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Growing up, playing professional baseball was the fairytale ending Kazuya dreamed of.
On the field, he wore a knight's armor as he defended home plate. He was a little dark and twisty inside the ribcage, but baseball touched his pauper’s heart and turned it gold.
Not much else about his childhood sparkled. Baseball, alone, was golden.
—
Kazuya likes to take his sweet time on off-season mornings. Wake up at whatever hour he wakes up. Bumble around the kitchen a little, assembling a tray of seared salmon, rice, and miso soup. Settle down in front of the TV to catch the rest of Eijun’s program. He has to make it down to Minato in an hour, so he forgoes the salmon and soup in favor of perching at the kitchen island with a raw egg over rice, and flips on Nihon TV.
It would seem that, this morning on national tv, Eijun is wrestling a pear. The pear has a pink flower glued to her head. Eijun is sporting a matching flower in her hair. For the most part, Eijun is dressed sensibly for a newscaster: yellow and gray plaid blouse, black pencil skirt, black heels. Like, her ass is sticking out as she headbutts the pear, but at least someone—most likely, the stylist on site—had the good sense to layer shorts under her skirt. It’s all good.
Surrounded by two other casters, a famous boy band member, and some guy dressed up as a sumo umpire, they—Eijun and the pear—grapple like a pair of bulls, shuffling back and forth across the center of the studio. Neither party—Eijun nor the pear—seem keen on giving a single inch.
That is until, with a rally that could summon a decomposed Oda Nobunaga from the grave, Eijun bodyslams the pear onto the ground. The pear goes skidding under the anchor desk, all fours up in the air like a tipped cow. The studio explodes in laughter, intermixed with mock-horrified inquiries about the pear’s well-being.
“Wahaha!” is Eijun's victory cry. Kazuya turns down the volume. “Take that-nassyi!”
She looks so proud of herself, arms akimbo and chest puffed out like a superhero. Kazuya shovels rice into his mouth. That blouse is doing her all the favors. He could eat three bowls of rice on just the way she looks in that blouse, standing there so righteous and triumphant.
“Ei-chan-ana stole my catchphrase and my dignity-nassyi!” mourns the pear.
Eijun beams. “Now, you know who’s top pear!”
But what does that even mean?
That’s exactly what Kuramochi’s wondering, too, in the LINE group chat. She attaches a picture of Eijun’s ass.
Wakana: Bold move to be flexing on Funassyi
Mochi: idk it’s like kirby beating up pikachu
The studio thanks the pear for stopping by. Eijun takes her place behind the podium and says, “Onto our next story: social security reform. Shiina-san, I turn it over to you.”
Sometimes, Kazuya has to remind himself what his wife does for a living. She’s an announcer for one of the most highly viewed programs on television. The morning face of Japan. For three hours every morning, she delivers the top headlines, she sometimes cries at the pieces about puppy mills and lovers reunited, and on occasion, apparently, she gets challenged by fruit-themed mascot characters to wrestle. All for the sake of energizing the nation, she says. Last year, she was voted favorite female announcer of the year, so she’s clearly doing something right.
To note: far before she became the nation's favorite, she was Kazuya’s number one.
He finishes his rice and puts down his chopsticks and just watches her, admiring the shine of her flyaway bangs and the butterfly flight of her smile. She’s right where she belongs, and he can’t believe there was a time when she thought no one needed her anywhere.
—
Kazuya did not find out until much later that Eijun had fangirled her way all the way from Nagano to Waseda University in order to be on his team. She joined as a manager during his second year. Preoccupied as he was with the new pitchers, he didn’t pay her much attention. But the other players did.
She was, in a way, incredibly popular. Something about the charm of her country bumpkin dialect and the way she loved baseball as much as the boys did.
Oh, and—
“I don’t think she wears a bra.”
“Or it’s not padded.”
“When the wind blows…”
“Minami-senpai is prettier, but damn. I wouldn’t kick Sawamura out of bed. She just seems so pure, y’know? Like you could really teach her a few things.”
Kazuya would hardly call himself a feminist, but even he thought that sounded a bit insulting. Sawamura was a good kid. She asked for Kazuya’s advice on keeping a scorebook. Her onigiri started out smashed and lopsided but she’d slowly learned to chill it on the gorilla grip. Every morning, she got to the grounds before anyone else to set up for practice and chased off the squirrels with her hollering.
As a rule, Kazuya preferred to be five minutes late than a minute early in the mornings. But when you couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t sleep. He found Sawamura standing on the mound, drawing her arm back, leg kicked high up in the air. She released a ball of air, making a slew of sound effects.
“Nice form,” said Kazuya.
She jumped a foot in the air, back rounded like a startled cat. A whole chunk of hair hadn’t made it into her ponytail, curling around her neck instead. Her face was bright red when she turned around. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry, was I supposed to knock? Doubt you would’ve heard me over the shhhhu! And pow! And kabam! What’s the kabam, anyway?”
“None of your business!” Sawamura’s left hand was in a fist, right hand in a glove.
He gestured to her pitching hand. “Southpaw? Hey, we could’ve used someone like you in our lineup.”
Her mouth pinched into a line. “I know. I wanted to sign up as a player.”
“You played in junior high?”
