In the little time he had been at Shujin, Makoto never saw so many students paying attention to the same thing, least of all anything school related. He certainly never expected to see an impassable crowd around the second floor bulletin board. "What's even going on here?" He shoved his way through a few layers, but he still couldn't see anything, swallowed up between black blazers touching shoulder to shoulder.
"Average?!" an exasperated student said. "Average?! I spent eleven thousand yen on study guides!" "Should have spent more than thirty seven minutes using them." "Look! You did really well." A soft spoken student mumbled something in response.
"Oh, our grades are out," a second year girl said. That, Makoto supposed, was one of a few things that could catch the Shujin student body's attention. "How did you do?"
"Damn… I'm dead…" a distraught boy said.
"Wait, you failed!? That's hilarious! The teacher's definitely going to call you out! I almost feel bad for you."
"Who's that at the top?" "No way," an incredulous student said. "There's no way!" "That has to be a mistake. If that's real, I give up." "What? Who is it? Some of us can't see."
In all this clamoring, Makoto was pushed toward the bulletin. At the top of the list, top of the class on the midterm exams, was Ryuji Sakamoto. "Wow." He looked around, no one was watching him, and Makoto read down the rest of the list.
The girl who just whined about not seeing the list gasped in shock. "Oh my God! This can't be for real!" "Sakamoto's definitely cheating, right?" "Maybe he just studied really hard. If he can do it, anyone can."
"Fat chance! Do you think he stole the answers?" "Like the Phantom Thieves stole Kamoshida's desires?" a perhaps too fanciful student said. "Are you high?! That's not even remotely the same thing!"
"So what is his secret? Did he just get lucky?" "Maybe he really just studied, really hard." The same student who brought it up before insisted it again. "You think he'll help us?" "Does anyone have his phone number?"
Makoto's eyes darted over page after page. A lump formed in his throat as he got to the last one. Toward the end. There at the very bottom, dead last, he saw his name. It took all the air out of his lungs, and all the energy out of his whole body as he got bumped around like a rag doll back to the outside.
He wondered what his parents would say. Shujin was the last place they could think of after March, and here Makoto was, about to flunk out. He wondered what his sister would say, after she found out he wasn't joking.
Makoto wondered what Principal Kobayakawa would do. Would he keep pulling strings to let the investigation continue, or cut things off before they got too embarrassing?
Dusting himself off, Makoto trailed the hall to his homeroom. "Good morning, Mr. Naegi," Ms. Chouno said.
Makoto looked up, thought for a second. "Good morning, Ms. Chouno," he answered. His English teacher nodded and grinned.
"Are you feeling better this week?" she said. Makoto turned toward his desk and nodded, dropping his backpack beside its front leg.
Some minutes later, Ryuji came in, his phone ablaze with text notifications. Even after being chided to silence his phone, Makoto could still hear it vibrate in his pocket through the entire class. But in spite of his top notch results, the expression he look at Makoto with was one of panic and dread.
"Dude, you gotta help me." Everyone was getting up for lunch, when Ryuji caught Makoto and showed him all the pings he'd been getting all day. Endless requests to study, either just for class, or already for finals. Makoto opened his mouth to say something, maybe to empathize, maybe to object, but he couldn't find the words. Ryuji pulled his phone back. "For real? Exams? What do they think I'm gonna help with?"
"I don't know, Ryuji," Makoto said. "Your guess is as good as mine." But apparently, that wasn't true. Apparently, Ryuji's guessing was better than Makoto's by a long shot.
"Argh, I can't do this!" Ryuji snagged his things off the floor and stormed out of the classroom. Makoto followed him out to the hallway. "Hey, Makoto, aren't you student council president or something?"
"Vice president, but, yeah." Where was Ryuji going with this? "Why?"
"Can't you hold group studies in the library?"
"I could," Makoto said. "Did you see my score, though?" Ryuji shook his head. He didn't even see his own, only inferred it from how his phone was blowing up all of a sudden. "I'm actually last. Who's going to take my help?"
"Damn, dude. That's usually where I am," Ryuji said. Then his head suddenly perked up. "You think we could trade?"
"What?" Trade what, exam scores? Makoto shook his head. "How's that even supposed to work?"
"Maybe you could ask the principal," Ryuji said. "He could probably find a way to do it. Ugh, what am I even saying? I can't believe I'm asking for that fat bastard's help. Just forget I mentioned it. Come on, let's get lunch."
Makoto shrugged and followed Ryuji downstairs to the food stall on the first floor, wondering why he needed to deflect the school's attention so badly, and so soon.
The familiar batting machine motor churned at medium power, with the display next to it showing 110.19 KPH. Kasumi stood at the plate, bat a the ready, with her red Shujin tracksuit opened up and tied around her waist. "A little more, Makoto," she said. "I want to at least match your speed."
Makoto nudged the speed slider a little more to the right, and the display ticked up around 112. "That good, Kasumi?"
"Perfect!" She kept a light grip on the bat, homing in on the machine's line of fire. It shot the first ball, and Kasumi swung to a straight, center hit. She adjusted for the second shot and sent the ball up to the back wall. With each swing, Makoto could see her confidence mounting, her posture more precise, the ball flying sharper and sharper angles off the bat.
