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seiin-translations · 3 years

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2.43 S1 Chapter 5.5 - Stand By Me

5. SACRED COURT

Haijima talks about Yoyogi National Gymnasium similarly to how most kids talk about Disneyland lol

Translation Notes

1. A service ace is a point made on a serve that the opponent had failed to touch

2. A kei car is the smallest highway-legal car in Japan

3. Takeshita Street is a popular street in Harajuku known for its trendy fashion boutiques and for being very busy

4. I feel like this is a reference to something I don’t know, but the wooden fish is a fish gong that is struck while chanting sutras

5. Manuscript paper is the paper used in Japanese schools for compositions and stuff like that. It has boxes in columns to write characters in.

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…Where am I again…?

When he woke up, he couldn’t immediately remember what had happened. The view around him was a hazy milky white, without a single distinct outline. It’s like I’m sinking into the bottom of a beaker filled with a mist of dry ice…it kind of smells like a science lab.

He felt something like a tugging in his left arm. There was a thin line connected to his body, pulling at him from above. The line was holding him back from sinking any further.

A blurry white ball with eyes and a nose was floating in the air.

“I got a text from Kou.”

The ball spoke with a familiar voice. The low-volume voice sounded pleasant to his ears as it seeped through the fog of dry ice.

“…Souta…?”

His consciousness was still fuzzy and his speech was slurred. The white shirt just blended into the background, and when he squinted, he found a proper body below the ball. A uniform…but not Meisei’s uniform. He had heard he went to a different high school.

“You really quit…? Why…?”

“Because I wanted to.”

He was a little surprised by his curt answer and closed his mouth. He heard a short exhale, and then his voice softened.

“…Ever since I entered middle school, I lost interest in volleyball. All I could think about was quitting, and it was getting harder and harder to go to club activities. Everyone entered Meisei, saying that we’ll do volleyball together, so it wasn’t an atmosphere where only I can say I wanted to quit…I was afraid that if I quit, I wouldn’t have any friends at school… I thought Minami-sensei would be disappointed, and besides, my mom’s the head of the parents’ association. I also felt like I had to be at the center of the team…I was tied down by so many things, and everyday was painful… So I came up with the idea that if I hated being in the club to the point of committing suicide, I could get sympathy and quit…That’s how I got involved in everyone’s plan. …I’m sorry.”

After everything that happened, he only has that simple “I’m sorry”?

However, when he learned the reason after two years, he felt like there were no words other than sorry… If you ask Haijima, it was such a trivial thing that he couldn’t even understand what was bothering him.

Was such a boring reason what was behind that incident?

Well…it’s not like I was the one who drove him into a corner…

“…You should have told me, normally.”

His mouth pouted a little despite himself.

“If it were you, you would’ve been able to say it. Well, I don’t think you’ll ever want to quit volleyball, even if it kills you. But I’m not you…I didn’t want to be the bad guy. I didn’t want to be hated by everyone.”

It’s not like I want to be hated…he wasn’t happy about that, but it was true that wanting to be liked by people wasn’t that high of a priority for him.

When he was in elementary school, the two of them would talk about high school and national team games after club ended. They could talk and talk and never get bored of it, and he wished the time when Yoshino’s mother came to pick him up would never come. Yoshino also had a lot of old video footage that only existed on videotape, and he was even more enthusiastic than Haijima about that kind of thing.

The shock slowly soaked into him at the idea that someone who was once obsessed with volleyball could stop liking it. Haijima couldn’t even imagine himself not being interested in volleyball anymore. It was the same as asking if he could imagine the afterlife. He couldn’t.

If there was just one starting point for his imagination—it was that on the third day of the Autumn Tournament, going to a game felt bothersome to him for the first time in his life. For him, it even had a feeling of dread. At that time, he had regained his willpower after sleeping a little, but if that kind of constantly continuing heavy mood was the “wanting to quit” that Yoshino experienced, then it might be quite painful to even live everyday.

