When you hear “summer training camp for high school girls,” you imagine something lively and bubbly, right? And with all seven participants aside from me being objectively good-looking—no exaggeration, even on the conservative end, their face scores are easily above 60—you’d expect some excitement, wouldn’t you?
But, you know, reality always tends to be harsh.
“Hahyu... hahyu...”
I don’t know if the sound is coming from our throats, mouths, or noses, but some kind of strange breathing noise is escaping from all of us. I can taste blood in the back of my mouth.
Ah, even Reiko gets exhausted when pushed this far. It’s the first time I’ve seen her sitting down, staring up at the sky, completely still.
“Th-that’s a relief… Y-Yuuri is… h-human… t-too…”
Reiko speaks to me in a broken, breathless voice. I see—we both must’ve thought the other was completely immune to fatigue.
August 1st. First day of the volleyball club’s summer training camp. Now with the three former basketball players officially added, our newly reformed volleyball team was already on the verge of collapse.
See, Asuka’s tendency to go overboard wasn’t new. And how she easily gets riled up by Mirai (who’s now officially in the volleyball club, and we all agreed to start using each other’s first names) wasn’t new either. But this was the first time Eri-senpai wasn’t here.
The result: no one to hit the brakes.
“What’s wrong, volleyball team?! You’re gonna give up from just this?! If that’s the case, go back to the basketball club!”
“Who’s giving up here?! Come on, everyone, next round!”
The brakes aren’t broken. It’s just, when we thought we were pressing the brakes… it turned out we had stepped on a second accelerator. That’s all it was. With no brakes, how do we stop? Simple. Just keep running until we’re out of energy—until we’re totally out of gas. Which we did. We stopped.
It was already a tough load—just the basic physical training. And from day one, all of us got to thoroughly enjoy the lack of oxygen and the taste of blood.
“Alright, 10-minute break! After that, we move on to serve practice!”
A male voice echoed across the Matsubara Girls’ High volleyball court—something that hadn’t been heard here before. It belonged to Uesugi-sensei, our former basketball advisor and now volleyball coach.
＝＝＝＝＝
Before the Summer Training Camp Began
Right after exams, during our first meeting
＝＝＝＝＝
“How exactly do you all plan to get stronger?”
It all started with something the new member, Maeji—no, I mean, Mirai—said.
“Huh? We’re obviously going to get stronger through practice.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m asking what kind of team you’re aiming to be. Like, maybe you want to be a team that focuses completely on defense and picks up every ball with solid receives. That sort of thing. Sure, in an ideal world, all six players on the court would be perfect at receiving, tossing, spiking, serving, and blocking. But that’s not how it works. You have to play to your strengths, figure out the best winning strategy within the time you have, and train that intensely.”
That’s fair. Take the inter-high prelims, for example—Reiko and I skipped everything but spiking and serving. That was how, even with two total beginners, we managed to place third in the prefecture. If we’d trained everything evenly, we probably wouldn’t have made it that far.
So, what kind of team do we want to be?
“Hmm. A team where Yuu-chan and Rei-chan just keep scoring again and again?”
“If that’s the kind of team our captain Asuka wants, I won’t deny it. So then, the rest of us just need to train our receives like crazy and make sure the two of them get good balls. Is that the idea?”
“...Not quite. I mean, I can’t put it into words very well, but…”
“Mind if I say something?”
The one who gently cut in on the unsure Asuka was Shirasagi-san… no, Mana. Still, calling people by their first names makes me nervous. Just a matter of getting used to it, maybe?
“To decide that, don’t we first need to know more about each other? Like, for instance, the reason you made Tachibana—er, Yuuri-chan—a spiker is because you knew she could jump high, right? If you didn’t know that, you probably would’ve assigned her as a receiver just based on her height.”
Looks like I’m not the only one flustered by the name-calling. By the way, Mana calls me with a -chan because “you’re small and cute,” and for some reason, she keeps touching me a lot. She’s in the same category as Sayaka—ladylike but a bit eccentric.
“I agree with Mana. It’s hard to set a team goal when we don’t even know what each other is capable of. Like I mentioned before, the former basketball team already had a training camp planned starting August 1st. Canceling last minute would be rude to the people involved, and the gym we reserved can be used for volleyball too. So, why not use that time to run volleyball assessments instead?”
Oh yeah, now that she mentions it, she did say something like that before. So, that means we’re doing training camps both in early and late August?
