Aoba Johsai High School — Class 3-E
“Hey, hey, Kana! Have you heard the news? Our boys’ volleyball club actually made it to Nationals!”
“Ah… yeah, I already heard.”
If she didn’t know her best friend’s hyperactive personality so well, Akashi Kana might have suspected she was being subtly mocked.
After all, with that massive congratulatory banner draped over the front of the school building, claiming she didn’t know would basically be admitting she was legally blind.
“That’s just incredible, isn’t it?!”
“Yeah. Our school’s team has always been a powerhouse in the prefecture. Making it to Nationals isn’t exactly a miracle.”
“Eh~~? Kana, you actually know things about the volleyball club? Haven’t you always been totally indifferent to sports?”
“I just happened to pick up a few details recently.”
Originally, Kana hadn’t known the first thing about Aoba Johsai’s volleyball program.
However, once her younger brother entered high school and managed to make the powerhouse team, she had reluctantly spent a little time looking into it.
Besides, there was a slight inaccuracy in her friend’s assessment.
It wasn’t that Kana lacked interest in sports.
She simply lacked the desire to participate in them.
To put it more bluntly… She was just fundamentally lazy and detested any form of physical exertion.
“But there’s one major thing you got wrong!” Kana’s friend immediately countered, wagging a finger.
“Even though our volleyball club is a powerhouse, Nationals used to be a completely distant dream for them. For the past two years straight, Aoba Josei lost every single time to Shiratorizawa. But this year, they finally overthrew them! Do you know why?”
Kana’s friend, Mizuta Renko, wore a glaringly obvious ‘Come on, ask me!’ expression.
In truth, Kana couldn’t care less about the sports drama, but to humor her friend, she put on her best show of curiosity.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Mizuta Renko planted her hands firmly on her hips, looking incredibly proud of information she had absolutely nothing to do with.
“Hahaha… You really don’t know, do you?”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret!”
“This year, the club recruited an absolutely monstrous, super-duper amazing first-year. It was because he paired up with Oikawa-kun that they finally managed to take down Shiratorizawa’s ‘Demon King’!”
“And… get this! This new guy is just as insanely handsome as Oikawa-kun! The two of them literally split the front cover of this month’s Monthly Volleyball!”
“A bunch of girls in our class are already planning to buy extra copies just so they can tear the cover off and keep it as a collectible…”
“I see.” Kana offered a thoroughly absentminded nod.
She really had no interest in Renko’s fangirl gossip.
That was, until Renko suddenly slammed the magazine down right in front of her face.
“Look, look! Isn’t this new underclassman from the volleyball club gorgeous? His name is… Akashi Asuto. Huh? Wait, Kana, he shares your surname!”
Renko excitedly thrust the magazine cover within inches of Kana’s nose.
At that exact moment, Kana stared at the stylized photograph of Asuto’s cool, sharp posture and went completely rigid.
‘What on earth?’
‘Isn’t that my brat of a little brother?!’
‘Since when did that annoying kid become cover-model handsome?’
‘No, wait, hold on.’
‘That’s not even the most shocking part right now.’
‘Are his volleyball skills actually that high-level?!’
Kana was well aware that her younger brother had joined Aoba Josei’s volleyball club. She also knew that during his junior high years, he had anchored his team all the way to the National stage.
But beyond those bare-minimum facts, she knew next to nothing about his athletic career.
That wasn’t due to a strained sibling relationship.
Anyone with brothers or sisters understood that real siblings don’t spend their time at home exchanging deep, detailed life updates.
Most of the time, when a brother and sister share the same living room, they might not even exchange ten full sentences throughout the entire day.
They weren’t toddlers anymore.
After coexisting for so many years, simple grunts like “Mm,” “Yeah,” or “Ah” were more than enough to communicate perfectly.
Consequently, ever since Asuto enrolled at Aoba Johsai, Kana hadn’t paid any attention to his daily club activities.
She had naturally assumed that even if Asuto was a big deal in junior high, a high-school powerhouse like Aoba Josei would force him to warm the bench for at least a year before he smelled any real court time.
That was the standard hierarchy in elite school clubs.
Which was precisely why, when Mizuta Renko first raved about some legendary rookie savior, Kana hadn’t even remotely connected the dots to Asuto.
She had never imagined that her irritating little brother was actually a generational genius.
Seriously.
This defied all scientific logic.
Looking back three generations through the Akashi family tree, when had their bloodline ever produced an elite athlete like this?
‘Could this be some sort of radical genetic mutation?’
