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For Shirabu Kenjirou, things are simple: If you see a problem, then you work on it until the problem is solved. No shortcuts can get rid of it.
For example: Once when he was a child, he ran a fever and his belly ached so horribly that he could barely walk. His parents fussed over him, buying him medicines and feeding him the safest foods to eat and tucking him into bed early. His brothers are shooed out of their shared bedroom and moved into the master bedroom, in case whatever Kenjirou has happens to be contagious. Yet when they asked him each day how he felt, his answer was always the same: “It hurts.” Even trying to get out of bed and walk to get a glass of water was agonizing.
The problem only got worse. The pain moved from below his belly to the side, and it was so bad that his parents took Kenjirou to the hospital. The place was scary, at least in the eyes of a child: white, featureless walls, adults walking in strange baggy uniforms, alien equipment being carted away with their strides. The adults at the hospital asked him how he feels, showing him a row of cartoon faces. Without hesitation, Kenjirou picked the second from the right: Hurts a whole lot.
He was taken to strange rooms for tests, then to an office with a worn-out couch, where he sat stiffly while a tall old man in a white coat talked to him and his parents.
The man turned directly to Kenjirou, meeting him at eye level. His laugh lines were deeply etched on his face. “Don’t worry. I’m here to help you get better so that it doesn’t hurt anymore. You said that it hurts a whole lot in your side, right? You see, there’s a part just below your stomach that isn’t working properly, so we’re going to take it out.” A pause; the older man smiled, his laugh lines deepening even more. “But it won’t hurt, and you won’t feel anything, because you’ll be asleep when we take it out, and then it won’t bother you anymore. Okay?”
Kenjirou was silent, staring into the old man’s face.
“Oh,” he said at last. “Okay.”
He trembled a little, but the doctor kept his smile steady. “It’ll hurt a little bit for a while, but you won’t remember much, and the pain will be gone after!”
Oh. And there it was: a solution to the problem.
The days at the hospital are a blur in Kenjirou’s memory: his classmates visiting him with homemade get well soon cards, the pile of books his parents let him keep at the table next to the hospital cot, the old doctor talking to him in soothing tones. He barely remembers the surgery itself or the time after, other than a slumber so deep he dreamt he were floating in space. But once his scar had healed, he could walk again, or get a glass of water by himself, or go to school and hang out at the library. The normalcy that followed was a relief, and when he thought about it, his memory always returned to the doctor who told him it would all be fixed soon, whose laugh lines deepened with his smile.
In middle school, setting comes naturally to Kenjirou. He can’t spike the ball down himself, but tossing the ball in a perfect arc and watching the spiker smash it down is just as satisfying, if not more so. On the court, he creates solutions to problems. No matter how tight a team’s defense or how flawless its receives, one good toss is all it takes to break through.
Kawatabi is fairly good at helping him realize those solutions. At practice, Kenjirou sends a toss his way, and he spikes it down into a corner, the ball hitting the back wall of the gym after the first bounce. It’s a clever play, one that would catch the opponent on the wrong footing in a real match. Kawatabi puts his hand out in a low five. “Nice toss!” he says.
Kenjirou gives him the low five, but stares at the spot where the ball landed. It should feel good to send a clever play like that into the opponents’ side. But he feels… nothing.
“Nice kill,” he says at last.
“Can we try that toss again? That was a good move.”
“Okay.”
He tries another toss, and Kawatabi spikes it in the same spot. Still nothing.
Kenjirou tries a few other tosses, at different angles and heights and speeds. The ball feels good in his hands, and they follow where he wills them to go, flying in a clear arc. Always, they find the hand of a willing spiker to bring it down; always, Kenjirou feels nothing.
Something is missing, and it gnaws at him.
It’s not Kawatabi’s fault, he knows. He sends his spikes where they need to go, in tight spots just out of the opponents’ reach, or at positions that would be awkward to receive. The rest of the team works well with him, too, responding to his quick sets, working hard to get the ball in his hands at the right position.
“Nice toss!” Kawatabi tells him yet again during practice. “Your sets are clean today, Shirabu.”
“Thanks.”
