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Abe notices that Ren’s hiding something almost before Ren’s aware of it himself; that’s how it works. Always. He’s got enough self-awareness for both of them; Ren’s is the kind of self-consciousness that’s closer to blindness, although he’s been learning better.
Today he’s hunched over a little at his desk and rubbing his eyes (damn, Ren, you said you were going to bed when I texted you last night, did you not sleep?), and when Mr. Matsuda calls on him in world history and he doesn’t have a clue, it’s not Ren-being-spacey, his mind is somewhere else. Abe can tell the difference.
Between classes? No, he’s going to need more time than that to get Ren to use his words. (Most often they can get by now without Tajima or Sakaeguchi having to jump in as translator: some of it is Ren having more practice at putting his feelings into words, and being less terrified that Abe’s going to hate him for whatever he has to say, and the rest is Abe having a better sense now of the little sounds and motions and half-expressions Ren uses when he can’t make the words come.)
Lunch, then. Abe scowls to himself and concentrates on classes, because he’s not the kind of baseball player who gets free passage into any college he wants as long as it has a nine; he’s going to get top grades in Japanese history and classical Japanese if it kills him, and it very well may. (The math and science stuff comes easier to him, he’s always had a mind for figures, but all this squishy history stuff, there’s no way to get a grip on it. Thank God for Nishihiro-sensei.)
But lunch time finally comes, and Abe gets hold of Ren and both their lunchboxes (and a sympathetic, querying look from Suyama) with sheer force of will and ends up in the social studies resource room, which is a tiny dusty closet full of disintegrating maps. It has a desk and a window, though, and the teachers don’t seem to have noticed yet that they keep forgetting to lock the door.
Ren won’t look at him until they’re squeezed in on either side of the desk, Abe’s solid ranks of rice balls, egg cake and mini-meatloaf just fitting in alongside Ren’s haphazard but obviously made-with-love lettuce and ham sandwiches. The oversized metal thermoses they both carry won’t fit on the table and have to be set on the floor.
Ren picks up a sandwich and stuffs his mouth, a ridiculously obvious last-ditch attempt not to have to say anything. Abe just waits until he swallows, taking the chance to gulp down about a rice ball and a half himself. As with most things, he’s faster and more efficient at eating than Ren is.
“So what gives?” he demands, the first time they both have empty mouths. “What’s bugging you?”
Ren really has come along, he thinks grudgingly. The Ren that useta was would have panicked on the spot, sweating and stammering and digging himself in deeper with every syllable. Ren-just-turned-eighteen just looks down at what’s left of his lunch, flinches a little, and whispers “Why…d-do you think anything’s…?”
“Give me a break. You think I don’t know by this time when something’s on your mind? What’s up? Or would you rather talk to Tajima or the captain?”
The last is a calculated risk, and it pays off. Ren’s eyes meet his, light brown and worried—but again, not panicked. He’s trying to cope on his own, Abe realizes. Figures he should handle whatever the problem is by himself.
Abe takes a quick breath and lets it out again carefully, because he’s not going to yell at Ren for this, even though there’s a lot he wants to say and most of it is likely to come out at high volume. He eats another rice ball to shut himself up while he’s thinking, notices Ren has stopped eating and automatically shoves a sandwich into his hand.
It takes two rice balls and a lump of meatloaf before he can do it, but his voice comes out calm and quiet. “Ren?”
Ren nearly chokes on his mouthful of lettuce, breathes shakily for a moment. “Abe-kun?”
(Sometimes he wonders why he doesn’t say just go ahead and call me Takaya already. It’s been a good while since Mihashi turned into Ren in his head and then in his mouth—it mostly happened junior year when Mihashi’s cousin, oh-my-God how-can-anyone-be-that-bubbly are-these-two-really-related Ruri, started hanging out with the team more and he heard her calling Mihashi by his first name. He was embarrassed the first time the other guys heard him say it—something totally prosaic like “Hey, Ren, you better not be finished eating yet, get another rice ball or else”—but nobody turned a hair. It’s not like it was Hanai, after all—God help any girl (or guy, if Hanai swung that way) who tries to call the captain Azusa. That would be one relationship that was over before it began. And face it, he likes the way Ren says Abe-kun, the earnest –kun ending that most guys their age drop by the time they hit junior high. From Ren it sounds like an endearment, sweet and serious.)
“Can I help?” he asks carefully.
Abe watches as Ren’s light eyes fill with tears, sees that at the same time his mouth sets firmer, not trembling.
“When you’re pitching,” he adds carefully, “nobody says you have to run out to center field to grab a flyball, right? That’s what we got Izumi for. And you don’t have to be at first to get the out, that’s where Oki is. Having the other guys on the field doesn’t mean you’re not doing your job.”
Ren shuts his eyes, lashes just barely touched with water, and gives a long shuddering sigh. “Abe-kun, I’m sorry.”
Abe can’t stop himself from reaching over to run the tip of his finger delicately along Ren’s lashes, collecting the tears. They both breathe shorter for a moment, until Ren’s shoulders heave and he says, voice small but steady, “Can I tell you? Just you?”
Abe bites down hard on goddammit what do you think I’ve been trying to get you to do for the last quarter hour. “Shoot.”
It takes a while, even with Ren clearly doing his level best to be coherent and brief. By the time he’s finished talking, Abe has a grip on his hands across the table, and both of them have forgotten the remains of their lunches.
“Fire Coach Momo,” Abe repeats carefully, wondering if it’s Ren’s fingers that are chilling his own or the other way around. “Fire her.”
Ren nods, biting his lip hard.