“And high school! Our team couldn’t get enough players so it was co-ed. We didn’t get to play many games because we always lost the first round.”
That was just how the cookie crumbled. Losers walked the plank. But how’d she end up marching herself all the way over to Waseda?
“You didn’t know you couldn’t play before you tested here?”
“I figured, but supporting the team as a manager was the next best thing!” She punched her glove out toward him.
Kazuya raised his eyebrows. You could drag a pitcher off the mound by force but, those single-minded creatures, they all went kicking and screaming. “Is it?”
Eijun stared at him for a second. Then, her face crumpled like a rejected love letter. “It sucks! I wanted to be the ace. Irreplaceable, you know?!” Under the morning light, her eyes did a wistful twinkly, glimmery thing. “Ahhh, you're so lucky you were born a boy. Can you imagine not being able to play? What would you do, Miyuki Kazuya?!”
“That’s Miyuki-senpai to you, brat!” he said, laughing off her question with all his might.
Because, see, at the time, a future without baseball was a future he refused to entertain.
—
The thought, even as an abstraction, was frightening.
The autumn of the second year of high school lived in his memories as a long, dark night. One injury. Six weeks on the bench.
You learned a lot about yourself when you deviated from your daily routine. Once you peeled back the protective barrier of skin, what would come bleeding out?
Kauzya went to class. He did his homework. He teased the underclassmen. With baseball, he was the prodigy catcher and cleanup and captain. Without baseball, he was just a pair of glasses with a nasty personality and mediocre grades.
That wasn’t who he was.
After all that it’s cost him, this couldn’t be all that he was.
—
Second year of college. End of summer. He made first string. Waseda crushed her first four series of the season. He was quickly earning his place behind home plate as well as the respect of his team and coaches. He felt like a million bucks.
Then.
During batting practice: a shooting pain.
The sleeping tiger had awakened to remind Kazuya how to be afraid.
—
Even through his eye mask, Kazuya could tell the sun was barely up when someone barged into his dorm room and flung his curtains open. His alarm for morning practice hadn’t gone off yet. Although, in his current state, he doubted anyone would come looking for him if he didn’t show up. He supposed he couldn’t afford to lose his sports scholarship. There was no way he could afford Waseda without it, and he couldn’t stomach asking his dad for help. Not when the old man could barely get through a thought without hacking up his lungs. Maybe Kazuya should cut his losses and start working in earnest on Plan B. That was the whole point of going to university, to gain skills for a normal job after baseball. Only, that phase of his life was meant to be the epilogue, the afterthought that came fifteen, twenty years from now, and not before his story even had the chance to start.
“Good morning, Miyuki-senpai!”
Was he still dreaming? When he pushed up his eye mask, the world was a blur. He felt his bed dip. He smelled the bubblegum scent of Sawamura’s shampoo. The warmth radiating from her legs through his comforter. The sound of her noisy breathing. He imagined her dragging around a leash in her mouth, pacing circles around him.
He threw an arm over his eyes. “’M not taking you on a walk. Bad girl.”
“Not a dog!” Eijun barked. “We’re going out, come on! It’ll be fun.”
Kazuya frowned. “What.”
“Let’s go see the fall leaves! And pick persimmons and chestnuts!”
“I…” What? “What about practice?”
“I got us the day off.” Simple as that.
“Sawamura,” Kazuya sighed, groping his bedside table for his glasses. “Who let you into the boys' dorm? And how the hell did you get a key to my room?”
Sawamura cackled gleefully. “I work in mysterious ways!” The joggers Kazuya had left folded over his chair flopped over his head. “Chop, chop. Time flows as the mountain stream carrying autumn foliage!”
As Kazuya shoved his glasses on his face and pushed himself up onto his elbows, he heard the Pokemon battle theme playing.
EIJUN used Poetry. It’s extra effective!
She was smiling, wearing a plaid, loose-fit shirt tucked into a pair of black track pants. Her long hair was down from its usual ponytail, flipping at the ends. There was something different about her eyes. What was it? Kazuya leaned in to see.
Her eyes widened. He figured it out: a black line right traced the root of her dark lashes, kind of like how Kuramochi did hers. When Sawamura sucked her lip into her mouth, he noticed the glossy finish of her lips.
“Miyuki…-senpai?”
He jerked back out of her personal space. He said, “You have a big streak of sunblock on your nose,” which was true.
“Oh.” She rubbed it away. Her fingernails were still orange from when he lent her his polish. She was trying to kick the nail-biting habit. “Thanks.”
Kazuya stared out his window overlooking the grounds. He liked chestnuts. His cute little kouhai got all dolled up to take him to see the fall foliage. He wasn’t a monster.
—
Many years later, Kazuya would learn that the gossip rags could turn even Mother Teresa into a monster. Kazuya was no Mother Teresa, but all he did was get engaged to his long-time girlfriend. God forbid, truly.
In Japan, a certain notoriety followed pretty lady newscasters who married professional athletes. The papers got wind of their engagement the week after the Swallows stole the title at the Japan Series. It was impossible to not go into a convenience store or the dentist without seeing their faces splashed all over the front page of every rag in sight.
Out of curiosity, he skimmed one of the articles in the bathroom of his physical therapist’s office.
