Chapter 142: People Who Work Hard Deserve to Be Happy

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Translator: Soafp

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Ginji paused the story, sighed, and looked out over the field. With the towel still draped over his head, Sora couldn't see his face.

“…I see. So that's why you quit baseball.”

Sora had seen it before—people broken by the wall called “talent.” And Ginji's partner had probably lost his chance because of injury. That's why Ginji must have felt responsible and walked away from baseball himself…

“I didn't quit back then. I just changed how I did it.”

Ginji adjusted the towel around his neck and gave her a grin. The mismatch between his words and that cheerful expression left Sora blinking in confusion.

“W-Wait, then… you kept playing baseball? On your own?”

“Ahh, how should I explain this… hang on a sec.”

Ginji stepped away from the bench, grabbed his bag, and pulled out his phone. After a few taps, he showed the screen to Sora. It was a photo of a tanned boy in a uniform holding a baseball and giving a thumbs-up.

“That's a top-tier private school team. He made the starting lineup in his first year.”

“Eh?! That's your partner? But didn't he get injured?!”

“He did. But he went through rehab. He missed the big summer tournament in our third year, yeah. But he made it in time for high school tryouts. …Not that it happened right away. After his injury, I couldn't do anything either. I couldn't accept that all that effort might have been for nothing.”

Rehabbing a ruined elbow was a grueling path filled with pain and time. And for a pitcher, the inability to throw was the worst suffering of all. Watching his partner cry in the clinic, Ginji felt guilty for pushing him too hard. He couldn't bear to keep playing the baseball he loved.

He still went to school, but the time that had once been filled with nothing but baseball now hung heavy and empty. With his shaved head and rough look, Ginji started getting a bad reputation just for wandering around aimlessly. He soon realized people were avoiding him, so he started spending time in the library to stay out of sight.

“That's when I started reading. I didn't have anything else to do, so I'd wander into bookstores too. Hard books were exhausting, so I got hooked on light novels. Even anime. Remember? You once asked me, ‘Why do you do so much for me?'”

“Yeah, I remember. You said you liked stories where people who aren't rewarded still get saved… and that I reminded you of one of those characters, so you couldn't help but interfere.”

She'd asked him that not long after realizing she had feelings for him—because she wanted to know more about him. There was no way she'd forget.

“Yeah. That kind of story really hit me. And it made me think: maybe hard work doesn't always pay off… but people who work hard should get to be happy.”

To others, it might sound ridiculous—being changed by a light novel. But Ginji had read those stories, where protagonists who had never been acknowledged finally got rewarded, and thought, My partner deserves to be happy too. If he could help make that happen, then he'd do anything. He stacked up his light novels on a shelf—and put on the uniform again.

“I went to his house and apologized on my knees at the front door. I begged him to try again with me. He knelt too, crying, and we both scraped our foreheads on the ground so hard we bled. It was ridiculous—and we laughed about it. After that, we worked as team managers while starting his rehab.”

Under the guidance of a physical therapist, they focused on training that didn't strain the elbow. Managing the team kept them busy, but compared to full-time playing, they had more breathing room. That shift in pace also made Ginji finally notice how dire things had gotten at home.

“Things were rough at home. I only realized then how much my family had been straining themselves to let me play baseball. So I asked if I could help out. At first, my parents didn't want me to. But eventually, they let me start with small tasks. If they hadn't, Tetsuya probably would've kept pushing himself to help out. I started showing up at the factory too, learning things little by little from Gen-san and the others.”

Helping out at home, supporting his friend's rehab, working as a manager—it was an insanely busy life. But Ginji saw it through to the end.

“By the summer of our third year, my partner's elbow had healed. It took a detour, sure, but he was pitching again.”

That day, out at the edge of the field, Ginji put on his catcher's mask for the first time in a year. The pitch was wild—nowhere near where he held his mitt. But he caught it. That ball was the one he'd waited so long for. Tears ran down his face inside the mask, and he couldn't stop them.

“I still dream about it. The day he got hurt. I can't get rid of the guilt that I pushed him too far. But even so… those days we spent, our hard work—it wasn't for nothing. Man, I'm saying embarrassing stuff here… Hey, Sora!?”

He turned, flustered—only to find Sora crying her eyes out.

“Snff… Ginji… you're amazing. Really amazing…”

“Whoa, you're dripping snot—here, tissue. Let's go wash your face. There's a water fountain over there.”

“Uuuuuh…”

He led fully-switched-on Sora to the water fountain. After splashing water on her face, she seemed to calm down a little. Ginji handed her a towel.

“Sorry… I just… I really understood how much you worked for everything…”

“It's not that big a deal. I just did what I wanted to.”

“Yeah… So then, just to ask—why didn't you join the baseball team in high school?”

Towel in hand, Sora looked at him.

“…After all that with my partner, I kinda burned out. I was looking for a new goal. Then I met you.”

Honestly, he was scared—scared that he might mess up again and hurt someone. He still loved baseball, but the lingering regret never fully faded. His partner moved to another prefecture to keep playing. Ginji, unsure what to pursue, filled the gap with part-time work and study and got into high school. It wasn't like he was unhappy… but something always felt missing. He thought that would just continue.

But it didn't. On the day of the entrance ceremony, he saw Sora being saddled with work by Aika. He started watching her from afar, feeling like she stepped right out of one of the stories that had once saved him. But she never seemed to find happiness, no matter how long he watched.

“Ginji?”

Sora looked up at him, eyes wide. He roughly ruffled her hair.

People who work hard deserve to be happy.

“That's what I used to think…”

“Y-You're all sweaty!”

“I don't think it's that bad.”

“I-I feel like you're dodging the question… If you quit baseball for my sake, that's not okay, Ginji. I want to support you, too.”

“Hah, nah. At first, I just wanted to help you.”

“But now?”

Her hazel eyes looked up at him.

“Now? …Now I wanna be happy with you.”

The one he thought he needed to support had quietly started supporting him instead. If he hadn't met Sora that day, he probably wouldn't be smiling nearly as much.

“Yeah!”

…Maybe it's just the weakness that comes with falling for someone, he thought, as they walked back toward the field together.