A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, g50 – write a fic that's post-canon.
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Pitching the Baseball
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Keiichi walks into Hinamizawa and there's an open spot. He doesn't realise it at first, but always and invariably he does.
He can't help but realise. There are little hints everywhere and there's a curse permeating through it all. Yes, no-one speaks his name unless they have to, unless he pushes or it's Satoko, about Satoko. But there's his baseball bat in the otherwise empty locker, the name on a deck of cards in the card room, and the way everyone stiffens when he innocently asks who Satoshi happens to be.
Sometimes, the cat doesn't come out of the bag at all. They say he transferred out and things stay there. Or, rather, things are entirely derailed before he can dig the truth out of the excuse they all use. Other times, he pokes and pokes until he's jumping at shadows on the wall and those shadows are Satoshi – or have taken Satoshi and are coming for him as well – and his mind just spirals on. Or, sometimes, someone else does the detective work and arrive that that same wrong conclusion and sometimes he gets dragged into it and sometimes he doesn't. And then there's that one final world where they brush the dust off Satoshi's coffin and open the lid so he can have some air.
And suddenly, there's no open spot anymore.
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Shion is almost always with Satoshi now, but that's okay since Satoshi is very important to Shion and Keiichi's not exactly close to her in this world. This isn't one of those worlds where the twin thing muddles his brain so badly he gets them the wrong way around permanently (but so does everybody else in most worlds so no-one can really blame him) and he doesn't even meet Shion until she and Kasai do their dramatic rescue of Doctor Irie. So he doesn't notice her absence too badly.
Satoko, of course, is a different matter. Too different, because he was a replacement older brother in every world where suspicion didn't drive him away and also because she can't stand to be in there for too long and he winds up with a very different Satoko than he's used to on his hands afterwards. And it makes him feel more like a replacement than when he'd first learnt he was using Satoshi's baseball bat and had taken Satoshi's spot in their club and Satoko was looking up to him like an older brother, because now her older brother was there and she'd run off to him instead.
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Satoshi wakes up many times, but it's weeks before he's cognate enough to recognise Doctor Irie's kind but worn face hovering over him.
Where have the people in the white coats gone? Where has his aunt gone? And where's Satoko? The questions tumble out of his mouth along with his air and Doctor Irie has to remind him to breathe 'slowly and gently' because his brain can't quite remember that it needs oxygen to survive and he won't get that by asking questions and not waiting for their answers.
So he fights those questions and he breathes: at first short and choppy and not entirely useful, but he listens to Doctor Irie's voice and it's so warm and familiar and comforting that he manages to get his body to obey. And then the breaths and slow and even and calming and almost sleep-inducing, except then Doctor Irie is stepping back and someone else is there instead. Someone with long green hair that's suddenly in his face as she throws herself half-over the rails to embrace him (and there are rails), and by the time his brain catches up and his lips sprout 'Shion…,' heavy tears are falling into his lap and Doctor Irie is leading her off again.
'You'll have plenty of time to catch up,' he says.
And he can't quite catch the implications of that statement because everything is in too much of a blur.
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Keiichi hears that Satoshi's awake and recovering – and how can he not, with the way Shion had screeched the news all over town and Satoko had run off.
He hasn't seen hair nor hide of the two of them since. Sometimes Mion is gone with them. More often Rena. The only one who never does is Rika, and he wonders why.
'There's plenty of time,' she says, when he asks. 'Keiichi-kun needs company too.'
And she doesn't push him to visit Satoshi. None of the others do either but for them it's because they're so busy suddenly. They haven't even had a club meeting for a while. But Rika seems to know something else. Maybe it's something about all the other worlds she's told them about, all the other timelines where Takano or the HInamizawa Syndrome get the better of them. Or maybe she realises it's just awkward, since these guys have known Satoshi for years and he's the newcomer he's never met before.
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Satoshi gets a lot of visitors before Doctor Irie lets him go back home. They're all people he knows (and he doesn't expect anything less, once he can expect positive things). Hinamizawa doesn't change, after all. Except for the curse.
But then they tell him there is no curse but a woman using their village for a scientific experiment. Or something to that effect. And it took him a few delusion-free days to be convinced of that, because it sounded as insane as the theories Nurse Takano had told him about…before he'd started to believe them.
It was confusing. So confusing. And he mostly believed what he was told because that was easiest and what he did know was that he couldn't trust his mind anymore.
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Things fall back into regular routine, eventually. The visits to the clinic ease up a bit once the others have convinced themselves Satoshi isn't going to disappear any time soon and the cure Doctor Irie's worked out is working. They're quick to vanish again, of course, and sometimes Keiichi tags along all the way to the clinic doors and then turns right back around, because Satoshi's still confused and healing and he's a new face that'll throw everything out of whack.
And he's still using Satoshi's locker. They'll have to do something about that once Satoshi comes back to school. At least there was a spare desk in the classroom. Or Satoshi's desk. Hopefully.
