V1C5 Part4

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2.43 S1 Chapter 5.4 - Stand By Me4. TRANSITION ATTACKIt kind of sucks that the anime cut out a lot of the cringe comedy in the books

Translation Notes

1. Three-stage attack refers to the offense where the ball is received, set, and then the attacker spikes it over the net

2. De Cecco refers Luciano De Cecco, an Argentine volleyball player known as one of the most talented setters in the sport

3. Abe refers to Yuta Abe, a setter who’s 191cm tall

4. A deuce is a term that refers to a tie score where a player needs to score twice consecutively to win

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Starting with his right thumb, taping was applied to his index finger, middle finger, and then his left thumb, index finger, and middle finger, in that order. He covered the nails and left the second joint open. He could already measure the exact length he needed by eye.

Normally, every time he finished taping a finger, he felt a switch turning on inside him, but today, he hadn’t felt that once. He wanted to feel a definite response, so he found himself taping harder than usual. The tightening sensation in his fingers told him that blood was flowing to and nerves were stretching to every corner of his body.

He had brought his bag for club activities, so he had all his familiar gear, including shoes and supporters. He changed in a corner of the gym, having said that he didn’t need a changing room. Finally, he tied the laces of his shoes tightly, stretched lightly, and then stood up.

He kicked his left and right foot backwards in order to check the slippage of the floor, and heard some nice squeaky sounds. It was indeed a nice gym. It was quite a difference from the Seiin gym, where the wax had peeled off the floor and made it slippery. He was so used to practicing in a gym that was as hot as a steam bath that the air conditioning made him feel cold. His body felt like it was stiffening up, so he stretched with great care.

He turned his eyes to Kuroba. Kuroba was bouncing up and down on the sideline. “You have nice shoes,” he said, admiring his borrowed shoes. His jumping power was the same as ever, able to hug both his knees lightly just from jumping a little. Kuroba didn’t have his practice gear with him, so he was only wearing his T-shirt that he wore underneath his shirt and his uniform pants rolled up to his knees.

Meisei High School had two gymnasiums, the larger but older first gym and the slightly smaller but newer second gym. The boys’ volleyball team practiced in the second gym. It wasn’t like in Seiin, where six clubs divided up the days each of them could use the gym, and they could only envy the environment of being able to practice in the gym every day.

On the other side of the court, a dozen or so Meisei team members were gathered, chatting among themselves and sneaking peeks at them. The Seiin team had team jerseys for game days, but their regular practice clothes were all different. Meisei had practice uniforms with their team logo on them. It was intimidating to see a wall of matching practice uniforms lined up in a row.

The only people present were the first- and second-year members of the club. The third years, the coach, and the advisor were having a meeting in the coach’s office with the members of the opposing school for a friendly match. Using that timing, the second years took the initiative to accept the “challenge.”

“Didn’t Haijima get into the best six?”

“He’s gotten big…Having that height with that volleyball sense, how much does he have…?”

He frequently heard his name mentioned in the gaps between conversations. He didn’t know what Komukai and the other first-years thought, but he got the feeling that the second-years were generally interested in finding it out—if the “genius setter” who dropped out of a powerhouse private school had lost his edge.

On the other hand, they seemed to take no notice Kuroba for the present. It couldn’t be helped, as an ace attacker from a no-name school in a prefecture they didn’t even know wouldn’t ring any bells for them. Even though Komukai had talked down on it, best 16 in the Kanto Tournament was a considerably good level. Before entering the Kanto Tournament, there were more than 150 schools that participated in the Tokyo preliminaries alone. They were in the best 16 in the tournament, on top of winning the block against a number of schools that was incomparable to the scale that Kuroba had experienced at Monshiro and Seiin.

The rules were two against two. Since beach volleyball was played with a two-person team, there was no reason they couldn’t play. Since they didn’t know when the third-years would come back after their meeting, they decided to keep it short and play only one set with whoever getting twenty-five points first winning. At the turnaround point of thirteen points, they would change courts. There were only two people on the court, so there was no rotation. Naturally, each person would have a wide range of roles, and both people must play receiver, setter and attacker.