‘Maybe I should secretly order a sibling DNA test this weekend…’
The internal monologue of a high school girl could be terrifyingly unconventional.
In the span of a single heartbeat, Kana’s overactive imagination had already spiraled into her mother having a scandalous affair, her parents going through a dramatic divorce, her becoming bitter enemies with Asuto, and embarking on a ten-year path of dark revenge before ultimately becoming the Prime Minister of Japan…
However, her grand geopolitical fantasy was instantly shattered by Renko’s next observation.
“How bizarre, Kana. This handsome first-year looks incredibly similar to you!”
After studying the magazine cover a little longer, Renko finally voiced the physical resemblance.
Kana opened her mouth to explain the situation, but Renko’s immediate follow-up delivered a direct emotional critical hit.
“But he’s way better-looking than you are! Look at that muscle tone, that height, those long legs! Wow, Kana, he basically inherited every single good gene you missed out on!”
Kana: “……”
‘The hunting season has officially opened.’
Unfortunately, Mizuta Renko remained completely oblivious to the lethal aura she had just triggered.
She simply continued to fawn over the glossy page with pure enthusiasm.
“So cool! For Nationals, our Vocal Club is scheduled to go down and lead the cheering section for the volleyball team. When we get there, I am absolutely going to track Asuto-kun down for a selfie.”
“Oh, that reminds me, Kana. What do you think? If I tried to make a move on Asuto-kun, do you think I’d stand a chance?”
Kana let out a sharp, frigid laugh.
“Heh. As long as there is breath in my lungs, you have zero percent chance.”
Still, Renko’s casual comment did spark an alarm in Kana’s mind.
As a member of the Vocal Club, now that the boys had punched their ticket to Tokyo, her club would definitely be mobilized to anchor the school’s support section in the stadium.
‘Looks like I need to start showing up to rehearsals and practicing seriously again.’
‘I can’t keep skipping club activities whenever I feel a bout of laziness coming on.’
‘Otherwise, if I mess up and embarrass myself in front of that brat… My authority and dignity as his older sister will suffer a catastrophic collapse.’
…
3:30 PM
The final bell of the day rang, and Asuto made his way down to the student shoe lockers to swap his indoor slippers for his athletic sneakers before heading to the gym.
However, the moment he clicked open his locker door, a mini-avalanche of seven or eight pastel-pink envelopes tumbled out onto the floor.
The sight instantly caused the surrounding boys, who were also changing their shoes, to radiate a suffocating aura of pure, murderous envy.
“Curse you, you lucky normie! Just explode already!”
Collecting the letters with a deeply troubled, exhausted expression, Asuto stuffed them away, laced up his shoes, and headed briskly toward the gymnasium.
Along the corridors, he had to endure a gauntlet of girls pointing at him, hiding behind their blazers, and whispering excitedly before he finally reached his destination.
Yet the moment he pushed open the heavy gym doors, he was greeted by a chaotic scene of several teammates charging across the court, waving a crisp white envelope in the air.
Sprinting desperately behind them was none other than a furious Iwaizumi Hajime.
“Hey! You damn idiots! Give that back right now!”
“Not a chance in hell!”
“Iwaizumi, you traitorous bastard! We all bled together to beat Shiratorizawa and qualify for Tokyo! Why are you the only one walking away with a love letter?!”
“Exactly!”
“We had a pact to stay single together! How could you backstab the brotherhood like this?!”
“You filthy normie! We shall execute judgment on your crimes before the entire court!”
Using their height advantage, Takahiro Hanamaki, Issei Matsukawa, and Shigeru Yahaba played keep-away, holding the letter high out of reach while solemnly condemning their vice-captain as if he had committed a high felony.
Asuto glanced at the dramatic display.
Then, he decisively chose to hug the wall, staying as far away from the blast radius as humanly possible.
‘Good grief.’
‘These three have clearly been single for so long that their minds have finally snapped.’
‘Someone receives a single confession letter and they want to hold a war tribunal?’
‘It’s just paper and ink. What’s the big deal about getting a love letter anyway?’
‘Is it really that rare? Is it?’
Unfortunately, the entryway to the Aoba Josei gym was a bit bottlenecked.
Even though Asuto had compressed himself against the wall to give them a wide berth, the three emotionally unstable bachelors still managed to collide heavily with him mid-scuffle.
At that precise microsecond, the plastic clasp on his over-the-shoulder school bag popped loose under the impact.
Thud.
The bag dropped flat against the gym floor.
And from the wide-open main zipper, a handful of unmistakable, identical pink envelopes spilled across the wood.
For an instant… It was as if time itself stopped, and the very oxygen left the room.