“Are you absolutely sure? I mean, that you didn’t, like, hear something wrong, or that it wasn’t a real proposition or something? Because seriously, the school likes winning teams, you know that, it’s good for enrollment and all that crap, and they’ve got to know it’s down to Coach Momo that we’ve been so strong right from the start—“
“And you,” almost inaudibly.
Abe holds Ren’s hands tighter, feeling the familiar calluses. “And you too, yeah, ace. And Tajima and the captain and…but look, you get the idea. I mean, I don’t think they’d be in any hurry to get rid of her, are you sure you didn’t—“
“I th-thought about it all night,” and that explains the reddened eyes. “My grandfather kept saying—he was telling my father I should quit the team b-before there was a, a scandal—“
“But Mihoshi is private, right? And out in Gunma, it’s not like your grandfather’s directly involved or anything.”
Ren shakes his head. “But he, he knows lots of people…”
Damn, but he’d like to write this off as just one of Ren’s panics, Ren’s misunderstandings. But those don’t happen any more the way they did in first year, and quirky as he is no one’s ever thought Ren was stupid. Coach Momoe, a scandal for the team, getting fired, the wrong kind of job back then. The pieces hang together, all right.
“We need more information,” Abe decides. “Shigapo…no. He might be the last to know anyway. I don’t guess you could talk to your grandfather?” He doesn’t really mean it.
Ren’s sore eyes open wide. “I. Maybe. I could try? I mean…I was…was going to…”
“You were going to?”
“I thought…I…” Ren swallows hard. “I should…c-could ask my grandfather…he could t-tell them not, not to…”
“Ren,” louder than he means to be, and from the hint of tension in Ren’s lower eyelids he realizes he’s holding Ren’s hands too tight. He lets go in a hurry, without thinking.
“I’m sorry…?”
“You’re amazing,” Abe says, and watches Ren’s head come up, eyes locking with his own. Too quickly, he goes on, “But you’re also really rotten at thinking things through. That’s my job, hello. Let me pull my weight, right.” He takes a deep breath, ready to start making plans the same way he sets out to call a game—and then the bell rings, making Ren jump and almost knock his lunchbox off the table. “Shit,” Abe says wholeheartedly. Five minutes to get to class, and now is really not the time to get in trouble for skipping or tardiness. “Did you eat enough?” automatically.
“What? Yes, I mean, yes. But…?”
“Take it easy,” Abe tells him, and himself. “We got Japanese history next and you need a good pass after the midterms, right? And practice this afternoon, and you better be able to look Coach Momo in the face without even blinking. Put it off—don’t think about the ninth inning while you got a man on base in the third, okay?”
“Can…can we talk about…after…?”
“After practice? You bet. And I think we need Hanai in on this, and Izumi—all of us.” He doesn’t have to specify that all of us means the original ten. And Shinooka, never forget Chiyo-chan. “Can we hit your house?”
Ren nods convulsively.
“Call your mom before practice, you know she needs some warning time,” Abe reminds him, leaning over to scoop up his thermos. He feels a momentary warmth in the small of his back and knows it’s Ren’s hand, laid there for just a moment.
Hanai pretty much bullies Prof Mihashi into ordering up pizza—“We’re not making you do that much work cooking for all of us, with no warning! How rude would that be? Seriously!”—and they pool their pocket cash to pay for most of it, except for Tajima, who comes up with a five-yen coin, three one-yen coins and a mournful look. Hanai slaps him across the head and covers his share.
Abe figures the pizza is a good time to talk about it, when everyone’s got their mouths full and there should be less interrupting. He makes sure Ren’s eating, looks around the room to count heads automatically—the ten of them, Chiyo, Ruri next to her (“because I’m sick of being the only girl”) and Shugo Kanoh next to Ruri because lately that’s how it is, and all the Mihashis swear up and down that they can trust him. Well, whatever. Abe is still willing to give him some credit for being the first one to understand Ren’s talent.
He takes a long drink of barley tea and clears his throat. “Okay, listen up. We got a problem…”
It doesn’t take long at all to explain, this time. They just don’t have that much information. Ren’s going to talk to his grandfather and see if he can find out more, Abe explains, and for a moment his dark cloud of worry lightens when Sakaeguchi pats Ren on the back and Izumi mutters right on Mihashi.
“I’ll go with!” Ruri offers, and is met with a chorus of “NO WAY” from Abe, Hanai, Kanoh, Izumi, Mizutani, and—loudest—Ren. “B-but thanks,” he offers after a moment, grudgingly, and Ruri rolls her eyes. “Okay, but remember I’ll be your court of last resort if you need me.”
Airhead, Abe thinks, not seriously. He’s grateful to her for making him feel like the world might not be ending.
“And then what?” Nishihiro asks quietly.
Abe takes a deep breath. “Then we play it as we see it.” Get as much data as you can on the other team; after that, you just have to call it as it comes. That’s the only way he knows to win a game.
Hanai says “You have in mind letting Coach Momo in on this, or what?”
Abe can hear the tension in his voice. The captain and the coach have a closeness no one else shares—not the way Tajima likes to kid him about, but almost like the team parents, responsible for the rest of them, if you throw in Mr. Shiga as the wise granddad. (The team-dad role is played by the catcher more often than not, but Abe has always been too focused on Ren to give that much attention to the rest of them.) Hanai is probably the most shaken of all of them right now.
So he throws the question back. “What do you say?”
“She’s gotta know.” Hanai’s voice is rougher than usual. “We can’t let her get blindsided.”
“You gonna tell her?”
Mizutani says, “Shigapo—“
Abe chews over that one for a second; yeah, it makes sense. No matter how much trust there is built up between Coach Momoe and her original eleven, she’s not going to want to hear something like this from a student. “Yeah. Okay. But not till we see what Ren can find out.”
