Just read this so it's fresh. One of the character, Souma (who's all around douche) tell his backstory in one of the few instances you sympathize with that character. He was a bench player on the highschool baseball team and with his best friend trained hard to become a starter. It shows that the girl manager likes Souma and he likes her. Well he finally gets his shot to start, but gets food poisoning. His best friend plays instead, does well, and the manager girl starts dating the best friend. I mean, you can look at it as she was shallow since apparently she was flirting with them both and only picked the one who played and did well. That drives him to leave his town, well in present day he comes back to town with the other main characters, and meets the 2 again who are still dating and before he leaves he becomes accepting of their relationship. Yeah, he "moved" on, but that's the point. THEY ALWAYS MOVE ON AND BECOME ACCEPTING.