“Souta, you…”

His brow wrinkled as he frowned, staring at Yoshino’s indistinct face in front of him.

“Nnn…?” There was nervousness in Yoshino’s voice.

“You got fat, didn’t you?”

The contours of his face were quite round. That was why it looked like there was a floating ball.

“…You’re as blunt as ever. Well yeah, I got fat after I quit the team.”

Yoshino’s voice lightened, like he was expecting something more. He didn’t seem to be offended. Probably.

“Are you in any clubs now?”

“Yeah. It’s not sports-related though. I’m in the science club.”

“Is that fun? More than volleyball?”

“It is fun, more than volleyball for me. There aren’t a lot of members, but they’re all good people. I have fun going to club activities every day. We go to the science lab every lunch break to collect data from our experiments.”

He didn’t like that he had affirmed it, but he could tell from the excited way he talked that he was doing what he really wanted to do now. Something fell into his chest with a thump, and he accepted that, Aah, the things that are “fun” for Yoshino and me aren’t the same anymore…

Even though their eyes sparkled at the same things, aimed for the same stage, and planned to do the same things, maybe that didn’t mean they were in the same story.

“Then, I’ll be leaving now.”

He could feel Yoshino standing up. Even though he had no intention of stopping him, Haijima immediately tried to reach out his hand. But his arm was pulled back as if it had been caught on a fish hook, and he was only able to move it a little.

Yoshino, who was about to leave, turned around. “…Take care of yourself. Don’t be too reckless.” Something soft gripped his hand along with a gentle voice. His fatty, plump hands were not bony and didn’t feel like they belonged to an active volleyball player anymore, but he could feel their warmth flowing into his wrapped-up fingers. It was as though the coldness of his fingers, which had been holding him captive ever since the day Yoshino didn’t come, was becoming undone.

Before he let go of his hand, Yoshino’s voice that had been mild and gentle took on a faint gloom.

“Chika, don’t be reckless, okay? You’re a true genius, not an ordinary person like me, and you probably can’t even imagine your limits right now…but I have a feeling that if you were to be betrayed by volleyball one day, you might be surprisingly fragile…I know it’s none of my business, but that’s what I’m worried about.”

***

“When did you get a fever?”

He seemed to have lost consciousness for a bit again until he heard the next voice.

The round outline of Yoshino, who had been by his side since a while ago, had changed into something more vertical and narrower. He looked up at the outline for a while, and then asked,

“…Are you angry?”

“Yeah. If you’re willing to work a little harder to read my mind off the court too, then that’s progress. Here.”

He held out to something to him. He tried to reach for it, but his arm cramped up and the thing was put in his hand instead. “I had them fixed at the optician across the hospital. They said that it would be safer to buy new ones, though.”

“Aah…thanks.”

“You really do have a strange way of getting into trouble during a game, don’t you?”

With his head resting on the pillow, he put on his glasses. For the first time in a long time, his vision was clear again. It was so clear that it actually made the world look distorted, which made him feel a bit dizzy. The lenses were in place on both sides, but there was still a sense of discomfort because the frame was still warped.

Kuroba was sitting on a chair beside the bed with a grumpy look on his face. Behind him, there was a partition with the curtains drawn. It looked like a break room-like space with a simple bed next to the examination room.

There was an IV tube connected to his left arm. Drops of water were dripping regularly from a clear pack that was hooked to a stand above his head. The liquid in the pack was down to about a quarter of its original volume. I was told to stay on the drip for about an hour…so I guess forty-five minutes have passed or something like that?

After resting, he was able to think more clearly and remembered how he had walked to the car by himself. By the time they had arrived at the hospital, it must have been 5:00 or 5:30, so outpatient consultation hours must have been over by now. He could hear the hurried conversations and footsteps of the staff, but they were far away, so it wasn’t noisy. In fact, it was rather isolated and quiet.

The final serve was done perfectly as he had imagined. Just as the gym was buzzing over the two service aces (1) in a row, the Meisei coach and captains returned after their meeting, as though they had timed it.