A few minutes later.
After being thoroughly interrogated and judged for his visual crimes by three jealousy-fueled envy spirits, Asuto, alongside the supposedly righteous judges (Matsukawa, Hanamaki, and Yahaba) who had instead suffered eight consecutive emotional critical hits from counting his stash, finally lined up on the court for registration.
“Yesterday, every single one of you went through an incredibly grueling, five-set war,” Coach Irihata Nobuteru announced, breaking the heavy silence.
“Therefore, today’s schedule will primarily consist of free, low-impact practice.”
“The National tournament is roughly two weeks away. Over the next ten days, in order to properly adjust our conditioning and iron out our strategies, we’ve invited several high-caliber schools to Aoba Johsai for a series of practice matches.”
“When those matches begin, anyone on the bench might be called up to the court, so make sure you stay mentally locked in. Understood?”
“Understood!” The squad shouted back in unison.
“Alright, split up and stretch.”
In the previous day’s historic final, nearly every starting member of Aoba Josei’s lineup had pushed their physical bodies far past their natural limits.
While they had claimed the ultimate victory, the physiological toll of such an intense match wasn’t something a single night’s sleep could erase.
Not everyone possessed a freakish recovery cheat-code like Asuto.
Despite how energetic the upperclassmen had seemed while fooling around moments ago, that was purely a temporary adrenaline spike fueled by their absolute rage toward popular guys.
In reality, let alone jumping to spike a volleyball, just walking normally caused every major muscle group in their lower bodies to scream in protest.
Coach Irihata was well aware of this, which was precisely why he had sanctioned a free practice day.
At Aoba Josei, “free practice” under these conditions didn’t actually involve touching a volleyball.
It simply meant light, therapeutic movement to flush out lactic acid and keep the joints loose.
The boys were essentially allowed to do whatever their bodies needed.
For instance, Aoba Josei’s libero, Watari Shinji, immediately unrolled a mat and began doing deep flexibility yoga in the corner.
But that relaxed protocol only applied to standard human beings.
For certain abnormal, volleyball-obsessed anomalies, “free practice” was merely a golden window to openly engage in relentless self-improvement.
“Mishita, grab a cart. Help me get some spike repetitions in.”
“Are you insane? Has your body already bounced back from yesterday?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m mostly back to one hundred percent.”
“Well… I guess I shouldn’t expect normal human biology from a physical monster like you.”
Mishita Ryuhei grumbled a few bitter complaints under his breath, but he still wheeled a massive cage of volleyballs over to the net and began tossing clean, consistent arcs for Asuto.
Before long, heavy, resounding impacts began to echo rhythmically through the rafters of the gymnasium.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Initially, the rest of the resting team paid no attention to the noise, focusing on their stretching.
But as the minutes ticked by and the heavy thuds showed no signs of slowing down, an inexplicable, suffocating sense of urgency began to fester in the hearts of the other Aoba Josei regulars.
It felt exactly like running a grueling marathon when your lungs were burning and your legs were turning to lead…
And suddenly, you caught the clear, steady sound of footsteps approaching rapidly from behind.
Closer.
And closer.
And closer…
“That’s it! I can’t take this anymore! I need to touch a ball right now!”
Finally, Oikawa was the first one to snap under the psychological pressure.
Even though he spent a fair amount of his free time maintaining his social life and popularity, when it came to sheer, unadulterated competitiveness, Oikawa was just as much of a obsessive overachiever as any genius.
Unfortunately, the absolute moment he tried to push himself up off the floor, his locked muscles and accumulated lactic acid immediately fired off a screaming protest.
With no other choice, he groaned and dropped right back down onto his rear.
Yet the longer he sat there on the sidelines doing nothing, the more anxious and restless he became.
It felt exactly as if a cat were constantly clawing at the inside of his chest.
…
By the third day of the week, every starting member of Aoba Johsai’s main lineup had finally achieved a full physical recovery.
Coincidentally, that was also the exact day Coach Irihata had scheduled their very first practice match opponent since the finals:
Izumiishi High School.
And so, after being forced to sit and watch Asuto openly grind, improve, and evolve right in front of their eyes for three consecutive days, every single player on the Aoba Josei squad erupted onto the court with a terrifying level of motivation.
During that match, they operated at a blistering one hundred and twenty percent of their usual capacity.
As a direct consequence…
The unsuspecting players of Izumiishi High School, who had arrived expecting a friendly, constructive practice match and healthy, cooperative sportsmanship…
Instead boarded their bus home carrying profound, lifelong psychological trauma.
(End of Chapter)