Foresight

In which Takashima holds Miyuki's future in her hands

"You'll come and watch us play, won't you?" Kuramochi was speaking into his phone.

Takashima couldn't see the name on the screen or hear the other party, but she knew who was on the other end of the line. That utterly absorbed look on the shortstop's face, the brightness of his eyes, and his goofy smile all told her that Aotsuki Wakana was the girl he was talking to. She had heard from various sources that they'd met up in both Nagano and Chiba during the baseball team's week-long break at the start of the year, and things seemed to have developed nicely for them in the two months since then.

"That's fantastic! Yes, we'll look for each other after the game... oh really? That's a coincidence… yeah, I've got a present for you too – it's just a small gift, but I really hope you'll like it…" Kuramochi couldn't stop a wide grin and light blush from suffusing his cheeks as he caught Takashima's eye at the main entrance to the dorm. He turned away from her with a half-polite, half-sheepish nod to continue his conversation with his girlfriend in a more private spot.

Takashima hadn't found out yet whether they'd managed a double date with Miyuki and Sawamura, but that was improbable, given that Miyuki would have wanted to spend the time with his father.

But even if they'd been apart that week, the catcher and the pitcher had been making up for it – Miyuki and Sawamura were seldom seen apart during recreational time these days. They'd been mostly discreet about their relationship in front of others – there was no public hand-holding or kissing, thank goodness for their common sense – but they were bold about how they preferred to spend their free hours together.

In the public eye, they made the kind of physical contact that was neutral enough not to raise eyebrows. Sitting close together in the canteen and sharing food, for example, or sitting back-to-back on the grass between training sessions as Miyuki went through his game data and Sawamura read the latest manga chapters.

However, Sawamura, in his big-hearted way, was sensitive to how the rest of the team would want regular access to their captain alone. He would first hound Miyuki to catch his pitches in the evening, then when the catcher was done with both him and Furuya, it would be Sawamura who would generously remind Miyuki to get out there and walk about by himself a bit so that someone else could talk to him if they needed to. If Miyuki were to slip into Sawamura's room later at night and bribe Kuramochi to go off and do his homework somewhere else for an hour, that was another matter.

"But they'd better not go too far," Takashima muttered to herself. "Or I'll smack them both upside the head."

"They'll be fine, Takashima-sensei," came a voice behind her, at the very same moment that she realised she'd spoken aloud.

She turned to see Chris walking towards her, a bag slung over his left shoulder and his right hand in his trouser pocket.

"Chris-kun," she said, giving him one of her most genuine smiles and doing her best not to let any sadness tinge the look on her face – for the young man was just a couple of weeks away from graduating, and she wouldn't see him anywhere near as often. "What brings you to school today?"

The third-year students had been given the whole of February off, after their final exams had ended in late January. They wouldn't have to show up in school again until it was time for them to graduate in spring.

"Miyauchi is here to see Kawakami. Tanba decided to tag along, and I followed."

"I see. Are you all ready to start university life in a few months?"

"I hope so," he replied in his gentle voice. "One of the loose ends I've been trying to tie up here at Seidou is reminding that very pair I believe you've just been muttering about that they had better not do anything stupid."

"I'm relieved to hear that. I have a suspicion that warnings from you hit them harder than any from me."

"Oh, you're far more intimidating than you know, Takashima-sensei," Chris chuckled ironically. "They'll both be terrified if you give them a formal talking-to."

"I don't know about that. I swear that Miyuki has absolutely no respect for me and never did, right from the start," she huffed, adjusting her spectacles primly.

"He respects you enormously. He just refuses to show it to you easily," Chris assured her. "I think he thinks it's a private game between the two of you."

"Always an uphill battle with that one."

"Well, don't worry about having to scold him over Sawamura. They've been doing their very best to be careful, even when no one's looking. I've made them promise to be as good as they can."

"Which may not be very good," Takashima murmured pessimistically.

