Chapter Text
Wow… Reon’s going to be practicing here for the next three years? He’s been around the campus before, but the act of standing in the spacious, pristine gym has finally drilled this fact into him. He’s here. In the finest high school team in Miyagi. In this place. With these senpais. All of the upperclassmen – muscular, large and intimidating – are lined up along the wall right now, observing. He is not among them. He, along with eleven other first years, is in the middle of the gym, in front of an already prepared net, arranged in a semicircle facing the coach.
He had heard of Shiratorizawa’s demon coach, Washijou Tanji. Seeing him is far more visceral. Every angle in the old man’s wizened face is curled into an assumedly permanent scowl. His gaze swivels around the gym like a hot laser, assessing the boys before him. It is deathly quiet. When the coach’s eyes pass over Reon, he gulps audibly. Maybe it’s not that audible and he can just hear it because, well, it’s in his throat and there’s no other noise… gee, it would be embarrassing if everyone heard him gulp… no one turned their head towards him or anything so that’s a relief. Oh man. He’s sweating. He’d much rather be led by the assistant coach Saitou, who brought them into the gym. That man actually looks like he can smile.
“First and foremost, I would like to welcome you all to the Shiratorizawa Academy Volleyball Club,” the demon coach says. His tone is soft, yet his words carry through the gym. “You have chosen well. I assume you are all aware of our school’s unrivalled success in the prefecture – some of you will be carrying on this legacy in the coming years, and I hope you do not disappoint.” The last part sounds like a challenge, a dare to underperform and provoke the coach’s wrath. Reon prays to the gods above that he will never answer this dare.
“It’s about time you introduce yourselves to me and your senpais. State your name, former school and position. Quickly now, we have much to do today. We’ll start with you” – he points at a silver-haired boy on the very left of the circle – “and work our way across.”
“S-Semi Eita,” the boy says, with the eyes of the entire gym thrust his way. “I went to Hiroo Middle School. I played setter.” Coach Washijou acknowledges him for a brief moment and looks at the next person, who stammers out a similar introduction, and the group works its way around the room. Oohira Reon. I went to Matsugaya Middle School. I played left. Oohira Reon. I went to Matsugaya Middle School. I played left. He turns the words over in his head. Thankfully, he’s not like the poor saps at the beginning who had to go in unprepared. He’s got this. The brown-haired Yamagata next to him is finished speaking, making it Reon’s turn.
“Oohira Reon. I went to Matsugaya Middle School. I played left.” His voice comes out strong and confident, and he manages to maintain eye contact with the coach. Scrutiny from strangers isn’t completely foreign to him; he gets weird looks all the time, mostly owing to his complexion. He doesn’t dare look away at the other students right now, but the demon coach doesn’t seem to be looking at him any differently.
Coach Washijou looks to the next person, who introduces himself. Reon exhales slowly and silently through his nose. His heart is pounding in his chest – how long has it been doing that?
In any case, as much as Reon might stand out, he’s nothing compared to the gangly wild child. He might just be the most ridiculous person he’s ever seen. His dark red hair sticks up like he’s in perpetual heavy wind, and Reon hasn’t seen his owlish eyes blink once yet. When he gets his turn, the guy beams. He full on beams. “Tendou Satori,” his name ends up being. “I went to Shirato Middle School. I played middle blocker!” He flashes the victory sign.
It’s like the gym got depressurised. A snort nearly, nearly escapes his lips. The silence is more potent than any other. No one dares moving an inch. As if time stood still, Tendou is stuck in his victory pose and the coach’s eyes are burning into him. Tendou gulps. Audibly.
“S-Soekawa Jin,” the guy next to him says. Coach glances at him. “I w-went to Hokuo Middle School. I played setter.” A bead of sweat drips down from Soekawa’s messy light brown hair into his impressive eyebrows. Coach keeps his eye on him for a moment longer than normal. He moves on to the next person. Reon exhales. Soekawa. It’s your first day and you’ve already saved a man’s life.
Even with that little stunt, Tendou isn’t the one attracting the most attention. That would be the first year on the very right, the last to introduce himself.
“Ushijima Wakatoshi. I went to Shiratorizawa Junior High. I played opposite.” He nearly looks like a grown man already, and his introduction comes out in a booming low tone. Whispers erupt from the senpais behind them. Ushiwaka requires no introduction. Everyone knows about the Young Giant, the prodigious hitter who overpowered his middle school opponents. He stands there, seemingly unbothered by the heightened interest. Reon shivers. He’s going to be competing with that monster for a spot on the team? His arms and legs pre-emptively ache.