Although the second-year members were severely reprimanded for skipping practice to play an impromptu two-on-two game, the fact that a former Meisei Middle School student came to visit meant that Haijima and Kuroba didn’t get into much trouble. It was also thanks in part to Komukai and Ikawa coming forward and saying that they had an arrangement beforehand. Come to think of it, Komukai was the one who warned him just before the score board crashed into him…

The coach and captains asked him about this and that, but from that point on, Haijima was completely wobbling and couldn’t answer them properly. Right when he thought, Ah…I can’t stand anymore, he felt hands go around his sides and supporting him. “Sorry, he has a fever,” He heard Kuroba’s voice through the haze of his mind. So the advisor drove him to a nearby hospital.

“No wonder that you were sleeping like you were dead on the train. I should have noticed it earlier, but I thought it was strange how your face was kinda hot, but since it was right before the game began…Really, why did you decide to go to Tokyo in that condition?”

“I didn’t think I had a fever either. I’ve been feeling off since the end of camp, but…”

“What!? Camp was a month ago! Wait, was that why there was something off with you at the Fall Tournament? Why were you practicing every day under the blazing sun in that state, are you stupid!?”

“You’re too loud, shut up…”

He pulled the terry-cloth blanket up to his eyes and dejectedly slithered under it. If there wasn’t a drip connected to him, he would have covered his ears with both hands. He wasn’t happy with the feeling of being below someone and being ordered around by them, but he didn’t have the energy to fight back.

His mother, who passed away before he started elementary school, was a sickly person. Haijima inherited that, and although it wasn’t bad enough to interfere with his daily life, his body wasn’t strong either. When he was little, he would often have fevers of unknown origin that would last for about a month in summer and winter. However, ever since he started playing volleyball in the upper grades of elementary school, he had become physically stronger, and it had been quite a long time since he has had such a long period of discomfort.

It seemed that he didn’t like the words “feeling off.” He got angry.

“It’s not ‘feeling off,’ you’re in bad health. Don’t switch words and gloss over the issue.”

“…My play wasn’t off though.”

“That’s the problem in your case. It didn’t influence your play…in fact, you got even more agile for some reason. I really don’t get it. And when it’s over, look at you. You’re completely out of energy.”

You’re so noisy…If he said that, it seemed like he would continue to get lectured, so he endured it. He normally didn’t consciously hold back what he was about to say that much.

“…I hate it. I hate it when I can’t play volleyball even for a day. I feel sort of…impatient…”

He whispered on the other side of his blanket. Kuroba, who had been talking at great length, stopped for a moment, then sighed quizzically.

“I don’t know why, but it seems like you’re living too fast and recklessly…?”

He was relieved when he realized that his lack of concentration in the semifinals of the Fall Tournament was because he had a fever. The fed-up feeling on the morning of the semifinals as well…he wanted to get rid of that feeling as soon as possible before it took hold in him, and now that he thought about it, even though he felt off, he felt like he couldn’t take a break from practice.

But he was able to explain to himself that it was just the fever that made him sluggish, and he was relieved…but in the end, the desire to play volleyball again welled up within him. It was a waste of time to rest.

“Haijima-saaan?”

An elderly nurse knocked on the partition frame and poked her head in. Kuroba stood and opened up the place.

“You’ve just finished the drip. …Yes, if there is no blood coming out after about ten minutes, you may tear off this bandage. The doctor says that you should rest today and properly go have a checkup at the hospital after you go home. Did you contact your guardian?”

She quickly pulled out the drip and performed the procedure while speaking so rapidly and one-sidedly that he recoiled. “…Not yet,” he answered in a small voice and got up while staring fixedly at the small adhesive bandage that was pasted over the small needle hole. Kuroba, who had moved out of the way to the foot of the bed, looked between Haijima and the nurse like he wanted to say something.

“Then, you’ll have to call them.”