“Fair enough,” Hanai allows. His expression is still dark, but when Tajima shoves a big floppy triple slice of pizza at him, he takes it and starts eating.
There’s not much else to go over; it’s enough that they know. Tajima is looking at Hanai as if he’d like to say something but doesn’t know what to say. Izumi and Kanoh are talking rather too loudly about the new kids on the Mihoshi team, with Sakaeguchi and Suyama throwing in occasional comments. Chiyo and Ruri, after an exchange of looks, are discussing college entrance exams and the horror of World History (as by Chiyo, who turned out to be a math-and-science girl all the way, probably thanks to all those stats; Ruri says she’ll handle all the random kings and treaties if she only doesn’t have to deal with physics and chemistry), a topic that draws Mizutani in too.
Nishihiro and Oki have retreated into one of their private conversations, quiet and allusive. Abe isn't trying to eavesdrop, but some of the phrases come his way: "...if it were true? Coach..." "...matter? To you?" "...were Shinooka, or Mihashi-san..." "...never been ashamed of...strength or...we shouldn't be either."
Just about enough to figure out the gist, and to guess that Oki is reassuring Nishihiro, helping him get a grip on the issue--one none of the rest of them have brought up--without arguing for one side or the other. Oki's a deep one, all right, Abe thinks, not for the first time.
Ren is leaning just a little against Abe’s shoulder, eating something like his sixth slice of pizza, unless it’s his eighth. He’s going to fall asleep in a minute, Abe suspects, but when he turns his head the expression on Ren’s face comes into focus: tense, unrelaxed, anxious the way he used to look so often their first year.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Take it easy.”
“Do…do you…time--” Ren swallows, setting down his last pizza crust, and manages to make sense before Abe’s blood pressure has a chance to start rising. “C-can you stay…later? A, a little?”
“Oh. Yeah. Of course.” Abe sighs, curiously relieved, and helps himself to another slice.
The others leave not long after they’ve finished eating, since it’s a school night and they have practice bright and early tomorrow morning. Ruri ruffles Ren’s hair, to his incoherent infuriation, and sets off arm in arm with Kanoh. Mizutani clearly thinks no one notices him keeping Chiyo company, and they’re all kind enough not to disabuse him. The others trail out in twos and threes, Hanai and Oki having made sure the pizza boxes and napkins are thrown out and the living room cleaned.
When it’s just the two of them, Abe and Ren settle around the low table in the middle of the room, hands linked, making themselves comfortable on the fluffy floor mat. “Spill,” Abe orders.
Ren’s eyes are huge. “They wouldn’t…they wouldn’t stop the team…we could still, you know, the summer games…?”
“I don’t think so…” Abe isn’t as sure as he’d like to sound. “It’s not like one of us was caught smoking or something. Or bullying or whatever. I mean, Coach Momo might get…well, get fired, but the team…”
“But, b-but, we couldn’t…without Coach Momo…!”
“Yeah. I know. Shit,” in spite of himself, furiously.
Ren doesn’t flinch. “I feel like…” he says after a moment, softly. “If…if I was pitching, and you were gone…”
“I’m not going anywhere when you’re on the mound.” Abe has no idea how many times he’s said that, but he’ll say it as many times as necessary.
Ren’s hand tightens on his. “I know…” and how many times did it take before he could answer that way? “B-but, if you were…and Tajima, and Oki at f-first and…if everyone was gone? And I was pitching, but I couldn’t…”
Abe gets the point. He imagines standing in the batter’s box with no runners on base, nobody waiting in the on-deck circle, nobody yelling from the dugout. No way to make it around the bases on his own. That’s what it feels like, knowing things are going wrong and having no way to get them under control.
“Oh damn, Ren, come here,” he says miserably, and shifts around the corner of the table to pull Ren back against his chest, automatically careful of Ren’s right shoulder—the pitching arm is sacred—and rough everywhere else. Ren jams his forehead against Abe’s collarbone like a cat, sliding sideways so neither of them is sitting at an improbable angles. Abe rests his face in Ren’s soft hair, smelling sweat and soap.
They sit quietly for a few moments. At first Ren’s fists are clenched against Abe’s breastbone, like a little kid curled up for sleep, but in a little while he shifts slightly and slides both arms around Abe’s ribcage, cheek against Abe’s shoulder. That makes it easier to sit closer, and Abe leans his head on Ren’s and closes his eyes.
Two days later, in the same place as it happens, Ren clutches his phone and thinks I did it. His heart is still banging hard enough to make him dizzy.
He can’t remember ever having approached his grandfather of his own accord, either on the phone or in person, before. When he was little Grandfather was the scary old man who makes Daddy yell and Mama cry, and then he was at Mihoshi and Grandfather was cold disappointed eyes and harsh voice every time Ren lost another game. He became expert at avoiding the old man, even though between home and school they were in the same building most of the time. Since moving home he’s hardly seen him at all.
Nerving himself to make the phone call took forever, sitting there with the phone slipping back and forth from one cold, sweaty palm to the other, trembling. Stop it, he told himself finally. You’re on the mound and there’s a runner on third, picture it and stay calm… and if he were pitching, Abe-kun would be there, eighteen-something meters away from him, steady dark eyes behind the catcher’s mask, keeping him steady too. Abe-kun, he thought, and punched in the numbers.
It was a surprise that his grandfather didn’t actually sound angry to hear from him. At least not at first. Well, Ren. What’s on your mind?
Getting the question out was hard, and getting any kind of an answer was harder. Ren imagined a series of stubborn foul balls and kept his mind on the imaginary Abe-kun, refusing to back down and hang up.
He didn’t manage to strike his grandfather out, but he might just have gotten him to hit the ball straight to a fielder, he thinks now, catching his breath and clutching the phone tighter, then finding the familiar entry in the address book. A text? No, tough as it is, he'd rather go through the struggle of talking if it means he can hear Abe-kun's voice on the other end.