＝＝＝
There are two goals for this training camp.
First: To find out what each person can do, and to what extent.
Second: Once everyone’s abilities are understood, to decide the direction for building the team based on that.
So, while up until now Reiko and I would practice serving during receive training time, and Yuki hadn’t really practiced serves at all, this time we’re all doing the same drills.
“You probably already get it, but don’t serve with a half-hearted mindset. Put purpose into every single serve. Especially the three who just joined and the three trying out new serves—reflect on each one. Why did it succeed? Why did it fail? Think it through each time.”
Now it's time for serve practice.
I'm doing spike serves as usual, but surprisingly, Reiko and Asuka are also trying to learn the spike serve now.
The spike serve is high-risk, high-reward, and though it’s difficult, it has serious power when it lands. In men's volleyball, especially at the pro level, it's a standard.
But when it comes to girls' high school volleyball, spike serves are rare.
Why?
The answer’s simple: they can’t generate enough power due to muscle differences. So even if you go through the effort and risk to learn it, the result might not be very impactful—kind of a thankless job. If you're going to learn a tough serve, a no-spin jump floater would be a better asset for the team.
In fact, Hina is trying to learn that very serve for the Spring High prelims. And personally, I find the no-spin serve more annoying than a spike serve—it suddenly swerves right in front of you.
...That might be because I couldn’t return Eri-senpai’s no-spin serve at all, though she didn’t jump when she did it.
But still—
“Being a girl isn’t a reason not to use spike serves. There are plenty of female pros who use them. And it’s not about theories or arguments. If you try it and it doesn’t work, then you can give up. But regrets from not trying stay with you longer than regrets from trying.”
It was Saeki-sensei’s words that pushed the two of them to go for the spike serve.
!!
Oh! Reiko’s serve just now was amazing. At least in terms of power and placement. Fundamentally, though, it still needs work.
“Reiko. Your last serve had good power and a great angle, but you stepped on the end line before hitting it. That’s a no-go. I think you should start by stabilizing your toss.”
“Hmm. I see. Thank you, Yuuri. How long did it take you to get your toss consistent?”
“Took me over a month.”
“That’s good news. Even if it takes me twice as long, I’ll still make it by November.”
To be honest, both of them are still under 50% on success rate. Even the power is hit or miss. But like Reiko said, we’ve got three months until November. Who knows how far they’ll come by then.
And then, there's someone trying an even more unusual serve.
“Hmph!!”
With a shout of focus, the ball was launched into the air with intense topspin, and dropped sharply just past the net.
Mirai’s serve is a rare (apparently) overhand drive serve.
Overhand serves themselves seem to be rare these days. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any during the Inter-High prelims.
Nowadays, beginners start with underhand serves. Then if they want more power, elementary schoolers move to side-hand serves. Once you gain enough strength, most switch to floater serves. Overhand serves just don’t catch on (probably because it’s hard to see the ball when hitting).
The drive serve’s main features are how it suddenly drops just past the net, and how hard it is to receive cleanly if it hits outside your body—it flies off in a weird direction.
But that difficulty fades as receivers gain more muscle. Back in elementary school, you had to receive it dead center, but by middle and high school, you can still get it up even if it’s outside your frame. To keep it hard to receive in middle/high school, you'd need serious strength—but if you can build that much strength, people say you should just switch to a spike serve.
Still, Mirai chose this serve, the one she used back in elementary school. Everyone accepted it. Since it’s so uncommon nowadays, the surprise factor might throw opponents off and lead to more serve errors.
And the impact is seriously strong. The ball really does just drop out of the sky right in front of you. And supposedly, if you’ve got the strength, it’s easy to receive? That’s a joke, right? I couldn’t receive it at all. (Blank stare)
“Hm? What’s up? Something on my face?”
She noticed me staring at her serve.
“Mirai's serve was amazing, so I got caught up watching it.”
It wasn’t something I needed to hide, so I just said what I thought.
“Wh-what are you, stupid?! Stuff like that—embarrassing lines like that—you’re supposed to wrap them in layers of politeness! Oh, wait, right. You didn’t grow up in Japan. Look, don’t say stuff like that so directly. It’s embarrassing, okay?!”
Mirai snapped back, blushing and looking the other way.
Her words are like that, sure, but deep down she’s actually pretty sincere and innocent. I could be wrong, since we’ve only really started talking for less than a week, but that’s the impression I get.
