Diamond No Ace: The Strongest Hitter Has Arrived

The interviews began before anyone had fully caught their breath.

The reporters who had followed the Seido bus to Akita Stadium had accumulated questions across two games and were not interested in waiting any longer to ask them.

Coach Kataoka stood with the pitching chart Takashima Rei had compiled during the Inashiro game, the paper carrying information he was still processing, and found microphones arriving in front of his face before he had finished the processing.

What he had seen in that chart and in the final innings of the game was not what he had hoped to see. Inashiro had not played their game against Teito at full capacity. The signs were specific and readable to anyone who understood what a team pitching at full effort looked like compared to a team managing its resources with later rounds in mind.

Narumiya had been effective without being extended. The lineup had produced results without revealing the approaches that they would use against opponents they considered the real test.

Four runs given up to Teito, a program that was genuinely capable, was a number that looked mediocre in isolation. In context, with the understanding that Inashiro had not been showing everything, it was a number that meant something different. A team operating below full capacity and still winning by three runs against East Tokyo's champion was communicating something about its depth that the final score alone did not capture.

The players had been right in their assessment on the bus. The strongest in Inashiro's recent history was not an exaggeration.

The reporter who arrived first did not lead with a gentle question.

"As the West Tokyo Summer Tournament champions, how do you assess your upcoming opponent?"

Coach Kataoka maintained the expression of a person who was entirely comfortable with the question and had no particular feelings about it either way. The smile that remained on his face during the response was the specific smile of a coach who had decided that certain external interactions required a different set of tools than the ones he used in practice.

He spoke about the past season, about new eras and new teams, about his longstanding respect for Coach Kunimoto. He said nothing that could be quoted as a prediction, a confidence statement, or anything that committed him to a position that a subsequent loss could be held against.

His players watched this performance with genuine surprise.

The image they carried of Coach Kataoka was built from months of direct experience: the man who set standards that did not move, who delivered criticism without softening it, who treated emotional state as something a player was responsible for managing rather than something the coaching staff was responsible for accommodating. Watching him speak in the careful, accommodating language of a public interview produced a mild cognitive dissonance that several players commented on quietly to each other.

One of them summed it up: the position you occupied determined how you were required to behave. The previous Seido had nothing to protect and could afford the freedom of unfiltered statement. The current Seido had a reputation and results that created obligations.

Coach Kataoka understood this and was operating accordingly, and the emotional intelligence required to make that adjustment was not a contradiction of who he was. It was an extension of the same competence he applied to everything else.

When the players were called for their own interviews, the template was already visible. They followed it without requiring explicit instruction: praise the opponent first, be modest about themselves, commit to full effort without committing to specific outcomes.

The formula was old and it worked because it was old. Saying something measured and appropriate before a game cost nothing and eliminated the most embarrassing possible outcomes. Saying something bold cost nothing while winning and everything while losing.

Several players delivered the formula with the practiced naturalness of people who had absorbed it from watching how adults navigated public situations.

Inashiro's players, interviewed in parallel, used the same approach. Both teams spoke warmly about each other, both teams called it a game between friends, both teams privately understood that the person standing across from them at the plate next week would be receiving exactly the same competitive attention as any other opponent had received, without sentiment adjusting the intensity downward.

The interviews concluded and the Seido players did not wait to see if Inashiro's players would emerge for any post-game socializing. The bus was already running.

The ride back to school was quieter than the ride to the stadium had been. The conversations had wound down, and the players were sitting with the private version of what the afternoon had shown them, which was less comfortable than the public version.

Zhang Han used part of the ride to think and then, after returning to campus, used the remaining daylight for extra practice before the sequence of showering and dinner claimed the rest of the evening.

By the time he reached the cafeteria, the room was already well-populated with teammates who had moved through the post-game routine at a faster pace. The school had provided extra food for the occasion, the standard acknowledgment of a tournament victory that stopped short of calling itself a celebration but communicated appreciation through portion size. Zhang Han registered the roasted suckling pig at the center of the spread and considered it a meaningful gesture.

He moved toward a seat near Miyuki and Kuramochi, and Isashiki's voice reached him from across the room, directing him toward the table where he and Yuuki were sitting.

Zhang Han assessed his options.

"I think I'll sit with the suckling pig."

The delivery had been genuine, the thought completing itself before the social calculation had fully caught up to it. Miyuki and Kuramochi's reaction was not the reaction of people who had been mildly insulted. It was the reaction of people who had seen something that Zhang Han had not yet seen.

He felt it in the quality of the silence before he turned.

Masuko Toru was seated directly beside the suckling pig in question, looking at Zhang Han with an expression that requested clarification in the most direct possible terms. The resemblance between Masuko's general physical presentation and the centerpiece of the meal was, once noticed, genuinely difficult to address smoothly.

Zhang Han pointed to the roasted pig on the serving platter.

"I meant that one. The cooked one."

The cafeteria's response was immediate and collective.

Masuko's face completed a transition that took less than two seconds, moving from confusion through recognition to something considerably less patient. The verbal option was not one he reached for. He stood up.

Zhang Han, whose sense of self-preservation was functioning correctly, also stood up and moved in the opposite direction.

The second-year upperclassmen, who had been observing with the appreciation of people who understood exactly what was happening, blocked the most obvious escape route with the coordinated effort of people who had been waiting for an opportunity like this one.

Zhang Han stopped. He raised both hands.

"We have Inashiro next week. Please consider the team's condition."

The argument was valid on its face and entirely self-serving, which was the specific combination that made it worth trying. Masuko looked at him for a moment, performed his own assessment of the situation, and arrived at a compromise position.

The slap that followed was firm enough to register and measured enough to fall short of anything that required a trip to the medical room.

The cafeteria noise resumed.

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