Much To Worry About

In which Oota frets a good deal

Oota thought he would burst a vein in his head. What he was hearing was just a tad too much to process calmly. After all the trouble Miyauchi had caused months ago early in the summer by molesting Kawakami, then declaring his feelings for him, the catcher had gone through a lot to travel that painstaking road back to a normal, not-awkward relationship with the pitcher.

But what was Oota hearing now? This very moment? Was he really listening to Tanba asking Miyauchi about what had gone on in the players' canteen earlier, and hearing Miyauchi answer frankly that he'd just tried to grab Kawakami's balls again? On the eve of the autumn tournament final! Which Kawakami was the starting pitcher for!

That vein in his head was really pulsating now.

The coaches and retired third-year players, as well as a clutch of second- and first-years, had left the indoor training facility tonight after watching Sawamura go through his usual uphill slog in learning anything, as he tried to pick up the two-seam fastball under Miyuki's and Kataoka's guidance.

Oota had spent some time talking to former base coaches Kadota and Kusunoki outside the indoor facility after Sawamura was done pitching. He had then walked through the dormitory compound with them on his way back to the coaches' office – which was upstairs, beside the row of dorm rooms currently occupied by the retired third-years. When they parted at the two students' rooms, Oota had not gone straight into the office, but strolled along the open-sided walkway, staring out into the cool autumn night and trying not to worry about the final tomorrow. How would it go? Would Seidou be disappointed once more at the last hurdle before Koushien? Was Kataoka-kantoku truly leaving the school? How would Kawakami fare starting in such a big game?

He sighed and fretted for a bit before coming to a stop at the very end of the walkway, where it was dark as no rooms were in use there, and someone had switched off the overhead lights along these few metres of the passageway. As he stood there, he became aware of two figures on the ground below, in the area of the dorm compound that lay between the main entrance and the offices used by the security, kitchen and dorm-supervisory staff.

The two were Miyauchi and Tanba, having a conversation away from the areas where foot traffic would be heaviest at this time of evening. Tanba was asking Miyauchi why he hadn't been with the rest of them in the indoor facility watching Sawamura train, and Miyauchi was saying that he hadn't felt like being there. Oota was just about to turn away to enter the office when he heard Tanba ask, laughingly: "And what on earth was that about in the players' lounge earlier? When you stuck your arm out at Kawakami and he stopped you with that crossarm block?"

Miyauchi's casual answer: "Oh, he was just preventing me from grabbing his balls again. He did it pretty well too, huh?"

"Uh… 'again'?"

Which was about when the vein in Oota's head started throbbing.

"Oh, of course… you weren't in the dugout during that three-header in early summer, were you?" Miyauchi remarked. "You and the rest of the team playing Shuuhoku later were warming up in the other field, right? I'm surprised no one mentioned it to you."

"Wait, wait…" Tanba muttered disbelievingly. "Are you telling me that you molested Kawakami during the three-header? During the game?"

"Really – no one told you? Ah – but that was the same day you sustained that jaw injury. Obviously, people would have been more concerned about how you were feeling when talking to you."

"Maybe. Or maybe, no one thought it was worth mentioning out of all the weird things you've been known to do in your three years here."

"Well, now you know."

"Shit, Miyauchi. Of all the things…"

"Yeah. You don't have to say it. I've already had an earful from Oota-buchou, Kantoku and Kawakami himself."

"So the reason things were awkward between the two of you in summer wasn't only because you told him you liked him, but also because you'd outraged his modesty before that?" Tanba sounded torn between chuckling at the problem and giving Miyauchi a telling-off.

"Yeah, well, mostly because I confessed. Not so much because I groped him."

"But now you're restarting the whole mess by trying to grope him again?"

"He fended me off pretty well, don't you think? He's all grown up," Miyauchi said, sounding ridiculously proud of Kawakami.

"Miyauchi…" the former ace was chuckling now, his body language expressing both amusement and disapproval. "You don't want Kawakami to be mad with you all over again…"

"He was never mad with me."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Quite sure."

They, and Oota, were suddenly distracted by Sawamura's voice, sounding loud and clear from the end of the compound nearer the laundry room. That part of the ground-floor veranda was blocked from Oota's view, but when the pitcher and his companions approached the row where Sawamura's room was, they came into his line of sight.

"Chris-senpai, I was good in there, wasn't I?" the southpaw asked eagerly, walking between Chris and Miyuki.

Chris' voice was too soft for Oota to hear what he said, but Sawamura's response told Oota that Chris must have said he wasn't too good at the start.