“Shut up back there,” the coach says. In an instant, there is silence again. “I look forward to working with you all.” He paces back and forth along the line of first-years. “I am Washijou Tanji. I will be your coach for the next three years. Make no mistakes – the rumours you may have heard about my harsh training are completely true. If you are not willing to bleed and sweat for volleyball, there is no place for you here.” Reon balls his fists. “You will suffer,” the coach continues. “You will push against your physical limits on a regular basis; you will undergo crushing pressure in the pursuit of victory. But if you persevere, you will become a diamond.
“This is my proposal to you,” Coach says. “Allow me to polish you into a diamond, and I will bring you to the national championships. Do you accept?”
His chest swells. Many of the first-years around him grin. The air in the gym is charged with energy. This is what they came here for. To grow strong, to play volleyball, to win.
“Yes, Coach!”
“I can’t hear you, first-years! Speak louder!”
“YES, COACH!” the first-years shout with all their might.
“Excellent.” Coach Washijou smirks, once again surveying the faces before him. “By my count, there’s twelve of you. What a fortunate number indeed.” He strokes his chin. “A practice match is in order. There is no better way to assess your skills than a real game.” He looks directly at Reon, who has to resist the urge to step back. “Reon and those to his left are yellow team. The rest of you are blue team. You will stretch first for fifteen minutes. Yellow team get five minutes on the court to warm up, then blue team gets the same. Sort out your rotation yourselves and pick a captain. Your time starts now.”
No one moves. Reon looks to the guys on his left. They look back at him. Everyone looks at everyone else. The other team aren’t doing much better, but Ushijima walks away to the end line of his side’s court immediately.
“ARE YOU DEAF?!” Coach yells. “YOU HAVE A GAME IN TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES! WHERE’S THE DRIVE YOU JUST SHOWED ME?! MOVE YER ASSES!”
The senpais grimace. There’s the demon coach. Everyone springs into action. The two teams split off. Reon’s team wordlessly spread around their side of the net. With no clear leader, every individual commences his own routine.
“Who’s ready to get trounced by Ushiwaka?” the silver-haired guy – Semi – says. That earns a wry laugh from everyone. A practice match against Ushijima of all people on the first day... this might be what Coach meant by suffering. It would be easy to label this a foregone conclusion, but something about that annoys him.
“Let’s not write ourselves off too early, guys,” Reon says as he stretches his arms.
“You ever seen him play?” Yamagata says, doing his quads. “We played Shiratorizawa last year in the third round. He’s a beast. We had no chance.” The entire group sags. The team on the other side of the net is huddled around Ushijima, but Tendou is the one chatting animatedly. Something about manga? He must have misheard.
“He’s only one guy,” Reon retorts, to calm himself if anything. “He can’t do everything himself. Maybe the rest of his team are crap.” As the words leave his mouth, they start to convince him. Like a massive machine, gears spin in his head, free of mental clutter.
“Yeah, that’s just what we’ll have to hope for,” Yamagata sighs.
“Listen,” Reon says as he sits down to do his hamstrings. “When Ushijima is in the back, we’ve got a real shot. He’s working with a team and a setter he’s never played with, so there’s no way they’re co-ordinated enough to do back attacks.”
Reon’s words sink in. The team’s faces light up in quick succession.
“Alright, Reon, you’ve got a hell of a point,” Semi says. “Now let’s talk positions.”
The team has three left side hitters and only one middle blocker, so the three lefts play a passing game to decide who has to play middle. Reon thankfully doesn’t lose, and neither does Yamagata. Semi, as the team’s only setter, gets the spot automatically. The right side hitter also gets his spot for free.
“All right,” Reon says. “Now what about the captain?”
The team look around at each other. “Uh, you, I guess?” Semi says with a grin. “Who better to lead the team than Mr. He’s Just One Guy? You’ve got the biggest balls out of anyone here, talking smack like that.”
No one disagrees.
“Aw, shucks, you guys,” Reon says, warmth in his cheeks. “I’ll do my best.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t let it get to your head,” Semi says, punching his shoulder. Reon guffaws.
A new set of footsteps approaches. One of the senpais, a smaller dude with short dark hair, jogs over carrying six yellow bibs. He looks familiar – probably from the team’s starting lineup, most likely the libero, but Reon can’t be sure. He deposits the bibs into Reon’s arms. “Good luck, guys. Uh, you might need it…” he whispers, looking past the net where another senpai is delivering blue bibs. “For what it’s worth, Coach does this with his first years every year. Whoever wins or loses isn’t super important, ya know… just show your skill and stuff and you’ll have a good start.” Great. Just what they needed. Another person who doubts them. As if they weren’t doubting themselves.
“Isn’t winning the match the best way to show our skill?” he asks.
The senpai smiles. “Ooh, guts, I like it!” he says. He looks back. “Well, Coach is a fan of guts too, so give it your best shot!” He walks back to the line of senpais sitting, flashing a thumbs up behind him. Reon smiles despite himself. The team gather around him. After some very brief deliberation, it’s decided that Reon will wear number 1. As a captain should. Heh heh. They pull the bibs over themselves.