For the Seiin team, it went without saying that the two players on the team were Kuroba and Haijima. In contrast, the first player for the Meisei team was the second-year, Tatsumi. Tatsumi was only about 180cm tall, but he remembered him to be a good blocker in middle school, making use of his long arms. To be honest, he was surprised to see Ikawa, a fellow first-year, was put on the team. Ikawa himself seemed puzzled by his selection, fidgeting unsurely.

“Alright!”

Kuroba shouted after finishing his relatively proper warm up. “Oi,” Haijima called out to his back, grabbed his waist belt and pulled him close.

“Whoa, hey, stop that. My underwear would be showing if I was wearing track pants.”

Kuroba, who had turned around to complain, blinked. “Nnn?”

“You’re playing with your glasses? What about your contacts?”

“I didn’t bring them today.”

Isn’t that your fault in the first place…? He glared at Kuroba, who feigned ignorance, and clicked his tongue. He hadn’t practiced properly in a while, so he didn’t carry his contacts with him. Since he started play volleyball, he had been wearing contacts out of necessity, but he avoided using them as much as possible because they didn’t suit his constitution and were too much trouble. This was the only thing Haijima was “lazy” about when it came to volleyball.

“You get it, don’t you? Two against two, we’re at a disadvantage.”

He thrust his face forward and made his voice stern. “You’re talking about that now? You’re a guy who keeps changing your own subject.” Kuroba shrugged and said indifferently.

“They have the same conditions, don’t they? How are we at a disadvantage?”

“You should be aware of your own weaknesses. You were the one who came up with the idea to challenge them. Who’s going to receive the ball?”

Kuroba was worse at reception (serve receives) than digs (spike receives). It was probably because he was strangely under pressure while waiting in the stance. His digs were not so bad, because he didn’t have time to think. Though he had strengthened his reception skills during the intensive practice at summer camp, he had finally become average at it. The dilemma arose when Haijima had to cover Kuroba’s defensive range, but Haijima couldn’t set the ball if he did the first contact.

“You say that, but we can’t back down now. It’s gonna be okay. Let’s go.”

With a strange confidence of unknown basis, Kuroba escaped from reality and stepped onto the court while spinning his arms. It looked like there was a flaming aura rising from his shoulders, and Haijima stared at his back in slight astonishment before hurriedly following him to the court.

He had never seen Kuroba showing so much fighting spirit. The usual Kuroba had the disposition of a spoiled only child, and winning or losing a competition wasn’t fundamentally his purpose of action. Usually, he was the one who was frustrated by his laxness, but…

Komukai and the other freshmen, who were responsible for keeping score and line judging, ran from courtside to take their positions.

The second-year team members watching from the walls, the first-year team members scattered around the court’s perimeter—all eyes were on them from all sides, as though to see what they got.

“You mean, a performance?”

…That was what was said.

He recalled Komukai’s confession again.

So they all conspired to see how I’d react to a teammate’s suicide attempt. So, what did you think when you saw my reaction, where I endured a lot, as planned? Did you enjoy it…?

Before he knew it, the contours of the people disappeared, and many eyes floating in the air surrounded him on all sides and stared at him. …What is this. For the first time, he cared about the stares pouring in from outside the court. I wonder how I’m being looked at.

He said, and then he was suddenly grabbed by his chin and made to look at the court. He blinked in slight surprise and saw Kuroba peering into him with a severe look on his face.

“I didn’t tell you to not care about your surroundings. It’s natural to care about it. I’d rather show them what I can do. Let them know how big of a loss it was to banish Haijima Kimichika from Meisei. I hope your former teammates’ senpais chew them out hard because of that. We’ll make them say, ‘If he had been here, we wouldn’t have just finished in the best 16.’ We’re gonna show off, and then I’m gonna carry you off back to Seiin while laughing. That’s the outline of it. In the first place, if we ran back shamelessly while our crucial setter disgraced, Oda-senpai would yell at us.”