“Oh, thank you very much for helping us!” Kuroba hurriedly said to the nurse, who was pushing the IV stand away from the bed. He waited for the nurse’s figure to disappear on the other side of the partition before asking Haijima.

“Can’t you just call your home in Tokyo?”

“I got the keys. I’ll just go to pick up the train money. If we get on the eight o’clock train, we can return just in time, right? If I stop by home and head for Shinagawa right away, we can make it in time.”

“Why don’t we just stay the night instead of forcing ourselves to go home today? You have a house here.”

“If we don’t go home today, we’ll have to be absent tomorrow too. Get my bags.”

He did some quick stretches on the bed to loosen up his back. Although he still felt sluggish, he had recovered enough to be able to move on his own. He wanted to move his body because he felt like his body would get more and more sluggish if he stayed in bed. The arm that had been connected to the tube was now free, so he felt somewhat liberated.

The taping on both hands had been removed. He was pretty sure he did it himself, though he didn’t remember. He was soaked in sweat from the game and his T-shirt dried as he slept, but either way he had to change into his uniform if he was going back (Kuroba, who didn’t have a replacement T-shirt, seemed to be planning to go home with just his uniform shirt, but as usual he couldn’t tell if that was cool or tacky).

When he tried to take off his T-shirt, it got caught on his glasses and he couldn’t get it off his head, so he tried to take them off inside his T-shirt. As he was doing this, he heard Kuroba’s voice along with the sound of a bag being placed next to him.

“I’ve been wondering about this, but can I ask you something? You don’t get along with your dad, do you?”

“It’s not bad or anything…” He was answering from inside his T-shirt, so his voice was muffled and it sounded like he was hesitating to speak, but he wasn’t trying to hide anything. “…My dad’s like me. Do you think that if there’s two of me in the same house, and one of them isn’t interested in volleyball, there’d be anything to talk about?”

“Ah…haha. I think I can imagine that.”

He interjected like he accepted that easily. He felt somewhat annoyed by that.

His father still lived alone in the apartment in Tokyo where they lived together until the second semester of his second year of middle school. It wasn’t that he had a bad relationship with his father, but he just couldn’t carry on a conversation with him. It was especially difficult to understand each other when it came to phone conversations. He truly wondered how his father and him had become so similar. Since Haijima came to live with his grandparents, they had had very little contact, but his grandmother sometimes told him about what he was doing, so he thought that was enough.

“It’s not bad, and my dad agreed for me to go back to Monshiro, so…there’s nothing for you to worry about.” It seemed like he was worried, so he thought that it would be better to say that wasn’t the case.

“Haijima-san, there’s someone here to pick you up. You properly contacted your guardian, didn’t you?”

He heard the voice of the nurse from before on the other side of the partition again. He finally pulled his T-shirt off his head and put on his glasses, then said, “Pick me up?” and exchanged looks with Kuroba.

“Hello.”

A bright voice came from the other side of the partition.

A person who was tall for a woman, with her long hair tied back and dressed plainly in a simple blouse and slim jeans——.

“Minami, sensei…”

He stood up, the bed rattling. As expected, he got dizzy, as his body that had been receiving an IV drip until right this moment had suddenly stood up. He immediately grabbed the top frame of the partition and ended up looming over it. The other person’s eyes widened as she looked up at him.

“Oh? You got taller than me? You really have grown. Are you at least 180?”

“I…I am. I’m around 181, no, 2, no, 3, no, 4…”

Wait, why am I padding the numbers? Kuroba had a “Who’s that?” look on his face.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you were changing. Have you gotten dressed yet?”

After being told that, his eyes dropped to the T-shirt in his hands in surprise. He turned around and jumped at his bag. “I’ll get changed in ten seconds.”

“No need to rush. You just woke up, right? I parked my car in the parking lot.”

He shoved his T-shirt into his bag and grabbed a change of clothes. His shorts were halfway down his legs when he realized what he was doing and stopped.

Half-standing, he turned around awkwardly.

“Wait over there…Sensei.”

