Baseball and the Azure Blue Sky

Chapter 29: Forgiving the Baseball Idiots

On the practice field Sora was still being rather grumpy and monosyllabic with her answers and when finally Sawamura and some others of the team arrived, at least the young southpaw caught her mood in an instant only by throwing her a short glance. She heard him advise his fellow first years not to come too close to her which she was incredible grateful for. Just, how come the biggest airhead around was able to understand her the best?!

Kuramochi and Miyuki whom Sora would've thought would be her biggest problem, luckily kept their distance from her voluntarily after their argument the evening before. Maybe they wanted to give her some time to think or they still had a bad conscience, but in the catcher's case that was very unlikely.

For the very first time since entering Seidou, the blue haired girl was actually glad that practice always started with running. She could get rid of her frustration and her bad vibes and moving her body around also helped with loosening up a bit.

In the batting cages she decided to practice with a ball machine. The blue head didn't even go through the trouble of trying to hit any targets. She just kept swinging with full power, smacking the balls as far away as possible and although Sora couldn't bat like a powerful guy like Maezono, her specialty was making contact at least. Until one of her cramps decided to show up with a terrible timing.

The next ball just had left the machine and was flying towards her at a fairly high tempo as her abdomen contracted painfully. Her body tensed, her fists clenched around her metal bat and she gritted her teeth. The young girl hissed and swung, but missed. The baseball hit the fence behind her.

Toujou and Kanemaru exchanged a glance.

"Sora... missed...?!" the blonde questioned incredulously.

"I've never seen Sora miss a ball coming from a machine before", Toujou said equally surprised. "He even hits the majority of my pitches. I always have to go all out to get a strike"

Shirasu who stood on the other side of Sora's spot sighed and rested his bat on his shoulder to face Kuramochi and Miyuki seriously. Maezono was switching with him and just getting ready into his batting stance.

"Whatever you two have done, you better fix it!"

"Huh?!"

Kuramochi blinked taken aback. It was rare for Shirasu to talk so openly and it was even rarer for him to accuse anyone of anything without being certain.

"Why do you think that we did something?!" Miyuki didn't hesitate to ask.

Shirasu quirked an eyebrow.

"First of all because you pestered Sawamura to take you guys with him yesterday and that even though Sora was obviously already angry at you for breaking into his dorm room", the calm and composed boy explained matter-of-factly. "And secondly... Who else would have such an extreme effect on him if not for the two of you? Sora was acting strange during breakfast as well and I'm not talking about his usual morning personality"

"Do you think he's still that pissed?" Kuramochi asked his captain, but he averted his gaze and just clicked his tongue stubbornly.

Coach Kataoka announced a short break and the team assembled in and around the dugout to grab towels, drinks and honey laced lemons. Sora was rolling her shoulder and glared at her bat in annoyance, but before either the shortstop or the brunette catcher could muster the courage to approach her, Sawamura beat them to it, plopping down on the bench right beside her, almost leaving no space in between at all.

"Hey Sora?"

He shot her his bright and sunny smile and the blue haired girl looked up to him in confusion.