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Originally posted by jotaros-massive-tiddies

hey guys

it’s fukuho time

but first, haijima’s going through some stuff

Translation Notes

1. A kappogi is a smock worn over a kimono

2. This is a pun on the word フリ, where furi could mean pretending but also “lead up” to a question or joke

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“Meisei Academy Middle School Volleyball Team”—with the team’s name engraved in grey letters onto the deep red—the school color—enamel bag slung over his shoulder, he ran down the hallway with a school bag of the same color tucked under his arm. Midway, he remembered to run to the bathroom, find a T-shirt to change into from the laundry he had left in the dryer, and shoved it into an open space of his enamel bag. And then he remembered something else and went back to his room again. He pulled his necktie, which he always forgot even though he was now a second-year, off the hanger and thrust it into the pocket of his blazer. He always went back and forth on his way out, sliding down the hallway on the soles of his socks to supplement what he had forgotten.

“I’m going…”

As he was about to call out to his dad in front of his bedroom, he ran right into his dad as he hurriedly came out while buttoning the sleeves of his business shirt.

“Ah…” They widened their eyes . “You’re leaving now, Chika?” “Yeah.” “Then, how about we leave together?” “Okay.”

He looked over his dad’s shoulder into his bedroom and caught a glimpse of his mother’s portrait on the simple apartment altar. He didn’t have any words to say in his mind. He didn’t feel any particular emotion well up inside him. He simply took in his mother’s face.

“You have the keys?” “Yeah.” “Do you have enough lunch money?” “Yeah.” The daily conversation between father and son was usually short. He waited for his dad to lock the front door, and by the time they got onto the elevator together, he had no idea what to do with the time he had on his hand. The two silently watched the floor indicator light go down slowly.

His dad suddenly glanced sideways at his shoulder and spoke as if he was just now surprised.

“You’ve grown…you’re about to overtake me.”

“Yeah. I will soon.”

He answered, comparing his shoulder height to his dad’s next to him.

“You didn’t get that from me.”

“Height, huh. Not from you.”

“Your mom wasn’t a tall woman either. Maybe it’s from my grandfather?”

His dad was of medium height for an adult man. From his impression from the photos in the albums, his mom was also not tall. Oh, I see, his dad muttered, then squinted as though trying to see further than the floor number display.

“Maybe your mom asked God to bless you. She saw how hard Chika was playing volleyball.”

His dad wasn’t usually the kind of person who said such sentimental things, so his back was exposed to an itching, creeping feeling. While twisting the strap of his enamel bag in front of his stomach, he tried to say it.

“I have a game on Saturday. Do you want to come?”

“Game? This week?”

He asked back, as though this was the first time he was hearing of it. That was because he hadn’t told him. He couldn’t find the right time to tell him, and he didn’t think he would be interested.

“Saturday, huh…”

His dad looked like he was opening his schedule book in his mind and seemed troubled, so he added, “There’s also Sunday.” “Saturday…” his dad still looked troubled.

I wouldn’t have told him if I knew it was going to put him on the spot, Haijima thought. In the past, he hardly ever brought it up to him, and in fact, he didn’t really want him to come. Some of his teammates always invited their parents to come cheer them on at every game, but he always wondered about how their motivation would change depending on whether or not they had their parents cheering them on. He didn’t think it mattered who came to watch him play, because he enjoyed playing.

“Sunday…I might be able to go to that one if it’s around four. Will that be in time for it?”

“Really?!” he unconsciously exclaimed when his dad still pressed the issue and said that.

“The finals will still be going on at four, so you’ll make it.”

“Mm? The finals have already been decided?”

“We’re going to win and advance to the finals. Because I’m the setter.”

“The setter isn’t a position that scores points, right? It’s more like a midfielder in soccer or catcher in baseball, right?”

“Yes, but not at all. Setters are special.”

His dad, who wasn’t a big fan of sports in general, got a mystified look on his face when he asserted that. He got irritated when other people talked about other sports as though they were the standard. Because volleyball was the most interesting sport in the world.

