I had a friend named Komori-kun. It was when we were in elementary school. Komori-kun and I were very similar. Children become friends with those who are similar to them. So we became friends. Komori-kun was small in stature. I was also small. Komori-kun was a quiet child. I was a quiet kid, too. We liked manga. We liked games. That was the group we were in. Every elementary school has its own group. Every elementary school kid has a group. Groups are generally determined by size, muscle mass, and athletic ability. Kids who are good at sports hang out with other kids who are good at sports. Kids who are not good at sports hang out with other kids who are not good at sports. The former are strangely and oddly cheerful, while the latter are strangely and oddly gloomy. And Komori’s group and mine were clearly the latter. No matter how anyone looked at it, we were the latter. After school, we spent our time at Komori-kun’s house reading manga and playing games. Komori was an only child and did not have a mother. But Komori didn’t seem to be lonely. Komori was happy. I think he was happy. At least that’s what I thought at the time. I was jealous of Komori-kun. Komori’s house had every issue of CoroCoro Comic and Comic Bombom, as well as every series of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Komori told me that his grandmother had bought them all for him. Whenever I went to Komori’s house, his grandmother would buy us dorayaki and buns. Sometimes his father was home, and when he was, he would take us for a drive. Komori’s father took us to many places, but I don’t remember most of them anymore. I have a lot of memories of fun times, but all that remains now is the atmosphere, and the only thing I remember clearly is that he bought me a Yu-Gi-Oh card at a card game store. I think it’s a terrible story, too much cash, but maybe that’s how strong impressions are made in childhood.

There is a video game called Power Pros (Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū / 実況パワフルプロ野球.) It’s a really interesting baseball game in which you control a real Japanese professional baseball team and players. I loved that game. I loved it, and I think I still do. I don’t play it anymore, but when I see its name from time to time, I feel strangely nostalgic. Komori and I used to fight in the battle mode. Komori invited me to join him. I think Komori wasn’t very good at the game, so he couldn’t play it alone. Komori was able to play role-playing games such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on his own—sometimes I would help him level up or help him solve the riddles needed to advance. But fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken got old fast and gathered dust. I guess it was difficult for me to play Power Pros by myself because it required direct physical manipulation, such as kinetic vision and blink of the eye reaction, just like fighting games—though not as much as fighting games, of course. I think it might have been difficult for him to play alone. That’s why Komori always invited me to join him when he played Power Pros. We had never played baseball or even watched a real baseball game, but we liked playing Power Pros. We learned the sport of baseball from Power Pros, and we learned the rules of baseball too. For us, the concept of baseball was something that existed only in games, something that was virtual in every way. There was no flesh and blood there. For me, baseball was not a sport played by living people. It was purely an accumulation of logic, parameters, and digital things. And for me, that was fine. That’s what I’ve always been fine with. I always wanted to love baseball like that. But for Komori-kun, it seems that was not the case.

That day, as usual, I was playing Power Pros at Komori-kun’s house after school. Komori-kun was playing for the Yomiuri Giants, and I was playing for the Chunichi Dragons. I don’t know if it’s the same now, but the Giants were very strong at that time, and they had a lot of very good players—players with well-balanced abilities as represented on the “radar” chart. And Komori always wanted to win so he always chose the Giants. Komori didn’t let me choose the Giants. Other than the Giants, the only other team whose name I knew was the Dragons, my hometown team. So I always chose the Chunichi Dragons. And I was unhappy about it. But I never said it out loud. I was fine with that. We were always winning and losing to each other. We enjoyed it.

About two or three times when we’d finished a match, I’d press the “continue” button to start the next game. Suddenly, Komori-kun turned it off. The cathode-ray tube TV made a popping sound, and a white horizontal line appeared in the middle of the screen, and then slowly disappeared—I learned when I was growing up that the image on a cathode-ray tube TV is drawn by bundling many fine lines of light called scan lines. Of course, I would never use such knowledge again, no matter where I went.

Komori-kun looked at me sitting next to him and said something like, “I was just thinking…” I said, “What?”and looked at him.

Komori-kun said hesitantly in a quiet voice, as if he was confirming something bad, “Why don’t we try baseball?”

I was surprised. My mind went blank for a moment, and then I tried to imagine Komori-kun playing baseball, but I couldn’t do it.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Baseball. Not a game, but the real thing,” Komori said.

I was confused.

“I don’t understand. I’m not sure. I don’t have any equipment or anything,” I said.

Komori wrinkled his brow and let out a small groan, then said, “Higuchi-kun, how much money do you have now? Komori looked into my eyes. I looked into Komori’s eyes. Komori’s eyes were shaking with anxiety, but I didn’t think he was joking. Komori was not smiling. Komori-kun was probably serious. That’s what it looked like to me at that moment. I flinched.