His mouth opened and closed, and then he heard his own tight voice.

***

“That’s right, when you were in elementary school, I used to tell you guys to change in ten seconds in front of me, but that’s no longer possible. Your body is completely a high schooler’s now. But you grew much taller than me. I’m a little shocked.”

Minami-sensei said with a happy smile as she turned the steering wheel. Haijima was seated diagonally behind the driver’s seat, hugging his enamel bag tightly and looking down. In the seat next to him, Kuroba was still looking between Haijima’s profile and the back of Minami-sensei’s head in astonishment.

The car was a small kei car (2), with the head of Minami-sensei crammed into the driver’s seat almost touching the ceiling in a few centimeters. When the three of them with their tall frames got into the car, it looked like a deformed car in a cartoon. The hair on the top of Haijima’s head just brushed against the ceiling, and in Kuroba’s case, he was completely stuck, so he sat so shallowly that his back sank into the seat, but then his knees ended up bumping into the driver’s seat.

“I’m sorry it’s so cramped. I never had two kids who were so big ride in my car before. You’re big, too. Are you a first-year? Center or wing?”

“I’m Kuroba Yuni. I’m a first-year. I play the wing position.”

He leaned forward and answered before she finished her sentence, then scrapped his head against the roof and lowered his head with an “ow.” Calm down, Haijima’s temple twitched, and he narrowed his eyes at him.

“You’re tall too, Sensei.”

“177 centimeters. That’s pretty tall for a woman, isn’t it? But today I’m the smallest, so my vision feels quite fresh.”

“Were you a volleyball player too, Sensei?”

“Yes. I used to play for a corporate team for a little while, but now I quit and teach at an elementary school.”

“You were the teacher at the club Haijima used to go to, right?”

“I was only a coach who assisted the head coach. The same year that Chika and the others started middle school, the school transferred me to a new position, and I lost touch with them.”

“Sensei, may I ask your age?”

Haijima silently pulled Kuroba’s back, who was clinging to the back of the driver’s seat and talking, back down onto his seat and made him sit. Watching them in the rear-view mirror, Minami-sensei grinned and said,

“Ahaha. I was twenty-eight when Chika was in the sixth grade. Are you fine with that answer? Chika, are you still not feeling well? You can go back to sleep. Or are you feeling carsick?”

“Ah…no.”

He hung his head and shook it while pinching Kuroba’s side. Kuroba tilted his head towards him and whispered into his ear.

“What’s with you? You’re suddenly so meek and quiet. Sensei’s worried about you.”

“Don’t call her Sensei. Why are you asking so many questions so over-familiarly?”

Haijima also kept his voice quiet as he and Kuroba pressed their temples together.

“Then what should I call her? Is Minami-san fine?”

“Stop…joking around. Minami is her first name. Her full name is Kashiwagi Minami.”

Minami-sensei said it was fresh, but it was fresh for Haijima that she was smaller than him. In elementary school, Sensei was like a tower, and her nickname was “Tower” (she seemed to have hated that nickname, and when some of the boys teased her with it, she would chase them around angrily). I had the impression that she had an overbearing physique…no, she has broad shoulders and is probably overbearing by average standards, but…she kinda looks more delicate than I thought she would be…

He was glad he was taller. That was a natural thing to think when you’re playing volleyball, and he knew that he still wasn’t tall enough, but he was confused at himself for being happy about it for reasons other than that.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think ‘Minami-sensei’ would be a female teacher.”

“I never said it was a man.”

The two continued to whisper to each other.

“Well, it kinda makes sense. I knew it wouldn’t be Vabo-chan, but I wasn’t entirely wrong either, was I? It’s not like a girl in your class or anything is going to catch your eye. A former athlete, a coach, and much older than you…Yeah, that’s just like you.”

“…What are you talking about?”

“The thing you said before about having a girl you liked, you were talking about Kashiwagi-sensei, right? Even you have normal emotions more or less. No, not even normal. I’m little surprised and shaken right now too.”