"Was I that bad at the beginning?" Sawamura demanded with a pout.

"Hey, have you forgotten already?" Miyuki reminded him. "Chris-senpai took cover behind the net and declined to stand in the batter's position as he wasn't keen on getting hit by your pitches!"

"I remember," Sawamura grumbled, looking petulant.

"You did very well, Sawamura," Oota managed to hear Chris say kindly, before most of the middle section was lost to his ears, until the third-year finished with: "It takes patience to train you, but it's always worth the while, and the wait."

Sawamura lit up like the candles on a birthday cake, and looked as if he was about to burst into tears of happiness, a sight that made Chris smile.

"Oi, oi, you look like you're about to explode with joy!" Miyuki chided. "Don't get this overexcited on the eve of the final!"

Directly below Oota, Miyauchi and Tanba had fallen silent as the trio appeared along the veranda across the courtyard from them, but Miyauchi was now asking Tanba softly: "Doesn't it bother you at all? Seeing how happy Chris always is to be near Sawamura?"

Tanba folded his arms and rocked back a bit on his heels, while continuing to gaze at the trio still too far away from them to hear their conversation. "No," he said. "If not for Sawamura, Chris wouldn't even be giving me a chance to get close to him in a different way from how we'd been before this, when we were just friends."

"Hmm?"

"Sawamura was the first guy Chris ever felt attracted to. It was only because he came into Chris' life at all that Chris is even smiling and talking to the rest of us normally now. And it's only because Sawamura moved him unexpectedly that Chris decided to be more open-minded about being with someone like me. If not for that, he'd probably be dating… I don't know… Takako-chan?"

"Jun'll kill you if he hears you."

"If Takako-chan had had a choice between Chris and Jun to begin with, who do you think she'd have chosen?" Tanba asked, clearly intending it to be rhetorical.

But Miyauchi remarked knowingly: "Ah… I don't know about that… Jun has his charms for girls, I think. Takako could have gone for Tetsu instead, but she didn't. Jun's sort – scruffy, loud, with a bad-boy image but easy to read like an open book, and with a good heart – the nicest girls always fall for that sort."

"I suppose you could be right. No girls ever looked at me."

"Not that you were ever all that attracted to them."

"I was never all that attracted to anybody, guy or girl, until… well, Chris."

"What about that Manaka friend of yours from Ichidaisan? You seem pretty close."

"Kacchan's always been my childhood friend, and that's all…"

They were interrupted then by another loud voice – but this time, it wasn't Sawamura. To Oota's surprise, and no doubt Miyauchi's too, it was Kawakami.

"Miyauchi-senpai! Where did you go after we all left the canteen? I haven't thrashed things out with you yet!" Kawakami snapped, walking briskly across the dorm compound. Even from upstairs, Oota could see that the pitcher's brow was furrowed, his eyes flashing – this was probably the point at which Sawamura was whispering something or other to Chris about "Nori-senpai looking like a nocturnal squirrel in a temper".

"Uh, I'd say Kawakami's mad with you now, Miyauchi," Tanba said a little nervously, excusing himself from the awkward situation by bidding them both good night and going over to Chris, who was just stepping away from Miyuki and Sawamura.

Kawakami waited for Tanba to get far away enough from them before rounding on Miyauchi and asking fiercely: "Why did you try to grope me again in public?"

"You'd rather I did it in private?" Miyauchi asked.

Oota honestly couldn't tell if it was tongue-in-cheek or not, so deadpan was his delivery.

"Miya-senpai!" Kawakami hissed.

"But honestly, it's not when I grab your balls that I mean anything by it. It's just the sort of thing I do to check how sure you are of yourself. Don't take it to heart."

"No, you said before that you couldn't imagine doing it to anyone else. That makes it kind of personal, doesn't it? So I can't help but take it to heart!"

"Hmm… yes, but you should take it personally in a different kind of way from when I do other things, like tell you how I really feel about you."

It wasn't possible to tell in the dim lighting of the area they were standing in, but Oota could very easily believe that Kawakami had to be blushing furiously as he said: "W-well, I already know how you feel about me. And yes, of course I take it personally, but it's not in a bad way."

"I know."

"S-so you should already know me darn well enough to know how I'm feeling, and there's no need for you to check by molesting me. Don't do it again, understand?"

"Not even in private?"

"Miya-senpai!"

"Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for groping you during that game, and I'm sorry for trying to do it again tonight in the canteen."

"Apology accepted."

"Thank you for not staying upset with me."

