Chapter 316: The Would-Be Siscon Who Never Got the Chance
"Ohh! So that's how it is—!" Sendo deliberately drew out his voice.
"Alright! Let's start round two already!" Harada quickly changed the subject, not wanting Sendo to stay on the topic of girlfriends.
"Yeah! … Yeah!" Sendo replied with a grin.
Harada let out a breath as soon as he saw Sendo raise his arm, then tensed up again.
Sendo was infuriating with his mouth, yet somehow not unlikeable.
"Here we go!" Sendo reminded him. He never needed to take advantage of trivial things like this.
"Ah!"
I didn't expect the outside corner to be so sharp! Where's the next pitch going? Outside? Inside? Or a breaking ball? Don't hesitate! This guy's pitching—if I get confused even for a second, I lose! Harada gripped his bat, staring at the boy who had already lifted his leg.
"Pwu!"
"Piu!"
"Crack!"
"Diagonal fastball!" The ball brushed diagonally across the strike zone, leaving Harada helpless.
Especially since the previous pitch had also been a vicious outside corner—Harada had almost failed to suppress his instinct to retreat. That was how nasty it was.
"What's wrong? Was that a ball?" Sendo asked.
Even Sendo didn't dare call it, it was that close.
"No! Strike! Nice ball!"
"Here!" Harada tossed the ball back.
"Pop!"
"Harada-san!"
"Hm?"
"You still haven't answered me! My question earlier! You never intended to have a real match today—you just wanted to trick me into pitching!"
"How did you figure that out?!"
"If it really was a match, even if you didn't bring a bat to make me let my guard down, there's no way you'd only bring one ball! And if the ball gets dirty, you have to wipe it—such a pain!" (And that was the real complaint…)
"Uh… sorry!" Harada apologized immediately, hearing the annoyance in his voice.
"Well, whatever! It's only nine pitches anyway!"
"Uh…"
Harada suddenly felt the urge to hit something.
"Alright, let's keep going." Sendo wiped the ball clean.
"Pwu!"
Harada braced himself the moment Sendo stepped forward. To match Sendo's speed and his own swing speed, he had to determine the pitch as soon as Sendo released and start swinging, then adjust mid-swing.
"Piu!"
Inside again! Same height as before—more inside this time! Harada read the pitch mid-swing.
"Whiff!"
His bat cut through empty air. Harada's eyes widened as he stared at Sendo's indifferent gaze.
Fast forkball! So that's the pitch! Same motion and same trajectory as the fastball! Not good…! Harada realized that today, he probably wasn't going to touch the ball at all.
Even without mixing inside and outside corners, having to guess between fastball and fast forkball already made it a coin toss. Add location on top, and it demanded all of his focus.
"Just the control for a four-square grid with that speed already makes touching it my limit. And on top of that he has vertical break? What a monster."
"Two strikes already." Sendo's voice slid into his thoughts.
"E… oh!"
"You okay? I can give you a moment if you want."
Harada took a deep breath.
"No need. Come!"
Sendo's eyes flashed with admiration.
As the weaker one in an overwhelming gap in strength, there's only one thing I can do—swing without hesitation and pray for a miracle! Harada's aura shifted.
"Oh? Nice face you've got on." Sendo smiled.
That was a real duel.
To stop guessing and treat everything as a straight fastball meant relying purely on technique and luck to adjust to a forkball.
"Admirable courage. But—"
"Pwu!"
"Boom!" Harada's bat howled through the air.
"Pop!"
The ball bounced behind home plate.
"A… changeup!" Seeing the huge speed difference as the perfect middle pitch floated in after he had already whiffed, Harada was speechless.
Even if it was dead-center, once he committed to the swing, the inertia was impossible to stop.
"Hey hey! On top of all that you're mixing speeds?!! That guy is way above high-school level!"
"Two strikeouts in two at-bats!"
"Shall we begin immediately? Third at-bat." Sendo narrowed his eyes with a gentle smile.
A smile that was warm and healing—yet to his opponent, icy and terrifying.
Harada's heart pounded like it did in elementary school—only stronger, fiercer, deeper.
"I want to catch that ball!" His very cells screamed for it.
"Ah!" Harada agreed instinctively.
Sendo's smile deepened subtly.
"Hays."
For Harada, it felt like being healed head to toe—proof of how badly he wanted to face that pitch. Sendo's reply felt like an answered proposal. (Baseball idiot—go marry the sport already…)
"Piu!"
"Pop!"
"Piu!"
"Thud!"
"…"
"Tap! Tap! Tap!"
The third at-bat ended. The final changeup bounced on the dirt and skipped a few times, signaling the end of their duel. Harada didn't touch the ball even once.
Facing the blissful Harada who'd already lost his fighting spirit, Sendo barely changed his sequencing—fastball, fast fork, changeup—repeating the second at-bat almost exactly.
"What was that one? Spiral ball? Forkball?" Harada rushed over excitedly, asking about the pitch that had dropped toward a right batter's outer corner like a spiral ball.
