“Of course. Who do you think I am?!” Kugisaki knew Itadori didn’t put much thought into what he said, so she wasn’t actually offended. “I know! How about some kind of punishment? It wouldn’t feel right among friends to make one of us treat everyone to a meal, so how about the person with the lowest score has to do an impression at the top of their voice?”
“Good idea!” said Itadori. He hadn’t hesitated before accepting Kugisaki’s proposal. Fushiguro frowned as the suspicion dawned on him that they planned to include him in this competition.
“I’ll let one of you guys choose the event,” Kugisaki said.
“That’s a big responsibility for you, Fushiguro,” Itadori said.
“Why are you pushing this on me?” Fushiguro said.
He didn’t like games that entailed a punishment, though, so it was actually better for him to choose what they did. He looked at the guide on the wall and chose something that wouldn’t involve an excessive amount of luck or depend on big differences in a particular skill.
“Batting,” he suggested.
“I knew you’d pick that!” Itadori said. “After all, we just played baseball!”
“This will help us combat the Kyoto school’s pitcher,” Kugisaki said.
“You make a pitching machine sound like an actual pitcher,” Fushiguro teased.
The choice had been easy for Fushiguro. He had at least experienced playing baseball at the Goodwill Event, so he could use what skill he had picked up to offset Itadori’s ridiculous strength and endurance.
“I’ll go first,” Itadori said.
“No, you’re last,” Kugisaki said.
“Don’t I get a choice in this?”
“Of course not! I’m first batter! You’re like...a sports monster, so if you hit a bunch of home runs and get bonuses, we won’t stand a chance! We compete for the best average in fifteen at bats!”
“Don’t I get a choice, either?” Fushiguro asked.
Kugisaki ignored him as usual, picked up the bat, and stepped into the box. Judging from how she’d held the bat upright and rolled up her sleeves at the Goodwill Event, she seemed like the type who would want to run through a whole warmup ritual.
“Watch this. I’m Tohoku’s Masahiro Tanaka! I’m a made-in-Japan Shohei Ohtani!” Kugisaki said.
“Shohei Otani is from Japan,” Itadori interjected.
“Then I’m the Shohei Otani from Tohoku!”
“Yeah, he’s from there too.”
“Stop nitpicking!”
Ignoring Itadori’s ribbing, Kugisaki focused on batting. She waved the end of the bat and tried to get a feel for the timing of the ball that was now flying her way.
“Here it comes! Right in my sweet spot!”
Crack! The bat made a satisfying sound.
The machine’s first pitch had been a straight ball, and Kugisaki scored a clean hit into the net.
“You’re surprisingly good at that, Kugisaki!” Itadori exclaimed.
“Of course!” Kugisaki said. “Cuz I always use a hammer to hit nails in midair! Miss the sweet spot and they’d go astray!”
“Hmm, makes sense.”
There was no denying that Kugisaki had considerable kinetic control. The spare Mechamaru at the school in Kyoto had been programmed to utterly crush the Tokyo students, but a straight ball from a pitching machine at a sports center was something else.
The boys found it odd that Kugisaki compared herself to Masahiro Tanaka and Shohei Ohtani and used a pendulum swing, but all that mattered in the end was her score.
Kugisaki’s performance changed at about the third pitch.
“Hunh?!” she exclaimed.
Almost as if the machine had tilted in mid-pitch, the ball underwent a sharp change—hwip!—practically in front of her. She continued her swing straight ahead and hit nothing but air.
“Is that thing sending me trick pitches?!” she asked.
“That was a curveball,” Itadori said.
“But it curved...straight!”
“You’re the one who set it to the advanced level,” Fushiguro stated matter-of-factly.
“Kyoto simply refuses to fight fair and square!” she huffed.
“Don’t blame this on Mechamaru,” Itadori said.
“Just you watch! I stole this flamingo-style batting method from Yu Darvish—and it’s pure fire!” Kugisaki boasted.
“Baseball for her is all about the big-name pitchers,” Itadori said.
“And she uses a pendulum swing,” Fushiguro added.
Without letting Itadori and Fushiguro’s chatter distract her, Kugisaki faltered against the occasional breaking ball, but struggled on. Eventually, she began to clip them.
Itadori raised a cry of honest admiration. “Wow, Kugisaki! That pitch would’ve been hard even for someone on the baseball team!”
“Maybe all that training with Panda Senpai is paying off!” Fushiguro said.
“Why, does Panda throw breaking balls?” Itadori remembered Panda, who had become the baseball team’s mascot.