Blah blah… the two met as player and manager for the Waseda University baseball team blah blah… Sawamura-ana was a manager for a year and a half on the team that would go on to achieve a three-time Emperor’s Cup streak under Miyuki-senshuu’s leadership blah blah blah…
In broad strokes, the article hit the pertinent points of their university life. And then it all went downhill from there.
Kazuya’s manager warned him that there would be the paparazzi camped outside their apartment, so they evacuated to Kuramochi and Wakana’s place for the night. This was before those two moved to New York.
Eijun’s hair, a straight lob back in the day, was damp when she answered the door. She’d borrowed a pair of Wakana’s pajamas, which cropped short at the ankles and clung tight across the shoulders on her.
“Hey,” she said, slipping into the spaces between his arms. Her nose was cold against his collarbone. “You all right?”
“You smell like peaches,” he said into her hair. Easy breezy did it. “Don’t tell me the Kuramochis use the shampoo Mei’s always singing about on TV. Damn traitors.”
This got a quiet chuckle. “That’s what I said.”
He exchanged looks with Kuramochi, who stood at the end of the foyer with her arms crossed. She tipped her head, offering a sympathetic smile-grimace.
“So, the talk of the town is that you got engaged,” she deadpanned. Two weeks ago, for their engagement present, she’d gifted them a pair trip to an onsen ryokan. Guess it’d be a while before they dare make good on that.
“Thanks for taking in the huddled masses,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved him in. “Come help your fiancée tear a whole chicken limb from limb.”
Once, Wakana asked him what he liked about Eijun. Wakana was in town visiting for winter break Kazuya’s last year of university, the week before he was going to visit his new team in Sendai. They sat together making small talk at the bench inside the train station, waiting for Eijun to get back from the bathroom.
Her question came out of nowhere. A dozen different smart, evasive remarks worked their way up his throat but the answer that came out was a total dark horse. “She eats like she’s trying to pass off as a fellow human.”
Wakana turned to him, blinked, then burst into laughter. He’d been dating Eijun for two years by then, and it was the first time she’d ever shown anything beyond faint amusement at anything he said.
“God,” she wheezed. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s like she was raised by wolves or something. You ever seen her eat a mango?”
“Oh, I got the whole seminar on the Sawamura Method,” he said. “And then with bananas—”
“I pretend not to know her when she does that.”
“The way she rips them in half with her bare hands? Yeah. She's really...” The first time she’d shown him, they were at a lunch buffet. That day, they had to eat six bananas each because they couldn’t stop competing over who could get a cleaner break on theirs. But Wakana didn’t need to know about that. She was already looking at him weird, like she was turning him end for end, emptying his pockets. He rubbed the back of his neck. “...Really something.”
Wakana smiled. “You’re a lot more smitten than I thought.”
“Is that so hard to believe?” he said, trying to protect his change.
“Then, why are you going to Sendai?”
There it was. The stranger sitting between them on the bench, the one they’ve been talking through and around, pretending he didn’t exist. Sendai-san.
“I’m going to play baseball. I’m needed there.”
The first snowflake fluttered leisurely down from the sky. It melted instantly on the pavement.
What about Eijun? said Sendai-san. She can’t just go chasing you around like when she ran out to Tokyo all on her own. Now, she has dreams of her own that don’t revolve around you.
What about Eijun?
“Uohhh!!!”
Kazuya and Wakana both whipped around in time to see Eijun dash out onto the platform. “The first snow! It’s the first snow, everyone!”
She lifted her face skyward and opened her mouth. She looked so silly with tongue out, arms outstretched, chasing down the first blooms of winter. “I got it!” she hollered, pumping a fist in the air. “Gah, it’s so cold.”
Who even tried to catch snowflakes on their tongue at their age?
Even though the snow fell every winter, who still found it so tirelessly wonderful that they just had to swallow it whole?
—
Later that night, while Kuramochi was on a conference call with some art guru named Darren, Kazuya found Wakana and Eijun out on the balcony. There was a loveseat swing out there, on which a butt-shaped stain had once been discovered.
Wakana was heading back inside. Kazuya said, “Dunno where you guys keep your ladles so I left it on the counter.”
“Million dollar hand doing our dishes.” She grinned, patting him on the shoulder. “Thanks for your good work, Miyuki-kun.”
Once the balcony door shut behind him, he said, “I still can’t tell if she likes me or hates me,” joining Eijun on the sex swing. (The name stuck; thankfully, the stain did not.)
Eijun nestled into his side. Her now-dry hair was scraped up into a bun at the top of her head. It bumped against his jaw. “Her mood’s all screwy from the hormones the clinic’s got her on. It’s not you! If she hated you, she’d be turning you to stone with her eyes, not putting out a futon for you.”
“Probably helps that you’re only, like, her favorite person.”
“She doesn’t just put up with you for me!” Eijun insisted. “She’s carrot-and-stick with everyone. It’s how she keeps the kiddos in line at school.”
A couple years back, over drinks, Kuramochi had once professed in length to Kazuya about the way that Wakana’s whole carrot-and-stick thing got her—quote—fucking sprung. Ever since then, Kazuya has never really been able to hear the phrase “carrot and stick” without invoking a vague sense of trauma.
