The smell of the locker room was always the same. A stinging, chemical mix of cooling spray, worn leather, and the sharp, metallic scent of nervous sweat.
I sat on the wooden bench, the grain digging slightly into my thighs, wrapping white athletic tape around my left wrist.
Tight. Loose. Tight. It was a ritual, a physical grounding technique to quiet the cacophony of noise rattling around in my skull.
Today was the day. The National Championship. Koshien Stadium. For most high schoolers in Japan, this place was a hallowed ground they only ever saw through the grainy pixels of a television screen.
It was the summit of our youth, the place where legends were born and dreams went to die in the dirt. But for me, it wasn't just a game. It was a promise I had made a long time ago.
I grew up in a house that was quieter than most. My mother had passed away giving birth to me, leaving my father to figure out the chaos of parenting on his own.
He wasn't a perfect man by any traditional metric; he burned toast with alarming regularity, he frequently forgot parent-teacher conferences, and his fashion sense was tragically stuck in the late nineties. But to me, he was a giant.
He was a former pro pitcher, a relief specialist who had bounced between teams as a "journeyman," never quite making the Hall of Fame but earning enough grit to last a lifetime.
He was the one who taught me how to grip a seam before I learned to hold a spoon. He taught me that a curveball isn't about the wrist, it's about the friction of the fingers.
We were a two-man team against the world. We spent our nights eating microwave convenience store bentos and binge-watching anime until our eyes burned.
We loved the adventure stories best, the ones where the hero gets whisked away to a new world, fights dragons, and saves the kingdom with nothing but his wits and his courage. "You know, kid," he'd often say, pointing his chopsticks at the TV screen while chewing a piece of karaage. "Life is an adventure, too. You just gotta have the guts to step up to the plate when it's your turn."
I finished taping my wrist, tearing the tape with a sharp snap, and stood up. I grabbed my glove from the bench. It was well-oiled, shaped perfectly to the contours of my hand, a gift from him for my sixteenth birthday. I wasn't just playing for the trophy today.
I was playing for the guy who played catch with me in the backyard until the sun went down and the fireflies came out. I was playing for the man who worked double shifts after retiring just so I could have the best cleats money could buy.
"Let's go!" the captain shouted, slapping the metal frame of the door with a ringing clang. "This is it!"
I walked into the concrete tunnel, the darkness embracing me for a brief moment before the light at the end consumed everything.
The roar of the crowd washed over me like a physical wave, vibrating in my chest, heavy and suffocating. Fifty thousand people. The stands were a sea of colors, shaking with the rhythmic chanting of the cheer squads. Brass bands blared fight songs that clashed in the humid air, creating a wall of sound that made it impossible to think. The summer heat was thick, a humid blanket that wrapped around my throat, tasting of dust and ozone.
I stepped onto the field, and the world narrowed down to sixty feet and six inches.