With his both his cheeks squeezed, Haijima blankly looked up at Kuroba. “Still not enough?” Kuroba sniffed in dissatisfaction, then looked like he suddenly thought of something and then whispered to him with his hand over his mouth, as though telling him a secret. “Hey, before we go home, I’d like to go sightseeing just once in Tokyo…like going to Harajuku or something. Those girls from earlier looked like they wanted to talk to us, right? What if we accidentally get scouted…”

“…Don’t get carried away.”

When Haijima gathered his eyebrows and said that in a low voice, “I-I was joking.” Kuroba said and let go of him in fear. “I was just trying to ease your nerves, you know? There’s no way I’d be saying that seriously.” He said, but he probably wasn’t all that opposed to the idea.

“You look happier than before, don’t you? You’ve got a shameless look on your face.”

He said with a grin. Haijima adjusted his glasses with a sour expression on his face. Do I always have a shameless look? It’s not like I’m consciously making faces.

…I can talk now…huh. That reminds me…

He put his fingers to his throat and breathed in and out gently. Somehow, as he followed his usual procedure to prepare, he felt relieved, and the foreign object feeling that had been pressing against his vocal cords disappeared.

He gently manipulated the three taped fingers of his left hand one by one with his right hand. He then did the same with the opposite hand. They didn’t feel cold. His body temperature went through to them. He could handle the ball as usual. I’m fine. My fingers…are still attached.

Alright…maybe this can work?

“Nnn? …You’re kinda…”

Kuroba blinked and looked at his own palms suspiciously.

***

“He’s kind of like you, isn’t he? No, you’re much more developed, but the things he’s trying to do are…”

Kuroba was also surprised and let leak such an impression.

The Ikawa that Haijima knew until his second year of middle school was a reserve setter with no special characteristics. He had a quiet personality and always waited for others to make a move before making a move himself, which was a flaw of his. But today, his impression of him was very different from how it was in middle school. It didn’t seem that the Meisei side sent Ikawa into the court because they looked down on the match.

Tatsumi was an all-rounder with a good balance of defensive and offensive skills, and it was unpleasant how his long reach, especially when it came to blocking and spiking, caused his movements to be a little unpredictable for Haijima. In addition, while he was stuck in the six-person system, Tatsumi on the other hand didn’t stick to the three-stage attack (1) and lightly went back and forth between the first and second stages. There were only two defenders, so even a weak ball would score unexpectedly if it was dropped right at the edge of the court. If you became vigilant about that and stepped back, he would then do the third stage properly and spike. Though they were definitely not losing in terms of technique, it was absurdly frustrating to be reminded of the difference of one school year with such deftness.

He had noticed that he was getting more impatient than ever. If it were a full game, he could spend the first half of the first set observing, and then build up a game to crush them from the second half onwards to crush them in the second set, but this game only had one set. We have to catch them early——.

From Ikawa’s hands came a set that dived straight for the attacker’s hitting point. Now a hard hit came. It was right in front of Kuroba’s block, but Tatsumi skillfully used his long reach to catch his spike on the tips of Kuroba’s fingers and blow it all the way back to the end line. Haijima, who was defending deep, chased the ball, but couldn’t catch up and ended up only used his stamina for unnecessary sliding.

“Shit…”

He should have run. He got up on his arms and pulled up his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from my face. It wasn’t usual for him to be this breathless at this point in the game, but he was more exhausted than usual. “Sorry, Haijima,” Kuroba, who seemed to still have plenty of energy, ran all the way outside the court. He lent him his hand and Haijima let him pull him up to his feet.

“Your hand when you block should be more…” He wanted to give him instructions to fix it there, but he didn’t want to use his energy to even teach him with specific hand gestures, so he just said, “Never mind…court change” and turned around. “Oh, right,” Kuroba was puzzled for a moment before following him. Currently, they were at 10-13. At the turnaround point of thirteen points, Meisei took a three-point lead and they changed courts. The two teams moved counter-clockwise around the sides of the net to the opposite court.