“I’m not complaining. It’s nice that everyone’s so protective of you,” Kazuya said. “Less for me to worry about.”
“Why are you worried about me?” Eijun demanded, bun clipping him in the chin. “What have I ever done?!”
“How about the time you got delivered to the center for lost children at Disneyland because you decided to chase down every single funnel cake stand we passed?”
“At least I didn’t go hungry while I waited for you guys to pick me up,” Eijun grumbled. “And technically! I delivered myself there. As a strong, independent woman.”
“At the center for lost children.”
Eijun hmphed. “Anyway,” she stressed, “you should worry more about yourself! Are you sure you’re...” The string of lights above them flickered. She whipped around to look, whacking Kazuya across the face with her bun again. "...okay?"
“Watch the tail, pup,” he said, pushing her bun away. It swung right back like a bobble-head doll.
“Not a dog!” she protested, mock-glaring at him with a pout that he had to kiss.
And so—
“Oh,” she said. Her face glowed pink under the now-steady fairy lights.
“Not a dog,” he agreed. “You’re the woman I’m going to marry.”
She sucked her lip into her mouth. “You’re not mad about the articles?”
“They come part and parcel with our jobs.” Kazuya shrugged. “But I'm not happy about it.”
“Yeah!” Eijun got up on her knees, making the swing creak. “They said all that stuff because I’m not as big a deal as you yet. Just they wait!” She swung a fist menacingly at the air journalists. An old woman passing by with her groceries on the sidewalk looked around, startled, then shuffled briskly past.
Kazuya yanked Eijun back down. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“It’s so frustrating! You’re Miyuki Kazuya, and they’re using me to dirty your name, talking about how you could’ve done better and how you’re gonna be like every other baseball player with an announcer wife.” Who cheats on their announcer wife with younger, prettier cabaret girls at away games. Eijun has the grace not to spell that part out. “They’d never have said those nasty things if I was—I don’t know, Satoru-kun! Or Narumiya-san!”
“If you were either of those two, they’d be writing a very different set of nasty things,” Kazuya said. “But you’re you, and I’m me. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”
Eijun looked down at her hand. “You think so? For me, I mean. Don’t get me wrong, I love assisting on variety shows and reporting on festivals and stuff, but! I guess, sometimes I just feel like you’re moving forward so fast, I don’t know how to keep up.”
He took her hand and filled the spaces between her fingers with his own. “I have games to play and pitchers to wrangle, but eventually, I’ll outgrow teams. They’ll need new forces. You’re the only one I want to keep by my side, no matter what.” He flipped their joined hands, so that the gold band on her finger winked under the light. “Isn’t that what this means?”
Her smile grew in measures. He saw himself suspended in her eyes, two shining drops of bright water. “I’m going to energize Japan’s mornings so hard and make you proud you chose this humble Sawamura Eijun to be your partner!”
Kazuya laughed, and he felt a fist he didn’t know was clenched around his heart relax. She already made him proud, everyday, being exactly who she was. Did he really need to tell her that?
I mean, just look at her.
—
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
He grew up in a sleepy factory town on the outskirts of Tokyo. Like many boys when they were little, he looked up at his father and saw a man that was greater than life. His father wielded a giant hammer and had magical powers. He slashed open steel chains and beat the stubborn material into submission. He made sparks prism off in reds and rangy yellows. It was like watching the stars go up in flames.
Back in those days, his father was a legend in his eyes, a true Midas: the king who was blessed with the power to turn all that he touched into gold. His Majesty lived in a two-bedroom apartment above the steel mill with a finicky TV and no air conditioning, but what mattered was that, at his touch, ordinary things became extraordinary.
The boy hoped he’d turned golden under his father’s touch, too.
But whatever the magic was, it must have been fast fading. The boy was only seven, with his first loose baby tooth, when gold darkened to rust around him. The kingdom lost its queen. The denizens forsook the land. His father, who was not a king but a dime-a-dozen steelworker making chicken feed in a dying industry, grew wrinkled and reticent.
The boy learned the rest of the story: Midas was a king who had more than enough to be happy, and in craving more, he was cursed with the power to turn all that he touched into gold.
Greed is bad. That was the moral of the story.
So then, here’s a different beginning: The boy, who was neither prince of knight, wished for one thing only. Give him baseball, and he would be happy. He wouldn’t ask for more. Soar for the sky with too much on your shoulders, and gravity, like a thunderbolt, would strike you down.
He’s seen it happen before.
—
Eijun keeps nagging at him to loosen up his purse strings now that there’s more zeros in their various accounts than he could’ve ever imagined, but old habits die hard. Back in college, he clipped a lot of coupons. He collected stamp cards. He didn’t have money to spend on so frivolous a thing as concert tickets, which was exactly why Kuramochi gave him a pair for his birthday every year.
“I don’t listen to this band,” Kazuya said, the year he turned 20.
“I know. Eijun does. You should thank her for getting you back on your feet.”
Kazuya would. He didn’t need Kuramochi to tell him that. “I thought this was my birthday present.”
“Enjoy it, then. Ei-chan and Kazu-kun’s first date.” Kuramochi smirked, eyes twinkling of pure evil.