Coach Saitou blows the whistle. “Yellow team, your five minutes on the court start now!” Blue team step off the court and join the senpais in sitting. The ones next to Ushijima, funnily enough, lean away from him as if he were holding a spider.
“Let’s go,” Reon says. “Uh, how about a minute of serving, then hitting for the rest?”
“Sounds good to me, captain,” Yamagata says. Even though it’s in half-jest, and even though it’s only for this practice match, the captain title bounces around his head. He lets it. He’ll need all the confidence he can get.
The six of them line up along the end line and hit serves. No one’s got a jump serve or anything, but they all seem to have solid form, Semi especially. Reon tosses the ball up and hits it right into the corner of the other side. Nice.
Next is hitting. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ushijima sitting down, observing them with his standard blank expression. Reon grits his teeth. He’ll show him. He bumps the ball to Semi, who delivers a beauty of a set stretching over to his side in a rainbow arc. He smiles and makes the approach he’s been practicing all these years, jumps high and crushes the ball with a straight shot down the line.
“Nice kill!” the team says.
“Nice set,” Reon says, Semi beams.
“Ain’t it just?”
Semi very quickly proves himself to be a capable setter. Having a teammate like this is going to be awesome. The other hitters manage to get powerful hits in as well. Even the middle blockers are able to hit some quicks by the end. Good. Yellow team – his team – are strong.
The whistle blows once more. “Yellow team, your time is up. Blue team, you have five minutes!” Coach Saitou says. Reon’s team steps off the court and takes blue team’s spot. They’ve got this, he’s sure. The six of them can deal with Ushijima, easy. It’s time to see exactly what he can do.
Blue team also elects to do some serving first. They’re also mostly unremarkable, standard floaters, drifting over the net. But Ushijima takes several steps back.
“Don’t tell me he’s…”
He tosses the ball high up into the air with heavy topspin. He makes an approach towards the end line like he was preparing for a spike, and leaps to strike the ball.
A freaking jump serve.
The ball rockets into the tape, spinning for a second before flopping back onto Ushijima’s side. Reon can feel the breath being sucked in by the senpais behind him. Whispers erupt from the crowd behind – conversations of awe, skepticism, envy – many things.
Yamagata exhales. “Holy crap.”
“Hey, it didn’t make it over,” Semi says, slightly pale. “Maybe he can’t actually do it and he just wants to psych us out.”
That theory doesn’t hold up for long. Ushijima’s next two jump serves clear the net and hit the court hard. The din of the senpais’ conversations gets louder, with some whooping and hollering.
Well, shit.
“He’s only one guy, just remember, for the love of god, he’s only one guy…” Reon mutters. He might just get sick. He has to receive that? On the first day?! Reon really liked his arms…
Blue team start their hitting line. All of their hitters have decent attack power. The weird redhead – Tendou – shouts as he slams the ball cross-court. Ushijima’s turn. The setter – Soekawa – puts the ball up high. Ushijima approaches and jumps. He seems to hang there for a moment, then he spikes. The ball thuds against the wooden court and bounces high – so high Reon has to crane his neck to follow it. It plummets back down and bounces several more times before coming to rest.
He buries his head in his hands.
Blue team’s setter isn’t as confident as Semi, but he also manages to get his middle blockers to hit quicks by the end of the practice. Reon should have expected this. Shiratorizawa is the best team in the prefecture. Of course everyone here is good.
However, with the exception of Ushijima, no one on that team is uncontainable. As long as yellow team scores more, they can win this. Reon breathes deeply. He’s just one big, dumb guy. It’s just a practice game. No one's gonna die.
The whistle blows. “Warm up time is over,” Coach Saitou says. “Captains.”
Reon stands up and approaches the net. There was a small possibility that the gregarious Tendou would step up to be captain, but Ushijima in the number 1 blue bib is the one standing before him.
They shake hands. “I hope for a good game,” Ushijima says. He’s about six or seven centimetres taller than Reon, which doesn’t usually bother him. Today is special. What’s more, the guy’s still got that same look on him. Like he’s never been impressed in his life. Reon wants to wipe it off his face.
“Same to you. We don’t intend on backing down.”
Coach Saitou holds a coin out. “Heads is yellow team. Tails is blue team.” He flips it, and it lands on tails.
“We will receive first,” Ushijima says. Coach Saitou nods.
“Teams, line up and greet each other!”
Reon joins his team at their end line. Across the net, Ushijima hasn’t dropped his stoic demeanour. Tendou is still grinning like a madman. They’re going to regret their complacency. His team are going to beat the pants off these guys.
The teams bow. “LET’S PLAY!”