“Not much really. What about you?” I said.

“I don’t have much either,” Komori said.

We pulled out our wallets and spread them on the tatami. The coins clinked and clattered against each other. We counted the coins. I think there were many one-yen coins and ten-yen coins. I think that was probably the case. At that time, we felt good if we had a hundred yen coin, and we were rich if we had a five hundred yen coin. Of course, I don’t remember exactly how much money we each had at that time, but there were no 100 yen coins or 500 yen coins. In any case, I remember that we didn’t have enough money to buy a real bat, ball or glove.

“Practically nothing,” Komori said.

“Why don’t you ask your grandmother to buy you one? I said. “Yeah, I don’t think that would really work out,” he said.  I was so surprised by Komori’s quick answer—which was unusual for him—that I actually couldn’t respond for a while. A slight silence fell between us. I thought Komori would continue to say something, but he didn’t say anything again. At the time, I didn’t really understand why Komori answered like that, but now I kind of understand. It was probably a secret experiment between us that Komori didn’t want anyone else to know about, didn’t want anyone to suspect, and didn’t want anyone to feel uneasy about. That’s what I’m thinking now. Or maybe that’s what I’m trying to believe now. Komori-kun stood up. I stood up, too. “Let’s go to Daiso,” Komori said.

We went outside. We rode our bicycles to the local Daiso. The Daiso was about a five-minute bike ride away from Komori’s house. With the Dobu River at our side, we passed through a factory and came to a main street. At the end of the street, there was a supermarket, GEO, and a large bookstore called Ofunado. Daiso is lined up on one side of the street. When I was in elementary school, I used to go to Daiso whenever I had a problem. Juice, sweets, presents for birthday parties. They sold everything. I think they also sold books that could be used for research and study. Geography books, history books, and other miscellaneous knowledge books. Anyway, I could get anything at Daiso. That was the way it was for me in elementary school. Maybe I thought so in junior high school, too. In junior high school, my friends who had become delinquents would shoplift at Daiso to bond. Juice, sweets, gel or wax-like hair products, CDs of unknown songs, DVDs of naked women. Komori-kun and I used our meager pocket money to buy plastic bats and rubber balls. There was no substitute for gloves, so we gave up. But for us, it was enough.

We left Daiso and started pedaling our bikes again.

I had a bag of balls and the bat I had just bought hanging on the left handlebar of my bike. The plastic bat was bright fluorescent green, sticking out of the plastic bag like a green onion in a housewife’s shopping bag.

“Where do we play baseball?　School?” I asked Komori as I rode my bike.

“No,” Komori said, “let’s not go to school.”

”Why?” I thought, but never said the words. Komori pedaled on in silence. Komori didn’t say why. He didn’t need to give a reason. I could understand why Komori said that. The school after school was not ours. There was a “sports group” that played “real sports” such as “real baseball” and “real soccer” after school. I knew about it and Komori-kun also knew about it. They were the real thing and we were the fake thing. After-school school belonged to them, the real ones, and not to fakes like us. We knew that.

“Let’s go to the shrine,” Komori said. “It’s probably safe there.”

I asked him if we could play baseball at the shrine, but he kept repeating that it would be fine—probably fine. He said that there would be fewer people there, and even if adults came, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Komori said that he had grown up playing at the shrine since he was a little boy. I was skeptical, but since I wasn’t particular about it, I went along with him. This story is primarily about Komori-kun. I’m not the main character, and I shouldn’t be taking the initiative. I’m thinking about this now as I write, and here I am, making the me in my memories obey the Komori-kun in my memories.

So we headed to a shrine near Komori-kun’s house. We soon arrived at the shrine. The shrine was large and surrounded by large trees and bamboo bushes, making it seem like it was cut off from the rest of the town. There was a pond nearby, and I could see a pure white bird flying, which I could only see there. The pond was deep and murky, and I couldn’t see the bottom, but sometimes I could see the shadows of fish wavering in the water. Komori told me that there were sponges in the pond, although I had never seen them before. Komori told me that he had heard about it from his grandmother. When I asked Komori if he had ever seen a spoon, he said that he had never seen one either. I asked Komori if he had ever seen a spoonbill, and he said he had never seen one either, but he believed there were spoonbills there. I didn’t believe the story, but it didn’t mean I didn’t believe it either. I didn’t have any particular reason to believe it, but I thought it would be good if there were. I thought it would be interesting to imagine that there were wild sponges in my town. I still think so now. That’s what I’m thinking as I write this article.

When we arrived at the shrine, we parked our bicycles in front of the torii gate and took the ball and bat out of the Daiso bag. I took the fake ball, Komori took the fake bat, and we started walking towards the shrine grounds.

After passing through the torii gate, we came to a stone staircase a few meters away. The stone steps were not that big. There was a money box at the end of the steps, and behind the money box was a building. The door was closed and you couldn’t see inside.