"We'll just have to trust that they know the boundaries, won't we?" Chris remarked before politely taking his leave of her and walking off to where Tanba was waiting for him.

Takashima watched him go. When she looked away to glance around the dorm compound, she spotted Miyuki and Sawamura walking along the open-sided passageway of the upper floor, then disappearing into Miyuki's room. They'd probably just been with Chris somewhere on the grounds before he'd come along and spoken to her. She had no qualms about being blatantly nosy when it involved her boys, so she made her way upstairs to find out if she could hear what was going on inside that room. She hoped there wouldn't be too much heavy breathing and too many slurping noises, or she was going to have to slip into serious disciplinarian mode – without making a scene which could start tongues wagging and bring the wrath of the baseball federation down on their heads.

She leaned against the wall right beside the door, shifted her ponytail to one side and tipped her head back. In that position, she managed to make out most of what was happening inside without needing to actually press her ear to the door – she was still slightly embarrassed by how Masuko had caught her doing precisely that outside Room 5 last year.

"…not mad at me?" It was Miyuki speaking.

"Huh? About what?"

"Earlier this morning – in the bullpen."

"Oh. That."

"I'm sorry that I had to tell you off."

"Why should you be sorry about that?"

"Because I don't like hurting your feelings."

"Idiot," Sawamura snapped. "It's your job as captain to keep us all in line. I was too caught up in making fun of Furuya to pay enough attention to Ono-senpai's pointers. If you hadn't ticked me off, that would've been weird."

"It doesn't upset you that I'm all business in training and matches?" Miyuki asked.

"If I were, I wouldn't deserve much respect as a member of this team, would I? And if you didn't treat me exactly the same way you do everyone else when we're on the field and in the bullpen, you wouldn't be a captain I'd respect either."

"So you're really not upset?"

"I was a little at first, but I figured that I deserved the telling-off, so… it's nothing I'll beat you up over."

"I'm really glad to know that, Eijun. Truly."

"Yeah, well… is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"That, and to be alone with you for a bit."

"Hmm, okay, but you know, we'll soon need to find a better place to thrash out such issues soon."

"Why?"

"We need to get used to not using our rooms for private time," Sawamura explained. "Once the new first-years move in, we won't be able to have alone time just by asking Kuramochi-senpai to please give us half an hour, or by clearing everyone out of your room. It won't be so easy."

"Wow, you've actually been thinking, have you?" Miyuki remarked teasingly. "It's getting to be a habit with you these days – I'm obviously a good influence."

"Shut up, Kazuya," Sawamura growled.

"I'll shut up if you'll kiss me. It's driving me mad that I haven't been able to get my hands on you all afternoon." He sounded positively petulant.

"I'll do more than that if you'll catch for me fifteen minutes longer than you catch for Furuya this evening," Sawamura said meaningfully, and very cheekily, thought Takashima.

"Just kiss me, idiot – if we do too much more than that, Chris-senpai will flay me. You heard what he said."

"But you'll still catch for me?" there was definitely a grin in that voice.

"When have I ever been able to refuse you without regretting it later?"

A satisfied, purring noise came from Sawamura, then a significant silence descended upon the room at Takashima's back.

Despite the blatant rule-breaking going on behind her, the assistant coach breathed a little more easily now that she'd heard their exchange. Miyuki was still Miyuki in his playfulness, but there was no biting edge to his voice or in the words he spoke to Sawamura. For a kid like him, that was surprisingly… sweet – not an adjective she would previously have attached to the catcher.

As much as she liked him, she knew better than most people what a handful he could be. And as she'd watched him gradually let Sawamura under his skin, she'd feared that he was only treating this as a game, to get the better of Kuramochi and Chris. Her initial fears had been assuaged by what she'd seen of the two of them together since the end of the autumn tournament. Miyuki hadn't looked like he was playing at anything – in fact, he appeared as sincere as it was possible for him to be. So she'd waited and watched, and now she had an opportunity to overhear them when they were alone, which would tell her more about how her Cheshire was really treating her Southpaw Kitten.