He walloped Kuroba on the side of the head with the bag he was holding, messing up his hair and causing him to scrape his elbow against the roof. He then pinned Kuroba down on his seat and pressed down on his face with the bottom of his bag. While they were silently fighting, Kuroba suddenly let out a big “Ah!” As he lied on his back, he looked up at the window and said, “I saw the word Harajuku just now!”

“Yes, we’ll be passing through Harajuku soon. Do you want to get out if I can park?”

Kuroba’s face lit up at the voice from the driver’s seat and he said, “Yeah, but it’ll be a lot of trouble for you if you do that.” “She can’t.” Haijima pressed the bag against Kuroba’s stupid face, which looked like he was quite seriously anticipating the possibility, one more time and got up, then pressed his face against the passenger window on his side and looked out. “It’s okay to sightsee around Tokyo just a little. We came all this way.” Kuroba also got up while muttering that, unwilling to give up, and hugged Haijima’s bag to his knees.

The roads in Tokyo were beginning to get congested as the working adults were heading home, but the cars were still going at a gentle speed. Under the gassy indigo-blue sky, streetlamps appeared at intervals and disappeared behind them. In front of Nanafu Station, where the school was located, there was not a single light on at night, but there were none even in front of Monshiro Station. All light and sound ceased to exist, and it felt like you had drifted ashore a small and isolated island. But no matter how far you went on the streets of Tokyo, the lights and sounds never disappeared.

As they turned onto a certain road from an intersection with a large overpass, he realized where they were driving to. What was up ahead was—.

He attached his hands and glasses to the window glass and fixed his eyes on their direction of travel. Finally, a large grey building appeared, on the other side of round street lights floating in the night sky like a formation of UFOs.

A large round building with a single dorsal fin-like projection on the roof. Although it was made of unrefined concrete, the gently curving form of the structure, like water eddying around, was so beautiful that it captivated his eyes—.

“Sensei, stop here!” While clinging to the window, he forgot himself and reached out to the seat next to him. “Kuroba, Kuroba!”

“Hmm? Is this Takeshita Street?” (3)

Kuroba eagerly said that and leaned forward. Haijima groped around to find his chest and grabbed it close to him.

“Let’s go see the best thing in Tokyo—Yoyogi’s first gymnasium.”

***

Thinking about it now, Minami-sensei must have planned to stop by from the very beginning. She wouldn’t have normally taken this route to get from the hospital near Meisei to Haijima’s home in Tokyo.

A little further down the road, she found an empty spot in the parking lot on the shoulder of the road, parked, and then Haijima dragged Kuroba out of the car and ran back to the admission gate of the gym.

“You’re too excited. I told you to calm down. The building’s not going to run away even if you don’t run.”

The entrance was closed, and the lights in the plaza from the gates to the gym’s entrance were off, leaving the asphalt to sink into the darkness. As it was located on a busy roadway, the noise of cars intermittently behind them.

The first gymnasium of Yoyogi National Gymnasium, the holy ground of the Spring Tournament. Most of the history of the Spring Tournament, which had been held more than forty times, had taken place at this Yoyogi venue.

“There isn’t anything going on today? They have concerts and stuff almost every day, not just sports tournaments.”

Minami-sensei, who came later, said as she peeked through the gaps in the gates.

The gates consisted of an iron fence about 190 centimeters tall. When Haijima gripped the rails and tested their strength, then lifted himself up vigorously with his arm strength. He leaned over the top of the gates and strained his eyes, but was disappointed to see that the building at the end of the dark plaza now only looked like a ruin. “That’s dangerous!” Kuroba grabbed the back of his belt.

“On the tournament day, there was this huge Vabo-chan balloon, and it was a landmark, and even though there was nothing cute about it, watching it bob around was kinda addictive…”

He desperately wanted Kuroba to also imagine that scenery, so he tried his best to explain it to him.