What perhaps neither Kuramochi nor Kazuya saw coming was that, by the time the concert rolled around early the next year, it would not be Ei-chan and Kazu-kun’s first date—or even their seventh. It was hard to define what they were doing together, other than the fact that they both liked it. Being with Sawamura came as easy as breathing.
So, when the song went, “You were the one to reach for my hand first,” like a monkey, Kazuya reached for her hand.
“Let’s take the long way home,” went another song, and like a different monkey, Sawamura dragged Kazuya through a park, then a convenience store, then a game center before Kazuya finally got the hint.
“You said Kuramochi’s at her parents’ this weekend?” he said, and that was yet another beginning.
—
Just for the record, the boys of Waseda baseball club had nothing to teach Sawamura Eijun. According to her, “I don’t know where you city folk get the idea that country bumpkins are sheltered when it comes to this stuff. There’s nothing to do in the boonies but sex and bowling!”
Kazuya would be seriously impressed if she was as good at bowling as blowjobs. He wondered what her high score was. He wondered about the people she loved before him.
—
Here’s one more beginning
(for now):
Kazuya’s mind was a black mantra of we won we won we won we won. Because Waseda had won, 6-4, and for the first time, the Emperor Cup belonged to Kazuya’s team. The team spilled out onto the field, dogpiling each other, and screaming, and laughing, and shouting. There was so much shouting.
He lifted his eyes to the stands, and when he spotted Sawamura, the noise faded away. She was smiling hard enough to split her face right open. She waved the crimson Waseda flag so hard she might just dislocate her shoulders.
Earlier, right before the game, she’d told him, “I’m thinking about quitting the team.”
And he’d said, “Haha, are you filming a prank for TikTok again?”
But she always meant every word she gave him.
Later, after the game, after they celebrated the victory with the team, when it was just the two of them and their foreheads were pressed together and Kazuya could feel everyone of her eyelashes, she said, “You were so awesome today, I can’t believe you and Sanada-san got that out at the bottom of the seventh, and then the way you sent the ball flying right at the top of the eighth—” She sucked in a shaky, excited breath, and kissed him again. “You’re a hero, Miyuki Kazuya! I’m so glad I came for you.”
The park was cold at night. Kazuya held her close so that she couldn’t see his face. “I love you,” he said. “Thank you for being here.” Don’t leave me. Even if you get tired of my baseball, stay for me.
Her laughter was quiet and happy. “Your heart is beating so fast.”
“I just confessed to my stalker fan who also somehow knows how to get into my dorm room. This is fear. Horror at what I’ve granted you the power to do to me,” he said.
She put her hands on each side of his face and declared, “This Sawamura Eijun will only use her powers for good and not evil! I love you, too, Kazuya. Somehow, I knew coming to find you would lead me to the right answer.”
Her hands were so warm. “Which is?"
“I always knew that baseball wasn’t something I could keep on doing forever, but I loved it, you know? I wanted to fight for it. Just love it and cherish it and protect it, but all it ends up making me feel like is Villager B, and I’m tired of it! I’ve been stuck trying to make something that I’ve outgrown work for so long, and it wasn’t until I watched you claw your way out of your dark place that I realized that I’m the only one who can change what I can’t accept. I’m going to find my own stage to shine,” she said. “One where I don’t have to wish that I was born any other way than exactly the way that I am.”
It seemed that the human capacity for relearning love was like bamboo: far more flexible than you’d believe at first glance.
“Then, I can’t wait to be your number one fan,” Kazuya told her.
—
In March of the year after their wedding, Eijun became the morning face of Nihon TV. The viewers lovingly called her Ei-chan-ana. Her popularity skyrocketed through the roof.
Soon enough, the rumblings of a certain cohort of fans started reaching Kazuya’s ear.
“Heh. This is just like college,” Kuramochi said. Kazuya’s plane back from spring training landed in the early morning. She’d offered to fetch him at the airport in exchange for him helping with her packing for New York. As he understood it, the situation was quite dire. The wife was not pleased. “Remember how much of a thirst trap she was in college? She was just feeding herself to the lions being on that team. God knows how she got away unscathed.”
“She didn’t. She ended up with me,” Kazuya said.
“Well, she could’ve done worse,” Kuramochi said. “And yeah, I don’t know what you’re being such a big baby about. You got the girl. She married you.”
“Because you would never get bent out of shape if strangers were being creepy about your wife.”
“Wakana’s safe from creepiness. Everyone at her work is too tired from wrangling little kids to be creepy. And if they’re creepy, they’re in jail. Really, you only have the sheer amount of newscaster porn out there to blame.” She dropped this last bit casually at a stop sign.
“...I’m sorry, the what?”
Kuramochi threw him some serious side-eye. “Come on, don’t play dumb. Your wife isn’t here. You can admit to watching porn.” If anything, Eijun was the one sending him clip recs in the first place, not that Kuramochi needed to know. “You’ve really never seen it before?”
“I’m kind of disturbed that you have,” Kazuya said.
“Hey, man.” Kuramochi threw up a hand. “The thumbnails auto-play. I do not see Eijun that way. Do not engage the nuclear codes on me.”
“So, what, people get off on having the news read to them erotically?”