He heard the second-year assistant referee chatting with another second-year by the pole.

“Ikawa’s pretty good. Was Haijima always like that? I had the impression he stuck out more in middle school.”

“No way, he can hit and he’s a good defender? He really can do it all.”

“Yeah, but not as good as I expected.”

“Anyways, the teachers will be coming back soon. We’ll be in big trouble. Should we stop?”

They were beginning to worry about the time. That meant the Meisei side’s concentration on the game was diminishing. The game was not being played in a way that made the gallery lean forward eagerly.

I’ll show you how big of a loss it had been to let Haijima Kimichika go—he didn’t feel like he had shown much to make them think that. Haijima bore much of the defense, so he couldn’t show off his set work. Of course, it wasn’t as though setting was the only thing he was good at. He couldn’t have peace of mind unless he was the best at serving, blocking, digging, and spiking, so he did them all. But more than anything, he wanted to build his offense the way he wanted it to be. He had his hands full with returning the ball in the flow of the game, and he wasn’t able to control the flow himself. Frustration was building up within him because he knew very well that he was playing a mediocre game.

“That set he made just now was a perfect copy of yours.”

Kuroba came up next to him and said. They were looking at the two members of the opposing team, who were moving around the court, talking with relatively cheerful faces.

“Kou is Chika’s fan.”

A voice cut in from the side. It belonged to Komukai, who was keeping score. He leaned languidly against the score board’s frame and looked at Ikawa with a look of displeasure on his face.

“Apparently, he’s been studying Chika’s game videos from middle school, watching them hundreds of times. He said there’s a lot of cool plays he wants to copy. But with how he is today, it looks like he already caught up to you. I think Kou must be disappointed that his idol turned out to be not that great after all.”

When Komukai boasted that, purposely stirring him up, Kuroba said, “Shut your trap. You guys only knew him until second year of middle school. You don’t know high school Haijima at all, do you?” He stepped in between them like a shield and pushed Haijima to the court.

“Good grief, standard Japanese is so creepy. So it wasn’t just you that’s creepy.”

Haijima asked Kuroba, whose anger still hadn’t subsided when he entered the court.

“Am I having a bad day today?”

“Huh? No, not really. In fact, I’ve never seen you have a bad day.”

“If you have the time to see my games a hundred times, you should watch the video of the Argentina game and see De Cecco’s (2) set work a hundred times. You’ll never get bored and it’s way more interesting. I’m still not even ten centimeters away from Abe (3) yet…”

When he muttered that to the floor, Kuroba tilted his head to the side and peered at him.

“You’re…not used to being praised much, are you?”

“…”

He sullenly shut his mouth and looked away.

He saw Ikawa on the opposing court looking at him over the net. The gallery seemed to be getting bored, but Ikawa seemed to be enjoying the game and his eyes were shining in his flushed face. No matter what he did, he was more often shunned or envied than praised, so he just couldn’t get used to being looked at in such a purely admiring way.

He remembered the first time Ikawa replaced Haijima as the setter in the Fall Tournament in his second year of high school, when he would come to the warm-up zone repeatedly while wiping sweat off his face and looking like he was about to cry for help. But now, there was confidence in his face. As Komukai said, he might be beginning to believe that he was more equal to his opponent than he thought.

“…Crush Ikawa.”

He declared, narrowing his eyes and glaring at beyond the net.

“Huh? What did you say? He’s your fan, you know.”

“That’s why it’s good manners to not hold back. I’m going to crush him with all my might and push him away. I’ll make him regret ever hoping to catch up with me. I haven’t done anything to make it easy to catch up to me.”

He hadn’t found much motivation to play this game, but his fighting spirit was finally ignited and his heart began to boil.

