Brothers

Brother

By the time Lang Zhi rushed upstairs, he already felt things shouldn't have gone this way. He should have been like Kōshū, calmly facing anything. But if he went back down now, how would he explain himself? It was even harder to handle than before. So he hid on his bed, back to the door, concealing his panicked expression.

Downstairs, Shen Qing had refused the family's offer to eat out. The two adults made Lang Zhi's favorite curry rice, and Kōshū carried it up. Feeling two pairs of eyes watching his back, Kōshū pushed open the slightly ajar door.

But he didn't speak first. He pulled out a chair and sat down on his own. The ceramic plate base clinked lightly against the table as the aroma of curry filled the room. Lang Zhi's stomach, which had been tight with nerves, suddenly growled. Along with the rumbling of his belly came the sound of someone eating curry behind him.

One bite, two bites. In between, because it was hot, Kōshū opened his mouth and puffed out a couple breaths of air.

Lang Zhi knew Kōshū wouldn't be swayed by soft or hard tactics. He was just waiting for him to say something, anything, so he could save face and back down. But no. Three bites, four bites. Lang Zhi could imagine the curry sinking lower in the dish. Damn it, that's my curry. If he eats it all, how am I supposed to eat today?

If he didn't stop him now, but didn't want to go hungry either, he'd have to go down. Going down meant facing the two adults. For a moment, Lang Zhi was caught in a dilemma. In the end, he chose the easier problem to solve first.

"Hey, that's my curry!"

Then he saw that the curry was already more than half gone, and Kōshū was shoving another big spoonful into his mouth. All his earlier hesitation vanished as he lunged forward to snatch the food.

Kōshū let him take it. Watching him wolf it down in a few bites, Kōshū said in a tone that brooked no argument: "Lang Zhi, I'm giving you a seven-day assignment. If you can complete it, I'll buy you that idol LIVE figure. But if you refuse or do a bad job, I'll throw all your stuff in the trash."

"Huh?" Lang Zhi, still wiping his mouth, looked bewildered. He muttered "Who cares what you say," but his eyes darted around uneasily.

Even before the tasks were stated, Lang Zhi already felt a pressure as heavy as Mount Tai. The branch that had once been snapped was swaying again, threatening to fall. He thought he had moved past the influence of the bullying, but now, facing the threat of someone bigger and stronger, he hadn't even thought of resisting before he had already yielded inside.

Kōshū keenly sensed the shorter boy's unease and changed the content of the first task: "I have a thousand yen here. If you finish the first task, I'll just give it to you. The first task is—go downstairs and get more rice."

Lang Zhi's face was full of question marks, but Kōshū's darkened expression was terrifying. He didn't even dare to ask. He scurried downstairs in a flash. In his mind now, the biggest difficulty had become sharing a room with Kōshū. He'd rather go down and face the two adults.

"Ah, Lang Zhi, let me get you more rice." Both adults were in the dining room, and Shen Qing came over to meet him.

Lang Zhi instinctively held out his bowl, then stiffly pulled it back. In a low voice, he said, "No... no need. I'll... do it myself. You shouldn't move too much... you're pregnant..."

At the silent dining table, Shen Qing and Mr. Sasaki both heard it. They watched the boy quickly fill his bowl and head back up, their hearts settling.

"I told you Kōshū would have a way." Mr. Sasaki smiled. To deal with a kid, you needed a kid.

Lang Zhi dawdled his way upstairs. Through the wide-open door, he saw Kōshū was gone. On the table lay a thousand yen and a hastily written task list.

First task: Go downstairs and get more rice. Second task: Buy a pregnancy gift for Mom. Third task: Help Mom wash the dishes. Fourth task: When Kōshū suggests cleaning out the guest room to set up the nursery, actively participate and speak up. Fifth task: Clean the nursery. Sixth task: Clean the yard. Seventh task: Offer to look at the prenatal checkup report.

The last line read: "All tasks must be completed within seven days. Upon completion, you may collect one Saori figure from the task issuer."

Damn Kōshū, using a Saori figure to tempt me!

In the end, he only dared to slam the door shut, crumple the paper with the task list into a ball, and toss it into a corner of the table.

Hearing the door slam across the hall, Kōshū, who had been listening intently, let out a breath. Thinking of the obvious fear in Lang Zhi's eyes just now, he felt a twinge of annoyance. Did Mr. Sasaki give birth to a girl...? No, I should have dealt with those people sooner back then.

So, adolescents were the second hardest to handle. The hardest were probably newborns. But in seven months, this house would have two troublesome kids at the same time. What would that scene be like?

Well, it's not my problem to worry about. Kōshū thought very calmly. That baby in swaddling clothes would probably become the center of the whole family. He or she was blood-related to every family member, truly and completely belonging to this home. As for himself? He'd better hurry up and mature, take root, and start his own branching-out life.

Two days later, Lang Zhi, who had been carefully observing his stepbrother's movements, sensed a restlessness beneath Kōshū's calm exterior.

First, he started his morning run earlier and increased its intensity. Second, instead of focusing on pitching practice, he was following everyone else in batting practice.