Kuramochi snorted. “No, that’s boring. The sexy part is watching a smart, poised lady read the news normally, all the while under the table... they’re getting railed.”
Oh.
Huh.
Kazuya desperately reeled his mind out of the gutter. “I cannot believe we, as a society, would objectify professional women like that in their workplace. I, for one, am outraged,” he said matter-of-factly. Very solemn, very serious.
Kuramochi threw out a punch, cackling. “You’re such an asshole.”
It was hard not to crack a smile. He made a show of rubbing his shoulder. “Hey, watch it. You trying to send me back to PT?”
“Shut up, you’re fine,” she shot back. When he didn’t say anything, she glanced over at him as she turned the corner. They passed the gallery in Roppongi where she held her first exhibition. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Never been better,” he said, and it was true. He let the grin overtake his face. His performance at spring training proved that he could finally play baseball the way he was meant to. His heart sang in anticipation of the season to come.
“You think you’ll ever make the move over to the States?”
“Never say never, but”—Kazuya shrugged—“I’m happy with the game I’m playing in Japan. Eijun’s career is here. It’ll be good for our parents to be nearby for the kids.” Kazuya didn’t think anything of what he’d said; it was something he and Eijun had talked a lot about recently. If Eijun’s told Wakana about it, the news clearly hadn’t been relayed along yet.
“Shit,” she said, quietly at first. Then, she banged her hand on the steering wheel. “Shit!” She was laughing, loud and bright.
“Are you having a stroke?” Kazuya said. “Pull over if you’re having a stroke.”
“Fuck me sideways, I can’t believe that the loner from high school who placed all his chips in his mitt is now all, I can’t go to the MLB because I’m gonna be too busy having babies.” Kazuya adjusted his glasses, feeling his face heat. Kuramochi must have taken his embarrassed silence as offense because she added, “I’m saying that as a good thing, asshole. You’re making me rethink New York. I can’t wait to make fun of your stupid face when you find out you’re gonna be a dad.”
“Aren’t you going to New York so that you can swindle babies from the government?” he reminded her.
“Oh yeah.” She hummed happily. “Guess we do need to take care of that first.”
They rolled to a stop in front of a stoplight. The pedestrian crossing in front of them was counting down. Kazuya watched a family of four cross the street, the kids in the middle bouncing and swinging their joined hands. Did Kazuya ever think, before he met Eijun, that he could have his own slice of an ordinary kind of happiness? Did he think that his best friend who got her heart broken by a different girl every month would now be crossing oceans to get the proper recognition for the love and commitment she shared with the love of her life? That, if all went well, they’d both be crossing into their thirties joined by the hand with the family they yearned for all along?
Funny how life really did change on a dime.
Bloop, went the pedestrian crossing.
Bloop.
Bloop.
“Gonna miss you, you know,” he said to the window.
The countdown ended. The light turned green. Kuramochi stepped on the gas.
“Okay, puke, you’re giving me second-hand embarrassment.” She sucked her teeth. “Just—we can video call, yeah? And it’s not like we’re never coming back to Japan again. Or you two can come visit New York. Wakana’s already planning to put in a tatami room for you and Ejiun to stay in.”
“You’ll never get her off the floor. She will become one with the tatami.”
“Whatever, just promise me you guys won’t do weird sex stuff on the tatami.”
“So, normal sex stuff is allowed.”
“Ugh, I wish you wouldn’t. Shit’s a bitch to clean off tatami.”
“And you know that… how?”
Kuramochi pressed her lips together. “In the spirit of America, I’m going to plead the fifth.”
—
The chilly autumn breeze grazes Kazuya’s neck as he passes by the Jingu Stadium. He steps through puddles of fallen gingko leaves. The sun melts over the horizon like orange sherbet. It’s a day much like that day eight years ago when Eijun had given him the courage to choose once upon another time—and he bets she doesn’t even know it.
She greets him at the door when he comes home, still dressed as she did on the morning broadcast. Her arms wrap all the way around him. When she comes up to her tiptoes to kiss him, he deepens it and makes her gasp.
“So I take it the negotiations went well?” Her smile is a stamp against his neck.
“Another two years,” he says. “I guess they like me.”
“Your team loves you. You’re everyone’s favorite!”
“No, that’s you,” he says. “Even though you’re a violent, pear-throwing war criminal.”
Her face slackens with surprise. “You saw my broadcast this morning!"
“Just Ei-chan-ana doing what Ei-chan-ana does best. And not that I mind, but”—he runs his hand down the smooth fabric of her blouse—“why are you still dressed up for work?”
The pretty petals of her eyelids flutter, and her smile turns coy. “Mochi-senpai and Wakana are getting here tonight and staying for a whooooole week,” she says, twirling the black bowtie ribbon at the base of her neck around a finger. Her nails are crimson today. “I know you like this blouse… And I was hoping we could celebrate your contract with a bang…”
“That’s a lot of reasons.” Kazuya chuckles. “I like you in most things. Even that god-awful brown sweatshirt with the red lines down the side.”
“Yeah, except”—she giggles when Kazuya pops open the clasp of her bra through the thin silk—“you never get me naked so fast as when I’m wearing this. It’s the sex blouse!”