Kuroba sighed in disgust. “…You’re a guy who’s never satisfied with anything. There’s not much people out there who can keep up with you.”

He rolled his shoulder blades and relaxed his shoulders. Before he knew it, he was straining in a bad direction.

He wasn’t aware of strange things like showing off his setting to Komukai and the second-years who were watching from around him. It would be enough to remind Ikawa, who was fighting on this court right now. You watched videos of me from up to second year of middle school hundreds of times? Then, don’t you want to feel it for yourself now——?

In that instant, the view outside the court disappeared. He was no longer conscious of the gazes from the gallery that often glanced over at him. He didn’t care what the people outside the court thought of him. He was in absolute control of the court, both enemies and allies. He connected his nerves to the court and made the world move on that board. Because this intoxicating feeling was addicting, he didn’t want to give up this position to anyone.

“Kuroba, starting now, you’re doing all the receives.”

“Huh, all by myself?”

“If I’m on defense, I can’t play setter. I want to play in the middle.”

I’ve said something like this a long time ago…when I was in Meisei. At that time, his statement had caused a wave of disquiet. However, then and now, he had felt that he was being selfish, but he didn’t think he was wrong either.

“You don’t have to return the A-pass. It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you get the ball up somewhere. You have to do the second contact. As soon as you get the ball, you have to run and hit it.”

“You’re being unreasonable…there’s only the two of us.”

Although he looked fed up, Kuroba opened his legs on the stop without much hesitation, twisted his body left and right, then let out a shout. “So, I should take them all myself. It’ll be easier if it’s that simple. I’ll do my best to keep you from running as much as possible. It’s more something to aim for, though.”

***

After changing the strategy, Kuroba’s movements improved dramatically. It seemed that he had been confused by the unfamiliar two-person team, unable to grasp the scope of his jobs. When Haijima affirmed that he wouldn’t be getting involved with the reception, he seemed to have a clearer idea of what he needed to do and moved on.

Although he called it an unreasonable request, if his partner wasn’t Kuroba, Haijima wouldn’t have said anything at all. Even if he just expanded his defense area, if it was just a matter of catching up, Kuroba could do that. His eyes, reflexes, and physically ability were a cut above everyone else’s. If I tell you that’s your prey, you will react and definitely catch up to it.

“You’re like a border collie.”

When he told him that half in admiration and half in exasperation, Kuroba, looking amazed, said, “That’s rare, you used a non-volleyball related simile.” A border collie chasing a frisbee had come to his mind, but he himself wondered how did he know anything about dogs. That’s right…that was Yoshino’s dog. They lived in a detached house.

He could catch up to it and hit it with his hand, but most of the time it wasn’t even a B-pass, much less an A-pass. However, Haijima predicted where the receive would go based on the angle and rotation of the serve the moment it arrived and Kuroba’s reaction, and got under the ball ahead of time. That was what he meant when he said it didn’t matter where it went as long as it went up. He demanded it because he was willing to do whatever it takes to follow through, as long as he got his teeth into it one way or another. There was no reason to be told that if he was going to tell people to do something, he should do it himself first.

With only two team members, there was no way to make full use of their attackers and show off their combination attacks, but as long as the second touch was given to him, there were plenty of ways to show off his skills as a setter. After letting Kuroba hit the ball from the left or middle as usual, he signalled for him to run to the right. He set the ball to as far as the antenna at the edge of the net and tear off the block. Kuroba alone left the block behind and mutter “This asshole” through gritted teeth as he caught up with the set and drive the ball in straight from the right side.

If he judged that the ball could be stopped even if he set it to Kuroba, he would instantly switch to hitting it himself. The effectiveness of his greatest weapon, the dump, could be demonstrated more powerfully in a two-player system. Fundamentally, the setter set the ball with the right side of his body facing the net, but for a dump, the setter himself threw the ball into the opponent’s court with his left hand from that stance. This was why left-handed or ambidextrous setters were able to perform a powerful dump.