“There’s rotations in volleyball. All six players rotate between all the positions. You don’t see this in soccer or baseball. There’s different rotations for each side out, and each rotation has a different formation, and the setter controls everything from the center of the court throughout the match. And because the field is small than in soccer or baseball, the setter has more influence on the court, or rather, they can use the whole court. That’s why it’s completely different from other similar positions.”

His own vehemently arguing voice filled the narrow box-shaped space. He returned to himself when he saw his dad looking overwhelmed.

“I see…so the setter has a special job in the center of everyone.”

The outer corners of his dad’s eyes lowered.

“That’s good, right?”

He looked up at the floor number display again and murmured, as though he was addressing someone.

Yes, the setter was a special job.

They controlled the game and the players in the center of the court.

In that instant, a strange thing occurred.

The three sides of the square floor stretched limply, and the wall in front of him began to recede to the other side. His dad, standing next to him, was rapidly getting further and further away. Dad, he tried to reach out his hand, but couldn’t.

His dad, shrinking at the tips of his fingers, was no longer his dad. He wasn’t even in the elevator. There was a group of people wearing the Meisei Middle School uniform, but their faces were all featureless so he didn’t know who was who, and they stood by the wall of the gym with blank eyes.

Beneath the volleyball shoes he was wearing, there was a court marked with colored tape.

His feet were indeed standing in the “center of the court.” However, that place was not in the “center of everyone.”

—

The tatami mats were at his eye level. The morning sun beyond the paper sliding doors shined onto the dull yellow tatami. He slowly blinked again, but his vision was out of focus and the joints of the tatami were blurry. One of his cheeks was tingling.

His hands crawled around to search for the covers. His fingers caught onto his glasses, which he had placed beside his pillow, and he pulled himself up, grabbing them. His cheek peeled off from the tatami with a cracking sound.

When he put on his glasses, he could clearly see the joints in the tatami mats and the scenery around him. A futon in a Japanese-style room…this wasn’t the Tokyo apartment. This was his grandparents’ home in Fukui…when he recognized that, his brain, which had not fully awakened, finally began to work. “Hot…” He pulled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt. The towel blanket he had covered himself and slept with was completely gone. More importantly, why wasn’t he sleeping on top of the futon?

…Why did I have that dream now? I don’t usually remember the conversations I have with Dad.

He went to the bathroom, splashed water over his head to wash off the sweat, and dressed himself in the bare minimum. He opened the sliding door to the living room.

“Morning…”

There was no sign of his grandfather or grandmother, so his voice trailed off mid-sentence.

On the tea table, there was a lunch box filled with side dishes and rice, two rice balls wrapped in plastic wrap, pickled vegetables, and folded laundry. There were T-shirts and underwear to wear today and to take with him. “Grandma…?” He looked around, but there was no sign of his grandmother in the kitchen either.

“Crap, the time,” he thought it was sort of quiet, but then looked at his watch and hurried to pack his things. He put one of the rice balls in his mouth (it was cod roe, so it was a winner), shoved his change of clothes into his bag, then decided to eat the other one after morning practice (if it was salmon…that was good, but if it was plum, it was a miss) and carefully placed it on top of his change of clothes along with his lunch box.

He put his shoes on at the door, then turned around.

“I’m going!”

He said, just in case, but no one answered. This countryside house was much older and larger than the apartment in the center of Tokyo where he and his dad had been living together without too much or too little. The dark brown wood-grained hallways were well polished and free of dust, but this in turn brought a strange loneliness in him.

Grandpa and Grandma don’t actually live in this house, do they——?

That wild thought flashed across his mind. That was when it happened.

His vision became distorted, as though it was rippling. He was wearing his glasses. He touched the frames for an instant, then widened his eyes when he saw what was happening in front of him. The other end of the hallway was growing longer, and the wall was receding.

It’s the same as my dream——!?

The sliding door behind him opened with a rattle.