“Ren?”
“Um, yeah, it’s m-me. Abe-kun, I, um, I…” Breathe, stupid, you’re not talking to Grandfather any more. “I c-called him, and, um, it’s like…” He hates talking on the phone to Abe-kun. Well, no, he doesn’t hate it, he’d rather talk on the phone than not talk at all, but…it’s so much easier to talk, and listen, when they’re touching hands.
It’s not holding hands exactly, not like the couples at school do whenever they can get away with it. But they’ve always communicated through hands touching, from Abe-kun’s first hard grip on his own stiff, trembling fingers, through Shigapo’s meditation circles and the gradual sense of warmth through his palm, then that reflexive, strengthening “Gimme your hand” before a game, until most anytime now it just seems more natural to be touching hands than not. As if that contact, palm-to-palm or fingers linked or Abe-kun’s hand laid over Ren’s knuckles, carries most of the communication they still can’t always manage effectively in speech.
Get it together, Mihashi. “He d-didn’t…wouldn’t tell me what…what exactly the problem…what they said C-Coach Momo did? But,” rushing on, “he said…he said, there’s this one guy, on the, the, the…?”
“The school board?” Abe-kun suggests helpfully.
“Yes! That! This, um, this one guy who…who’s the one trying to…against Coach Momo? He said…I mean…my grandfather said his, his…”
“His name?”
“Um, no, but…his…his c-company name? And he’s, um, the, the president? So—“
“All right!” Abe-kun runs over Ren’s trailing sentence, his voice energized the way it is when they get a tough out. “Fantastic, Ren, we can work with that, you did a brilliant job!”
Ren’s whole body fills up with warmth as Abe-kun starts making plans.
Abe frowns over Mizutani’s shoulder at the little teardrop shape on the phone screen. “Where the hell is that?”
“Way up near Chichibu,” Mizutani groans. “Like, a couple hours by train. Why can’t the guy be from the city like the rest of us?”
“Can’t be helped.” Abe looks around at his team, realizing it’s not just Izumi, Mizutani and Hanai (and Ren quiet at his shoulder, the backs of their hands just touching) but all eleven of them, standing in a tight circle by the water trough.
“So when are we going?” Chiyo wants to know.
“Wait—look. We can’t all go. If it’s just the two or three of us, there’s doctor’s appointments and family stuff and colleges and—we could pull that off, but all of us? Coach Momo’s going to catch on.”
“We’re the seniors,” Nishihiro says calmly. “Forms to fill out for next week’s practice test, remember? And assignments to get ready for it?”
Abe blinks at him. “…You talked to Shigapo,” he figures out.
“Yeah. Well, Oki-kun and me. He’s going to have two words with Coach Momo. Told us not to worry about her on that score.”
“You didn’t tell him about--?” Hanai jabs a finger at the map on Mizutani’s phone.
“No no, he’d, well. People are happier not knowing some things, if you follow me. But he’ll cover for us without needing to know the details.”
“As long as we don’t screw it up,” Izumi adds darkly. “We get this wrong and the team will be in hotter water than it is now.”
“Tell me something else I don’t know,” Abe snaps. He feels Ren’s shoulder quiver against his. Yes, okay, calm down me. “Okay, fine. What day’s it going to be?”
They fix the details. “And don’t tell anyone,” he adds, knowing it’s unnecessary, but nervous.
“So we offer him what we got,” Abe lays it out. Weekday early afternoon and they’ve got one end of a train car to themselves, chugging steadily north. “He drops this thing with Coach Momo, and we go to Koshien.”
“But isn’t that like…like saying ‘You should give me a prize because I did my homework’?” Tajima’s freckly face is screwed up in confusion.
“How many times you tried that line?” Hanai snorts.
“Plenty,” Tajima says easily. “And the teachers all said the same thing, that you don’t get anything special for doing what you’re supposed to do anyway. I mean, going to Koshien is what we’re supposed to do, right? Do we get to ask for something back that way?”
“Not that simple,” Hanai counters. “Look. We’re a public school, prefectural, right? You know how many times a public school has represented Saitama in the last twenty years? Twice. One in ten. I asked my mom,” he adds a little sheepishly. “The last time was back in ’98, and that doesn’t even really count ‘cause that year they divided the prefecture in half and there were two reps. You know how bad the school board would like a public school to step up? You know how happy it would make their budget?”
“No,” Tajima shrugs.
“Well, take my word for it. And also—“
“And also, Nishiura?” Sakaeguchi puts in. “We’d be awesome poster boys for the whole public school goes to Koshien thing, on account of, you know, good grades? If they can say, look, our students get into great colleges and they play terrific baseball, they’ve got it made.”
“Okay—“ Izumi is frowning. “So far so good, but don’t we need, like, a stick as well as a carrot? I mean, we can swear we’ll go to Koshien as long as he drops the subject, but what do we have to bargain with if he says he won’t?”
“Well, not going to Koshien, to start with. Lose out on all that good publicity—“
“Wait a--!” Oki is usually quiet in team meetings, and his sudden blurted interruption makes him blush. “You don’t mean, throw the summer tournament?”
“No! Jesus. Never. But, look, bottom line if he pushes his plan is we’d lose Coach Momo, right? and that’s if we didn’t get disqualified altogether. You really think we could win the tournament without Coach?”
Oki lets out his breath in a long sigh. “I don’t know. I guess we could try…”
“We’d still have the technical ability to do it, assuming we had it in the first place,” Nishihiro says to him. “But I think we’d lose the…the…” Uncharacteristically, he’s lost for words.