As soon as he enshrined that huge Vabo-chan balloon in his mind, bright line shone on that lonely indigo plaza as though blackout curtains were lifted at once. In the same way he could create a volleyball court around him without relying on his eyesight, the scenery of the day of the tournament was drawn with him as the starting point. Under the early spring morning sky, large crowds of people passed by them, who stood there blocked by the gates, and walked through the gates and into the admission gates.

The cheering squads of parents wearing matching windbreakers and carrying banners and drums. The concert band members in their school uniforms with mufflers around their necks and the cheerleaders in ponytails. The sports reporters holding equipment. And then there were the athletes of the competing schools, wearing their various team jerseys, each of them with feelings of tension, excitement, and fighting spirit in their hearts. Some of them were today’s high school students from vivid high-definition footage, and others were high school students he had seen in footage from a long time ago, with much frailer physiques looking at them now. High schoolers from various eras were mixed together, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were all volleyball players who had marched in carrying their prefectures on their backs.

Once he passed through the dark admission gates, his vision opened up again. In the vast circular space, illuminated by bright lights, was a spectator seating area with a capacity of over ten-thousand people, and in the center of that, there was a glossy sky blue and citrus orange volleyball court.

“The quarter-finals are on a multi-court, but the semi-finals and beyond are on the center court. There’s only court in the center of the arena, and it’s super fancy, and only the best players from the best teams who are capable of winning the title of the best high school in Japan can stand on it…”

“I get it, it’s an amazing stage. I know how much you want to be there, and I know very well that you’re a setter who can stand in the middle of that amazing stage.”

With a pacifying voice, he embraced his trunk and brought him down from the gates.

“That’s not what I meant, what are you talking about? I wasn’t talking about me?”

Haijima brushed off Kuroba’s arm in frustration and grabbed his collar just as he was turning around. Kuroba’s eyes widened as he clutched Haijima’s wrist and drew his chin in.

“Imagine yourself standing there. Try wishing for it seriously. More, more…You’ve got what it takes to be up there. And if you’re competing on that stage with a lot of people like that, you’re going to crave it more and more. You’re going to want strength and time so much that you can’t stand it. You’re going to be unbearably frustrated that there’s only three years of high school. That’s why I want you to be the ace…”

It was frustrating that what was inside of him wasn’t inside Kuroba. He wanted him to understand that somehow, and this might be the first time he had ever squeezed out words like that to try to convey something. He had often let things go, thinking that it was fine if he wasn’t understood. He had never been driven by the desire to actively share his values with someone before.

He let go of Kuroba’s chest, half pushing him away. He turned his back to him, who staggered slightly, and looked back at Minami-sensei.

“Sensei. I promised to go to the Spring Tournament with Meisei, but I’m sorry, I’m correcting that. I want to go there with Seiin…with those guys. That’s what I want now.”

Minami-sensei leaned her shoulder against the iron fence and folded her arms with a slightly scary look on her face. Thinking that she might be angry, Haijima waited a little nervously.

The ends of Sensei’s eyebrows lowered, and she let out a short sigh.

“You don’t have to apologize…am I that scary of a coach? Souta also came all the way to me to ask for permission with a teary face. He asked me if he could quit volleyball. You know, elementary schoolers become high school students, right? It’s not the same as me going from twenty-eight to thirty-one. It’s normal for friends and things you like to change rapidly. Because that’s how compressed the time all of you spent was.”

“Sensei, you spoke with Souta…?”

He hadn’t really thought about the extent to which Minami-sensei had heard about the suicide attempt, but then it occurred to him for the first time that she knew about the incident and the reason why Haijima transferred schools.

If Sensei knew that her students, who left her elementary school club happily and saying that they’ll all play volleyball together, became bullied or bullies in middle school and drifted apart, then she must be sad…

“I’m sorry…Sensei…”

He lowered his head and muttered an apology again.