The words feel routine, plucked of meaning. Objectively, it’s true; his sets have been going well. He glances at Kawatabi, sweat-drenched and smiling, having successfully hit toss after toss. He’s doing a good enough job, Kenjirou thinks. His spikes aren’t terribly powerful, but they land right. Judging from the smile on his face, he feels good about hitting them.
Kenjirou doesn’t feel the same way. The feeling of nothing persists at the back of his mind, spike after spike, practice after practice, match after match.
All that changes when he sees Ushijima Wakatoshi smash down a spike on the opponent’s court.
His form hangs in the air, every bit of force and power building up into his arm, the seconds stretching out. Kenjirou feels his heartbeat pick up its pace and the blood rush in his veins. Then Ushijima makes contact; in a split second, the spike thunders down on the opponents’ court. The sound of the ball hitting hardwood rings in Kenjirou’s ears. He feels his body quivering, as if reverberating with the force of the ball on the court.
Oh.
He tries to remember if he’s ever set to that kind of strength, and the answer is a disappointing no. But before his eyes, Ushijima’s strength unfolds, and Kenjirou feels a new energy pulse through him.
He holds on to that feeling as he holes himself up in the library, studying his ass off for an entrance exam that he knows is his one hope. The feeling of his entire body singing from the force keeps him awake as he pores through paragraph after paragraph of his textbook, and through line after line of his notes. The tremor he feels from one too many cups of coffee or from keeping his eyes open for too long is nothing compared to the sheer joy his body felt at the sight of pure height and strength.
He holds on to that feeling, too, a year later, as he crosses Shiratorizawa’s gym for the first time and lines up in front of the students on athletic scholarship. Washijou eyes him, unsure of what to make of this kid who studied his way into the school. This isn’t a joke or a prank, Kenjirou wants to say. When he’s given the chance to practice, he says it with his sets, high and fast, hoping that one day they’ll be the beginning of a spike so powerful that the whole court trembles.
If you see a problem, then you work on it until the problem is solved. No shortcuts can get rid of it. The image of Ushijima’s form, frozen in time in mid-air, is a beautiful thing to behold, but it was also Kenjirou’s problem now. Like any other problem, he gets to work.
Kenjirou makes the starting team in his second year. Volleyball practice becomes more intense after that: more roadwork, more conditioning, more drills, and more scrimmages, all to prepare them for the stakes of a real match. But it also means more opportunities to set, specifically more opportunities to set to Ushijima.
Washijou ushers the starters onto the court for a scrimmage against the B team; without hesitation, Ushijima takes his position at the front of the court, his figure tall and sturdy. Even up close, he radiates the strength of an ace, without a trace of doubt even in the slightest of his movements. Kenjirou follows suit, rubbing his hands together for warmth, and he feels a pressure build in his chest. The image of Ushijima’s spiking form and the sound of his spikes reverberating throughout the gym are still fresh in his memory. Now that will be in his hands.
The B team serves. Yunohama manages to send the ball straight to Oohira. The receive is perfect, and Kenjirou positions himself under the ball. This is what he’s been working for. His fingers make contact, and he sends a toss Ushijima’s way.
The toss is fast and close to the net and a little low. Ushijima manages to spike it across the other side, but it grazes the blockers’ fingers and lands at an angle that isn’t quite a clean cross.
No. Not like that. Kenjirou stares at his fingers, at the tape bending at the joints.
Still, a point is a point.
At time-out, Kenjirou grabs his water bottle and is wiping his face with a towel when Ushijima calls out to him.
“Shirabu.”
“Yes?”
“Toss the ball higher and take your time. There’s no need to panic.” His voice is low, but not harsh; no trace of irritation can be heard from it, nor seen in his expression. Just a plain statement of what to do.
Kenjirou gulps, his eyes widening for a moment. “Yes.”
Ushijima’s right, and he knows it. That set was too rushed; a better toss would have given the blockers less leeway, leading to a proper cross. Another sloppy set like that, and the opposite side would be able to receive it. He makes a mental note of it, then gulps down the last of his bottle before heading back to the court.
Old habits are hard to unlearn. Kenjirou’s mind knows that he needs to keep his tosses to Ushijima simple, not too quick, just high enough to keep the air clear for him to spike the ball down. But his hands are used to quick and impressive sets, plus the occasional feat of style and unpredictability. His hands need to keep up with his mind. They have to, for Ushijima’s sake.