“No, but he has a style that doesn’t conform to any particular method. He teaches you to adapt.”
“Oh, really?”
“While you were gone, we did so much combat training we got sick of it. Honing our physical strength, visual acuity, our thought processes.”
“Oh, okay.” Itadori nodded grimly, digesting those words. Meanwhile, Fushiguro refrained from adding, “But you still surpass us, Itadori.”
After that, Kugisaki continued fairly well, scoring five hits in fifteen pitches. She even drove a home run into the corner.
“How about it, Itadori?” she said. “I batted 300 and got one home run. I’m an ace slugger, don’t ya think?”
“I thought you said home runs don’t matter,” Itadori said.
“Shut up!” Kugisaki snapped. “Go! You’re next, Fushiguro!”
Itadori handed a bat to Fushiguro, who entered the batter’s box with an air of reluctance. Usually, Fushiguro wouldn’t have taken a game like this seriously, but Kugisaki had done pretty well, and it was hard to imagine that Itadori, who had hit a home run at the Goodwill Event, would do any worse.
That meant this high-stakes game had just gotten real.
The worst-case scenario flashed through Fushiguro’s mind. He would have to do an impression at the top of his voice. But an impression of whom? Fushiguro just wasn’t the type to do impressions. He didn’t have a repertoire, and he didn’t have any ideas for improvising. If he didn’t think of something, Itadori or Kugisaki would name some celebrity he resembled and force him to do an impression of that person. That would be intolerable. Fushiguro knew he couldn’t refuse to do the impression. This situation truly prohibited taking such a path.
“Argh!” Fushiguro grunted.
Why was it so difficult?! Kugisaki was always hitting targets in the air, but even she had experienced trouble with the combination of a fast and breaking ball. The moment he started swinging, he realized his timing and trajectory were off. He caught nothing but air, and with clumsy form at that.
“You’re headed for punishment,” Kugisaki said.
“Don’t remind me,” Fushiguro replied. He gripped the bat tighter. More strength, however, wouldn’t improve his results.
Baseball requires overall strength, and whether or not she was more sporty overall, Fushiguro had to admit that when it came to baseball, Kugisaki had the advantage. Given the circumstances, perhaps he should trust in luck and restrict himself to swinging straight ahead, which was easiest. Despite this idea, memories flickered through his head.
Megumi, you don’t know how to bring out your best, do you?
What Gojo had said to Fushiguro a few days ago kept flashing through the back of his mind, but why was it popping up now? This was simply not the time for it, not when he was trying to focus on a high-stakes game!
Megumi, a baseball helmet looks ridiculous on you.
It was an irritating comment someone had made to him during a break at the Goodwill Event. He recalled it now because they were batting.
Megumi, what kind of balance ball would you want pitched to you on a desert island?
Now the most irrelevant memories were pestering him. In the back of his brain, Fushiguro couldn’t stop summoning memories of Gojo. How could the sorcerer be such a pain in the ass when he wasn’t even here?!
As these thoughts assailed Fushiguro, the white ball flying his way began to look like Gojo. He could almost hear it egging him on: Do you really think you can get a passing grade at the batting center too? Now that he thought about it, Fushiguro remembered when they went early on to reclaim Sukuna’s finger. Fushiguro had been so angry that day that he had considered slugging Gojo.
“Fushiguro’s swing is getting sharper. He’s really cutting loose,” Itadori said.
“And the look on his face! Is he cursing the ball?” Kugisaki marveled.
“You might beat Kugisaki,” Itadori called to Fushiguro.
Kugisaki growled in frustration. “I thought the sacrifice bunt was your specialty. Have you been hiding your batting skill from us?”
“You sound like the player from the rival school in a sports manga,” Itadori said.
“Who, me? Don’t act like you’re more mature than me.”
Fushiguro forgot about different pitches and just swung for what came his way. He got better as time went on, eventually getting seven hits for fifteen at bats and surpassing Kugisaki. He felt relieved to have avoided the punishment and realized that hitting those white balls was a good stress reliever.
“Yes!” Fushiguro cheered.
“I’ve never seen Fushiguro do a little fist-pump before,” Itadori commented. “Do you really hate competitive games that much?”
“His repertoire of impressions probably extends no further than funny animals,” Kugisaki said.
“Fushiguro mimics animals?”
“All the time. Like this.”
Fushiguro frowned when he saw Kugisaki using her hands to make a shadow that looked like a dog.
“Shadow puppets don’t count.”
“All right, I’m last,” Itadori announced.