"I've never been seriously upset with you."

"No? You sounded upset enough when you stomped over to me a minute ago."

"That was because I thought you were hiding from me after we left the canteen. I wanted to talk to you. Well, I wanted to scold you first for trying to grab my balls again, and then I wanted to talk to you."

"About what? Are you nervous about tomorrow? You said you weren't…"

"I'm not nervous. I'm fine. I just wanted to ask you now, in case things go wrong tomorrow and I'm too distraught to talk after the game. I wanted to ask you if… after the winter training camp and just before we go home for the New Year – if you'd like to, maybe… go for a movie, and have coffee, or something…"

Oota's jaw almost hit the balustrade, and Miyauchi himself was silent and still for a good half-minute before the catcher finally asked: "Kawakami Norifumi, are you asking me out on a date?"

"Yes, but we'll have to go dutch. The pocket money always dries up at that time of year – I think my parents are actually afraid that I won't go home for the New Year if they send me too much cash…"

"It's a date."

"Right," Kawakami said awkwardly. "I'm going back to my room now. I want to have an early night so I can wake up earlier to run a bit before tomorrow's game."

"Walk you back upstairs?"

"No groping, you hear?"

"No groping."

Miyauchi's current room wasn't far from the coaches' office, and neither was Kawakami's, for that matter. Oota didn't want to be standing here when they got upstairs. He was a little afraid that he would end up grabbing Miyauchi by the collar and shaking him violently the way he'd often seen Sawamura doing to Miyuki earlier in the year. So he entered the coaches' office and stood off to the side in a daze, giving vague replies whenever Kataoka, Takashima and Ochiai asked him a question. Thankfully, there wasn't much for them to ask him, as all the logistics were sorted for tomorrow, and he knew the details like the back of his hand, so he could reply on autopilot.

He was worried about Kawakami – worried that the boy might be caving in to initiating a closer relationship with Miyauchi out of guilt for not returning his feelings before, or perhaps because no better alternative had presented itself. But then, it had been Kawakami who had proposed the date, not Miyauchi. Kawakami could quite easily have asked the girls he knew instead, if he'd seriously been looking for a date with anyone, as opposed to a date with Miyauchi. After all, he and Shirasu, whom he spent the most time with, were a pair of boys whom girls never felt too intimidated to talk to, as they were gentle, quiet and warm in nature. Oota knew they were on good terms with all their female classmates. So if Kawakami hadn't asked one of these girls instead, perhaps… perhaps… he really was starting to feel something for Miyauchi?

When the other coaches called it a night, Oota said he would do the locking-up. After they had left, he sat alone in the office for a while before rising with a sigh, stepping out of the room, reaching back in to switch the lights off, then securing the door after him. He paused outside Miyauchi's room on his way towards the nearest staircase, then found himself giving those stairs a miss and walking further on to the other wing, where he paused outside Kawakami's door. No, he shouldn't talk to the boy tonight – he didn't want to upset him on the eve of the final. And if they won tomorrow, then he didn't much mind who the players chose to date, provided they didn't break school rules by canoodling on school grounds, or while wearing the uniform – and provided that the puppy love didn't go wrong enough to leave the parties involved heartbroken and too distracted to study or play baseball properly.

Oota went downstairs and walked up and down a bit more, worrying all over again, not only about Kawakami and Miyauchi, but also about the final, Kataoka-kantoku, whether life would be horrible for him under Ochiai-san in future, whether Sawamura could be relied on to relieve Kawakami tomorrow (gosh, the southpaw's record was terrible against Yakushi!), what the doctor would say about Furuya's foot tomorrow morning, and whether Furuya would even listen to the doctor…

He'd strolled aimlessly past the laundry room and the bathing house when he heard voices from the area near the vending machines outside the canteen. Looking round the corner of the building, he saw Sawamura and Miyuki seated on one of the benches close to the vending machines, facing the indoor facility. Goodness. Shouldn't they be in bed by now like almost everyone else was? Kataoka-kantoku had specifically told them not to stay up late tonight…

"Can't you catch for me a bit more?" Sawamura was cajoling Miyuki.

"You already had the ten extra pitches Kantoku allowed you after you finally nailed the pitch!" Miyuki replied, before taking a sip of the canned drink he was holding, then passing the drink over to Sawamura.

"I could do a hundred more! It felt fantastic once I got it!" Sawamura exclaimed.

Miyuki laughed. "Hey, even if you don't need rest, I do."

