The entire Seido High School Baseball Team turned out for the opening ceremony of the tournament.
The moment they arrived at Jingu Stadium, the attention of the whole venue shifted toward them.
"They're here!"
"Who?"
"Who else? Seido."
That was simply how it was now. Wherever the Seido High School Baseball Team went, they became the center of the room without trying. Eyes moved toward them without anyone deciding to look. It had become as automatic as breathing for the people around them.
Kuramochi had just pulled on his First-string uniform for the first time and was quietly discovering that being at the center of that kind of attention felt every bit as good as he had imagined it would. He stood a little straighter, cast a deliberate glance around the stadium, and made sure the number on his chest and back was clearly visible.
Number 6.
The starting shortstop number for the Seido High School Baseball Team. It had belonged to someone else before Kuramochi arrived and took it, pushing that player to a different position through a combination of speed and defensive skill that the competition simply couldn't match. Leaving aside his hitting, Kuramochi was not below Zhang Han in any other aspect of the game. In a direct comparison across every tool except the bat, Kuramochi was arguably stronger.
And hitting, in the end, was a skill that could fit into any position on the field. Zhang Han could contribute from anywhere. So the shortstop position had gone to Kuramochi, and Zhang Han had adapted accordingly.
Coach Kataoka had pulled Zhang Han aside privately and told him not to neglect that position in his own training. The shortstop role offered better prospects than outfield if Zhang Han ever seriously pursued the Major League. Reclaiming it from Kuramochi would be difficult, but knowing the position deeply was still worth the investment.
In the meantime, however, not many of the people filtering through Jingu Stadium were paying close attention to Kuramochi's number. Their eyes kept drifting to Zhang Han and Yuuki.
"It's Zhang Han!"
"He's so much better looking in person."
"Han-san!"
A cluster of girls had materialized around Zhang Han before he had fully registered what was happening, pens and paper appearing from bags, voices overlapping with requests.
Previously, this kind of approach would have been tempered by reserve. That reserve had apparently dissolved somewhere between the Summer Tournament and today. Zhang Han smiled with as much patience as he could arrange and took the pen being offered to him.
He worked through seven or eight autographs before Manager Ota and the coaching staff stepped in to move the crowd along.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a thought was forming. If professional baseball was genuinely in his future, and the Major League beyond that, he was going to need a clear strategy before he got there. The cultural gap in how fans expressed enthusiasm was not small, and it was worth thinking about in advance.
By the time the crowd had cleared enough to breathe, a few sharper-eyed observers had noticed that something on Zhang Han's uniform had changed. The number 6 he had worn previously was gone. In its place was a 9.
His position had shifted to outfield.
Coach Kataoka and the coaching staff had deliberated on this carefully before making the call. Zhang Han had the ability to handle a more demanding defensive position. Third base, for instance, was well within his range. But after working through the options, they had decided that outfield served his overall development better. It freed something in him that a more constrained infield position might have suppressed. The jersey number was a signal of their intentions. They hadn't given it to him expecting him to stay in the outfield forever.
Before the crowd around the players had fully dispersed, reporters had already moved in to fill the space.
A microphone appeared near Coach Kataoka almost immediately.
"Your first game is against the relatively unknown Seisenji Academy. Are you already confident of victory, Coach?"
The phrasing was smooth, but the trap inside it was not subtle. A confident answer read as disrespecting the opponent. A cautious answer read as lacking belief in the team. Neither direction led anywhere useful for a coach standing in front of cameras.
Kataoka didn't blink.
"We give our all in every game. Seisenji's ability to come through a group of four teams speaks to their considerable strength."
The reporter tried another angle.
"Is there a specific Seisenji player who left a strong impression on you?"
"Every one of their players has something distinctive about them."
The coaching staff had used the Koshien run well in more ways than one. Kataoka had absorbed the media experience and come out the other side considerably more practiced at giving answers that were technically complete and entirely without content. He navigated around the questions the way water navigates around stone, naturally, without any visible effort.
Other reporters in the group were more straightforward in their approach. One asked directly whether Seido was quietly stepping back from the Autumn Tournament to focus its energy on the following summer. The reasoning wasn't unreasonable. The Koshien run had been long, the break that followed had been extended, and the accumulated training time compared to the other two West Tokyo powerhouses was shorter. That gap was real. Closing it before the knockout rounds would not be simple.
"That isn't the case. We give everything in every game, and we respect every opponent."
Clean, respectful, and carrying exactly zero specific information. Kataoka had become very good at this.
None of it changed the fact that Seido remained the gravitational center of the stadium. Their performance at Koshien was still recent enough to be present in every conversation. The only team to put more than ten runs on Osaka Kiryuu. More than half of all the runs that championship team had surrendered across the entire tournament. The title of strongest offensive team in the country, debated briefly in some corners of the internet and accepted almost everywhere else.
No other team had done what they did. That fact hadn't faded.
Beyond the reporters and the fans crowding the perimeter, there were players from other programs who had come for the opening ceremony and were now quietly doing their own assessment work. They studied the uniforms and jersey numbers with focused attention, pulling out phones to relay what they saw back to their coaches and captains.
"Confirmed. Zhang Han is playing outfield for Seido now."
"The other numbers haven't moved much. Miyuki is still wearing two. Whatever was being said about Chris coming back doesn't seem to be accurate."
"What about the Ace?"
The player on the phone squinted, scanning the Seido lineup methodically until he found the number he was looking for on a slender, upright figure standing near the back of the group.
"Found him. Seido's Ace is Tanba Kouichiro."
It wasn't a surprise. Most people following the team closely had already predicted this outcome. With the third-years gone and the rotation needing a clear answer, there was no one in the current Seido pitching staff better positioned for the role. Tanba was the most experienced arm they had. The circumstances had made the decision almost for them.
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