Hello there! I am back on schedule and I will hopefully stay on it for a while, so there won't be any other unexpected breaks.
This chapter is slightly different in style than the previous chapters, but I thought that it was a nice little thing before the next one, which has a lot of heavy plot revelations, which I won't spoil :3
Disclaimer: I do not own Haikyuu!
It's a week long training camp and besides getting stronger, developing new techniques and earning experience, it is a chance for everyone to get closer and spend more time together.
Coming from a power school with a lot of club members and not nearly enough managers, Kageyama quite early on started helping the three managers of Kitagawa Daiichi and sometimes when he felt he needed some time away from Volleyball and especially the very hyperactive Hinata, whom Kageyama really did admire, but sometimes just became a bit too much for his introverted personality, he found himself helping Shimizu with whatever she was doing. Whether it was refilling water bottles or washing T-shirts, it didn't really matter. Neither Kageyama nor Shimizu were the most talkative people, but he did learn quite a lot about her. Originally, she had played tennis, but Karasuno hadn't had a tennis club and she found herself being recruited as a manager of the slowly crumbling Boys' Volleyball team. It had not taking her long to fall in love with the sport, but more than anything, she had wanted nothing more than for Karasuno to get back on their feet. The boys from her year were hard working and talented, yet had joined the club at the worst possible time. All their efforts seemed in vain and she had found herself caring more about them than herself. Shimizu was a silent, caring and passionate person and Kageyama liked all the time, however limited it was, he spent with her.
The Captain was a supporting figure. He spend quite a lot of his time helping out the first years with whatever problems they were having, even if they weren't Volleyball related. After having practised their synchronised attack, everyone would go on to practising an individual technique, but the Captain usually found himself either helping Kageyama with his new toss or receiving Asahi and Yamaguchi's serves, as Nishinoya was busy practising his toss with Sugawara. The Captain also had a way with words. Kageyama realized that he never lost his temper, when he was around to calm him down and he also tended to play better, when the Captain was encouraging him.
Just as Daichi, Sugawara was also a supporting person, there was just the small difference in attitude between them. Where Daichi was a frightening person, when he was mad, Sugawara was quite aggressive in his support. It wasn't in the same way as Tanaka, or sometimes even Nishinoya, it was this subtle thing, which Kageyama, very weirdly, associated with his mother. They were supporting through and through, but they were also the last person you wanted to anger and defy. Kageyama and Sugawara also had a special relationship, as Kageyama had gone and stolen his spot as the official Setter. One would think that Sugawara would be salty, but he dedicated quite a lot of his time to make Kageyama the best he could become, because if he couldn't be on court himself, he was making damn sure that the Setter taking his place wouldn't drag down any of the players, and surpassing the experience Sugawara had with the second-years and, especially, the third-years, was something that Kageyama could not do on his own.
Asahi was the Ace of the team, which meant that, apart from Hinata, Kageyama had to work with him the best, because Karasuno was only as strong as their Ace. Asahi was an interesting personality. He looked like a person, who would have the same attitude as Nishinoya, but his personality as basically the complete opposite, unless he was in deep concentration. And this was when he was the strongest and the most dangerous. If Kageyama and Asahi had had a smooth training session, he would slowly begin to notice this fierce side of the always timid Asahi, but only ever fully surfaced, when they playing another team or Hinata was getting dangerously close to catching up to him. When Kageyama saw how much Asahi was improving day by day, he wondered if Hinata would ever come close to touching him, but then again, the two were of completely different calibre and comparing them would be pointless, as their skills were so far from each other.
Nishinoya was easily the most talented player on their team (not including Kageyama of course) and Kageyama was shocked speechless, when he found out that Nishinoya was broadening his skill set even further by practising a libero's toss. Nishinoya was also the only other person to come from a power school, which provided him with a different kind of experience than the other Senpai, who had simply just been playing the sport for a year longer. This experience came in quite handy, when the playing against teams like Nekoma or Fukurodani, who had years of experience being powerful and playing powerful teams.
Tanaka was a riot and at the same time quite talented. Hinata was probably going to wait quite a while to earn the name of Ace, because Tanaka was a lot closer to that title than he was. Of all the spikers Karasuno had to offer, Kageyama was surprised to find Tanaka the easiest to work with. As a spiker he had almost no flaws and when he was in good form, those flaws weren't visible in the slightest. Tanaka would ever so often come to Kageyama and ask that they try a new move and they always perfected it faster than Kageyama ever thought they would. Tanaka was also a person who often found himself inspired by others and, if anyone, he was the one Kageyama mostly associated with a crow. He absorbed everything around him and a had vicious attitude to anyone who could be considered and enemy and a protective one towards anyone in his so called pack.