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They told him lots of stories. Things they'd gotten up to in the year and some months he'd missed. A lot of them involved someone called Maebara Keiichi.
At first, he put it down to another delusion. No-one had moved to Hinamizawa since who knew when. Except they insisted it was true, on multiple occasions. And he gave in. Nothing since he'd woken up in the clinic had blown up in his face yet. But he couldn't stop second-guessing everything.
And so they told him quite a bit about Maebara Keiichi. How he's Rena's age, but smarter than even Mion (except when it came to the club but that was because the rules, as he remembered them, were outrageous). How he had a way with words – such a way that he managed to lead the HInamizawa Fighters to victory without having a clue how to hit a ball with a baseball bat.
His baseball bat, Satoko adds, and suddenly he's drowning in panic because isn't that the bat he used to bash his aunt's skull in and isn't that part real because she hasn't been seen for over a year? Isn't it real because he remembers bat striking flesh and bone until the bone cracked and then dragging her and dragging her until her face haunted him, stared at him everywhere he went.
'Someone admitted to your aunt's murder,' Mion said: calmly, quietly – and lying, but he can't be sure, he can never be sure, and this is one delusion he wants to keep because if only it could be true.
And Doctor Irie, afterwards when the others aren't around, reminds him of his parents, and Satoko, and Satoshi knows he needs to swallow this either way, true or false.
He'll take Mion's version, because that's the one he can bear a little better.
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They tell him why he doesn't see his uncle anymore. Maebara Keiichi has something to do with that as well. And the others, but the most entertaining story is how he tells off Sonozaki Oryou and she can't do anything but put up with it. Unbelievable again, but Shion's eyes are filled with mirth when she retells the tale and so is Mion's, and besides, weren't all the delusions he's been told are delusions filled with fear and horror and anger and all those awful emotions he wants to claw off his skin.
He thinks a lot and not much at all about Maebara Keiichi.
And he doesn't claw off his skin anymore. And he thinks he's got the timeline nice and straight, as well.
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It's when they discuss putting him back home and into school that Maebara Keiichi becomes a little bit more real. Part of it is the fact that he's using his locker, and now they'll have to find another locker to put into the school because there are no spares.
They can get one next week, Chie-sensei says. Another block of six so there'll be five spare lockers this time, but Shion decides to stick around so she'll take one and then there'll be four. And Satoko says she's been staying with Rika since their aunt died and he could come stay there as well and they can sell the house. After all, the Maebaras have fit in perfectly alright. Hinamizawa has dealt with that new blood, and so they can handle more as well.
Shion whispers that this new blood mixing thing is mostly Oryou trying to admit she wants some fresh air in stuffy old village ideals and the Maebaras were the test that was aced.
And he still hasn't seen hair nor hide of this Maebara Keiichi.
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They meet, eventually, at Rika's house on the day they welcome Satoshi back home. He's there, in the back with Rena, and he sticks around after most of the adults have drifted off. His parents stay a little longer too, until he convinces them that he's perfectly fine to ride his bike home later. He knows Hinamizawa pretty well now. He can get past any potholes even in the relative darkness and there's no longer any curse on the streets.
Of course, aside from Rika, he can believe it the most easily because the curse hasn't been engraved into him ever since he could hear and understand.
And Satoshi has the hardest time because he didn't witness its unmasking and defeat.
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Maebara Keiichi isn't…quite what Satoshi had been expecting. In some aspects, he sounded quite similar to himself…except the more exuberant personality. Except he's got brown hair, tanner skin, and has a certain hard look in his eyes Satoshi can't quite place.
They don't talk much. Keiichi introduces himself and then backs away to let Satoko cling to Satoshi – and that's what she does for most of the night. He joins in the teasing and the story-telling but that doesn't tell him much he hasn't already been told. Except when talk of school comes around. Then the questions are a little odd. 'What's happening with the lockers?' Satoshi will get his old one back, and Keiichi and Shion are both getting new ones. 'And what about the desk?' Satoshi's desk was still vacant, and they drag in another desk for Shion. 'Will you be re-joining the baseball team?' Doctor Irie thinks it's a good idea so he'll give it a try…unless Maebara-kun was keeping the bat?
At which Keiichi backpeddled, said he wasn't very good at hitting the ball, and promised to return the bat on Monday.
Something's a little off about the picture and Satoshi can't quite work out what it is.
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First day back at school is strange. He's not used to someone sitting next to him ever since the last guy graduated…what, five years back? But Keiichi is also a useful desk partner (unlike Mion who would have only been a distraction) and helps him work through more sheets than he'd ever managed to do on his own.
He's still over a year behind, but at this speed, he thinks he can catch up before the end of the next academic year. If only barely.
Though he wonders why in the world someone as smart as Maebara Keiichi is in a little school in HInamizawa instead of some private school in Tokyo.