Was he being neutral enough as captain and starting catcher? Yes. But was he being good to Sawamura at the same time?

"I wish we'd never have to leave Seidou," Miyuki's voice came through after a minute, husky from the kiss, but also sounding uncharacteristically wistful.

"Your graduation is a whole year away," Sawamura countered.

"But even if we make it all the way in the summer tournament at Koushien – and the odds of that are not fantastic considering the serious competition – I'll be leaving the baseball team in six months, at most. Then I'll be absorbed in my exams, then I'll be gone. I don't want to spend a whole year after that not being able to see you and touch you every day."

"Hey, Kazuya."

"Hmm?"

"Don't be so down about it. You'll still have baseball because the universities and the professional teams will be queuing up to recruit you –"

"But I won't see –"

"– and I'll be right there with you sooner than you think. I'm not letting you leave me behind for long. A year will just fly by."

"You'll forget me once I'm gone."

"No I won't."

"You'll decide that Kanemaru makes a better boyfriend. He probably does too."

Violent spluttering followed by loud coughing told Takashima that Sawamura had choked on his own spit at the thought of dating Kanemaru. "Mi – *hack* Miyuk – *choke* – ack, Miyuki Kazuya! What the hell are you talking about?"

"And what if I get caught up in uni life or pro life and somehow feel… distant from you? Aren't you worried about that?" Miyuki ploughed on with his fretting.

"Are you intending to forget about me?" Sawamura demanded loudly.

"No, Eijun. But life doesn't always go the way we plan."

"I know that! I know that very well, from seeing what happened to Chris-senpai, and from you telling me what happened to your mum and how your dad has been for years…" Sawamura sounded for a moment as if he was about to cry, but he rallied and continued firmly: "But I won't let you get away from me, Miyuki Kazuya."

"Oh?" Miyuki sounded genuinely curious.

"Yeah. I came to Seidou because of you, and now that we both know you're dead serious about us, I'll never let you get away."

"Really?"

"Yup. And even if for whatever reason we can't make it into the same uni or onto the same teams in future, we'll still be together in our private lives. I'm not giving up on you."

"Even if I decide to give up on you one day?" Miyuki asked, in a manner that seemed like his usual playfulness, but with a tight undertone that told Takashima it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

"If you do, I'll pursue you like you pursued me here," Sawamura declared boldly, obviously hearing the message beyond the words.

"And what if I tell you to go away and stop stalking me because I'm so over you?" Miyuki teased.

"Then I'll remind you of everything you're giving up. I'll win you over again like I won you over here at Seidou."

"Baka, you never had to win me over – you had me pretty much from the start," Miyuki confessed.

"I'll do it anyway. I won't give up. I'm really persistent, and I won't give up until you remember everything you can't resist about me."

"What if I'm having an affair with someone else by then? What if Narumiya Mei seduces me?"

Takashima thought Miyuki was really pushing it, because he seemed to be saying every unromantic thing possible to make Sawamura feel insecure about their future together. But without missing a beat, the pitcher said with absolute conviction: "If you're ever stupid enough to let him, you're going to spend every second of your time with him realising how much you'd rather be with me instead."

"My, you're full of confidence these days," Miyuki murmured, sounding as if he was smiling as he spoke.

"Uh-huh – because I can feel it, as you know – when I'm holding you like this – I can feel what you really mean when you say these things. You're talking about all the things you're afraid of in the hope of warding them off, and not because you want them to happen deep down inside."

"When did you get so smart?"

"I've always been smart."

"Sure, and I've always had flawless eyesight."