“The heart,” Sakaeguchi fills in quietly, and no one argues with that.
Mizutani clears his throat. “Okay, but, is Koshien something we can offer no strings attached? I mean, if it were that easy we’d’ve been there two summers ago.”
“Yeah, what if we say we’ll go to Koshien and he laughs in our faces?”
“It’s pretty plausible, from his side.” Abe steps up to this one. “Best 16 two years ago, semifinals last year. We’re better every year, and with a deeper bench.”
“The columnists say we’re as good a bet as anybody else, and better than most,” Hanai agrees, passing on more of his mother’s scuttlebutt. “He might say we couldn’t actually promise to go, but not that we don’t have a chance—not like they all said two years ago.” For a moment they all grin at the memory, worry temporarily lightened.
“Anyway,” Abe resumes, “it’s a bargain, you know? If he takes us up on it, at the absolute worst we get to play the summer tournament and buy some time to figure out what comes next.”
“Fair enough,” from Izumi. “But what’s the contingency plan? What if he doesn’t buy it?”
“Then we’re no worse off than if we didn’t do anything at all,” Abe says flatly. “Also, in that case, we threaten to bring in the heavy artillery.”
“Huh?”
“Parents. My mom figures Coach Momo hung the moon. Hanai’s folks, Suyama’s, Ren’s—“
“My sister’s interning for the Saitama Times now,” Sakaeguchi volunteers. “I mean, she’s about as low on the totem pole as you can get, but I bet we could make something out of that. And she adores Coach Momo.”
“Excellent. The thing is, that’s our last resort—we don’t want to make a big thing out of all this unless we absolutely have to, we want it to go away…” Abe’s voice trails off as he notices the truly demonic grin growing on Tajima’s face.
Unusually, the third baseman doesn’t burst out right away with whatever he’s come up with, just sits there smirking until Hanai says impatiently “What the hell, Tajima? Spit it out.”
“We’re all missing something, you guys. Izumi talked about a carrot and a stick? Well, we’ve got a big stick.”
“This isn’t any time for stupid jokes—“
“No, no, I didn’t mean that.” (“For once,” several of them say in muffled unison.) “Look, so, this a-hole on the school board, he’s accusing Coach Momo of, like, working in one of those places, right? Well, how does he know that?”
They all blink, and then something like Tajima’s evil grin starts spreading around the circle: Hanai, Izumi, Mizutani, Suyama, Sakaeguchi…Ren is still blinking, in (from Abe’s point of view) comically innocent confusion.
“Gee,” Izumi murmurs. “How would he possibly ever know such a thing? Unless, you know, he’d been doing some personal observation…?”
“You mean blackmail,” Mizutani sums up, sounding torn between genuine shock and playing it for laughs.
Tajima shrugs. “Dig two graves when you curse a man, y’know…What? Hey, I passed Classics last year, don’t look at me like that. Nishihiro? You know I did, you’re the one that tutored me.”
“Stay on topic,” Nishihiro tells him automatically. He’s frowning, sharp dark eyebrows bunching. “Tajima, hold it, but that means you think he's telling the truth.”
“No it doesn’t,” from Hanai, briskly. “It means what's-his-face was in, like, a position to see somebody there, and he saw somebody like Coach Momo. Or he didn’t and he’s just causing trouble because he doesn’t like having a woman coach, or whatever. Because he was there doesn’t mean she was.”
“…Fair enough.” Nishihiro looks as if he has more to say, but with Oki’s hand on his arm, he’s quiet.
“So what do you think?” Tajima wants to know, and Abe realizes he’s the one being asked. Well, okay, like he said to Ren when this started, a catcher is a strategist.
“It…might…work,” he says slowly, thinking as he speaks. “If we do it right. Tajima, you better not say one word.”
“Awww—Ow!” as Hanai cuffs him.
“Hanai, you’re the captain, you do the talking,” Abe goes on, and Hanai freezes.
“Me?”
“Who else? And you need a backstop—Sakaeguchi.”
“What?” A pile of notebooks and worksheets cascades from Sakaeguchi’s lap to the train floor. (“Dumb-ass,” Suyama says good-naturedly, scooping them up.) “Why me? I’m not captain or anything—“
“Yeah, that’s why Hanai and you. Look, two people talking is better, right? Ren did the hard work finding it all out, but…” He loves Ren like nothing else in this world (Abe hears himself thinking this and tucks it ruthlessly at the back of his mind to handle later), but no one is going to ask Mihashi to be the team spokesman any time soon, and that doesn’t need explaining. Ren just about lost his teeth at the notion, and his eyes are still wide with relief.
“Why not you, then?” Sakaeguchi protests.
“I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Abe-kun would l-lose…lose his…” Ren begins, solemn-faced.
“…temper,” Abe finishes, catching Ren’s eyes and grinning in spite of himself. “You ought to know. And Tajima’s out, and Ren, well…”
Finally Sakaeguchi cracks a smile. “Well, okay, I’ll do my best. But you guys better jump in if we need you.”
“A-always,” Ren says seriously, and nobody laughs.
The headquarters of Hiranuma Manufacturing are about fifteen minutes’ walk from Chichibu Station, a mid-sized yellowish brick building on a nondescript street. They walk in a loose group, Tajima—being Tajima—munching on a corndog from the convenience store outside the station, Nishihiro and Oki, incredibly, trading English vocabulary words. Sakaeguchi and Hanai are mumbling together, checking their game plan. The rest of them are quiet. Chiyo is wearing a blazer and tight skirt she must have borrowed off someone, looking incredibly grown up. Most of the rest of them are in plain white shirts and dark trousers, like game days.