He reflexively jumped and turned around. “Morning…whoa, don’t just come out of nowhere!” the visitor was surprised as well, his eyes widened.

“Kuroba…”

A little stunned, he called out the visitor’s name in a slightly hoarse voice.

“Haijima? What’s the matter with you?”

The person who spoke with a Fukui accent and tilted his head in the doorway was Kuroba Yuni—his teammate on his high school volleyball team. He had his enamel bag for club activities slung over his school uniform, just like Haijima, but Kuroba was a little taller. The simple uniform of a white shirt and black pants was the summer uniform for the boys of Seiin High School, which the two attended.

“You’re right on the button today. I was planning on going on the first train today anyways,” Kuroba laughed as though he had won something, even though he had no idea what was going on.

When he turned his attention back to the house, he saw that the stretched-out hallway had returned to its original state.

“Good morning, ma’am!”

Kuroba stretched his back and shouted from above Haijima’s head. The sound of hurried footsteps came from the back of the house, and his grandmother appeared in her kappogi (1). Oh, so you were here, Haijima thought sarcastically despite himself.

“Oh my, Young Master, did you come to pick him up again today? Kimichika, have you finished getting ready yet? Why don’t you at least say, ‘I’m off?’ Have you forgotten anything? Your lunch box and laundry are in the living room…”

“I told you. I’ve got everything.”

He interrupted his grandmother’s fussy voice and answered curtly. If you’re here, come out quickly. Was she trying to surprise me… Are her ears getting bad? He glanced at her and wondered.

If Mom was like Grandma, would she have been this fussy too? He thought she was a quieter person, but maybe he was just beautifying her…he only had a vague memory of his mother, who had died of an illness before he started elementary school.

Haijima was born in Fukui, his mother’s hometown, but moved to Tokyo with his dad soon after his mother’s death. In the winter of his second year of middle school, Haijima alone returned to Fukui to live with his grandparents. Although he did have the choice to go to high school in Tokyo where his father was, he went to high school here.

If he had to describe his current relationship with Kuroba, it wouldn’t be wrong to call him his “high school volleyball teammate,” but they had also played volleyball together for a short time in middle school. If he went back further, he was also Haijima’s playmate in kindergarten before he moved to Tokyo. Although there was a gap of eight years when he was living in Tokyo, he supposed you could say they were childhood friends.

“Okay then, I’m off.”

Following Kuroba’s carefree voice, which felt like it was approaching him, Haijima also said in a small voice, “I’m off.” “Yes, yes, take care now,” his grandmother saw him off with a smile.

He pulled his bike out of the yard and started pedalling down the street alongside Kuroba’s bike, which was parked in front of the gate.

His mother’s parents lived in the town of Monshiro, which was a rural town in the mountains of Fukui. He took the first train out of Monshiro Station at 5:30 and arrived at the school across the city at 6:30. If you missed the first train, you would have to wait nearly an hour before the next train came.

“Why’d you come pick me up?”

“What’s with that tone? I asked Oda-senpai how to borrow the key for the gym.”

“Oda-san didn’t tell me.”

“It’s ‘cause you don’t know how to control yourself.”

“No matter how you look at it, I’m not going to school any earlier than the first train. Because I can’t.”

“So you’re saying you’d go if you can? There won’t be anyone there if you go early. What are you even going to do?”

Even by myself, I can…he was about to say, but stopped himself with a jerk.

He felt like what was in front of him would suddenly become far away again…

“You’re still suffering from heat fatigue. You look kinda out of it.”

Kuroba craned his neck at him from next to him. “And your face has weird lines on it,” he said, peering into his face with a suppressed smile. Haijima immediately brought his hand to his face. Are these from the tatami mats?

While turning his face away and rubbing his cheek,

“…Once the matchups for Spring High are decided, I’ll pace myself. I know how to hold myself back.”

“Alright, alright! It looks like you’ve learned a little something.”

“You sound like you’re looking down on me.”

He took one foot off the pedal and kicked Kuroba’s bike. “Oi, stop that!” Kuroba protested, laughing.