"Kazuya, shut up for a bit and listen to me," Sawamura said firmly. "You're always looking years ahead, beyond how far the rest of us know how to look. By the time our third-year senpai retired, you'd already started thinking about the team Seidou would have after your year retires. And because we didn't do as well as we'd hoped in the Jinguu when you were out injured, you began planning for the strongest possible team without you in it. And you run through every variation of worst-case scenarios in your head so you'll be prepared for everything, but most of all so you can work out how to win. I know you're like that with me too – you're running through all the things that could go wrong not because you really believe they will, but because you really, really want to make sure they don't come about, and even if shit happens and they occur, you'll already have figured out how to make you and me work for the long-term anyway. I know you. I'm going to trust in your foresight and my refusal to give up to get us through the bad times as well as the good."

It was at that moment that Takashima realised for the first time that Sawamura possibly knew some aspects of Miyuki's character better than she herself did.

She had her fears for these two boys. She had her doubts. She'd lived through enough as an adult to know that even the most sincere teenage love could be outgrown, and even the greatest determination to hold on to a connection with another person could end in failure. But if there was any kid whose tenacity she could believe would overcome the odds, it was Sawamura; and if there was any kid whose mental sharpness and planning could prevent the demise of a relationship he didn't want to lose, it was Miyuki.

"You have that much faith in me, huh?" Miyuki asked with a warm, fond overtone in his voice.

"Yup," Sawamura declared, without an iota of doubt.

"How did someone as sweet as you end up agreeing to go out with me?" Miyuki wondered.

"You asked and I said yes, moron."

"But you know… realistically speaking," Miyuki reverted to his usual jovial note. "I'm the one who's going to have to fight off hordes of people trying to seduce you."

"Ehhhh?"

"Hordes. And if I break your heart, Chris-senpai, Kuramochi, your scary little Harucchi, Wakana-chan, your entire middle-school gang, the whole catering team from Seidou, and, oh, probably Masuko-san too, will all kill me dead."

"Heh, so you'd better treat me damn well."

"I intend to do just that…"

Another significant silence told Takashima they probably had their tongues in each other's mouths again. She waited a while longer to make certain she wasn't hearing anything suggestive of clothing being removed or things getting too hot and heavy. Then she tiptoed away, hoping that – as Chris so optimistically believed – they would know the boundaries.

For the rest of February, and into early March, she saw and heard nothing that gave her too much concern about this pair of tomcats. She regularly considered giving them a strict talking-to about how they should wait until they were both out of school before going all the way. She also internally debated the wisdom of lecturing them about how, when they eventually did go all the way, they should never forget the absolute necessity of lubricant, as well as how condoms were probably an excellent idea even if they were both very likely clean, given their age and inexperience.

But she didn't want to broach topics that would make it seem as if she, their teacher and assistant coach, was in any way tacitly assenting to their defiance of school rules. So in the end, she texted Chris to ask if he had already raised such matters with those two troublesome kouhai of his. To her relief, he said he had – in great detail, too – and that they seemed to have taken him very seriously. You should have seen the looks of horrified fascination on their faces, he texted back with a smiley. You'd never have guessed Miyuki of all people could be so naïve…

Heavens, she would really miss Chris once he left Seidou for good. There wasn't a more reliable cool cat for getting done what needed to be done in so many areas of school life, baseball, personal affairs and more!

So Takashima had to admit to herself that she hardly felt less emotional than the younger students on the third-years' graduation day in spring, when a good number of kids cried openly as the finality of it sank in – they were truly losing their senpai to higher education or professional baseball. Zono wailed like an infant as he clutched Isashiki, all the student-managers were weeping as they surrounded Fujiwara, and Sawamura was, unsurprisingly, in floods of tears that mingled with his irresistible grin as he bade a formal goodbye to Chris.

Of course the third-years would still visit, as so many old boys of the school did, but now that they were holding their high-school certificates, they were officially no longer students of Seidou, and everyone was genuinely experiencing a kind of mourning even at the same time as they looked to the future with a sense of excitement.