“When you say it like that, it only reminds me sex swing. You remember that thing? I can’t believe those two shipped it to New York.” His hands drift down to her pencil skirt, sliding underneath the hem. “Nixed the shorts?”
“Returned them to the stylist—hey.” She frowns even as she’s surrendering to another kiss. This one makes her a little wobbly. “How did you know?”
“All of Japan knows about your perky ass in those shorts. Better send that stylist an extra nice gift for New Years.” He’s having a hard time concentrating when her perfect breasts are pressed flush against him. He makes quick work of the top three buttons. Her loosely hanging bra flops forward, revealing the creamy expanse of skin and a peek of rosy areolas. There is too much he wants to do. His mind is all over the place. He needs three more pairs of hands to touch her like he wants.
“You mean like tentacle porn?!”
He must have said that last part aloud.
“Ten years later, and I still don’t know how your brain works. Might need to consult the manual again. Tentacle porn. Fucking hell.” The memory of a conversation resurfaces. He could’ve done without hearing the cackle of Kuramochi’s smarmy voice in his ear, but—“You know what what’s much, much sexier than tentacles.”
“What? Don’t be dramatic! I’m horny,” she says, rocking her hips against his leg. She licks her lips. Her eyes sparkle.
He presses his mouth against her ear. “An ace announcer who can read the news with perfect poise while she’s getting eaten out under the desk.”
A whine escapes Eijun’s throat as she sinks her nails into Kazuya’s arm. “My briefing files are on the counter.”
“Eager, are we?” Kazuya teases.
“I wanna come on your face,” she says, which is, apparently, exactly what she needed to say for him to uproot her off the floor and carry her across the condo to her office. Along the way, he snatches the files from the kitchen.
They’re both breathing hard by the time he settles between her thighs. He didn’t quite fit under her tiny workstation, but it’s close enough just to have her splayed open on her desk chair, hands clutched excitedly around the stack of briefs.
He throws one of her lean legs up over his shoulder and peels aside the damp crotch of her panties. A sticky, thin thread stretches between the cotton and her lips. They glisten, beckoning him for a taste.
Her butt is already floating eagerly off the seat. “D-do you want the one about the armed robbery or cancer?”
Um, neither. “Isn’t there anything less…” Kazuya can’t think of the word, any word, when all the blood is rushing to his cock at the ripe scent of her.
“Recycling?” she offers.
Maybe he’ll never be able to separate their trash without getting inappropriately excited again, but fuck it. “Tell me about recycling.”
She starts off strong, voice steady as he kisses her soft inner thighs. His mouth traces the honey trail of where she’s starting to spill out, chasing it back to the source.
“As the pace of plastic removal is accelerating worldwide, including plastic shopping bags and straws…” She inhales sharply when his tongue finds her clit and circles it through the hood. She’s packing back there, he knows, and it’s always a point of anticipation for him to pull back the curtains and see the mushroom-shaped nub red and swollen and just waiting for him to suck it. She chokes out, “The pressure is also rising for PET bottles with a h-high plastic content,” going squeaky at the end.
There’s something distinctly satisfying about making a struggle out of a task that’s normally second nature to someone. She’s stopped reading now that his tongue is in her pussy, licking her from the inside out. He pulls away, wiping his face with the back of a hand. “Ei-chan-ana?” He tips his head innocently. “Is this too hard for you? Do you need another announcer to switch you out?”
Her hazy eyes sharpen and her slackened mouth sets into a line of resolve. “I can do my job! You go back to doing yours!”
Kazuya smirks. “Yes, ma’am.”
To her credit, she gets through most of the article. Something about a new design of recycling boxes next to vending machines. It’s hard to hear when her thighs are clamped around his ears, and he’s losing himself in the slick heat of her pussy in his mouth and the soft surrender of her breast in his hand. His other hand is on his own cock. He’s only human.
The article is about as disheveled as she is when she abandons post. She tosses it onto her desk and anchors her hands into his shoulder. He thinks she’s ready to make good on her plan to come on his face, but instead, she pushes back away from him and slides down to the floor.
Her ponytail is a puffy bird's nest, her bra flops loose around her midsection, letting her breasts spill out, and her skirt is bunched at her waist like a belt. She's a sopping mess between the legs. She grabs the back of his neck and kisses him like nothing else matters. She kisses so long and so hard she’s not only taking the air in his lungs but the entire organ, too.
He lets her, because he’s learned that loving her never cost a thing.
“I love you,” he tells her.
“I love you, too!” She licks her lips. “You taste like me.”
She likes that. Possessive little shit. She’s half-crawled her way into his lap. He pulls her in the rest of the way. “What happened, changed your mind?”
“I was about to come, but I also really wanted to kiss you, and then I wanted to come while kissing you.”
“I see your dilemma, greedy,” but he thinks it’s sweet. “So, what do you want to do?”
She’s eyeing his cock, jutting against her lower abdomen. She reaches for it, gives it a soft stroke that makes Kazuya pulse in her hand. She rises to her knees, and Kazuya reads her sign, supporting her hips with his hands. “I want to ride you…” she says, breathing shallowly as he stretches her open. “…while kissing you…” The thickest part of his cock pops in, and her whole body goes slack with relief for a moment before her mouth curves into a smile, then she begins to move. “...And drive. you. crazy.”