The next point begins. Oohira’s serve returns right to them as a chance ball, Yamagata gets the pass, and this time Shirabu’s hands obey him. The toss is simple, a high, clear arc. Ushijima soars up to meet it, and spikes it with ease. It lands untouched on the other side with a boom.
Perfect.
If each point in a match is a question, then Ushijima answers it in the most straightforward way possible, an answer that absolutely no one can doubt. Kenjirou wants to help him come to that answer. But any sort of help that is too cluttered, too full of fluff, detracts from the final answer. A simple and polished answer needs simple and polished help.
Kenjirou sends another toss to Ushijima. Time seems to freeze; the ace is poised in the air, a perfect snapshot of form. A split second later, he makes contact with the ball, and spikes it with such force that it bounces off Yunohama’s arms and into the second floor.
If Kenjirou could watch that form for every point at every match at every day, he would. That’s why he needs to set perfectly for him, he tells himself. To draw out that power. To portray the strongest ace in the country in the best light.
Taichi sits on the floor in Kenjirou’s dorm on a Wednesday night, working on a trigonometry problem set due in the morning. From his desk, Kenjirou can hear the occasional scribble of his pencil and the punching of numbers in a calculator, but most of the time he hears no sound at all. Finally, there’s the sound of a pencil hitting the floor, and Taichi sighing as he sprawls out in frustration.
Kenjirou lets out a sigh of his own. His own problem set is already more than halfway done. He puts down his own pencil and swivels his chair to look at him, pressing the space between his eyebrows. “Do I have to explain it to you again?”
“I understood what you said about diagramming the problem and then labeling the distances and the angles. But the diagram… doesn’t make any sense.”
He gets off the desk chair and sits across Taichi, then glances at the problem he’s working on. “Problem 3, right?”
“Yeah.”
He furrows his eyebrows at the sight of his hastily scribbled diagram of a building and an angle of elevation. “That’s not how the diagram should look like, Taichi. Also, that building looks godawful.”
“Shut up, it’s not an art contest. And I’ve seen yours 一 they don’t look any better either.”
“At least mine are correct. Check your notes again.”
Taichi groans, and fishes for his notebook in his bag, then opens it to a messy page containing scribbles upon scribbles of diagrams and equations. “This isn’t very intuitive,” he says.
Kenjirou doesn’t respond, but simply stares down at Taichi’s notes. He doesn’t give his friend the answer, no matter how much Taichi sighs or knits his eyebrows or erases his whole solution just to start over. Instead, he simply points out every error and makes the occasional comment. Taichi blinks at him, but puts his head down anyway and undoes his mistake to take a stab at it again. Finally, some ten minutes later, the proper solution clicks in his head.
“Oh!”
He turns his calculator on and punches in a few numbers, the tension and frustration disappearing from his face. Kenjirou’s expression softens as he watches him. Of course, he could have just given him the solution much earlier, but that would defeat the whole point of doing homework. Besides, watching Taichi’s little epiphany is a sight to behold, as he writes the final answer down and underlines it with a flourish.
Taichi looks up at Kenjirou and gives him a little smile. “Got it. Thanks.”
“Good. That’s it.”
“I think I can do the next one,” he says. “Won’t keep you from your own work any longer.”
Kenjirou takes the finished problem and Taichi’s tiny burst of confidence as his reward. A simple and polished answer needs simple and polished help.
Kenjirou’s captaincy begins not on the heels another successful run at nationals, but coming off an unexpected loss.
It’s with a sense of unreality that the first and second years gather around the gym, as the third years settle final matters and hand over the reins. Ushijima steps forward, and his presence is as commanding as ever: even in defeat, his figure remains tall and sturdy, unfazed by the events of the day. He begins to speak, and the words, sure as they always are, ground them back in the gym.
After his words to Taichi, Ushijima turns to Kenjirou.
“Shirabu.”
His voice, like his figure, does not waver. Kenjirou meets his gaze.
“Moving forward, the composition of this team centers around you. There are no bad hitters here. Make the best use of each of their talents.”