'I…wasn't enjoying it,' Keiichi says, and then turns resolutely to his work as Satoshi realises in horror that he's asked that out loud. And then Keiichi is telling the rest of the story and all Satoshi can wonder is why, why tell him this, this deeply personal scar inside his chest –
But aren't they all carrying scars like this? He remembers he and Rena doing the same for each other the year before.
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Satoshi doesn't slot into their lives again like the missing piece of a puzzle, and Keiichi finds he doesn't tumble heads over heels out either. It's a bit of a relief, even though he does feel a stab of pity when he sees Satoshi floundering over things Keiichi himself has become accustomed too. And the club is the most interesting of those, because isn't Satoshi one of the original members?
Then he remembers Mion telling him the whole reason they'd begun the club was to give Satoko a circle of friends and keep her out of home just that little bit longer and having fun. Satoshi probably hadn't put much effort into trying to win any of their games.
He has to now. The penalties are as mortifying as ever and Keiichi is enjoying not being at the bottom of the battle due to sheer inexperience.
He still can't beat Mion and Satoko though. Not at card games anyway.
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Satoshi does go back to the Hinamizawa Fighters, though he's completely out of technique and his body's forgotten pretty much all the exercises, postures and techniques. Couch Irie is patient, and so's the rest of the team (if only because they've been a member short ever since he dropped out and who knows why they didn't try to recruit Keiichi to fill in that gap).
Still, Keiichi proves helpful here too. 'I know some guys who'll help you practice.'
Satoshi had asked him, but he repeats that he can't play. Can swing a bat fine, but playing's another matter entirely and he's not particularly keen on learning either. But he does bring a rival baseball team, and then somehow convinces them to put him through his paces with a variety of pitches even the Fighters' pitcher can't manage.
Satoko tells the story, punctured with snickers, over dinner that night. And it is rather amusing. Using the truth of all adolescent boys as a weapon. Really?
He supposes that's why he's the magician of words.
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Satoshi is hardworking. He knows this already, form the way Satoko and Shion and even the others have spoken about him, but seeing it is another matter entirely. While Mion goofs off in class and usually manages to pull Rena into not giving a hundred percent as well, Satoshi is entirely focused on his worksheets in attempting to catch up and it's so much easier explaining things to him.
Less interesting too, but Mion leaves them alone and he thinks she gets it too. Let Satoshi catch up, and then they can all relax. It's not much extra work on his part anyway. He's covered all this after all, and it's not the same as the teachers back in Tokyo wanting him to do more and more until he can't see the end any more…
He spills the story when Satoshi asks, when Satoshi's got this shell-shocked look on his face like he can't even believe he's asked and Keiichi can't quite believe he's answered in so much detail either. But he feels like he's told this story before, to the others, and Satoshi's the only one left and information shouldn't be the reasons to isolate him any more than a lack of desks should isolate Shion or use of a borrowed locker and a birthplace somewhere outside HInamizawa should isolate Keiichi. Though the latter did isolate him, in other worlds. He's wormed his way firmly into Hinamizawa though. Got Oryou's approval and she's the hardest nut of them all to crack.
But he was doing what came naturally. Didn't realise there'd been a hole for him to fill then. But now there is. Satoshi's hole, for Satoshi to fill.
If he had been filling the hole for him before, he was no longer.
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The girls are all busy so it's only them, walking home.
'You should come over,' Keiichi says, after a pregnant pause. 'You've never been to my place.'
Somehow, it just hadn't come up. Because they weren't as close as with the others, even if they were the same age and the same gender and by all rights except time and circumstance should have been the closest of all.
But they can fix that, slowly and surely. So Satoshi agrees to come over, and finds himself marvelling over his father's paintings during that time as well.
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That night, he has another nightmare.
He's been having them since he's woken up again and though Doctor Irie has pronounced him parasite free (and then proceeded to run the entire village through several courses of needles to kill the Hinamizawa Syndrome once and for all), the memories are still there: of the truth, of the delusions, and of all the things he wishes he could have just forgotten about but are still there.
But Keiichi has a way with words again and Satoshi doesn't remember exactly what they were, but they put him right back to sleep. Seriously magic words and he can't help but be a little jealous of Keiichi for managing that – and tons more grateful.
And then in the morning, Satoko comes and fusses and Keiichi and she squabble a bit before Satoshi placates her, and Keiichi laughs and says something about a magic tongue, and maybe he does have that effect on people too.
Shion, some time later, says that magic tongue is what made her fall in love with him, and he can't use said magic tongue for an answer because his entire face is red.
And he wonders if, in another world, she might have fallen in love with Keiichi for the same reason, but it doesn't really matter, because there's no space fillers, only holes left behind by missing people, and it's the main moral of the story of how Hinamizawa Syndrome was overcome and he knows it, believes it, remembers it: even if he wasn't there to see it.