An hour after the last graduating students had left the school grounds to go home with their families, Takashima spotted Sawamura alternately laughing and crying on Miyuki's shoulder behind the dorm as she crossed the road beside the chain-link fence. She said nothing about it, because this was a day when it was only to be expected that emotions would get the better of some kids. If the overflow of all those feelings meant that one boy was shedding tears into another boy's jacket and the two were wrapping their arms around each other out in the open, well, it wasn't a day to take them to task for it.

Sawamura didn't see her, but Miyuki did, and he gave her a little smile and a nod as she passed them without saying a word.

But later that evening, as she stepped out of the main school building, she found Miyuki waiting for her, leaning against the side wall of the block she'd exited from. His posture was reminiscent of the pose he'd struck that afternoon early on in this academic year, when he had waylaid her to demand his "commission" for luring Sawamura to Seidou. However, aside from the pose, everything else was different – the expression on his face was serious, and he wasn't in training gear but still in his school uniform, jacket and all, though he'd shed his school tie. He wasn't tossing a baseball up and down in his hand either; this time, it was a neatly folded piece of paper he held instead.

"Rei-chan," he addressed her.

"Miyuki-kun? Is Sawamura all right?"

"Sawamura's fine. He's still crying a bit over the senpai, but Kuramochi's kicking it out of him in their room."

"Should I be relieved or worried about that?"

Miyuki chuckled, looked down at the ground for a bit, then raised his eyes to her face again and said: "Rei-chan, I think neither of us owes the other a commission any more?"

"Oh?"

"Well, Sawamura's more than earned his keep here, and he's paid us back in spades in countless ways. So you shouldn't be paying me for reeling him in for you any more than I should be paying you for getting my hands all over him, eh? He's his own man."

"If you say so," she smiled. "I wasn't the one who started all that nonsense, speaking of him as if he were a piece of meat."

"I do say so. And in an about-turn from my previously mean way of talking about him, I'd like to ask you for a favour. It's a day for sappy expressions of undying affection and lifelong connections, so it's probably the only sort of day on which I'll ever be able to do something that's so unlike me."

"What is it, Miyuki-kun?"

He let a sly, shrewd look glimmer in his eyes for a moment as he asked: "Before that, can we have a clear understanding that everything I say does not, in any way, shape or form, constitute an admission that Sawamura or I are breaking any school rules whatsoever, and that none of this should be taken as an incriminating admission that we are currently in any sort of relationship that would be frowned upon by the school and baseball authorities? And that everything I mention with regard to such a relationship should be understood as something we intend to engage in after we both leave school, and not as something we are already engaging in?"

"We can indeed operate on such an assumption."

Then the serious, formal look returned to his eyes as he took a deep breath and held it for a second before he said: "Okay, then… I'm a bigger idiot in a lot of ways than Sawamura will ever be, and if ever, in the near or distant future, I should do anything stupid like leave him, or lose him, and you somehow hear from your impressive multitude of informers that the breakup's gone on too long and he's been crying about it, will you please give him this for me?"

With both hands, Miyuki held out the folded piece of paper to her. Takashima received it, shot him a querying glance as to whether she should unfold it now, received an affirmative look in response, and opened up the sheet.

It was a complete reversal of the idea of earning a commission on Sawamura. The best way she could describe it was as a handwritten and signed deed, giving Sawamura Eijun the right to claim Miyuki Kazuya as his own, even if the said Miyuki Kazuya was ever enough of a brainless fool to let himself be parted from Sawamura Eijun.

"So you're his, always," she remarked.

"Even if I ever forget it."

"I'll remind you."

"I'd appreciate it if you would."

"I'll send Kuramochi along as well to deliver a good hard kick up your backside."

"I'll deserve that if I ever leave Sawamura."

"Even if you do it out of some misguided notion that you're leaving him for his own sake because you're not good for him and suchlike nonsense?"

"As Chris-senpai told me a few months ago, I'll just have to make sure to be good for him."

"You do that, Miyuki-kun."

"I'll do my best."

"You were waiting for me on purpose that afternoon at the start of this school year, weren't you?" she asked as she folded the piece of paper back up into a tidy rectangle.