“Yes, sir,” is all he manages to reply, but he keeps those words close to him from then on.
The next year, everyone returns to practice with a new willpower. This year is different. It’s a year of taking things back, of restoring Shiratorizawa to the pinnacle of volleyball. One broken streak of nationals appearances does not define the team, and Kenjirou will simply not allow it.
Goshiki misses a receive when his elbows sag; Kenjirou sends a glare his way. Don’t slack off mid-game, bowl-cut. Goshiki shivers, but his receiving form stays up for the rest of practice. They’ll stay up at key points in the game, too.
Sagae’s spikes haven’t been landing as sharply as he wants them to. “Are my tosses not clean enough?” Kenjirou asks, staring right at him.
“N-no, sir.”
“Then you can hit a better cross than that.”
Sagae fidgets, then nods. The next practice, his spikes are cleaner, less easily blocked.
It’s not that Kenjirou is being cruel on purpose; it’s just that a team this talented can’t let its skills go to waste, not during the year of taking things back. He points out when someone’s toss is off when serving, drills the new regulars on his signals, and helps his spikers work on their form. Every play needs to be strong, an extension of the player’s willpower 一 and this is a team with incredible willpower. A team like that should not lose.
Meanwhile, Kenjirou heads to the gym with Taichi in his spare time, working on his own tosses. He keeps them simple yet consistent, giving the spiker the freedom to hit them as sharply and as powerfully as he wants. Use the toss to draw out the spiker’s strength.
This is what it means to make the best use out of everyone, Kenjirou tells himself.
When Shiratorizawa’s road to nationals is cut short twice, then 一 first a semifinal loss to Date Tech at the interhigh, then another loss to Karasuno at the spring tournament 一 no one is more devastated than Kenjirou is.
It should be simple, after all: If you see a problem, then you work on it until the problem is solved. No shortcuts can get rid of it. The problem is how to go back to nationals after a year off. So he led his team, ironed out everyone’s weaknesses, took their strengths even further. Their offense is powerful enough, even with Ushijima’s departure; their defense steady and crisply executed, with Taichi at the lead. And Kenjirou’s sets, though as simple as ever, are even better at drawing out everyone’s strengths. In every circumstance imaginable, this should have been more than enough to solve his problem.
And yet the team fails.
Immediately after the second loss to Karasuno, Kenjirou manages to keep it steady. He already knows half of the things that Coach Washijou says during the post-match debriefing back at the gym. They’re things he’s seen not only on the court, but in countless practices leading up to today’s match: a few mistakes, yes, but also plenty of immaculate plays that failed either from Karasuno outplaying them, or from pure bad luck. The whole scene is all too familiar, too fresh from the year before. The same problem from last year. Why couldn’t they solve it?
He and Taichi stay in the gym after everyone else has left, and they double-check the equipment and lock up the storage room. They move in silence; Kenjirou forces his mind to focus on checking on the nets, on storing the gym mops, on anything but the ugly details of the match. When he takes out the keys and locks the storage room, his hands tremble, and he fumbles the keys. Taichi takes them from him and does the locking. When he hands them back, he places a firm hand on Kenjirou’s shoulder. For a brief moment, their eyes meet.
Under the harsh fluorescent lights and unyielding silence of the school gym at night, Kenjirou finally breaks.
Taichi is the only person on the team to see him cry.
Kenjirou can’t recall exactly when he decided he was going to be a doctor. It just came to him, naturally. In his mind, he’s stored away many memories of every medical professional who’s ever helped him: the medical team who taped up his minor injuries, the doctor who gave his younger brothers medicine during particularly bad bouts of stomach flu, and especially of the old man with the laugh lines who told him that he would take out the bad part in his that was making things hurt a whole lot.
He also thinks of every time he made some first-years take a few extra drills, not out of vindictiveness, but because Taichi pointed them out struggling earlier. He thinks of every glance and every reminder he’s tossed Goshiki’s way, because a boy this talented can’t have his skills wasted too easily. He thinks of each night he’s let Taichi stay in his dorm to help him work out a particularly troublesome bit of homework.