As he watched Kasumi reset her stance, he heard someone behind him. "Besides, this place doesn't seem busy. I'll probably be the only one to see it."
Chain links rattled. Kasumi missed one.
Makoto turned around to see a boy in a white jacket, and a girl with a pink ribbon tie. "Sayaka?" Her name immediately sprang to mind.
She propped one arm over the other, and touched a finger to her chin. After a moment of thought, she smiled from ear to ear. "Makoto!" Sayaka said. "It's been years, hasn't it?" Sayaka and the boy walked past Makoto to drop their things off at one of the tables in the batting center. "Oh yeah," Sayaka said. "This is Leon Kuwata. Leon…"
Sayaka extended her hand toward Makoto, who knew his cue when he saw it. "My name is Makoto Naegi. It's nice to meet you, Leon."
Leon, the boy in the white jacket with spiky, bright orange hair, looked up from where he dropped his stuff. "Yeah, same," he said. He pointed at Kasumi, who was still locked on to the pitching machine. "Who's that?"
"Whoever she is, she looks like she's catching up to you." Sayaka laughed behind her hand.
"Hey, Kasumi!" Makoto said. The bat was starting to look heavy in her hands. "Do you want to take a break for a minute?" He reached back to the control panel and held his hand just off the slider.
In the cage, she took a deep breath, and lowered the bat. "Yeah, I'm good for now." She only now just saw Sayaka and Leon, and she ran out of the cage, easing the door shut behind her. Makoto pushed the power slider left until it clicked to zero, and the motor started winding down. "I guess Makoto's already introduced himself by now. I'm Kasumi Yoshizawa. Pleased to meet you both."
"Leon Kuwata." The boy with the white jacket.
"Sayaka Maizono." The girl with the pink ribbon tie. She bowed, unlike Leon, returning Kasumi's gesture. "I met Makoto in middle school, though we didn't share any classes, and we didn't talk much." She turned toward him, held her hands together down by her hips. "But, I'm glad you remember me after so long."
"Wait," Kasumi said, "How did you know I was going to ask that?"
Sayaka tilted her head. "I have psychic powers," she said. Her eyes flickered between Kasumi's and Makoto's reactions. "Ah, I'm joking about that. I just have good intuition, is all. And I feel like you might have told him the same thing."
Kasumi leaned away in shock. She looked to Makoto, but he was just as bewildered.
"Freaky, isn't it?" Leon said. Sayaka spun around with a pout, and smacked Leon's arm. He brushed it off, and looked over the floor of the cage at Kasumi's handiwork. "You do all that?"
She nodded with a big grin. "Not bad, huh?"
Leon slowly bobbed his head in approval. "Not bad at all." He stepped close to the rack of bats, and glanced at Sayaka with a look of resignation. "You still want to see this?" he said.
Sayaka's look faltered, and she tucked her arms behind her back. "Not if you don't want to," she said. "It doesn't have to be baseball, I suppose, but I wanted to see you take something seriously."
"Why don't we all give it a shot?" Makoto said. "I know someone probably wants to see me try it again." His head snapped towards Kasumi just in time to see her hiding her laughter.
"I just don't get the point of this," Leon said. He lifted the bats by the handle, testing their weights one by one. "I'm straight dynamite on the field, every game. Practicing isn't going to change anything, so why bother?"
"Practice is the point," Kasumi said. She picked up a hand towel to wipe off her aluminum bat before handing it over to Makoto. "I don't know good I'll ever be at baseball, but lately I just felt like I wanted to try. Most days…" Kasumi stepped aside to a clearer spot and untied her tracksuit.
She flipped into a single handstand, slipped her free arm through her sleeve and shifted her whole weight onto it. She put on her other sleeve as she landed upright. "I'm a gymnast. And I'm good at it, but it's weeks and weeks of practice before a meet. It's like that for everything, whether it's gymnastics, or baseball, or, music. We can be good at anything. Practice is all it takes. But, that is what it takes."
Leon's mouth hung open until he shook his head. "I guess," he said. "I still don't want to show off, though."
"That's fine," Kasumi said. "We can get out of your hair. Oh, but first," she nudged into Makoto with her elbow, "Would you mind watching my senpai give it another try?"
"Ngh!" Makoto froze up, although by now he could tell she was joking. Kasumi was joking, right?
"That's a great idea!" Sayaka said, clasping her hands together.
Makoto looked from her to Leon, who just shrugged with that same resigned look in his eyes. Well, he already had the bat in his hands. He sighed and pushed the cage door open, locking eyes with Kasumi before he stepped up to the plate. "Don't go too hard on me, okay?"
"Don't worry, Makoto," she said. "It won't be like last time."
Taking her at her word, Makoto stood ready with the bat, listening for the motor and watching the counter tick up on its way to 78 KPH. He breathed in, filling his lungs to capacity as he dragged his eyes from the digital speedometer to the pitching machine's extruded tube.
The machine shot the first ball. It flew right past him, already clattering on the chain links by the time he moved his arms.
On the second shot, Makoto swung and missed.
"I still believe!" Kasumi said.
On the third shot, the shock rushed up his arms, and he almost dropped the bat. Makoto's eyes slammed shut. His arms seemed to shake on their own.
CLONK!
But that noise from across the room meant only one thing. Finally, he hit the ball.