“You mean you’re gonna show me who’s top pear?” he grinds out around a moan.
Her muscles contract around him when she laughs. Her mouth is a string of fairy lights. He kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her. They exchange a whole grammar of sound that gets them so tongue-tied and tangled on a heartvine it’s impossible to tell whose love is pulsing through whose veins.
When they’ve said all there is to say, they lie boneless and spent on the hardwood, breathing quietly. Eijun searches for his hand blindly. He links their fingers and hangs on tight. The pitcher’s calluses have smoothed out. She moved on from one dream in order to live out another. That kid who stood on the mound yelling about how she wanted to be irreplaceable is now the heart and soul of Japan’s mornings. So maybe he does have just one more thing to say:
He murmurs, “I am so impressed by you.”
She doesn’t get it. “Hehe. Yeah, that was good, wasn’t it?”
“I’m saying”—he sighs, feeling silly for pressing the point—“that I’m proud of you. Of what you do. Of how hard you’ve worked to get here. Of who you are.”
For a moment, she stops breathing. Her arm tightens around him. Then, she says, “So you do know how to compliment me!”
He chuckles under his breath. “It’s because you’re always fishing that I don’t want to give it to you!”
“Well, that just sounds mean,” she accuses.
“You knew that about me before you married me.”
“You just pretend to be mean because you don’t want people to know about your tofu bits.” She pokes at his chest. “You’re not half bad.”
“Like 8.5 out of 10?”
She doesn’t get this one either, not that he expected her to. It was so long ago. “Now who’s fishing? Miyuki Kazuya, you know you’re a 200 out of 10!”
“You don't have to sound so mad about it,” he teases.
“I’m not mad, I’m hungry!” she insisted, pushing herself up onto her feet. She turns and starts walking toward the kitchen, leaving Kazuya to admire her bubble butt. All of it. Sans shorts. “I nearly starved waiting for you to come home! I’m going to order take out. I want oinari and shumai and kanitama and steak and croquette!”
No one makes him laugh like she does. “Don’t go too crazy. How many people do you think you’re eating for?”
Eijun pauses in her steps. She turns slowly. Then smiles. “I was waiting to tell you.”
—
So I guess, then: once upon a final time.
—
By the time Kazuya and Eijun got back into Tokyo with a backpack packed full with roasted chestnuts and persimmons, ripe to bursting, the day was late. Eijun had failed to mention that the farm was out in Saitama and that the owner was a family friend, who insisted that they stay for tea and snacks, which was then followed by an impromptu game of magical banana with the kids that got off from school just as they’d been ready to go the first time. (Note to self: never stand downwind of Eijun when playing word association games. Her curveball brain will be the cause of your demise.)
The sun had started to set by the time they stepped foot onto the Jingu Gaien Ginkgo Avenue. Overhead, the gingko trees formed a golden canopy fit for a king. Under their feet, the street was paved in gold. Kazuya had lost count of the number of weekends he'd spent at the Meiji Jingu Stadium, fighting for the Emperor’s cup. Not even 10 minutes away, there was something else equally as perfect and golden just waiting for him to take notice.
“Beautiful, right?”
Eijun’s hair was windswept and messy. She was eating a persimmon like a tangerine and turning her hands sticky and orange. Her eyes were doing that twinkling, glimmering thing again. This time, Kazuya felt his heart do a reciprocal wiggly, skippy thing.
He swallowed. “Why’d you do all this?”
Eijun shoved the rest of the persimmon in her mouth. She garbled, “What do you mean why? Didn’t you have fun?” The wind blew, and a shuffle of leaves took flight like butterflies through the air. Eijun reached out to catch one with her hand. She wiggled it against his neck, giggling as he batted her away. “Don’t you remember fun?”
How she got away with being so uppity and annoying, he’d never understand. “Baseball is fun.”
Eijun twisted around to walk backwards in front of him, fanning herself with the gingko leaf as she looked at him. She said, “Even though I love the Miyuki Kazuya on the field the best, the rest of you isn’t bad either. You know that, right?”
Did he? If he did, would he feel like crying in that moment?
It took more effort than usual to flash his most bastardly smile. “Not bad, hmm?”
“Well, like! Eight and a half out of ten! Don’t get carried away,” she warned.
“I don’t know, 8.5 out of 10 is pretty generous. You plan this whole day to cheer me up… bring me to a place that’s full of couples…” He gestured at the people traveling in pairs around them, hand-in-hand. Pink seeped across her cheeks; gold butterflies fluttered in his stomach. “It almost sounds like you like me.”
“I—!” She balled her hands into fists, as if her feelings might come rolling out from her palms. “I don’t not like you…?!”
“Well, I like you, Sawamura,” said Kazuya.
There. It was out there. He couldn’t take it back.
And he didn’t want to.
That day wasn’t the day Kazuya fell in love with Eijun. But he does think, from that day forward, that he never again plays baseball because he’s afraid.
He plays for the same reason he kisses Eijun a week later. For the same reason he goes to Sendai but leaves her with a promise. For the same reason he makes the vow to love, respect, and protect her for as long as he lives.
Because baseball is not his entire life story, and he gets to choose his own happily ever after.