But on a quiet winter day, holed up in the library, Kenjirou’s mind isn’t on those memories. His focus is barely holding on to the biology textbook open in front of him, and on the meticulous notes he’s taken on Japan’s top medical schools. If he lets his mind drift too much, he starts to see Karasuno’s formation on the other side of the net, or hear the ball landing on their side of the court. He wills himself to read another paragraph of his textbook, but the meaning of the words elude him.
“Kenjirou, hey.”
He looks up to see Taichi watching him, his own textbook open in front of him.
“You’ve been staring at the same page for the last five minutes. You okay?”
“You haven’t moved on from your section, either.” His retort comes out without any bite. “And I’m… okay.”
“Don’t push yourself too hard. You’re already preparing for the entrance exams earlier than everyone else.”
“I won’t, I’m pacing myself.”
Taichi simply nods, but lets his gaze linger before turning back to his textbook.
Studying together has always been routine for them, but Kenjirou needs it now more than ever. Too much time alone, and his mind begins to drift back to that last match on the court, the one that should not have ended the way it did.
Somehow, Taichi always ends up by his side. It’s expected on the court, of course, since he’s the vice-captain. But Kenjirou soon finds Taichi seated next to him at the library, looking through brochures for universities. Or Taichi follows him to his own dorm, settling down on the floor while Kenjirou works from his desk. Sometimes the attempt at productivity fails, and the two of them gather around Taichi’s phone and watch videos, one earbud apiece shared between them.
“I can’t help you study for your own entrance exams, Taichi,” Kenjirou tells him one night, as his pile of notes and books is once again ignored for another round of binge-watching. “You’re not going to med school. I don’t even know what you want to major in.”
“I haven’t decided yet. And it’s okay if you can’t help, I just need the company. I like hanging out with you here.”
“Are you being sentimental?” Kenjirou makes a gagging noise. “Didn’t know you were the type.”
“Me neither, honestly. I guess I surprised myself.”
“Gross. Go finish your applications.”
Kenjirou would never admit it, but he’s feeling a little sentimental, too. As he hops off the floor and back to his desk, he glances at Taichi’s profile, dimly illuminated by the light of his phone. Kenjirou has helped him countless times over the last three years. Perhaps he’s returning the favor, in his own way; the thought makes him feel warm, despite the chill air of the night.
The routine sticks; if one of them is studying, the other one follows suit or comes over. Their respective roommates even joke that they should swap. Months later, when Kenjirou’s acceptance letter to medical school arrives, he rushes to Taichi’s dorm room. Taichi doesn’t even need to see the envelope in his hand to know what happened. An excited smile spreads across Kenjirou’s face, Taichi mirrors it, and he pushes him inside, then pulls him in for a strong hug.
Kenjirou doesn’t protest, but relaxes into his friend’s frame. He couldn’t have done it without him.
Years later, a young boy sits on the little cot in a doctor’s office. His mother is sitting next to him, holding his hand, while every muscle in her face works to look calm. The boy is silent, but his eyes are wide, as if he might cry at any moment.
Seated across them are Kenjirou and Dr. Sumida, his supervisor. Dr. Sumida bends down to the boy’s eye level, and smiles. He has deep laugh lines too. Kenjirou holds the pain scale chart in his hands a little more steadily, with a little more confidence.
“Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay,” Dr. Sumida tells the boy. “We’re going to help you get better, Shirabu-san and I. But we need you to help us so that we know exactly how to make you get better. Can you do that?”
His mother nods to let him know it’s all right. The boy nods, too.
Kenjirou flips the chart to face them, and he gives the boy a small smile. A row of five faces is now in front of the boy. “Can you tell me how much it hurts? You don’t have to cry for it to be the last one. That one just means that it hurts the most, like you want to cry, even if you don’t.”
The boy pauses, his gaze trembling as he scans the options. Finally, he points to the second face from the right: Hurts a whole lot.
Kenjirou’s face softens and meets the boy’s gaze. He keeps his little smile, his look calm, as if to tell the boy that it will be all right. Inwardly, he knows that a lot of pain isn’t good, of course. But that’s one more clue to figuring out what the problem is, and then fix it. He’ll help fix things, and he’ll help this boy get better. He wants to, just like he always does.