V1C1 Part6

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

6. ENTRY SHEETIf I get anything about volleyball wrong, let me know

Translation Notes

1. Tokyo is called a city, but it’s treated as one of the 47 prefectures since it’s so big. Its official name is Tokyo Metropolis or Tokyo-to (東京都)

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His class duties took longer than expected and he rushed out

of the classroom later than usual. As soon as he turned the door at a right

angle, he ran into Itoko coming out of the classroom next door. He barely

caught her wrist when she bumped her face against his collarbone and got

bounced back.

“Ow… Yuni? That’s dangerous, you know.”

“I didn’t know. You’re the one who was looking away.”

While insulting her back out of habit, he was inwardly

flustered because her wrist was thinner than he thought, and immediately let

go.

“Hmm? Are you going to club now?”

Itoko let out a “Hmm?” with a rising inflection when she

looked at Kuroba’s bags. He was feeling like he had been using the enamel bag

he carried on his shoulder for a long time lately. Starting this month, they

would be wearing their summer uniforms, and his t-shirt could be seen from the

front of his wide-open shirt.

“Do your best, sports lad.”

“Don’t, don’t make fun of me!”

“How? I wasn’t. Wasn’t I praising you?”

“You sound like you’re looking down on me when you say it

like that.”

“Even if I wanted to look down on you, I can’t!”

She

gestured to compare the heights of their heads by holding up her hand. When he

felt an itchy feeling down his back and bent back, Itoko leaned forward on her

tiptoes and looked up at him from under his chin.

“W-what? Don’t get so close to me, it’s weird.”

“You got taller again, haven’t you?”

“Huh? R-really?”

Now that

she said it, the position where Itoko’s face bumped into him was considerably

lower. Recalling the scent of her shampoo, the itchiness ran down his back

again.

***

“One-seventy-nine-point…zero.”

“It’s true! I did grow taller!”

It had been a long time since they measured their heights at

that scale on the door of the equipment room. He smoothly removed himself from

beneath the powder drink box that was held up by Haijima and checked the scale

for himself.

“Hm. Isn’t it…nine-point-two? Don’t cut it off.”

Haijima didn’t even hide his tongue click when he corrected

him. Haijima was 176.9cm. Even without being jealous of Kuroba, they were

growing together, but he didn’t like the fact that their height difference of 2.3cm

wasn’t shrinking even a millimeter. Well, I’m in a good mood now, so I can

tolerate Haijima’s aggression.

“Fufu…Fufufufu…I’ll be one-eighty soon, with this.”

“Don’t your knees hurt?”

“It doesn’t bother me that much. It just feels a bit

uncomfortable.”

He answered, tilting his head as he bent and stretched his

knees. “You’re too healthy,” Haijima said, half-opening his eyes with a look of

resentment.

“Does your knees hurt?”

“They do. I can’t even sleep some days.”

“Ho. Heh. So that’s how it is.”

“Tch…that loose face is pissing me off.”

Currently, there were eight active members on the boys’

volleyball team. There were some dropouts during the intensive spring break

practices, but three people joined miraculously in the new school year. They

could be in matches if they had seven people, but it was great that they could

have one member in reserve (Since it was six-people volleyball, there were six

people standing on the court at the same time, but the player specializing in

receives called the libero could be registered separately, and they rotated

while replacing a player on the court).

Within

the club, Kuroba was the tallest, and his position was outside hitter as well

as opposite hitter. Simply put, they were the positions that spiked the most.

Next was Haijima, whose position was the immovable setter. It was the position

where one set the ball up. And after him was Nagato, who was 175cm tall and also

a third-year like the two of them, and his position was the center. It was a

role that was the center of the blocking in front of the net and to act as a

decoy. Other than those three, the rest were on par with the average middle

school boy, and none of them were outstandingly tall enough to surpass 180cm.

It was undeniable that they didn’t have the fighting power, but those who had

good physiques drifted to more popular clubs.

“We’re having a meeting!”

The advisor called for them to gather while they were being

noisy in front of the equipment room. Their ghost advisor, who had been

grumbling about his holidays been used up for accompanying their club

activities, seemed to have gotten more enthusiastic about it in the course of

going along with them seriously. Lately, he had started to cooperate with

practice, not just watch, and he was studying from the coach’s manual.