“You have nothing to apologize for. You were the one who was in a lot of pain. We should be the ones apologizing…the adults shouldn’t have been so unperceptive…”

Minami-sensei’s hand touched his arm. It was a gentle touch. On the day when their club had lost a match, he had been comforted by the same gesture, and he couldn’t help but hug her around the middle and cry. He had never lost or cried like that. Suddenly, he felt as though the time had gone back many years, and he had returned to the time when his teacher still looked as tall as a “tower.”

But he was already taller than the Sensei before him. He couldn’t hug her or anything like that. And he wasn’t as hurt as he had thought he would be when he found out what had happened two years ago that he didn’t know about.

In the end, Komukai and the others probably didn’t think it was such a big deal. They didn’t imagine that they would ruin their teammate’s life, and he thought that Komukai was saying what he really thought when he disappointedly said, “With just that.” They had done it with only the intention of making Haijima pay a little, and he repented, then they would be satisfied. They probably wondered what was going on with him when he stopped going to school and then transferred schools from the incident that had occurred from that simple intention.

But if Komukai and the others really didn’t have a goal to eliminate Haijima, then that was actually…a relief.

He wasn’t eliminated from that team.

Once he understood that, the fear of starting over somewhere else diminished considerably.

“I’m fine now.”

He thought it was good he knew about it now. He thought that was probably because he could accept it now.

“I didn’t come here alone…so I’m fine.”

He could hear Kuroba gasp from behind him.

“I see…” Minami-sensei looked at Kuroba and smiled, as though satisfied. “It was a good thing you went to Seiin High School, after all.”

“Huh…” “Kashiwagi-sensei, you know about Seiin?”

Kuroba’s voice overlapped with Haijima’s surprised voice. Seiin was just a local high school, not a nationally know school. It also bothered him that she spoke like she had known where he transferred to since before.

“Who do you think sent me to pick you up at the hospital? Meisei Middle School’s coach asked me to do it.”

“The coach…?”

Haijima learned that the coach of the Meisei Middle volleyball team had felt responsible for the series of events that had occurred in the second year of middle school and that he had been concerned about Haijima’s condition for a long time. He thought that by the time he entered high school, things would have died down and he could talk to the coach of the high school team and call him back to Meisei. However, when he had heard that Haijima went to Seiin High School, he decided to withdraw and leave him alone——.

“Seiin High School in Fukui has a famous coach, yes?”

Famous coach? He looked back at Kuroba, puzzled, but Kuroba also stared back at him with a puzzled look on his face. They recalled the dried up old advisor who looked like a scarecrow with a wooden fish placed on top of the head. (4)

“…Haa?”

The two exclaimed in unison.

He had heard from Oda that he had been a volleyball player a long time ago. However, the old man usually fell asleep when he came to watch club activities, and he had never done much as an advisor, let alone a coach. Their advisor at Monshiro Middle School, who was an amateur but showed a lot of motivation, was a much better advisor.

“Adults are connected in ways that children don’t know about.”

A corner of Minami-sensei’s mouth raised in a mischievous smile.

“That’s why, the teachers at Seiin High School are already informed that you two are here. I’m sure that your families have been contacted as well. I heard that your senpais on the team were also worried about you. The two of you did skip class and disappeared together after all.”

They both groaned and their faces stiffened. There was no way the school wouldn’t find out that they skipped, so they were prepared to be penalized for it, but if they knew that they were in Tokyo, then…

“I hope they’ll just make us write an apology.”

Kuroba sighed, but for Haijima, who found writing any essay more than two columns on manuscript paper (5) torturous, a written apology was more hellish than any penalty. “Don’t look so miserable. I’ll help you. It’s collective responsibility,” Kuroba said and clapped him on the shoulder.

Minami-sensei looked down at her watch and murmured, “We have to go soon.” When she looked up, she had a big smile on her face, as though she was taking out a special present she was hiding.

“There’s one last message for you. It’s from the captain of your volleyball team. He says, ‘You have club activities tomorrow, so go home.’”

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#2.43 #2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club #2.43 translation #2.43 book 1 #2.43 seiin high school boys volleyball team #2.43 seiin koukou danshi volley bu

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