The front office is like all front offices. Hanai takes a deep breath, gathers the rest of them around with a look—pull it together, Abe thinks, the way he’ll yell to the infield before the other team comes up to bat—and says to the middle-aged receptionist, “Is Mr. Hiranuma free, please?”
She looks surprised, as well she might. “Mr. Hiranuma? What’s your business with him?”
“We’re calling on him in his capacity as a prefectural school board member,” Hanai says formally. “From Nishiura High School.”
This is something of a calculated risk, but apparently nefarious plans don’t trickle down to receptionists, and she doesn’t react to the school name. “Well, you might be in luck, he’s in the office today, but—“ She picks up a receiver and taps buttons, while they wait tensely. Abe finds his fingers are interlaced with Ren’s, and isn’t sure which of them reached for the other.
“Mr. Hiranuma can give you a little time,” the receptionist says pleasantly—Sakaeguchi’s hopeful smile from beside Hanai seems to have had some effect, and Abe congratulates himself absently on his player positioning. “Not very long, mind, he’s got to leave the office by five-fifteen.”
“Thank you so much!” with a background chorus from all of them.
They clatter up the stairs to the main office, watched with mild curiosity by assorted office workers and factory guys in jumpsuits.
In the big “President’s Office,” with its broad desk, leather sofa and armchairs, they line up formally with their backs to the window. Hiranuma—stubby and broad-shouldered, white shirt, tie and work pants, salt-and-pepper hair cut short--sprawls comfortably in his big chair, eying them one after the next. Abe makes sure he meets his eyes solidly.
“So what can I do for you gentlemen—and the young lady?” the school board member asks affably.
Hanai squares his shoulders and clears his throat. “We’re here from Nishiura High School, sir, representing the baseball team. I’m the captain. Hanai.” (Someone makes a tiny suppressed sound in the back of their throat, and Abe’s certain it’s a choked-down giggle over the way that even in this formal context Hanai won’t admit to a first name.) “We’d like to speak with you about, um…allegations we’ve heard about our team.”
“Al-le-ga-tions,” Hiranuma repeats, drawing out the word. “Does your school usually send its students to meet with community leaders, young man? Don’t you think you should leave adult matters to adults?”
“We believe in communication,” Sakaeguchi says, wide-eyed, earnest. “Mr. Hiranuma, I know you’re a concerned board member. You know our team has a good chance of taking the Saitama tournament this year, right?”
“You’d know that better than me, young man.”
“You can read the newspapers, you’ll find it anywhere, don’t take my word for it. Sir, you know it’s been over ten years since the last time a public school represented Saitama at Koshien, don’t you?”
“Is that so?”
“Don’t you think it would be good for the prefectural school system if that were to change?” Hanai takes over again. “I think this is our year, sir. Nishiura can make it.”
Hiranuma sighs. “I’m not sure that would be the best thing for all concerned, son. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you’re all upstanding young people and fine baseball players, but from what I hear about Nishiura…well…”
“Sir, if you know something about our coach, you should let us hear it,” Hanai says forcefully. “We have the right.”
“Son, I told you this was adults’ business.”
Standoff, Abe thinks. How long before he kicks us out? He can’t tell if it’s his palm or Ren’s that’s sweating, or both.
Sakaeguchi is saying “We’re the original members—“ and Abe remembers suddenly the two of them and Coach Momo clearing weeds off the ground during that first spring break before he’d ever caught Ren’s pitching.
“Coach Momoe paid for most of our equipment,” he cuts across Sakaeguchi, ignoring the alarmed look he gets. “The first year, we didn’t have a budget much, she worked three jobs to make up. That’s the only reason we were able to play.”
“Maybe you’ve heard of profiting from—“
“Could you tell us—“ Nishihiro, in his best on-my-way-to-Tokyo-University tones—“what basis you have for suspecting Coach Momoe of…behavior not befitted to a molder of young minds?” (Abe can feel Ren’s eyes going wider without even looking at him.) “If a job as a cleaner of office buildings is considered to be inappropriate—“
Hiranuma clears his throat and glares at Nishihiro, who looks back with limpid inquiry. Everyone else holds their breath.
“Is that what she’s told you all she was doing?” the board member says, finally.
“That’s what we hear from our parents,” Hanai says. Abe mentally salutes him for slipping in the keyword. “Mr. Hiranuma, are you suggesting that Coach Momoe’s been telling us all lies?”
“I know about the cleaning company she worked for,” Sakaeguchi says brightly. “My sister applied there when she needed a part-time job. She said they were glad to take her with Coach’s recommendation.” (Wakako-san didn’t actually end up working for the company once she found out it was more about washing fortieth-floor windows than vacuuming carpets, but still.)
“We’re not talking about a cleaning company—“ the board member fumes, and then shuts his mouth hard.
“What kind of company are we talking about, Mr. Hiranuma?” This from Oki, of all people, but if there was ever a time for those big innocent eyes it’s now.
Hiranuma scowls at all of them for a moment, and then his gaze settles on Chiyo. “Young lady.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, sounding totally calm.
“Do you think your parents would want you exposed to…unsavory influences?”
“Such as?” Chiyo asks politely.
“Such as your coach, enough beating ‘round the bush! We have every reason to think that your Miss Momoe earned your team’s equipment fees by showing off her equipment!” Hiranuma shouts, losing his temper at last.
Ren’s fingers are trembling against Abe’s; he squeezes gently, trying to summon some of the near-telepathy they have on the mound to let Ren know it’s okay, when the batter you’re up against blows his cool that means you’re winning. After a moment, Ren squeezes his hand back.
“Every reason?” Mizutani asks—gentle easy-going Mizutani sounding crisp and cold like they’ve never heard him. Oh man, pick on Shinooka and see what you get.
“Or proof?” Suyama adds stonily, making the most of his height and his game face, better than anyone’s.
