Diamond No Ace: The Strongest Hitter Has Arrived

Author Note: Hope you enjoyed the drop. Released this week's Extra Chapter early as well, so please don't let me down and just let it reach 100.

The Volume is Finally over back at Patreon and so the next volume starts, finally getting into the main story after nearly 400 Chapters. Hop on there if you are curious.

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The final out was recorded and the applause began.

The crowd's response had the quality of people who had watched a game that delivered more than the bracket position of the two teams had suggested it would. Sensen had not played like a team that expected to lose.

They had played like a team that had arrived with a plan, executed large portions of it well, and been beaten by an opponent that was simply operating at a higher level in the moments that decided the game. That kind of defeat produced a different response from observers than a one-sided match did.

Maki had been the center of most of those observations. The home run in the second inning. The innings where his pitching had made Seido's lineup look temporarily ordinary. The competitive resilience after the grand slam, when the reasonable expectation had been collapse and the actual outcome had been six consecutive outs. For a first-year pitcher in his first significant tournament game against a nationally recognized program, the afternoon had demonstrated something that went beyond raw talent.

The stands had felt it. The casual fan who understood enough about the sport to read a trajectory would remember Maki's name.

And yet the game's most important individual performance had not been Maki's.

The assessment that emerged from the people who had been paying close attention pointed in a different direction. Zhang Han's grand slam and walk-off hit had produced six of Seido's nine runs, a number that was difficult to look past. But the conditions that had made those hits possible were not self-generated.

The grand slam had required the bases to be loaded before Zhang Han arrived at the plate, which meant Kominato forcing a walk through a nine-pitch at-bat, Isashiki reaching base while Maki's command was degraded, and Yuuki being walked to create the situation. The walk-off hit had required Isashiki making contact on an inside pitch he had no business driving to center field, and Yuuki extending the inning from first base.

Two-thirds of the runs had come directly from Zhang Han's bat. The remaining third had arrived because everyone around him had done their job.

The name that the most honest accounting returned as the game's primary contributor was Kawakami Norifumi.

Seven innings. Four hits allowed. One walk. One run. Against a Sensen lineup that had genuine hitting capability and a competitive approach that had been designed to expose pitching vulnerabilities. The performance had not been spectacular in the way that Tanba's high-breaking curveball was spectacular or that Zhang Han's pitching debut had been spectacular. It had been something more durable: consistent, precise, and reliable under pressure in circumstances that would have revealed weaknesses in a less composed pitcher.

Manager Ota's expression across the final innings had been the expression of someone whose belief in a player had just been publicly validated in a manner that left no room for counterargument. He had been tracking Kawakami's development with more confidence than most of the people around him had shared, and the game had settled the question of whether that confidence was warranted.

In Coach Kataoka's mind, the question had not settled so cleanly.

Three pitchers. Three distinct profiles. Three sets of strengths and three sets of limitations. Tanba had elite talent in a single pitch and a temperament that complicated everything around it. Zhang Han had the makings of something exceptional and was still in the early stages of developing his left arm as a competitive tool. Kawakami had just demonstrated that his ceiling was higher than anyone had been comfortable projecting, and had done it in conditions that validated the demonstration.

None of them was obviously the answer. All of them had genuine claims. The comfortable problem of having multiple Ace candidates was, in practice, less comfortable than it appeared from outside, because candidates were not Aces and the gap between the two categories was where tournaments were lost.

In previous years, Seido had failed to reach Koshien specifically because the staff had not included a pitcher capable of carrying a team through the rounds that mattered most. When Hidezawa had finally provided that, the results had followed immediately.

The three pitchers currently competing for that role were all promising and none were ready. Kataoka could not identify which of them was closest to being ready, and that uncertainty made the decision about where to concentrate developmental resources genuinely difficult. Favoring one risked misallocating the investment. Treating them equally meant none of them received the concentrated attention that producing an Ace from a candidate required.

He had not expected to be troubled by having too many options. He was troubled by it anyway.

After the final handshakes, the two teams went through the standard post-game procedures, the salutes and the brief exchanges that closed out competitive games at this level. The Sensen players conducted themselves with a composure that Zhang Han had not expected based on the pattern he had observed in previous tournament eliminations.

Crying after a loss was common, sometimes profoundly so, particularly in summer games where third-year players were playing their final high school innings. Sensen's players were composed. Disappointed and visibly so, but composed.

The words exchanged were honest and not performative.

"We weren't a match for you today."

"Every single one of you is built like something else."

The Seido players responded in kind, acknowledging what had actually happened on the field rather than deflecting with false modesty. Maki's pitching was recognized specifically and genuinely.

Zhang Han was turning back toward the dugout when the shadow arrived.

He was over 180 centimeters himself, which meant people did not frequently cast shadows over him. He registered the change in light before he registered the source of it, and when he turned, Maki was standing behind him with the particular expression of a young person who has something specific to say and is going to say it in the most direct possible way.

The height differential was something Zhang Han had not experienced from this angle before.

"Next time we meet, I won't lose."

The delivery had the particular quality of a declaration rather than a prediction, said with the earnestness of someone who meant it entirely and was not particularly concerned about how it landed.

Zhang Han looked up at him for a moment.

"Then I'll look forward to it."

There was nothing else useful to add. The sincerity behind the statement deserved a sincere response rather than a diplomatic one, and the simplest honest reply was that the promise was welcome. By the next time they met, Sensen would have developed further, Maki would have developed further, and the game would be a different problem than today's game had been.

Seido would not be standing still in that interval either. The outcomes would speak for themselves when the time came.

The team gathered and boarded the bus, and the expected route back to school did not materialize. Coach Kataoka had made a different arrangement, and the bus moved toward Akita Stadium instead.

The game already in progress there was between Teito High School and Inashiro Industrial, East Tokyo's representative champion against one of West Tokyo's established powers. The matchup had drawn the kind of attention that strong programs playing each other always generated, and the stands were populated accordingly.

Coach Kataoka's interest in the game was not the spectacle it offered. It was specific and practical. The team that emerged from this game would be Seido's next opponent. Whatever the result, one of these two programs would be waiting for them in the quarterfinals, and the time between now and that game was not so long that scouting could be delayed without cost.

The bus continued toward Akita Stadium, and the players inside it shifted their attention from the game they had just finished to the game that was already deciding who came next.