoshita Little League. Anyway, since I've joined, I'll just do my best."

Kōshū glanced sideways at the boy, who was rarely this serious. Watching him scratch his face and rub his head awkwardly, he held back from making a jab. "Yeah, that's true. If you don't have anything else, go back to your room."

"Stingy." Lang Zhi stood up and spitefully yanked the swivel chair, sending it spinning several times before it bumped into the desk and stopped. The short guy's door slammed shut with a bang.

Kōshū looked back at his phone. The sense of control over his current life brought him a lot of reassurance.

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

[Next Chapter Preview] This chapter still didn't let Miyuki appear. Next chapter, I have to write the pitching test. I'll try to squeeze Miyuki in on the edge.

[Early Q&A] In case anyone wonders, "Why make Lang Zhi's experience so tragic too?"—it mainly comes back to the line in my synopsis: "A history of rebuilding one family at a time." Behind a rebuilt family, there are inevitably two broken families. As the child most vulnerable to harm, by the time he's twelve, six years of pain already make up half of his twelve-year 'life.'

[Future Family Storyline] If you fill time with good memories, the proportion of painful memories in his life will keep shrinking. That's the truth behind "time heals everything." The saying should really be: "Happy time heals everything."