"Calm down. It was just a normal fast fork."
"Quit messing with me! That wasn't normal!"
"Harada-san, you know, right? Some forkball pitchers use finger pressure to control the direction of the drop."
"Souka! Even so, that's just a regular forkball! A fast fork like that—might as well call it a magic pitch! With that, you should be able to make it fall inward toward a righty like a slider too!"
"Dunno. Never tried."
"Never tried?! Didn't you say you've been throwing it for days?"
"Yeah. The test pitches were before that. Didn't expect them to work. Tried one drop direction, felt satisfied, stopped. Same for the changeup—super rough stuff."
"Figures. Sounds like you. Wasting talent pisses me off."
"Thanks for the compliment."
Harada didn't know how to respond. He wasn't wrong—only the talented get to 'waste' talent.
"Whatever. None of that matters."
"Can you keep pitching? I'll catch."
"...!" With that warm voice and pleading eyes—plus the fact that he'd already retired from the team and there was no competition left between them—nobody could refuse him.
Even without the pleading expression, when Harada made that kind of face and spoke in that kind of tone, even someone like Narumiya, that grand master of tsundere, could only surrender.
Let alone now. Even if his face was large and not particularly handsome, he had the same universal charm as Chris-senpai—men, women, old, and young, all fell for it.
"Fine, I'll pitch! But seriously, stop making that face, it's too much!"
"Thank you!"
"I said stop making that face! Who on earth could refuse that?!" Sendo turned his head away.
"Sorry!"
"Sigh… just get back behind the plate already." Seeing Harada completely unable to control his expression, Sendou sighed.
"How good is your fastball control now?" Harada asked, picking up the catcher's mitt and getting into position.
"Fishing for intel? Fine, it doesn't matter if I tell you. Barely four squares. I can hit all four corners, but the speed's too high so sometimes there's a bit of drift.
I'm not wearing spikes today so the drift'll be bigger, and the speed might drop a little. Oh, and I can throw a regular forkball too."
"No problem! Your lower body's solid—your control barely shifts!" Harada got even more excited.
"So, you call the pitches."
"Yoshi! Outside low, edge of the zone!"
"Piu!"
"Thud!"
"Diagonal fastball!"
"Thud!"
"Outside high!"
"Thud!"
"Inside low!"
"Thud!"
"Fast forkball!"
"Fast fork, dropping away from righty!"
"Changeup!"
…
With every pitch he called, Harada's mood soared. For him—for any catcher—this was bliss.
…
"Another ten pitches!" Who knew how long had passed before Harada requested again.
"That's it. Seriously, look at the time. It's my rare holiday. Do you really want me to do nothing but pitch? If that sunglasses old man at home finds out I threw outside, he'll tear me apart." Sendo was speechless.
Only now did Harada realize it was almost evening.
They'd been here for an hour.
"Sorry!"
"Stop apologizing. If you feel bad, treat me to dinner and a movie. It's my vacation."
"Sorry—let's go now."
Sendo felt like the conversation was a bit strange, but didn't dwell on it.
"Sigh! And that's why you can't get a girlfriend, Harada-san. You wait for the other person to suggest everything."
"Uh." Harada didn't expect that topic to come back after all this.
"Don't you not have a girlfriend too?"
"Brutal…" Sendo cursed in his heart—this good guy was unexpectedly sharp.
"Ahem. If I wanted one, it's not like I couldn't." Completely unaware of the situation around him, the steel straight-man said that with slight uncertainty.
"Mm. True. You'd have no trouble finding one." Harada replied honestly.
(Good guys like him really were confusing and hard to dislike—they just made people open up.)
"Well, I do know your strengths, Harada-san. If I were a girl, I wouldn't mind being your girlfriend." Sendo joked with a smile.
He genuinely worried about not being able to get a girlfriend…
If Kuramochi and Isashiki heard that, they'd tear his skin off in rage.
"Hm?" Hearing that, Harada actually began seriously thinking.
Sendou—tsundere, gentle, mature, aloof, with a hint of mischief.
If he were female, he'd have all the popular archetypes—cool beauty, tsundere loli—plus a mischievous cuteness. Add to that his slim build and pretty face; as a girl, he'd be devastating.
Harada's eyes slowly scanned Sendo from top to bottom.
Sendo shivered.
"Hey! No way, right?" Sendo took two steps back, trying to snap him out of it.
"Don't misunderstand! I was thinking that if only you had a little sister."
"Too bad, I'm an only child. If I had a little sister, I'd probably be a siscon." Sendo laughed, having been startled.
"That's unexpected."
"Think about it. If you had a cute little sister, you'd feel like no guy is good enough for her, right?"
"When you put it like that…" Harada had to agree.
"But, if you did have a sister—and her boyfriend was you—I'd allow it."
"Rest easy. I absolutely wouldn't. Unless she looked nothing like you."
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