Diamond No Ace: The Strongest Hitter Has Arrived

The bus was moving before the conversation had fully organized itself.

Miyuki had the tournament schedule open and was looking at it with the expression of someone who has identified a problem and wants to know if anyone else has noticed it yet.

"Our game and theirs were starting at almost the same time. By the time we get there, it'll be over, won't it?"

Manager Ota had already done the arithmetic. The two stadiums were separated by approximately half an hour of driving time, which would have made the overlap manageable under different circumstances.

The circumstances included a game that had run its full course, plus the post-game procedures that competitive matches at this level required: the handshake lines, the brief media exchanges, the administrative formalities that could not simply be skipped. Two hours, roughly, between the final out of their game and a realistic arrival time at Akita Stadium.

"Our game ended in just over an hour. I just checked, and their game is in the sixth inning with the score close. We should make the end of it."

Takashima Rei had called during the transit. Her position was clear: if there was any possibility of attending in person, they should take it. Video recordings, however clear the resolution, could not fully capture what direct observation provided. Certain things about how a team moved, how their pitcher's mechanics looked from field level, how the dugout responded to pressure, required being in the stadium to see correctly.

Ota had been uncertain when she called. Coach Kataoka had not been.

The upcoming opponents were a different category of problem from everything Seido had faced in the tournament so far. Sensen had been a genuine challenge that had produced a real game and real lessons.

Teito and Inashiro were programs that had been defining Tokyo high school baseball long before Seido's recent emergence, and whichever of them came through this game would arrive at the quarterfinals with a depth of experience and a quality of player that the bracket's earlier rounds had not provided.

"Even if we only catch the final innings, there's plenty to learn," Coach Kataoka said, in a tone that ended the discussion about whether the detour was worthwhile.

The players nodded and accepted it.

The question of which team they would be facing became the natural conversation to fill the remaining time on the bus. The historical profiles of both programs were familiar enough to provide a starting framework, even if the specific details of their current rosters were less certain.

Teito had spent years as East Tokyo's dominant program, making Koshien at a rate that reflected systematic organizational excellence rather than the particular brilliance of individual players. Seven or eight years out of ten, they reached the national stage.

The consistency was the thing about Teito that impressed people who understood what it required to produce it. This year's roster was understood to be predominantly second-year players, without obvious breakout talents in the individual profiles that had been circulating.

Inashiro Industrial's recent history was built on Coach Kunimoto's particular approach: stability, precision, the careful development of players within a system that rewarded fundamental execution over individual flair. Year after year, the output was reliable. The national tournament appearances were consistent. The style was conservative in a way that some people found limiting and others recognized as a form of wisdom.

Which made the information about this year's roster unexpected.

First-year players accounting for half the starting lineup was not a profile that fit Kunimoto's established approach. The second-year upperclassmen on the bus processed this with visible difficulty, working through the reconciliation of what they knew about Kunimoto's coaching philosophy and what this roster composition suggested about the talent available to him.

The conclusion was straightforward even if it was uncomfortable: for Kunimoto to trust first-year rookies in a lineup that was supposed to compete for a Koshien berth, those rookies had to have justified the trust in practice sessions and internal games before the tournament began. Kunimoto did not extend that kind of trust on potential alone.

The collective gaze in the bus naturally found its way to the two first-years who had come from the same junior high circuit as the players being discussed.

Miyuki had already organized his knowledge into something specific.

"Carlos, Shirakawa Katsuyuki, Yamaoka Riku, Yabe, Narumiya Mei."

He listed the names with the flat certainty of someone who had shared a competitive landscape with these people and had formed accurate assessments of each of them. The names landed on the bus with varying degrees of recognition. Some of the upperclassmen had heard them during their own junior high years. Others were encountering them for the first time and reading the weight in how Miyuki delivered them.

The question of how this collection of talent had ended up concentrated at a single program had an answer that Miyuki clearly possessed, and the answer was sitting in a specific memory.

A sunny afternoon. A boy whose energy filled whatever space he occupied, who had assembled around himself a group of players who understood what he was trying to build and had decided to be part of it. The invitation extended to Miyuki had been genuine, and the vision behind it had been compelling enough that refusing it had required a decision rather than an obvious answer.

How many people could say no to that kind of invitation from that kind of person?

Zhang Han added the piece that completed the picture. The project had apparently been specific in its targeting. Narumiya had reached out to players across Tokyo with the explicit goal of assembling a historically dominant team, with Koshien and everything beyond it as the stated objective. The omission of Matsukata's core players, Hoshida and Miyagawa specifically, had seemed like an oversight at the time.

Miyuki's reading of it was cleaner than that. Narumiya's invitation list was not random. Matsukata Senior League had been Narumiya's primary rival for years, the program whose players he measured himself against and whose success he had wanted specifically to surpass. Inviting your rivals to join you was not consistent with the competitive psychology of a person building something partly designed to beat those rivals. The omission had been intentional.

"That makes sense," Zhang Han said, and meant it. Narumiya's personality, as he remembered it, supported exactly that kind of reasoning.

One of the upperclassmen raised the question that had been forming since Miyuki began listing names.

If Narumiya had been assembling talent across Tokyo, and if his goal was the most competitive possible roster, why hadn't he invited Miyuki? Miyuki's individual ability was not the kind that serious scouts overlooked. His value behind the plate was recognized by everyone who had watched him work. A roster built around the best available players should have included him.

The chills that followed the question were visible across the bus. The scenario of Miyuki on the Inashiro roster, calling pitches for a staff that included Narumiya, was not a comfortable scenario to spend time with.

Miyuki received the question and the surrounding anxiety with the specific expression of someone who had no patience for this particular line of speculation.

"Don't try to stir things up. My choice was made a long time ago. I live and die for the Seido High School Baseball Team."

The delivery was entirely characteristic of him: direct, unambiguous, and somehow more convincing for having no warmth in it. He was not performing commitment. He was stating a settled fact and had no interest in discussing it further.

The bus continued toward Akita Stadium, and outside the windows, the city moved past in the late afternoon light.

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