When Komori arrived at the front of the stone steps, he took one of the stone pavements at his feet as a batter’s box, gripped his bat like a real batter, and held it up to me.

“Try throwing from there,” Komori said. I threw the ball. I threw the ball as hard as I could. The ball flew forward much faster than I expected. Komori swung his bat, but it was cutting through the air in a completely different place. The ball hit the stone steps and bounced back to me. I tried to catch it, but couldn’t do it. The ball went over the torii gate and stopped when it reached the road. I ran after the ball.

“That was amazing,” Komori said. “Let’s do it again.”

So we started playing fake baseball. The only positions were pitcher and hitter. There was no baserunning. If the bat hits the ball and the pitcher doesn’t get it, it was treated as a hit. If three hits overlapped, a point was scored. A big hit over the torii is treated as a home run and counts as one point. Whether it is a strike or a ball is judged each time by comparing the two players’ subjective opinions. Four balls meant one hit, three strikes meant one out, and three outs meant a change. That was our improvised rule. I threw the ball. Komori swung the bat. Komori threw the ball. I swung the bat. I caught the ball and didn’t catch it. Komori caught the ball and didn’t catch it. We repeated this over and over again. At first, we couldn’t do it well, but as we repeated it, the bat began to hit the ball and we began to catch the balls that flew at us. Little by little, we began to feel as if we were playing real baseball. I don’t know how Komori felt about it, but at least I did. I was overlapping myself with the virtual professional baseball players moving around in “Power Pro.” Every time the ball hit the stone steps and made a bouncing sound, every time the bat caught the ball, every time I caught the ball in my palm as it flew up into the sky, I felt like I was a member of a sports team, or that I might actually be a member of the “sports team” tomorrow, and my vision seemed to expand endlessly. I had never thought of myself as having such potential before, and not just that. It was a discovery. Or it was an invention. A discovery that the world was open to me. The invention of thinking that the world was open to me. I still clearly remember the feeling I had at that time. I can do anything. At least I think I can. And it’s fun to think so. Even if it’s not true, and even if I can’t really do anything, I can still feel like I’m full of power.

The evening was drawing to a close. It was getting darker and darker. A few cars passed by, their headlights casting lines of light on the road. From above, we could hear the crows cawing as they flew in flocks. But we didn’t stop playing our baseball game. I didn’t say that I was quitting. Komori didn’t say he was quitting either. The ball was getting harder and harder to see, but it wasn’t completely invisible. When night came, Komori’s grandmother would probably come looking for him. But it was not yet that time. Night had not yet come. We can still continue our time together. We were going to continue our baseball game until someone stopped us.

Komori threw the ball and I swung the bat. The bat didn’t hit the ball. Komori caught the ball as it hit the stone steps and bounced back. Komori’s pitching form wasn’t that great, but his velocity had increased and his control had improved. After tunneling through many bouncing balls, he was now able to catch the ball with both hands.

Two outs, two strikes. Komori gripped the ball several times and rotated his neck and shoulders to relax his tired muscles in order to get the last strike. Komori-kun made his form and swung his arms.

That’s when I heard a loud laugh from far away. Both Komori and I looked in the direction of the voice. I hated the sound of other people’s laughter. For some reason, hearing other people’s laughter made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy. Soon after I heard the voice, a group of children on bicycles passed by the shrine. They were about our age. Upon closer inspection, I realized that they were the “athletes” of our class. They had their gloves in the basket of their bicycles and a case for their bats on their backs. They disappeared from sight and then turned and came back. They stopped their bikes in front of the shrine gate and walked toward us, pointing at us. I heard someone say, “That’s Komori and Higuchi.” Maybe it wasn’t true, but I thought I heard it. “What are you guys doing here?”

They all got off their bicycles, passed through the torii gate, and entered the shrine grounds one by one. Yamada, Goto, Oshima, Ando, Tanaka⁠—I rarely interacted with them, so that was the first time I got a good look at their appearance. They all had shaved heads and baseball caps, their skin tanned and dark, their arms and chests heaving with muscle. They had long bangs that hung over their eyes, in contrast to us, thin, with our pale skin and ill-fitted T-shirts. They walked slowly toward us.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a toy bat, isn’t it?

“Are you always playing with that thing?　It’s really weird.”

“Maybe they’re in kindergarten?

“No, I used a bat even in kindergarten.”

“ I mean, they must be preschoolers, right?”

“Like it matters.”

I could hear them talking amongst themselves. I could feel my face getting hot and sweat gushing out. The light flickered in my eyes, dazzling me. I felt as if my body was going to shrink and disappear. Or I wanted to disappear right then and there.