"Hayakawa-kun, come here for a second." Lang Zhi pulled Hayakawa Aki aside and told him all the strange things he'd noticed recently.

"Kōshū-kun has been practicing batting lately because his fastball has exceeded the coach's expectations. He might start in the second string soon, so he needs to keep up with batting training too."

"Why didn't I know?" All of Lang Zhi's guesses from the past few days were overturned.

"The second string hasn't had any games recently, but everyone's been quietly improving. Two weeks from now, the Kanto Tournament will be over, and then there'll be game invitations again." Hayakawa Aki patted Lang Zhi's shoulder meaningfully. "Sasaki-kun, it's not my place to say this, but from now on, your brother's back will be your responsibility on the field. Do your best."

So that day, after the first string finished practice, Lang Zhi found a spot near Kōshū to practice batting.

Kōshū was working with Shibasaki. Shibasaki was feeding pitches, and Kōshū was hitting.

"Any specific type of pitch you want to practice today?" Shibasaki asked from the other side of the net.

"No, Shibasaki-kun. You call your own pitches. I want to see what I can hit."

Shibasaki didn't hold back. His first pitch was a tricky outside low corner fastball, not too fast, around 127 km/h. Kōshū waited steadily for the ball to come to his hands, thinking to himself, Shibasaki-kun's fastball seems a bit faster. Even though part of his mind was elsewhere, it didn't stop him from swinging. The wind from the bat carried the ball flying backward at incredible speed, much faster than it had come. The ball was hit high and far, landing at the edge of the field.

"Kōshū-kun, did you guess that pitch?"

"Ah, you caught me. Shibasaki-kun, you've been working hard on tricky outside corner balls in the bullpen lately, so I figured your first pitch would be an outside low."

Second pitch, inside high, with a strange spin. Kōshū knew this was a high rotation speed straight ball. The ball left the pitcher's hand and, on its way to home plate, should normally dip due to gravity. But this one didn't follow the usual downward trajectory. To Kōshū's eyes, it almost seemed to rise. He knew it was an illusion, just the reduced drop from the high rotation speed straight ball.

The ball was already upon him. Kōshū didn't hesitate. In milliseconds, his focus stayed locked on the ball. The feel of the bat in his hands gradually faded, as if it had grown onto his arm. Illusion.

The next instant, bat met ball. The vibration traveled through Kōshū's entire body. The bat hadn't disappeared. It had caught the ball's sweet spot, sending it soaring high again, all the way to the far end of the field.

"Amazing, Kōshū-kun." Shibasaki knew this time it definitely wasn't just guessing the pitch. Even the previous successful hit hadn't been a guess. Kōshū's batting, like his pitching, carried a beast-like intuition that made one shudder.

"If I hadn't swung, it would have been a ball, right?" Kōshū said with a grin.

"Only two pitches." Shibasaki rotated the ball in his hand, starting from the four-seam fastball grip. He shifted his index and middle fingers slightly to the right by a few seams, placed his thumb directly beneath the ball, and put more force into his middle finger as he released.

A high rotation speed straight ball? No—the residual spin trail was that of a four-seam fastball, but the axis was slightly tilted. Kōshū, intimately familiar with a true-axis four-seam fastball, spotted the irregularity at once. Just as the ball reached the front of home plate, the tilted axis carried it veering toward Kōshū's inner corner.

'The break is too late.' Kōshū had already swung. He forced an adjustment to his body, barely managing to hit the center of the ball. The landing point was much closer this time, but he didn't care about that anymore.

"Shibasaki-kun, is that your cutter?" There seemed to be flames blazing in his eyes.

"Ah, you still got a hit off it, Kō-kun. I thought you'd ground out seeing it for the first time."

Shibasaki's initial urge to show off immediately subsided. 'This guy's a beast. My velocity isn't fast, but this cutter grip is something I just figured out. He's seeing it for the first time, and he still got a hit... Well, looks like I need to practice a lot more.'

Beside them, Lang Zhi stepped out of the batting cage and circled around to the net behind Kōshū. He was also very curious about that last pitch.

"Haha, the timing of the break was brilliant. At first glance, the rotation looks just like a fastball, and the velocity isn't much different either." Kōshū's desire to learn a beautiful breaking ball was overwhelming at that moment. "Shibasaki-kun, how do you grip it? Teach me."

"The grip is very similar to a fastball, but you should wait until the coach allows it before learning breaking balls." Shibasaki didn't wait for Kōshū's next words. "Next pitch is coming! You can't be thinking about pitching when you're hitting!"

Thwack—

For the entire half-hour batting session, Kōshū hit nearly every one of Shibasaki's pitches well. Shibasaki's previously inflated confidence from his improvement was thoroughly deflated. "Kō-kun, velocity really is the foundation of everything."

"Yeah. My velocity is even slower than yours, and I can't throw breaking balls. It's going to be rough for me when I'm batting." Facing his own pitching today weighed heavily on Kōshū's mind as well.

'Hey hey, no one's even watching these two pitchers dueling each other. Shibasaki-kun's confidence is about to get crushed,' was the thought running through Lang Zhi's mind as he stayed behind.

The mood now was to keep writing, make it a habit, and finish a novel.