As I break this chair…
The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 15, 2008. Spoilers for Haruna and Abe's backstory.
Whenever Haruna throws another tantrum and storms off during practice, or whenever Nishiura comes up in this or that discussion and Haruna gets that really weird scrunched-up I'm Using My Brain and Not Enjoying It look on his face, Akimaru finds himself remembering that one time the Nishiura kids and their boobsy captain came around to watch a game. He remembers looking up in the middle of a conversation to his partner abandoning him, taking off across a green field at full speed to speak to (torment the hell out of) Abe Takaya, his old pitcher. His old punching bag.
Admittedly, he doesn't know all that much about Abe beyond the statistics. Haruna likes to think of himself as a creature of the present and as such, he never, ever talks about the way things used to be before Akimaru came unto the team – the few times Akimaru managed to get something out of his pitcher were a result of serious blackmail, or sheer luck. He's got nothing to rely on but a handful of observations, because Haruna's body language is ridiculously easy to read. Once was all he needed: one moment to see a light that's never there when Haruna was talking to that kid, one moment to hear a tone in Haruna's voice that he only ever heard before Haruna's knee was ruined almost for good.
Oddly, Abe Takaya is also ridiculously easy to read, and it is because of his obvious hatred and the way it very obviously doesn't make sense to Haruna that Akimaru's sometimes tempted to take him by the collar, shake him around and tell him that fuck damn it, he's the lucky one. He doesn't have the right to complain (to hate), when he's the first, the best, the impossible standard that someone's forced to measure up against, whether he likes it or not.
It'd be so much easier if he could drag the brat back in time and show him the hundred quiet little ways that Haruna broke apart without him around or maybe sit Abe down and talk to him about what it's like to know you're always going to be second best, but that sort of stuff only happens in kiddy comics and as such, Akimaru's forced to shut his trap and deal by pretending he doesn't notice a thing.