"Then I'll wake you up early tomorrow to catch for me!" The pitcher took a couple of sips of the drink, and handed it back to Miyuki.

"What kind of batteries do you run on?" Miyuki asked in disbelief, taking another mouthful of the drink and checking that enough was left for Sawamura before indicating that the pitcher should finish up the rest of it.

Watched by Miyuki, Sawamura downed the remainder of the drink, tipping his head back to get the last drops of it, then excitedly leaped to the next thing on his mind: "Oh yeah – say – what was it like watching me pitch from the side tonight while Ono-senpai caught for me? Was it different? Was it interesting?"

"I couldn't take my eyes off you," Miyuki said seriously.

"That's – that's…" Sawamura spluttered after a moment of stunned silence. "You can't just say something like that!"

"Oh? Why not?" came the disingenuous question.

"And you don't just ask why you can't ask it either!" Sawamura snapped. "If you need to be told that sort of thing, there's no hope for you!"

"Really?" Miyuki asked teasingly.

"And by the way, don't you still have something you need to tell me? Does it still have to wait till after this whole tournament is over? It'll be over by tomorrow!"

"Do I have something to tell you?" was Miyuki's playful question.

"Come on, you can tell me!"

"Okay, I'll tell you… that you're really a stubborn, hyperactive, noisy fellow."

"Hey!"

"But that stubbornness is exactly what made you so determined to learn how to properly use the two-seam fastball tonight, just because you saw Sanada Shunpei using it to good effect this afternoon – you're so easily influenced."

"So what if I am?"

"So we'll have to make sure no one who doesn't mean well influences you to do anything that wouldn't be good for you, or us."

"'Us'?"

"The whole team."

"Oh."

A low chuckle from Miyuki, and a playful tap of his finger on Sawamura's nose. "And us too, as in you and me, you idiot. Come on, baka, it's time for bed."

"Are you sure you're not hiding something else from me?"

Miyuki seemed startled for a moment, but the moment passed swiftly, and the catcher asked with a chuckle: "What else would I be hiding from you?"

"You've been really cautious about making contact with me tonight – not at all like last night. As if you're afraid I'll sense you're keeping more secrets from me."

"Baka," Miyuki said softly. "I just want us both to be totally focused on the game tomorrow."

"Is that all it is? Promise?"

"Ohhh…" Miyuki teased, leaning over towards the pitcher a little. "Does little Sawamura not feel able to go to sleep without a goodnight kiss?"

"Hey! Who said anything about kissing!?" Sawamura yelled, leaning away from Miyuki.

"Shh… you'll wake everyone, Uzamura," Miyuki smiled. "Should I also ask Kuramochi to tuck you in and sing you a lullaby?"

"Miyuki Kazuya! You're so annoying!" Sawamura growled, getting to his feet and walking away from the bench to toss the drink can into the nearest recycling bin.

Miyuki walked along behind him, so close behind that when Sawamura turned away from the bin, he found himself nearly nose to nose with the catcher. Miyuki put both his hands on Sawamura's upper arms and, thus grasping the younger boy, leaned in an inch or two to plant a peck on his forehead.

"There – a kiss for luck against Yakushi in tomorrow's game, and a goodnight kiss, all bundled into one. Will you go to bed now?"

"Okay," Sawamura murmured, sounding curiously embarrassed and contented at the same time. "You're really not hiding something else from me?"

"Nothing earth-shattering, baka. Focus on tomorrow's game. That will be earth-shattering if we don't win it."

"We'll win. We have to."

"I'm sure Yakushi's saying the very same thing right now, so we're just going to have to outplay them."

"You know how to do that, don't you? You and Kantoku?"

"We'll do it. We'll win it, even if it kills me."

Miyuki walked Sawamura back to his room – Oota had to nip behind the door of the laundry room so that they wouldn't see him. When the pitcher had shut the door of his room, Oota saw that Miyuki lingered outside for a few moments, staring at the closed door, before climbing the stairs to his own room.

Why were all these relationships and romances coming to light for Oota on the eve of the autumn final? Why were these boys giving him so much to worry about? Things were already tense enough without all these other things – plans for dates, and goodnight kisses, and questions about secrets being kept from others… gah! Whatever was going on, it had better not screw up their concentration for tomorrow's match! They'd better win it first, and then start thinking about dates and kisses… no, no, no – what was he saying? As a teacher, he simply mustn't encourage smooching in school. Absolutely not. It was totally against the rules.

But then again, if they won, they'd qualify for Spring Koushien, and who'd really care by then who was smooching whom?