“I haven’t gotten to celebrate your birthday in years, Miyuki Kazuya!” Sawamura glares up at him balefully. “But I’m very happy you were born in this time and place, and that I got to meet you!”
Eijun is not going to change his mind, Miyuki-senpai. He is not going to move on. He's just going to love you, because he decided to. That's the sort of person he is. He decides things, and then he perseveres. You should know that better than anyone.
I wanna play baseball with you as long as I can! And everything else, too! I want to smash doriyaki into your face and push you into the snow and see your surprised face every time I call you by your given name!
You didn’t give up on games! You didn’t give up on me, when I had the yips, despite knowing it ends careers! So why would you give up on yourself? You just had to find the right people to understand you.
“There’s nothing wrong with your glove,” Sawamura had told him, and Kazuya had curled his fingers into the grass of the baseball diamond and believed him, even though every experience in his life before had been a lesson teaching him otherwise.
When you don’t know how to react, you push people away. I just don’t think you should push Sawamura away. Not only for his sake, but also for yours. He makes you laugh in a really genuine way.
He somehow hasn’t realized yet that I never really believe he can’t do something. It would be silly to think Sawamura is going to stop pulling through when he’s needed most.
“I still remember all of your signs, Miyuki. How you shift your weight to catch certain pitches. You don’t need to tell me.”
“Even in the dark?”
“Even then,” Sawamura replies. “I know you.”
“I've spent a whole year recovering from the constant headache that is Sawamura’s personality, and now he's landed in my lap again.” And damnit, Kazuya thinks, he sounds way too pleased about it.
Sawamura as a pitcher, though… Plenty of talent, plenty of potential. Perfect for Meiji, with a mound that might as well be empty and Kazuya waiting in the catcher’s box.
"Who cares how big the world is?!" Sawamura says furiously, scaring winter larks from the trees as he tightens his grip on Kazuya’s thighs. "I already found you! So why the hell would I keep looking?!"
You don’t give up on games! You didn’t give up on me, when I had the yips, despite knowing it ends careers! So why would you give up on yourself? You just had to find the right people to understand you.
You offer him a focus point. He keeps you in his sights because the way you play is motivating for him, because he wanted to live up to your expectations. And as he was watching you, he found other things in you that he wanted to reach for.
Kiss him, or catch his pitches, and he doesn’t know which one he likes better, and the part of Kazuya that’s lived and breathed baseball for years is appalled that making the choice seems so impossible as the rest of him tries to get as close to Sawamura as possible.
Kazuya prefers what he has now at Meiji, anyway, because he can see the shape of his catching in the outline of Sawamura’s windup, and the echo of Sawamura’s battle-ready attitude in his boldest play calls.