Of course, Haijima’s former Meisei teammates knew the terror of his setter dumps. Ikawa, anticipating that he would do a dump, marked him. He turned his left hand from the jump set stance to do the dump—right before that, he turned his hand over again over the net. Right in front of Ikawa, who had been caught off guard and unable to move, he made a left-handed backhanded set to the right. Even without looking back, he could see Kuroba jumping there. The sound of a crisp impact sounded behind him.

While the two of them were getting into the swing of it, it was Ikawa who had suddenly gotten worse. His face began to show signs of impatience, and he was frequently seen wiping off sweat with his hands on knees. He had been running a lot in the first half of the game, and his legs seemed to be hurting. The two-person team was three times as tiring as the six-person team, so to speak.

However, it was the same for them, as they were approaching the limit of their stamina. Every time the rally was interrupted, he felt so tired that he wanted to sit down.

“Ugh.”

The bottom of his shoes slipped on his sweat and he fell to his knees. He was also quite exhausted. While feeling glad that he wasn’t in the middle of a rally, he knelt down and took out the towel at his belt. There was no mopper standing by to wipe the court like there were in big tournaments, so he did it himself. Even though the air conditioning was working in the gym, a drop of sweat ran along his chin and dripped onto the floor where he was wiping it. He pulled on his T-shirt and wiped his face again, but the T-shirt itself was already soaked, so it was useless.

“Stand up.”

Kuroba held out his hand, but he couldn’t raise his arm. He was squatting down, his shoulders heaving before Kuroba took his arms and made him stand up. “You’re already at your limit…” “What are you talking about?” He spat out those words as he took a breath and interrupted Kuroba. If he could stand up, he could still look up. He wasn’t doing the easy-to-understand actions of looking down and putting his hands on his knees. His experience and force of will was different from Ikawa’s.

Kuroba already knows, doesn’t he… I get that from the way he spoke. But.

“We’re almost there, so don’t say a word. All you, have to do, is give it your all.”

He said choppily while breathing shallowly. His voice had the slight hint of a plea in it.

Kuroba looked like he wanted to say something, but gave up in the end and said, “Okay.”

Just a little more. Just a little… I haven’t been able to show them what I wanted to show them yet.

A feverish membrane enveloped his head, and his consciousness became hazy. Hah… Hah… His rough breathing filled the inside of the membrane and he could hear it reverberating only around him.

But when he heard the in-play whistle, the membrane was cleared away and he could firmly concentrate. It was a conditioned reflex that his mind and body learned.

The ball that Kuroba slid to pick up drew a low trajectory and flicked to outside the sideline. Haijima was already dashing towards it. He braced himself on his outside leg, twisted his body, and dove right under the ball with an overhead stance. Right after he pushed the ball back into the court, he stepped on his sweat again and his heel slipped. He fell backward, unable to keep his footing, but his eyes never left the set he had made.

The set released from his fingers with all his strength tore through the empty space and headed for the net. Kuroba rolled around on the floor, got up, immediately broke into a run and took off. The ball was far away. But Kuroba could hit it. No one except Kuroba could hit it.

He brought his entire body to the front of the net at once with his inherently dynamic jumping distance. Even so, the hitting point was high. Tatsumi jumped to block him, but he didn’t even allow a single touch, as though it was payback for earlier, and went over the block. “Go!” Haijima spontaneously shouted. He could confidently say that there were no high school-class players who could stop Kuroba one-on-one at the net when he was on the top of his game.

He saw with his own eyes Kuroba knocking down the ball with a powerful swing, and then in the next instant,

“Chika!!”

The outside voices that had completely disappeared suddenly flew in from nearby. Komukai?——The moment he turned his head in the direction of the voice, he was hit by something from the side. A violent metallic sound penetrated his head all the way to the other side.

There was a stir around him. All the noise in the gym suddenly came back to his eardrums, and he was temporarily lost in the torrent of disorganized sounds.

“Chika! Oi, Chika!” He heard Komukai’s voice near him, but it was kept away and replaced by another voice saying, “Haijima!”

