Baseball and the Azure Blue Sky

Chapter 1: Who needs Baseball Idiots?

It was fall, not her favorite season of the year. And it was raining outside, making her mood even more gloomy. Zapping through different TV programs, Sora sighed and hugged the sofa cushion she was holding in her lap a little tighter. With the fall tournament of baseball already over there wasn't anything interesting to watch anymore. Seidou High School from Tokyo had been announced the winner a few days ago and since then Sora's boredom had grown to an absolute maximum. There was nothing for her to do after all.

Her parents were always busy with opening their new family business and moving to Tokyo and her older brother Ten was either helping them, studying for college or training for his track and field team. Sora would join him whenever he was running in the past, but she hadn't been feeling like it lately.

Being in the middle of her second year of High School, the young girl was still looking forward to moving away to Tokyo with her family. In fact, she welcomed the change. She wouldn't miss anything or anyone and nobody would miss her when she was gone. Sad but true, unfortunately. Sora could still feel the pang in her heart, the hurt and the disappointment after the betrayal of people she had considered her teammates and friends, some of them since Grade School since they were living in a very small, rural town which only had one Grade School, one Junior High and one High School all the kids living in the neighborhood were attending if they didn't want to travel too far.

After the fallout with both of her teams, the softball team of the girls and also the baseball team of the boys, which wasn't such a long time ago, Sora was still heartbroken. Her brother had been furious and their parents had made a huge effort to keep him from storming into Sora's school to knock some sense back into her former so called friends. Yes, her family was very heartwarming and supportive and it made it easier to some extent, but it wasn't the same as having a best friend in the same age or some baseball idiots to practice and to play video games with. She missed this. Like crazy. The young girl had never been the one to be comfortable being alone.

As a child she had been relying on the three years older Ten most of the time until entering Grade School and only very slowly overcoming her shyness to make some friends on her own. And now after she lost everything that had been important to her, Sora was relying on her older brother once again, waiting to finally be able to move away and to leave everything behind. Hopefully she would be able to make a fresh new start in Tokyo.

Her parents had decided to open a wellness and sports center with focus on physical therapy, rehab, sports medicine and massages for athletes of all kinds and with a casual wellness area for everyone, also the visitors without an athletic background. Her father was a physical therapist and a sports medic who had specialized on pro athletes, while her mother was a masseuse with a focus on sports, sports injuries and helping with rehab of athletes. Even her brother was following their father and was studying sports medicine while being the captain and an extraordinarily gifted athlete of the college's track and field team. Ten was considered a real genius of his generation and Sora was extremely proud to have him as an older brother.

Due to his good influence, the young girl had always helped her brother with his training, running with him, exercising with him and learning from their mother how to do correct stretches, how to tape and how to massage Ten correctly to be a valuable support. Since Ten's Junior High years also Sora had been training as a practice partner for her brother and thus she was very athletic, fast and flexible herself. Yet she never really had been interested in a particular sport. Just being with Ten and helping him had been enough for the little Sora. Until she got hooked on baseball that was.

She had a pro baseball player to thank for her passion towards baseball and the more girlish version of softball. He had been a client of her parents at that time and little Sora, only interested in her drama club, acting and manga, anime and videogames during her Grade School years, had been fascinated by his words, his total conviction and the absolute aura of an arrogant, but highly skilled ace who loved to take on any good challenge standing on the mound.