Are you guys playing baseball? In a place like this? The two of you? Yamada said. I didn’t know what to say. I was confused. I hadn’t thought of the game I was playing as baseball, but until then I had been playing it as if I were playing baseball. I didn’t know what to call it. I couldn’t find the right words to describe the game. I kept quiet.

As I remained silent, Komori said, “Yeah, that’s right.”

I looked at Komori face. Komori’s lips were quivering a little. The other guys were giggling.

“Heh. Let me borrow that,” Yamada said. Yamada pointed to the fluorescent green plastic bat I was holding. I handed the bat to him. When he held the bat, it looked like a toy—in fact, it was just a toy—but it looked cheap and poor. I could see that it was terribly funny for boys our age to be playing with that bat. I felt embarrassed and turned away. When I looked at Komori, Goto was ripping the rubber ball out of his hand. “What’s this? A soft rubber ball,” Goto said. “You know, it’s actually harder to throw a ball like this.”

“You’re the pitcher, right? You’re the pitcher,” Yamada said with a grin. Yamada had started swinging the plastic bat. Yamada’s batting form was beautiful. I realized that Komori and I were just fakes.

“I’m going to throw a softball,” Goto said. Goto started to walk slowly and got some distance from us. The place where Goto stopped was much farther away from us than the place where we were throwing the ball. It would be impossible for me or Komori to throw the ball from such a place and hit the stone steps without bouncing. Goto stomped his feet as if he was standing on a mound, and then stood up. He stared at the ball and made sure he had the proper grip. Yamada set up his bat and prepared to intercept Goto’s ball. Goto looked at Yamada and Yamada at Goto. They stared at each other in silence. The shrine was filled with silence. The wind was blowing, and the only sound was the rustling of the leaves on the trees.

Goto threw the ball and just as it left Goto’s hand, it disappeared in midair. Yamada swung the bat at full strength. There was a sound like a balloon popping, and the ball appeared again. The next thing we knew, the ball was flying high into the sky. It was a short moment, less than a second. I had no idea what had happened. By the time my thoughts caught up with the situation, everything was already over. The ball made a nice arc and disappeared into the bamboo thicket in the distance. At the end of the path, there was a pond that was said to be inhabited by turtles.

“Oh,” said Goto, “It’s gone. What are you gonna do?

“What? What’s wrong with me,” Yamada said. “Well I don’t really care what happens. I’m not a a little kid.”

Yamada picked up the plastic bat, spread his arms out to the side, grasped both ends of the bat, and bent it in the middle. The bat was helpless and gave little resistance, bending instantly like it were made of syrup. Goto laughed and said, “Oh, come on, don’t do that.”The others laughed, too. Yamada handed me the bent bat, which was now half its length, and said, “See you later.” Then Yamada and the rest of the “athletes” started walking out of the shrine and rode away on their bicycles. The sound of laughter faded into the distance, and eventually they disappeared into the darkness. All that was left was me, Komori, and a bent, ridiculously colored plastic bat. We didn’t say a word. We didn’t talk, we didn’t try to talk. I stood there, and Komori stood there. The wind grew stronger. Night was approaching. I could no longer hear the crows cawing.

I felt like I wanted to cry, and I felt like I should cry, but I didn’t. I looked at Komori and saw that he was blushing and seemed to be enduring something, but he wasn’t crying either. Our baseball game was over, but I felt like that was okay. In fact, I even thought it should be. Everything seemed like it should be over. Or that’s what I was trying to believe. And now I’m convinced of it, too. Since then, I haven’t played baseball or done anything like it.

Komori walked off in silence and headed for the pond where the turtles were said to live.

Komori sat down in the bamboo bushes and looked for the ball while shoveling the grass. I thought he didn’t need to bother looking for it, but didn’t say anything to that effect. Like Komori, I sat down and started looking for the ball, touching the grass and soil. To be more precise, I started pretending to look for it. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do at that moment, or what I should do, but I figured it was better than not doing it. I thought I would never find the ball again. In fact, I couldn’t find it. I was looking for something else. Or maybe I wasn’t looking for anything at all. When I became a junior high school student, I stopped playing with Komori. The reason is obvious. At the age of 13, I couldn’t stand the fact that I was a fake that looked like a fake, so I became a fake that acted like a real person. Komori has always been a fake that looks fake. Or rather, I think that in Komori’s world, there was no such distinction between real and fake. And it was the same for Yamada and Goto. The only person who sees the world in terms of real or fake is probably me, the fake.

It was the first time I had ever been inside a bamboo thicket. It was the first time I had ever seen a pond up close. I peered into the pond. I strained my eyes. In the darkness, there were waves everywhere. I couldn’t tell if it was the wind or the fish lurking in the pond. There were many crickets and grasshoppers jumping around the pond. I didn’t know then whether or not there really were turtles living in the pond. Of course, I still don’t know. And I don’t think we will ever know.