Tanba had just released his pitch when Carlos, stationed at second base, broke into a full sprint.

By the time Miyuki saw it, there was no time to warn Tanba. He made a silent decision on the spot. He would catch the ball himself and fire it directly to third base. Carlos was being too bold. Did he really think his speed was untouchable?

Miyuki ran the numbers quickly in his head. Throwing Carlos out stealing second might be a stretch. But cutting him down before he reached third? That was absolutely within reach. He was confident in that. He was also confident that Yuuki would be waiting and ready to apply the tag.

He had the whole sequence mapped out in his mind.

What he had not mapped out was Shirakawa.

The moment the ball came toward him, Shirakawa dropped his bat into a bunt without a second’s hesitation. He put it right in front of the mound. A sharp wave of alarm moved through Miyuki. He felt it before he understood it — this was a trap. But what kind? Targeting who? In the time he had, he could not work it out.

Then he watched Tanba charge in, scoop the ball cleanly, and glance back at Carlos. Tanba read it as too late, turned, and threw straight to Yuuki at first base.

The moment he saw that throw, everything clicked.

“Home base!”

He shouted it toward Yuuki before the play had even finished developing, knowing time was already razor thin.

Carlos had started his run from second base and was already at full acceleration. From third base to home, he would need roughly three seconds — maybe less. This was not a straight steal from third, where a runner needs time to build speed. Carlos was already flying. He was covering that twenty-seven meters at something close to his best sprint.

And what did Seido have working against that? Tanba’s throw to first. Yuuki’s catch. Yuuki’s throw home. Ball flight time alone was over a second. Add in two players’ preparation movements and the total climbed to nearly three seconds as well.

Even with zero errors between them, the margin left for Miyuki would be almost nothing.

He felt the despair settling in.

Then Yuuki moved.

The moment the ball hit his glove, Yuuki had already rotated his body ninety degrees. He did not wait to hear the umpire call Shirakawa out at first. He minimized every motion, saved every fraction of a second he could, and threw.

The ball came straight and true directly into Miyuki’s glove.

“Smack!”

Even in that instant, with everything on the line and every second mattering, Miyuki felt a surge of admiration. Ever since Yuuki had become captain, it was as though something had switched on inside him. He had become simply unstoppable.

Miyuki caught the ball. Carlos was still four full meters from home plate.

Everyone who saw it felt the urge to cheer — even some on the opposing side. Nobody had seen a relay executed quite like that. It was something else entirely.

Carlos, as the man living it, felt only despair.

What had these Seido players been drinking? How had the return throw been that fast?

This play — this exact sequence — had been rehearsed during Inashiro’s private training sessions. They had timed it to the millisecond. Their reference benchmark had been Narumiya and Yamaoka Riku, Inashiro’s own first baseman. The coordination between those two represented a national-level standard.

Today’s execution had not been perfect, but it had been at least ninety percent of what they had practiced. By their calculations, a score should have been nearly certain. The success rate for Carlos reaching home was projected above ninety-five percent. And yet Seido had somehow shaved off those remaining tenths of a second.

When Carlos approached home plate, Miyuki was already set and waiting. He could not legally block the plate, but he could obstruct the path. He could make it difficult.

Carlos refused to stop.

Inashiro had already lost to Seido once. They had not come here to let that story repeat itself.

With four meters remaining, Carlos shifted direction abruptly, angling wide to the outside, trying to swing around Miyuki and reach the plate from a different angle.

Miyuki read it and moved to the opposite side to cut him off. There was no need for a full collision. If his glove could touch Carlos’s body, that was enough.

He was almost there.

Then Carlos turned again.

With a change of direction that defied what his body should have been capable of at that speed, he reversed course by more than eighty degrees and dove forward — directly toward Miyuki, as though throwing himself straight into him.

Miyuki froze.

In all his experience, he had never seen anything like it. For one brief moment, three questions surfaced in his mind with perfect clarity.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

In that instant of hesitation, Carlos shot past him like a dark javelin along one side of his body.

Miyuki snapped back.

He knew exactly who he was. He knew where he was. He knew what he was doing.

He was Miyuki Kazuya, Seido’s catcher, and he was not done yet.

He yanked his gloved hand back and drove it down toward Carlos’s body.

“Thud!”

Carlos hit the dirt and slid onto home plate. Miyuki came down with him, glove pressed hard against his body. In the chaos of the collision, Miyuki kept his grip locked, the ball held firm inside.

Neither of them could see from where they had landed whether the glove or the hand had arrived first. Neither of them spoke. Both looked to the home plate umpire.

The stands went completely silent.

Tens of thousands of eyes converged on the same point. Everyone held their breath and waited.

The umpire was a man in his forties, and even he had been caught off guard. His eyes had been on the play the entire time — his reaction had not been slow. But Miyuki’s glove touching Carlos and Carlos’s hand touching the plate had happened at almost the exact same instant. His naked eye could not separate them.

Two, maybe three seconds passed.

The umpire gritted his teeth, raised his hand, and called it.

“Safe!”

The run counted. Inashiro had their third run of the game.

Total score: 3-1. Seido was trailing by two runs again.

Miyuki stood up slowly. He did not feel convinced. He had not been able to see clearly in that moment whether he had been faster or whether Carlos had beaten him to the plate. But something in him still resisted the result.

That dark-skinned kid had too much luck.

That was all Miyuki allowed himself to think about it.

Tanba, however, had seen every detail of the play from where he stood, and something in his chest had shifted.

What exactly had he just witnessed?

With the path to home plate already cut off, Carlos had used what could only be described as a basketball-style change-of-direction move to completely reset Miyuki’s center of gravity. And he had done it not standing still, not dribbling in place, but while sprinting at full speed.

Could this person still be considered an ordinary human being?

His body coordination was on an entirely different level.

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