“Haijima! Are you okay, Haijima!?” “Ugh…” He could still feel the metallic sound reverberating in his head. It feels like I got slapped…he was conscious enough to have that thought in his mind. He could guess from the direction he slid in that it was the metal panel of the score board.

Am I okay…? He checked himself and got the response that he was fine. He sat up on the fallen panel while pressing his face.

“Haijima, oi!”

“Yeah…I hear you. I probably didn’t hurt any…”

The person hanging over him and peering into him was probably Kuroba, but he couldn’t get a clear image of him even if he strained his eyes.

“My glasses…”

“Glasses? Oh, this…mmh? Ah.”

“…What is it.”

“No, this…are you fine with it like this…?”

While Kuroba spoke unfocusedly, he ran his hand over the thing he had given him and checked the shape of the familiar frames. He tried to open the earpieces, but something felt off.

The frames were warped. Well, it’s an emergency measure, but if I forcibly bent it to the other side, I’ll be able to put them on more or less…as long as they aren’t broken… Nope.

“…”

He held up the glasses by the earpieces. Grimacing with all his might, he stared at the fuzzy figure eight outline in front of his eyes.

One of the lenses was gone.

“Oh, here it is, here it is. It looks like it’s not broken.”

Kuroba found the missing lens, but it wasn’t like he could fit it in right here.

“What are you going to do? Quit? We don’t mind if you quit.”

The Meisei second-year who was acting as the referee said. When he used the received lens like a magnifying glass and glared at the referee, he could see the referee flinch a little in the slightly distorted oval.

He pointed the lens at the scoreboard under his butt. The numbers were flipped up and the scores for both sides were unclear, but they were recorded in the scorebook inside his head. Haijima didn’t doubt that Kuroba’s spike right before had went in, so he added that.

“…23-23, huh.”

They were always behind by two or three points, but they gradually closed the gap in the second half and caught up at the end. Now all they had to do was to score two times in a row without giving up a single point. Meisei seemed to be worried that the higher-ups would be coming back soon, but it would be irritating to have the game end with no definite results.

“It’s no problem. I’ll play like this.”

Is he serious? The gallery buzzed. He stood up with his glasses, which couldn’t be used due to the warping of the frames. Kuroba tried to support him, but he pushed his hand away with an “I’m fine” and turned to Tatsumi.

“Tatsumi-san, you’re going to play until the end, right?”

“Yeah, if you’re fine with it. It’s getting interesting, after all.”

Tatsumi said with a wry smile, his voice coming from a completely different direction from where Haijima was facing.

Now we’re talking… His heart boiled up lightly, and he pushed aside his fatigue for the moment. He was glad he was able to play this game. Ikawa was able to rouse him, and there were many things he could learn from an experienced player like Tatsumi.

Absorb it all, push it away, and go up.

“It’s my serve, after all.”

“If you can’t do it, you can rotate the serve order around, okay?” He couldn’t make out the face at all, but a long and thin object that seemed like Tatsumi said.

The serve was Seiin’s. The server was Haijima.

“Kuroba. Put this near my bag.”

He thrust his glasses to Kuroba while glaring at the court. Kuroba let out a shrill “Uweh?”, and he sensed that it was no good. Even though he had been on the top of his game, the current commotion had broken his concentration.

Well, we were able to unveil our ace, anyways.

If Kuroba said he wanted to show off their setter, then Haijima also wanted to show off the fact that there was such an attacker at a no-name public school. He had already accomplished that goal with that shot earlier, and he didn’t need to show their hand any more than that today.

He started walking along the line. His feet were a bit unsteady, but he had no hesitations about the direction he was walking in. Kuroba put his glasses near his bag by the wall and then hurriedly caught up to him.

“Can you see?”

“I can’t. I have 0-0.1 vision without my glasses.”

He stood in the service zone to receive the ball. He tried to catch the ball with one hand and ended up receiving it with his face.

