“Anyway, I remember him keeling over during practice one day, clutching his shoulder in pain. Then the next day, we all found out that he’d apparently done permanent damage to it. They said it was probably due to overuse and that the inflammation was so bad he’d probably need to stop playing baseball altogether… The whole team was in shambles over the news, I tell ya.”
“Wow. It was really that serious, huh?”
“Yeah, none of us could believe it either. But obviously, it was Akito who took the news the hardest. He’d always been extremely careful to stretch before practice and whatnot every day, because he really had his sights set on going all the way to the majors. He was even getting scouted by a few teams, and he loved to talk endlessly about which one he might choose if he had his pick of the litter. So I think it hit him really, really hard. And, well…the fact that he’d put so many years of hard work into refining his game probably only made it that much more crushing.”
At this point, Hayase’s face grew dark.
“At first, he tried to play it cool, like it didn’t even bother him at all. That was really hard to watch. Then, as winter rolled around…that’s when he really started to lose it. He was always a pretty short-tempered guy, but now he was downright violent. If he ever heard that anyone was talking smack about him, he’d just go up and punch them right in the face, no questions asked. People were really afraid of him. No one even wanted to say his name anymore, out of fear that he might take it the wrong way.”
This conversation was starting to seriously depress me. Akito had been putting in the work toward being a professional baseball player each and every day since I was in elementary school. I could only imagine how devastating it was for him to hear that he’d never be able to wear that pitcher’s glove ever again. As unfortunate as it was, I could totally understand how that could turn a man violent. Gripping my knees with both hands, I asked Hayase my next question:
“…I’ve also heard rumors that Akito got himself involved with some less-than-reputable types of people over on the mainland. Is there any truth to that?”
“Oh, yeah… I’ve heard those ones too. I honestly don’t know if there’s any validity to them or not, but let’s just say I wouldn’t be too surprised. Even back in high school, he had a bad habit of borrowing money from our classmates and never paying it back.”
“Wow. Gotta admit, I have a hard time imagining that.”
Hayase let out a heavy sigh.
“Yeah, I really don’t know what happened to him,” she said. “He started making one stupid decision after another, until eventually it killed him…”
There was a heavy hint of regret in her voice, and I had no idea what to say in response. That may have been a good thing in its own way, because she kept on talking to fill the void. It was as though she were at a confessional or something.
“I always looked up to Akito too, y’know,” she went on. “Ever since we were in elementary school. I remember I used to bring sports drinks and lemon slices down to him in the dugout way back when he was in little league, just trying to get his attention. This was long before I was ever team manager, by the way. I’d go with him whenever he’d travel to big tournaments or anything, even then. And then in high school, I finally worked up the courage to ask him out, and we became boyfriend and girlfriend, and things were really great…for a while.”
Hayase pressed one hand to her forehead.
“But the moment he injured his shoulder and couldn’t play baseball anymore, I couldn’t figure out how to interact with him. It was like he became a totally different person, and I was starting to get scared… Eventually, I had to distance myself from him like everyone else.”
All I could really do was sit back and hear her out. I knew the Rollback would hit any minute now, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt her in the middle of this heartfelt venting session, no matter the circumstances.
“I couldn’t totally turn my back on him either, y’know? Even then. I mean, it was really hard to see the guy I always looked up to and had a crush on growing up reduced to such a miserable wreck… Then the other day, I worked up the courage to reach out and ask if he wanted to help out at my family’s festival booth this year. He did kinda grumble and complain about it at first, but I can’t tell you how happy I was when he finally said yes. I mean, I still didn’t expect him to ever go back to being the old Akito again, but it did make me think there might be some hope for him yet… So the fact that he went and died right before the festival? It felt like the universe was playing a cruel joke on me. Still, I mean, it’s not like there was any guarantee he’d turn over a new leaf, right? Some folks might argue it was a good thing he left this world before he ever did anything truly unforgivable. At least we didn’t have to watch him turn into a full-on criminal, y’know?”
“C’mon, don’t say that,” I cut in, shaking my head. No matter how far off the beaten path Akito’s life might have strayed, he didn’t deserve to die for it. Hayase sort of glowered at me for a second, before sharply turning her face to look straight ahead once more.
“…Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point,” she conceded. “No one deserves to die so young. Man, though, with all the nasty rumors I’ve heard about him…it’s just hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy, I guess. Like, obviously there’s the stuff we already talked about. He was seriously in debt, was getting linked to criminal organizations, and so on. Some of the other rumors are way more disturbing than that. Like, for example…
“I heard he’s been physically abusing his little sister, Akari-chan.”
“…Huh?”
Her words nearly flew right past me. They kept reverberating in my head, but I couldn’t parse them. My brain knew each word’s individual meaning but refused to accept the implications of what they meant when placed together in that particular order.
“Sorry, did you just say he’s been…”
…beating his sister? I tried to ask, but before I could get the words out, I was interrupted by the staticky, low-fi melody of Greensleeves coming out of a nearby loudspeaker. It only amplified my anxiety. Akito couldn’t have seriously been abusing Akari, right…? I refused to believe it; it had to be a rumor, some sick joke cooked up by someone who never liked the guy. But on the off chance that it was true, I would—