"Was I?" he asked disingenuously, the cheeky spark back in his eyes.

"You never slip away from training – you're always in the thick of it – but that afternoon, you saw me about to walk off alone, and you went around by the other side of the storage sheds to lie in wait for me, didn't you?"

"I'm not confessing to anything," he grinned.

"Even back then, you were itching to talk about Sawamura, weren't you? You needed, in your twisted way, to express how confused you felt about him, and I was the best person to talk to because I was the one who'd brought him all the way from Nagano right into your life the day he stood up to Azuma Kiyokuni."

"You're imputing too many motives to me…" Miyuki grinned and lightly scratched the back of his head. She thought he was blushing, but it was hard to tell by the light of the lamps illuminating this outdoor area in the darkness of this spring evening.

"It's a little too late to play the innocent now, isn't it?"

"Ah, you never go easy on me, Rei-chan…"

"You never go easy on me either," she retorted.

"That is true," he admitted freely, even a little abashedly.

It dawned on her there and then how different Miyuki was now in his private moments. On the field, he was the same as ever, but in personal moments like these, he'd become willing to be vulnerable, instead of being all sharp edges, blunt words and emotional walls like he'd been not so long ago. So she said to him sincerely, with a gentle smile: "But what a long way you've come since that day, Miyuki-kun."

He flashed her a surprised look, and when she didn't follow up the kind comment with anything snippy or snarky, he gave her a pure smile that was stunning in its clarity. "Thank you for everything, Rei-chan," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you then."

At that very moment, Sawamura – whom they heard long before they could make out his face – came trotting across the car park from the training fields, calling out: "Oi! Miyuki Kazuya! So this is where you've been! I've been looking for you… Oh! Takashima-sensei!"

"Sawamura," she greeted him in response to the bow he gave her once he'd run up to them.

"Has this fellow been bothering you, Takashima-sensei?" Sawamura asked, jabbing a thumb in Miyuki's direction.

"Oi," Miyuki chided. "'This fellow'? Is that any way to refer to your senpai?"

"Miyuki-kun has been surprisingly gentlemanly this evening, and hasn't bothered me at all," she assured the pitcher.

"Really?" Sawamura asked disbelievingly. "He's been behaving himself?"

"Of course I have," Miyuki sighed. "I was just talking to Takashima-sensei about… my future."

"Cool!" Sawamura exclaimed. "Like career plans and all?"

"Even bigger than career plans," Miyuki said.

"Eh? That sounds serious…"

"It is," Miyuki agreed, putting an arm around Sawamura's shoulders. "Rei-chan's got my future right there in her hands."

"Ooh," Sawamura's eyes went wide. "That piece of paper? Can I see it?"

"Uh-uh, not anytime soon, or ever, if I do everything right," Miyuki said quickly, pulling Sawamura away from Takashima after giving her a quick bow to say goodbye and forcing Sawamura into one too.

"Whaaaaat…?" Sawamura wailed as Miyuki dragged him away, back towards the dorm. "But whyyyyy…?"

The pitcher tried to break free of Miyuki's solid grip to pry something out of their assistant coach about the mysterious piece of paper, but his catcher wouldn't let him go, and Takashima chuckled to herself as she watched them walk away, Sawamura Eijun pouting and protesting, but not managing to squirm away from Miyuki Kazuya, who was doing a pretty good job of keeping a firm, unbreakable hold on his future.

- END -

Disclaimer: I do not own Daiya no A, of course. It belongs to Terajima Yuuji.

Author's Note, 2 Oct 2015: Thank you to everyone who has accompanied me on this journey through my first Daiya no A fanfic. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

I based the story on the world of Part I of the manga, adding my own developments, conversations and headcanon-y stuff that I thought could conceivably fit in between or alongside the scenes that are actually shown in canon. If any other developments occur from Part II onwards that contradict anything in this fic, well, that's beyond what lies in this particular little universe.