Haijima’s frank way of doing things and his single-mindedness

towards volleyball infected everyone else before they knew it. An unfamiliar but

not unpleasant something permeated their cells and remade their bodies

unnoticed—.

It had already been three months since that incident with

Yorimichi before spring break, but there was still a faint scar on Haijima’s

right temple. If you asked him if there was any change in Haijima’s personality

after that incident, he could tell you that there was absolutely none at all,

and that he was still the same volleyball fanatic who went his own way.

But thanks to that…he felt in his body that he had gotten

better. This week was better than last week, today was better than yesterday,

and he was able to move up a level. Kuroba especially liked the back-row attack

hit from right in the center of the court. Hitting from there, he was able to

jump the highest, hit the hardest, and get the best view.

“This is the entry sheet for the middle school prefecturals.

This year it’s two days from July twenty-six to twenty-seven.”

In a

corner of the gym, they sat in a circle with the advisor in the center. Except

for Haijima, everyone peered at the sheet curiously and said, “Wow, this is?” They had a few practice games with the middle schools in the city, but now

it was time for the summer prefectural tournament, their first official game.

“It’s right after we go into summer vacation.”

“You get to play around for the rest of summer if you lose,”

their advisor let slip out of his mouth, then cleared his throat when Haijima

glared at him. Kuroba had almost blurted that out as well, but he was glad he

hadn’t. “Ahem. Well of course since we’re going to compete, our goal is to win.

I was told that for last year’s schedule, the first day was the first and

second rounds, and the second day is the semifinals, third-place deciders, and finals.

The top three schools will advance to the Hokushin’etsu Tournament.”

“That’s all?”

It was Haijima who raised his voice in surprise.

“No subdivision qualifiers, already the prefectural finals?”

“Hmm, you’re referring to the block qualifiers below the

prefectural level, Haijima. To tell the truth, we’re lucky that our block

doesn’t have qualifiers. The girls do, but it seems that the number of

participating schools for the boys has been below the minimum for the past few

years. The number of schools where Haijima’s from can’t be compared to here,

and you have to win a lot of block qualifiers before you can get to the

prefecturals, right?”

“It’s the metropolitan tournament, but yeah.” (1)

Haijima

nodded, and Kuroba and the other members blinked in surprise. As he stared at

the entry sheet, his face became tinged with red and his eyes turned piercing. Uwah,

it’s that face, the dinosaur-loving boy…Kuroba had an ominous feeling that

he was going to say something bothersome and felt like holding his head.

Haijima raised his eyes from the entry sheet, and then

looked at his teammates one by one, as though confirming something. His gaze

stopped on Kuroba’s face. In a hoarse yet somewhat lively voice that sounded

like he was repressing his excitement, he said,

“We win the championship if we win four. If we win at least

three, we break through the prefectural tournament.”

A “Huh” slipped out of Kuroba’s mouth, and he gulped.

“That’s surprisingly…”

Close, he was about to say, but felt ashamed at

himself for forgetting their position. Excepting Haijima, it was an amateur

team where everyone else had no experience with regular games. If they won

once, that was all they could ask for, but if they somehow won twice against

all odds, then that was a remarkable achievement. They should be thinking that

humbly.

However, even the letter H in the word “humble” didn’t exist

in the dictionary of the man named Haijima Kimichika. He didn’t have the sensitivity

for being embarrassed about his overreaching statement, nor the thought of making

a precautionary low estimate.

“We can do it.”

He said confidently, without a hint of doubt or hesitation.

“We’re gonna win.”

He

always wondered how this guy could boldly put such words on his tongue as though

they existed just for him. Win? Did that mean being the best in the prefecture?

Those were words he thought he would never have any relation with. Or rather,

he was so far removed from them that they never even crossed his mind. The

reason was because he never devoted himself to anything that he wanted to be

the best at. Although he was passionate about volleyball now, it wasn’t because

he wanted to win, but more because at this point, he just enjoyed the feeling

of getting better at it.

But, only four wins. Or even three wins.

It

would be easier to become defiant and fight back if it was some eternally

distant place like having to win dozens of times or something like that… He

still couldn’t accept the fact that it was in a place they might reach if

everything went well, and now he was just bewildered.

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