Ennoshita was curious case. Kageyama hadn't quite paid attention to the more passive second-years, who were easily overshadowed by Tanaka and Nishinoya's loud personalities, but as the training camp progressed, Kageyama noticed the skill he possessed. It reminded him a great lot of the Captain's sturdy personality and attitude. He knew how to calm down the second-years, when they were going overboard and he was supportive towards the first years, who were still finding their place in the team.
Narita was the only Middle Blocker on Karasuno, who could be considered normal. And Kageyama meant this in the nicest way possible, because with people like Hinata and Tsukishima, who were a pain to work with, because one was so far from Middle Blocker potential as possible and the other was an asshole, normal was more than welcome with Kageyama. Now, usually, Narita played with Sugawara, but since Kageyama and Hinata no longer had a usable attack, Narita and Hinata had switched teams and, boy, was it a load off of Kageyama's shoulders. Narita was also a very down to earth person, whom Kageyama found very easy to communicate with (and that says a lot), so the mistakes they made were almost non-existent, although didn't have anything outrageous when it came to attacks, but all of the textbooks attacks were usually executed perfectly between them.
Kinoshita was most visible, when they weren't actually playing. He was usually the first one up in the morning and he would spent quite a lot of time trying to get everyone out of bed. He had a lot of similarities to Tanaka, except he was more tactful. He was also always the person who would either rile Tanaka up or completely dismiss his weird antics, which would usually end up in a fun argument, which always had the team laughing. It wasn't until a few days into the training camp that Kageyama also realized his worth as a player. Karasuno were having a "fun" midweek match between their usual A team and B team (with the exception of Hinata and Narita who had, of course, switched places) and when Kinoshita had gotten past Kageyama's block for the fifth time in the first set, he realized his potential. He was almost the opposite of Hinata in the way that he was almost invisible and forgettable in the midst of all these eccentric players and that made him dangerous. The blockers would always be a few centimetres behind and thus their block were significantly weakened and it didn't take the most powerful spiker a lot to break through it. However, Kageyama also noticed that this weapon didn't work against the taller players, as Tsukishima only failed to block him once and after that, seemed to have learned from his mistake. It was quite infuriating to Kageyama that Tsukishima could do something that he couldn't.
Despite Kageyama spending a whole lot of time with everyone on the team, he almost didn't speak a word to Hinata except when it was absolutely needed, but, then again, until he had perfected the new toss, he couldn't support him and it wasn't like there was anything about Hinata that he didn't already know.
Kageyama was already quite close to Yachi, but when helping her and Shimizu, they had gone from revising to talking mostly about Volleyball. It had also gone from Yachi lecturing to Kageyama as he taught her about this sport she had dived straight into without actually knowing much about it. As an outsider, Yachi also noticed a lot of things no one else would ever pay attention to. Things such as how they set up their practice, which she pointed out could be optimized to allow more people to use the same space without getting in the way of each other and things like acted towards different teams. She had noticed how many of the players on Karasuno responded differently to different kinds of provocation and as she told this to Kageyama, he quickly told the Captain and the two of them, together with Sugawara had quickly figured out how to utilize this in games. A person as Tanaka, who got easily riled up, when provoked by a person such as Bokuto, who had a positive effect on everyone, be they ally or enemy, he would have a higher success rate with more difficult techniques, such as a personal time difference attack (1) or a narrow cross (2). On the other hand, when riled up by people like Kuroo, who had a natural provoking attitude, Tanaka's attacks had more force behind them and it became difficult to stop him without three blockers.
Hinata was the same, although his response to the two teams were different from Tanaka's. When playing Fukurodani, he tended to be in a better physical state and he was just a notch faster than normal and could jump a few centimetres higher than usual. However, when playing Nekoma, Hinata was influenced quite a lot by the fact that he and Kenma had an intense rivalry besides their friendship, and Hinata usually showed better game sense in the games against Nekoma than any other teams. Yachi truly had been godsend and contributed a lot more to them team than she was aware of.
Other than Hinata and Yachi, Kageyama had never really talked to the other first years, at least willingly, and that did not change during this training camp, however, he did notice how Tsukishima changed his attitude drastically after a few days, which lead to a massive improvement, not only for him, but for the overall defence of the team. He also noticed that now that Hinata wasn't spending all his time with him, he was getting a whole lot closer to Yamaguchi, whom Kageyama had initially just labelled as Tsukishima's sidekick, but was now beginning to think twice about.
Overall, this training camp had been nothing but good for the team and they had all become so much stronger. The only thing that was left now was for Kageyama and Hinata's new quick-strike to begin working on a more solid basis.
(1) I don't know if this attack has been introduced in the anime yet, but it is first introduced as an attack used by Kuroo, and later by someone else, but that is definitely a spoiler so I won't say it in case I have any anime-only's reading this.
(2) I actually don't know what this move/technique is called, but it is basically the spike Bokuto uses in their final match against Karasuno during the training camp. The one where he avoids the blockers by having his spike follow the net.
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