He stepped on the pedals and felt the wheels treading on the bumpy road, confirming that he was alright. The vast land of Monshiro taken root beneath him with an unshakeable presence. He was sure the scenery had remained unchanged since his mother was born and raised in that house decades ago.

Come to think of it, the scenery in this town was strange: no matter where you were in the town, you would find yourself in the center of an undistorted circle. A pale blue-green mountain range framed the boundary between the 360-degree, circular and unobstructed sky and the circular earth. The two of them rode their bikes side by sides along a farm road that stretched out in a straight line as if to pierce the foot of the mountains. Every time the wheels wobbled, his heavy enamel bag bounced on his behind.

He squinted his eyes, feeling somewhat threatened by the intensity of the blue. The blue skies of Tokyo and the blue skies of Fukui were completely different in terms of density of the blue. The azure sky that seemed to cover him from above was slowly beginning to scorch the earth. It was early September, just after summer vacation, and the temperature was still not dropping at night, but the heat barely abated just before dawn. He had to take refuge in the train station in the short time that the heat lost its grip on him.

As Kuroba had told him, he felt himself getting quite tired from the heat. Compared to last year and the year before, this year’s summer felt longer.

But, that was because the summer tournament was still going on. And he didn’t want it to end, and he wouldn’t let it end.

It was probably a common feeling among people who were on athletic teams.

He wished this summer would last even just a day longer.

“The matching will be decided on the tenth. That’s next Wednesday, right?”

The prefectural preliminary round of the All-Japan High School Volleyball Championship Tournament, nicknamed “Spring High Volleyball,” began on the 27th. This was the last chance of the year to get a ticket to Nationals.

“Is it that soon? Ugh, I hope we don’t face off with that strong school…the one that you said broke the all-time undefeated record.”

“Fukuho Tech. We’re going to face them sooner or later.”

“Yeah, but maybe they’ll lose before facing Seiin.”

“I doubt it. Fukuho hasn’t lost a single prefectural match since Mimura Subaru enrolled.”

“Mimura…Subaru?”

Kuroba looked blank. “How do you not know him…” Haijima glared at him in exasperation. “Setting me aside, you’ve never left your hometown in your life? To the point where you’ve never even heard of him? Fukuho’s Mimura Subaru—even in middle school, he won three consecutive prefecturals at Shinei Middle.”

Umm, Kuroba paused, like he was digging up a memory.

“I don’t think so. Say, where is Shinei Middle?”

He had pretended to be thinking just now, but it was a lead up to asking the question. (2)

“…You’ve probably never suffered from heat fatigue.”

“I haven’t. Why are you asking that? Is that a compliment?”

“No reason. It wasn’t a compliment.”

He was about to kick him again, but he stopped when they were passing an old man who was doing farmwork early in the morning.

“Oh, Bon! Going to school already?”

A guttural voice with a strong accent chased after him from the side of the road. “It’s team practice!” “Ho—. Team practice, eh? The two of you, work hard!” “We will! We’re going now!” Next to Kuroba, who had turned around and yelled back in a carefree voice, Haijima only bowed his head. Kuroba was called “young master” and “Bon” because he was the son of this town’s landowner, and there were many people here with the surname of Kuroba or with the surname of Kuroba somewhere in their lineage.

A wrinkled but muscularly tanned face peeked out from beneath a straw hat.

“Hey, I’ll bring you some boiled corn!”

“No thanks, sir!”

Before Kuroba could say no, two whole, magnificent stalks of corn were thrown into the air, spinning. “Geh…” “I said I didn’t want them.” It was a wild pitch. The corn flew over their heads, so they both hurriedly pedalled their bikes to chase after them, nearly losing their balance as they stood from their seats.

The two corn stalks flew high in the air as they spun around and around, swallowed up by the blue sky and disappearing temporarily. They fell in the backlight, scattering a golden light.

A brisk papan sound echoed consecutively in the sky, and one by one, they fell into two outstretched hands.

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