Abe has the odd feeling that they’re all in each other’s minds right now, like the best kind of double play—he signs to Ren knowing for sure that the batter will ground out, Ren sends down precisely the pitch Abe saw in his head, and there it is, a slow grounder to short; Suyama fields it backhand, perfectly, and throws it to where Sakaeguchi is covering the base without even needing to turn his head; Sakaeguchi pulls the ball easily from the air for the out at second, and then sends it arrow-straight across to Oki at first, batter out, they haven’t come close to breaking a sweat.
Coach Momo and Mr. Shiga would say it’s just practice, hours and hours of practicing together until they know in their bones how each of their teammates moves. Abe figures that’s just about right, but the best times behind the plate are when he feels like he’s got one brain and eighteen hands, able to move freely in all directions at once. That’s what they have going now.
“Sir, don’t you think—“ Izumi’s turn, gulping with nerves. “If you think it’s, um, unsavory? for a baseball coach to be…to be suspected of being…no better than she should be, well…”
“…isn’t it just as bad for a school board member in the same position?” Tajima’s capacity for keeping his mouth shut has finally run out, and wouldn’t you know it he’s gotten a dirty innuendo in there too.
Hiranuma turns bright red, and then pale, and then slowly red again. Abe has time to think if he has a stroke, that’s probably not a net positive for us…and then he hears Ren draw breath next to him.
“We…we just want to p-play, to play baseball,” Ren says slowly, in a small voice that still rings clear in the quiet office. His hand is gripping Abe’s hard enough to hurt. “We…Coach…we know…”
Abe can’t help himself. “We know Coach Momoe hasn’t done anything she needs to be ashamed of,” he says, feeling the pressure of Ren’s fingers ease in relief.
"Whatever she's done." This is from Nishihiro again, very soft, but everyone (even Tajima, who may or may not get the point) nods.
Abe says, “Please. Please just let us play.”
Hanai clears his throat, takes an envelope out of his schoolbag. “Sir, I think you can agree that if our team gets to Koshien this year, the results all round—publicity for the school district, parents’ attitudes, everything—would be much better for everyone involved than…”
“…than any unneeded…improprieties,” Sakaeguchi finishes smoothly, taking the contract out. They all put their heads together on the train to come up with the wording, and Oki wrote it out in his elegant calligraphic handwriting. “If you feel the same, sir, maybe we could have your seal here?”
Hiranuma snatches the paper out of his hands so violently they all think for a moment he’s going to rip it in half; but he just flings it down on his desk, scowling at it. “I can’t believe this,” he snarls.
Somebody breathes in, and Hanai makes a just-audible shut up hiss. They wait in careful silence while he reads over the few lines. Abe realizes he’s holding his breath; next to him Ren’s color is rising.
Finally the school board member opens a drawer in his desk, with an erratic bang that makes Ren jump and Izumi squeak a little, and grabs out the little ivory tube of his family seal. “And what if you brats don’t hold up your end of the bargain, eh? If you don’t make it to the national tournament?”
“Then the juniors and sophomores will keep our promise for us next year,” Hanai says calmly. Abe thinks for a moment of his sophomore backup catcher, chubby, taciturn Danno with arms of steel; of Iwata and Kim, the two junior pitchers, who have spent hours following Ren around at practice trying to figure out how to throw the “Mihashi fastball.” Yes, okay.
Hiranuma shakes his head and growls something ugly and incoherent; but there’s the little red circle on the paper, unmistakable, and the date.
Before anything else can happen, the contract is safely back in Hanai’s schoolbag. “Thank you!” they all say together, as if Hiranuma were an opposing team they’d just beat by fifteen runs to nothing.
The team goes out to eat together, because nobody wants to leave the day’s work alone yet, but finally they’re all heading home one way and another, bikes and trains and buses. Abe and Ren have both left their bicycles at school. When they’ve said good night to Tajima outside his house, the two of them climb the hill on foot; Ren’s hand finds its way into Abe’s again, the tight grip clearer than anything he might try putting into words.
“Ren…?” Abe is having trouble catching his breath for some reason; he just about manages the name.
“Can…can we…” Ren swallows. “I want…I need to pitch.”
Abe lets his breath out on a surprisingly shaky laugh. Ren. Of course. “Let me get my mitt.”
He doesn’t bother with mask or protectors; with Ren’s control they won’t be needed, and even now Ren’s fastball tops out at 130 km on a really good day. The mitt, and his knowledge of Ren’s style, will be good enough.
The field is quiet and dark and peaceful, all the younger kids long gone. Ren on the mound is a glimmer of white shirt, no more; he should be seeing the catcher’s mitt as a dark blot against Abe’s own shirt.
Abe calls out the pitches, sketching and recreating games in his head, quoting at-bats they both remember; then teasing Ren with half a dozen sliders in a row followed by his fastest pitch, or making him aim a fastball so high outside the zone Abe has to leap for it and Ren’s laughing when he hits the ground again. Then they play the old Haruna game, Ren pitching whatever he feels like with no signs, tougher in the dark but still such a rush. Abe could almost cry, it feels so good.
Finally, Ren sends down a feathery curve that nestles into Abe’s mitt like it’s coming home. Yes. “Last ball!” he calls, and Ren jogs down off the mound to join him.
“Nice pitching,” Abe says quietly, drawing Ren to him with an arm around his shoulders, while Ren’s arm settles around his waist. They walk slowly back to the school and their bicycles. Abe listens as Ren’s breathing, quick and shallow from the physical work of pitching, gradually slows to match his own.
“Can we…” he begins, stammering like Ren for a moment. “Can I…stop by your place?” His house is full of big-voiced dad and bustling mom and curious Shun; Ren’s parents appreciate their privacy and extend their son the same courtesy (and just don’t notice sometimes).
