The leaves on the trees change colors and, almost before they realize it, the time comes to say farewell to the school that's put up with them for the last three years. Many of them will go on to the high school that's only a few blocks away —Izumin and Kouji among them— but for several others, like Shou-chan, this day marks a fork in the path.
"Are you sure you wanna go to Karasuno? It's in the middle of nowhere."
They already know what answer they'll get and Shou-chan doesn't disappoint.
"It's the Small Giant's school! If I want to be like him, I have to start there."
High school lessons begin with cherry blossoms pouring over their heads during the entrance ceremony, and the first few weeks are spent in the adventure of finding the proper classroom, learning the names of new teachers and classmates, locating the toilets, finding out the best spot for lunch, and signing up for clubs. Kouji signs up for the football club, of course, and Izumin will try his luck again at basketball. Yukigaoka's team wasn't particularly good but he hopes he'll do better in high school. He's heard that they almost went to Nationals last year.
Every now and then, they get a text or an e-mail from Shou-chan that, when they aren't filled with links to memes and funny videos, narrate his new adventures at the volleyball club. At least, now he has a team to belong to, although they haven't gone to Nationals in quite some time.
Shou-chan has made it into the starting lineup almost from the get go. Izumin and Kouji exchange somewhat surprised glances. Undoubtedly, Shou-chan can make incredible jumps, and no one else has his determination (no one knows that better than them). But at the tournament they could see how horribly tall boys that play volleyball tend to be, and any of them can reach the same height as Shou-chan almost without stretching their legs.
"Well, Shou-chan has trained really hard these last few months," Izumin points out and Kouji nods because they've bore witness. Shou-chan didn't just begin training with the girls' team, but also with the ladies from the Neighborhood Association, and more than once they've seen him going out for a run under the snow, without flinching at the freezing wind cutting his face.
The disastrous score of his first —and last— match hit him hard, but where anyone else would've given up, Shou-chan pushed himself even harder.
"Do you think Karasuno is any good?" Kouji wonders.
Izumin shrugs.
"Maybe. It's not like we knew that much about volleyball, right?"
"Well, no, but if they are really good you can tell even if you know nothing about it, like… well, like that guy."
A grimace twists Kouji's features, the same one that shows on his face each time he is reminded of "that guy." Izumin makes an effort to suppress a small shiver.
They were a terrible team, true. It's likely that anyone with a vague sense of the sport could have stomped all over them, and easily so.
But that boy wasn't halfway normal, and the hairs on the back of Izumin's head still stand on end when he remembers him, so he tries not to.
Weeks slip by in between lessons, new friends and, ugh, exams. He and Kouji aren't in the same class and they don't share a club either, but they still see each other often enough during breaks and at lunchtime. Before they realize it, the heat strikes again and with it, Inter High tournaments begin.
None of them fares very well. Kouji has finally made it into the starting lineup, but his team loses the second match and the sulking lasts for a week. Izumin doesn't share such luck: his team makes it into the prefecture semifinals but without him. He was right when he thought that the high school team would be loads better than Yukigaoka's. What he didn't take into consideration was that it might be too good for him.
"It's, hum, normal for a first year not to make it into the starting lineup like that, from the get go," Kouji says, when the names of the starting lineup get announced and his own gets called but Izumin's isn't. "I mean… Well, you can't compare: our school's football team is not that good, you know? It's not like they had a lot of options much better than me."
Izumin smiles and tells him not to be an idiot, that he already was the best player at Yukigaoka and it's natural that he's ended up as a starter in high school as well. Kouji pats him on the back with a little too much force.
"You'll see that soon there will be another spot on the team and you'll get to play. Third years retire after Inter High, don't they?"
He nods and tries to keep his smile in place until after Kouji has left for practice. He'll have to bite his lip when his teammates complain about how hard the training is, because they at least get to play, but he has to keep quiet and keep practicing his shooting.
Again, and again, and again.
Next time you'll play for sure! writes Shou-chan, and he can almost hear the certainty in his voice through the e-mail filled with spelling mistakes, he can almost see the manic gleam in his eyes.
At times, Shou-chan makes it sound so easy.
He keeps practicing, although the names of other first years get called and never his own, not even to warm the bench. He clenches his teeth and keeps shooting threes, he keeps taking laps around the gym, keeps up with conditioning.
Sometimes, when he feels tempted to give up, he remembers Shou-chan practicing his spikes against the wall, he remembers the shadow over his face when that last ball hit outside the white line, he also remembers how that shadow dissipated when he thanked them for accompanying him there, making Kouji cry (although he keeps denying it to this day).
He asks the coach if he can stay behind after-hours to keep training after practice.
When the second tournament begins, the football team fares a little better even though they don't make it to the finals and Izumin, at long last, gets to play one quarter during an official game. It's not a victory but it feels a little like one. That's around the time they both get the message from Shou-chan:
Karasuno has made it into the finals and, if they win this match, they will go to Tokyo.
They gape at each other for a moment, mouths hanging open, because Shou-chan did it. Or, well, almost. But the odds were always so against him from the beginning that it feels like a small miracle.
"And if we go to see him play?" Kouji suggests. "We can surprise him."