The gallery buzzed for a moment and then fell into complete silence. “…Is this guy going to be okay?”

He once lightly nudged the ball in the service zone. Everything around him looked blurry, like it had rained, but only the white lines, a rectangle of nine by eighteen meters, stood out clearly. Like guide lights illuminating a runway at night, they shone white in his vision. He had only moved away to a place where he couldn’t see the outside of the court. His connection with the court wasn’t broken.

The soles of his shoes squeaked as he checked the feeling of the well waxed floor. He rolled the still relatively new Molten practice ball in his hands.

Haijima liked the feel of a volleyball. Not a soccer ball, not a baseball, not a basketball, but a volleyball. The surface was slightly cushioned, and it fit into his fingers as though wrapping around them. For him, a volleyball was “warm.”

The whistle sounded to resume play.

If the other side scored even one point and it became a deuce (4), then they probably won’t win. They had to score twice consecutively to reach twenty-five points. Of course, they couldn’t miss any of their serves. But there was no option to include a float serve. A lukewarm serve would be easily counterattacked in any case.

To be honest, he couldn’t tell where Kuroba was standing, so he couldn’t tell what defense Tatsumi and Ikawa were taking on the other side of the net. However, the tension given off by those breathing on the court created a slight airflow. He used the feeling on his skin, sense of hearing, and sense of smell to grasp the changes in the air. Even if he couldn’t see it, there was a court in his mind that he could recreate in vivid detail from corner to corner. The bright coat on the wooden floor at his feet radiated out from beneath his feet as though to stretch out the roots of his nerves all around.

He put the ball in his left hand and held it up to his eyes. He could only vaguely recognize the three colors of white, red, and green at the end of his arm, and he couldn’t even recognize the colors of anything further away than the ball.

But…so what?

How many tens of thousands of times do you think I’ve stood in this place and hit the ball from here?

With a snap of his left hand, he threw the ball high in front of him. While looking up at the ball he had just released, he ran forward, sank his knees in the same manner as a spike jump, and jumped. The blurry white, red, and green disappeared completely, blending in with the lights on the ceiling. However, he believed in his set and swung his arm out without hesitation. He felt the sensation of his left hand securely grabbing the center of the ball.

There was a stir at the same time he landed on his toes, and the whistle blew.

“Haijimaaaa!”

Haijima didn’t know what the whistle was for, but it seemed that he had scored as Kuroba cheered and flung his arms around him.

“…Can I hit another one?”

“Of course. You’re our service ace.”

Service ace…it went in, huh… The strength slipped out of him for an instant, and he rested his chin on Kuroba’s shoulder and took a breath. Well, he was confident, but even so, he was surprised with himself.

“Where did that one go?”

“Straight into the right corner…wait, you really can’t see!?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along.”

“That’s scary, you’re strong even in this condition…”

He reproduced every serve he hit on the court in his head while digesting the sensations so as to not forget the sensation of every move that remained in his body. He could clearly imagine the white, red, and green ball that drew a slightly distorted trajectory to the left and sucked into the opponent’s court and stab into the right corner, as clearly as if he were seeing it with his own eyes.

One more…I can do one more.

“The ball…”

He muttered heatedly while staring into space. “Huh? O-Okay,” Kuroba caught the ball that had been released and passed it to him.

He didn’t have to think about the whole court anymore today. He didn’t need to think about game-making for ahead. He only had to think about making this serve——

Kuroba’s voice disappeared from his eardrums. The court he had been drawing in his head with himself as the starting point disappeared as though a dark curtain had been pulled down in all directions. The place he was standing in and the white lines at a ninety-degree angle that indicated the right corner of the opponent’s court. The world was condensed into a single sharp, thin line—the shortest path that connected those two points and grazed the top of the net. A ray of light in the darkness, only for the No.5 ball with a diameter of 20cm to penetrate.

If he had only the nerves to make this one serve, then the circuits in his brain might as well be burned out for the rest of the day.

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