“And besides, the amazing one is you, Japan. You’ve only been playing for four months and already got invited to the national training camp!”
“…It’s not like I made the team. I was just invited to the training camp.”
“Japan” is my nickname (only Mirai calls me that). Somehow, I ended up getting invited to the national training camp.
＝＝＝＝
Before the Start of Summer Training Camp
Right After the Test That Determined the Club’s Survival
＝＝＝＝
“You guys... I get that you're passionate about volleyball, but at the very least, keep your grades good enough to move up and graduate. Even me, six to eight years ago, didn’t exactly have stellar grades, but I never got a failing mark. Starting from the second term, if you get below 40 points on any subject in midterms or finals, you’re not playing in matches.”
After our fierce (?) battle with the basketball club, Saeki-sensei laid down new conditions for continuing club activities.
“Well, anyway. Shirasagi, Maejima, Nabekawa—welcome to the volleyball club. I’ve been watching your efforts from nearby. You might not be thrilled about how things turned out, but I for one am happy to see gutsy new members like you join us. By the way, do any of you have experience with volleyball?”
“I played volleyball at a local club when I was in elementary school.” That was Maejima-san.
“I played during middle school—mainly because I was tall—from first year until summer of second year. After that, our team didn’t have enough members and just naturally dissolved.” That was Nabekawa-san. Apparently, from autumn of second year onward, she was recruited into the basketball team for her height.
“I’m the opposite. I was forced into the volleyball team in autumn of second year because they didn’t have enough members, and I played for about a year.” And finally, Shirasagi-san. Interestingly, the volleyball team she was roped into won the prefectural tournament and made it to nationals in the summer of third year. The ace and setter from that team went on to Himesaki on recommendations. As for Shirasagi-san herself? She says she just spaced out in the back the whole time.
“Oh? All three of you have experience, huh? Our volleyball team values skill above all else. If you’re good enough, it doesn’t matter when you joined—you can play in matches. That said, the bar is pretty high. After all, we’ve got a national team player in our ranks.”
“Which brings us to Yukiko. It’s not exactly a surprise, but... thanks to winning the Libero Award in the Inter-High Prefectural Qualifiers, you’ve been selected to play in the Kokutai (National Sports Festival) for the Girls’ Volleyball Youth Division this September. What do you say?”
“Huh? Why was I chosen? Am I the only one? Shouldn’t Himesaki, who won the tournament, be the one going?”
“Ah, Yukiko doesn’t know this, huh? See, the Kokutai is a tournament with a kind of ‘let’s cheer on our local talent’ vibe, so for some sports, you can’t participate unless you’re from the relevant prefecture. Because of that, at least for our prefecture’s girls’ high school volleyball division, the team is made up of selected local players. The selection criteria are mostly based on whether you won individual awards at the recent Inter-High Prefectural Qualifiers. Since you received both the Libero and Rookie of the Year awards, I figured this would happen. The notification actually came a few days ago, but you were in remedial classes, so I couldn’t pass it on until now.”
“Congrats, Yuki! That’s amazing.”
“Whoa whoa, Yuuri. You’re the amazing one. Yukiko’s representing the prefecture, but you got called up—albeit just for a training camp—by the actual national team, right?”
“Huh?”
“Yuu-chan, that’s incredible! Getting invited to the U-19 junior national team after only four months in the sport...!”
“Wait, that’s not the team Yuuri was invited to.”
“Huh? Oh, right, she’s still 15... So was it the U-16 youth team?”
“Nope. She was invited to the all-age senior team. The real All-Japan national team.”
Huh? Me? When did that happen? That’s news to me!
“Hmm? That’s weird. The folks on the other end said they already got Yuuri’s consent.”
“I don’t know anything about that! I never said yes!”
“...Yuu-chan, hold on. Saeki-sensei, is the training camp being held in Tokyo from August 9th to 11th?”
“That’s right. What, you know about it, Hina?”
...Wait. Is this about that thing from a couple of weeks ago, when Mika-nee casually invited me online?
“Um, in that case, I did hear from my sister that ‘the coach liked you, so come to the camp.’ So I just assumed it was the coach from Tenma University who saw me during the Inter-High Qualifiers...”
Mika-nee! At least tell me which coach liked me!
And just like that, I suddenly found myself attending the All-Japan national team’s training camp (cue blank stare).
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