"Hmmm, I don't know, would he want us to? Maybe we make him even more nervous."
"Bah, you know that Shou-chan will end up holed up in the toilet before the game, I don't reckon we're gonna affect him that much."
Sendai's gym is swarming with people but that orange mop of hair is impossible to miss. Shou-chan's face when he sees them is worthy of a frame. He shrieks their names so they reverberate through the entire place, and he had forgotten how noisy Shou-chan could be. He introduces them to this shaved-head guy that wears the same black uniform as he does and, to their surprise, it seems like he has seen their game last year and he remembers them. He praises Kouji's footwork and, at first, Izumin thinks that maybe it's the traumatic memory from that day that provokes such a grimace on his friend's face, as though he's just gotten kicked on the stomach.
That is, until he follows his gaze and sees him.
Black, straight hair falling over narrowed eyes; that eternal look of toxic radioactivity; the demeanor that seemed to have a presence beyond his body.
He won't say he's had nightmares that begun like this, but he very well could have.
What have you been doing these past three years?!
His voice, low and haughty, still resonates in his ears, well over a year later. On instinct, he grabs Kouji's arm to prevent him from going over there to throw the punch he held back that day. The boy looks at them, and he seems somewhat confused and quite indifferent.
When Kouji, on the verge of a furious paroxysm, asks what that guy is doing there, Shou-chan looks quite untroubled and that's when Izumin notices they are wearing the same uniform.
The guy doesn't pay them any more attention, very busy scowling at Shou-chan and chiding him not to hold back. Shou-chan waves his hand goodbye and both of them gape at him.
Not a single e-mail or text of Shou-chan's, in all these months, mentioned even once that that guy was now his teammate.
He remembers how much Shou-chan spoke of him after that game, how much he talked about how one day he would be good enough to beat him and make him swallow his words, right until they got fed up with the subject and he stopped bringing it up. But even in his silences, Izumin knew he was still thinking about it, obsessively looking through the magazine that talked about the defeat of that boy's team.
"Who would've thought they'd reunite…"
They watch him walk away, accompanied by the bunch of boys in black uniforms, and perhaps Kouji's thinking the same thing, perhaps he's remembering when Shou-chan was at the gym all alone with his volleyball, the wall as his only rival and mate. Sometimes, Izumin felt sorry for him and agreed to toss him the ball for a while, but after his arms threatened to fall off from exhaustion, he realized that even his sympathy had some limits.
He feels his lips curving in a smile as Shou-chan blends in with his teammates, belonging to a real team at long last.
The smile is wiped off his face when, as soon as he sets one foot into the gym, he's hit by the white-and-violet tide of the opposing team's supporting squad.
He doesn't have to turn around to see Kouji's horrified face and know he's going through the same feeling of déjà-vu.
They've even got cheerleaders, with their miniskirts and pompoms and everything, just like in American movies. Their mood doesn't get any better when they see Karasuno, because truth to be told they all look kind of like idiots. And then, to top it all, the rival team gets there and, as the hollers of the crowd become deafening, he wonders: is it him or are those boys huge? He feels like he's back at that horrible game, when the opposing team walked past him and they were so much taller than any of them. Before, there was a blond boy on Karasuno that seemed quite tall, but now he doesn't look that impressive anymore.
His mood sours even more when one guy on the other team hits the ball so hard that it falls into the hands of a boy in the stands.
On the second floor.
These are the people Shou-chan has to play against? All of a sudden, his friend looks tinier than ever.
Kouji clutches on the handrail, maybe foreseeing what a terrible time they're going to endure. Izumin believed that nothing could surpass that awful game last year, but he might've been wrong.
The guy with a monk's shaved head approaches Shou-chan and the other guy —that guy— and says something to them. Both nod in unison and exchange a glance that seems to hold a whole conversation without words.
The setter —that's it, that's what his position is called— gets ready to receive the ball and Shou-chan begins to run. And what happens next is so fast that Izumin will wonder whether he's imagined it.
The ball barely grazes the boy's fingertips and then it shoots towards Shou-chan, whose feet were on the ground a mere second ago, who is now soaring through the air, higher than Izumin has ever seen him. The ball hits hard on the other side of the net, drawing an almost straight line, and Kouji and he aren't the only ones who gasp in surprise. Even the white and violet sea has fallen silent for a miraculous instant, their breath stolen by Shou-chan's impulse at leaving the ground and flying almost over the net, the ball shooting towards his hand as though his palm was a magnet, only to throw it like a cannon shot against the wooden floor.
Shou-chan and his setter land on the floor almost at the same time, an identical gesture of triumph drawn on their faces, and Kouji turns to look at Izumin.
"Did you see that? Did you?"
His incredulity finds an echo in the voices around them: how could that little kid hit such a spike and also did the setter even touch the ball? and I don't know what the heck was that. Izumin nods, his hands now clutching the handrail, almost leaning over towards the court without realizing it, a sudden thrill prickling underneath his skin.
Perhaps this will be, at long last, the moment they see Shou-chan jump for real, to the highest point as he always dreamed of, now that he's no longer alone and he's found someone to help him get there.