Ren answers wordlessly by pulling him closer for a moment, before they have to move apart to get on their bikes.
The ride isn’t a long one, but Abe feels himself running out of breath again, his fingers and the top of his head tingling. He, Nishiura’s starting catcher, who’s called games against the best teams in the prefecture—and won them too—without ever losing his cool. Well, he’s never before had to go up against Ren, has he?
The big house seems cool and breezy inside, as always. Ren’s dad is out or asleep already or at any rate not in evidence, and his mom can be heard typing away in her study. Ren calls out an automatic “I’m home!” softly, and is answered with an equally automatic “Welcome back! Food in the fridge!” The typing doesn’t even stutter.
They settle on the floor next to Ren’s unmade bed.
Abe has, okay, spent a lot of time thinking about how this might go, everything from images of total awkward disaster to the kind of fantasy he has to keep far away from his waking life (on account of not being Tajima). His biggest worry was always the same thing: how much time and effort it would take to convince Ren that he, Abe, really does want to do this—look at how hard it was to get Ren to believe Abe actually wanted to form a battery with him, jeez. Being with Ren would be worth it, he’s pretty sure, same like catching Ren’s pitching is worth it on the team, but he’s been figuring it would be a long road to get there.
Not even close.
Pretty much the biggest surprise of his life so far: Ren is not at all shy or hesitant in bed.
Well, technically they’re not exactly in bed even, just sitting there together on the floor. Abe starts out with both arms around his pitcher, the way they’ve sat together before when just holding hands didn’t seem like enough, and then tenses and starts worrying harder when Ren eases him away. Except it turns out right away that there’s method in the madness, Ren using the slight extra distance to unbutton Abe’s school shirt, one button at a time, from the bottom up. Abe has a sudden image of Ren using his mouth instead of his fingers on the buttons, and it’s ridiculous that something like that can make him shiver. Once the shirt is all the way open, his tank undershirt leaves his collarbone bare: Ren’s pitching-callused fingers run delicately along it and Abe gasps out loud. “Ren…!”
Ren tilts his head a little and looks at him with such a…a Ren look, innocent, a little uncertain, wide open, smiling—Abe catches his breath again and chokes out, “Do you have…any tissues?”
“…Huh?”
“I’m going to…I’m…” God, he sounds like he was Ren, but—“I mean, don’t stop doing th--!” breaking off with another gasp as Ren’s fingers trail down across his breastbone. “Wait,” he manages, trying not to sound as if he’s coming to pieces, and tries to get his shirt and undershirt off without breaking their physical contact. His hands are shaking, and there’s an inevitable moment when he’s blinded by the undershirt over his face, and when it comes off over his head Ren is leaning in to kiss him.
(Later he’s still confused by that un-Ren confidence, until he remembers that makeshift target out back of Ren’s place, with its nine faded squares. Yeah, okay. When something’s important to Ren, he doesn’t spare the work needed to get it right.)
Abe kisses back, closing his eyes and drawing Ren closer again; it’s almost too much for his brain—let alone his body—to process at once, the solid pitcher’s muscle structure across Ren’s shoulders, Ren’s hands tracing down his bare spine, warm lips opening against his. Something breaks, and he gives up all the thinking-ahead and tracking and contingency-planning that’s his stock in trade, his job as a catcher, and puts himself into Ren’s hands completely. Like Ren was at the beginning of their first year together, he thinks muzzily, total trust in Abe’s signs—only then it got even better, when Ren started saying what he thought about batters, and does that mean he somehow taught Ren to take control the way he’s doing now, and…Somehow his hands find their way up under Ren’s shirt, still damp with sweat from their pitching session, to the soft skin underneath; that’s when he gives up on thinking in words altogether.
Another minute or two and they both have their shirts off, Ren tracing the line of Abe’s collarbone with lips instead of fingers, saying something against Abe’s throat, although all he can hear is “Abe-kun.”
“What?” he gasps, his mouth against Ren’s cheekbone.
Ren raises his head from Abe’s chest for a moment, one shining look, and then—shy or a tease or, like when he’s pitching, intent on doing the best work he can—moves closer again, lips and then tongue finding Abe’s nipples one after the other. Abe digs his fingers into Ren’s shoulders, twisting sideways to tangle their legs together, closer--
They build it up slow and steady, starting from the surprising delight of the first touches, and then the constant unfolding of there’s more? it gets even better? as the scope of the pleasure just keeps broadening, and eventually it rolls over them and shakes their whole bodies with it and leaves deep, steady tremors of aftershock behind. Abe hears himself make a sound like a sob, something coming out of his chest that sounds more like pain than pleasure. Even when he can come up with something that’s not a groan, it’s only “Ren.”
They’re slumped back against the bed now, Ren’s head on Abe’s chest again. Eventually Abe gets back some of his fine motor control, raising his clean hand to stroke Ren’s hair lightly. Ren laughs, the slight vibration reaching Abe’s ribcage as well as his own, and stretches out an arm for the box of tissues.
“Spoilsport,” Abe tells him shakily, clearing his throat. “You mean, that’s it?”
"Abe-kun..." Ren's voice is pitched lower than usual, unfamiliar even with the faint tremble that's always marked his speech. "How...how f-far can we...?"
Abe can think of myriad answers to the half-voiced question. "Koshien," he says after a moment, and sees Ren's eyes light. It's not just that look but what comes next--Ren quiet, waiting for more--that sets off the fireworks behind his own eyes, warm and brilliant and high as the sky over the baseball field. "Koshien and more," he says, softer. "Farther. Higher..."
Ren nods against his chest, and they sit holding each other, at the beginning of summer, at the beginning of everything.