Hyu-hyu
Some kind of ominous breathing echoes throughout the gym. It’s May 3rd—Constitution Memorial Day. But for us high school students, it doesn’t really matter what holiday it is. What matters is whether the calendar date is printed in red or black.
It’s a rare day off, but since our volleyball club is full of serious athletes, we naturally have practice. And now, in the gym we’re using as our training ground, more than ten high school girls are collapsed in various poses. How did it come to this?
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At Matsubara Girls' High School, the clubs that use the gym include the volleyball team, badminton team, and basketball team. Other clubs like drama and English conversation sometimes use the stage area, but it’s only occasional—and it’s the stage, not the arena. The three main clubs using the gym’s arena are the ones mentioned earlier.
As for the number of members in each club, the badminton club—which is more of a fun, casual club—has the most (too many to count accurately, but at a glance probably close to fifty). They practice Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, taking Wednesdays, weekends, and holidays off. There are no morning practices, and they wrap up by 6 p.m.
The volleyball club, on the other hand, is made up of serious athletes. We have eight members. We practice Monday through Saturday, with morning practices on weekdays. Honestly, we’d like to train on Sundays too, but being a public school, we’re bound by regulations that prevent that. Well, teachers need their days off too.
The basketball team is also full of serious athletes, with seven members. Their schedule matches ours exactly.
However, even though the volleyball and basketball teams combined have fewer members than the badminton team alone (even multiplied by three), the badminton team gets to use three-quarters of the main gym, while volleyball and basketball share the remaining quarter.
There is technically a second gym at Matsubara Girls' High, but it was built back when the school had a lot more students. These days, not even PE classes use it. Half the lights are broken and left that way, and to top it off, it’s far away and kind of a dump. We avoid using it if we can.
Still, since the volleyball team can only use a quarter of the main gym and has to share it with the basketball team, we don’t have much choice. As a result, volleyball gets the second gym on Mondays and Tuesdays, and basketball gets it on Thursdays and Fridays. (Note: Since the badminton team doesn’t practice on Wednesdays, both volleyball and basketball can use the main gym on that day.)
You can probably guess where this is going. In short, the volleyball and basketball teams are rivals, competing over the limited space in the cleaner, closer main gym. It wasn’t always this tense, but things got heated when a new first-year on the basketball team—Mirai Maejima—and our very own Asuka, who have been bitter enemies since middle school, started fighting every time they saw each other.
“Hah! A pathetic volleyball team with only eight members should just stay quietly in the second gym forever.”
“Oh please. You guys only have seven. If we’re pathetic, then you’re a junk basketball team.”
“What did you say?!” “You heard me!”
It was Monday, the start of the week. We had just changed in the club building and were heading to the second gym when we crossed paths with the basketball team heading to the main gym. And of course, this argument broke out.
“Come on, Asuka. People are going to think you’re a troublemaker. Let’s go.”
Half impressed they never get tired of this, and half fed up, I grab Asuka by the hand and start pulling her along.
“Yuu-chan! I have to say something here!”
By the way, Asuka calls me Yuu-chan. She calls Yuki, Yuki-chan, and Reiko is Rei-chan.
“Asuka. Arguing is just a waste of time. Let’s go practice.”
Yuki sighs as she tries to calm Asuka down. Meanwhile, the basketball team is dealing with their own problem child.
“Mirai. Don’t you ever get tired of this?”
“It’s a rare weekday we get to use the main gym, so stop wasting time here and get moving.”
Can you believe they have this exchange almost every day?
“Eri, sorry about our first-year causing trouble again.”
“Yours? Ours is just as bad. We’re both dealing with it, Ai.”
This was a conversation between the basketball team captain, Okumura-senpai, and our captain, Eri-senpai. They were good friends to begin with, and now they bond over the headaches caused by their over-energetic new first-years. You hear these kinds of chats all the time.
If you noticed from earlier, our volleyball team is now on a first-name basis with each other. The reason, of course, is the Tachibana siblings—us.
Just calling out “Tachibana” was too confusing, and it felt weird if only me and Hina used first names. So we decided that everyone in the club would just call each other by name. It was embarrassing at first, but we got used to it after about two weeks.
When we switched to first-name basis:
“Just call me Eri, okay? ♪”
That’s what our captain, Eriko Itagaki, said. I barely had time to wonder why before:
“Understood, Eri-senpai. In return, please call me Yuki.”
“Got it. Nice to meet you, Yuki.”
Later, I found out that Eriko and Yukiko both hated the “-ko” at the end of their names because it sounded old-fashioned. I wasn’t sure if that was a thing, so I asked Reiko, whose name also ends with “-ko.”
“I’ve never felt that way. I guess some people just care more about it.”
Apparently, she didn’t mind at all.
Now, about our volleyball training—it changed quite a bit after we joined.
Our unofficial rival is Himesaki High School, which went to Spring Nationals in January and hasn’t lost a single official match in our prefecture in three years. One of their former players is none other than one of my sisters, Mika-nee.
We got the training menu from Mika-nee, which includes not only Himesaki High’s practice regime but also athletic science she studied in university and physical training she learned when selected for the All-Japan team. We shared all of it with our team.
Our captain, Eri-senpai, is surprisingly open-minded for someone in a sports club. She listens well and welcomes suggestions, especially if it’ll help the team get stronger. She never once said anything like, “You’re just a first-year, don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Yui-senpai and Miho-senpai, also third-years, laughed and said, “Practice got way tougher since the new first-years arrived,” but they still helped enthusiastically.
…This is an athletic club, right? Compared to the handball team I was in back when I was a guy, or the stories I’ve heard from my guy classmates about their sports clubs, the senior-junior hierarchy here feels way more relaxed. Is it a girl thing?
Anyway, our practice routines have changed a lot thanks to what we got from Mika-nee.
As for that training menu, it was designed primarily to improve basic physical fitness for "first-years whose stamina isn’t much different from middle schoolers, and third-years who, while having participated in club activities, hadn't trained to the level of national tournament participants."
Our arrival had already modernized the foundational training, which previously revolved around old-school strength training methods from over a generation ago. The basketball club happened to take notice of this.
Due to the gymnasium’s usage rules, on Wednesdays the large gym is shared by both the volleyball and basketball clubs. They divide the space with just a net partition to prevent balls from crossing over, but since it’s only a net, both sides can see exactly what the other is doing.
As usual, Maejima-san, the problem child of the basketball club, picked a fight with Asuka, the problem child of our volleyball club. What started it again? I think it was when Asuka was completely worn out from one of Mika-nee’s brutal training routines.
From across the net partition came:
“Heeey heeey heeey!! The volleyball club is so weak. You can't even handle such basic strength training?!”
...Core training is deceptively tough. It may not look like much, but if you actually do it, it’s exhausting. To an outsider unaware of that, it probably does seem pretty lame.
People like me, Hina, Yuki, and Reiko just ignored it. But Asuka, of course, bit back.
“If you're gonna talk that much, why don't you try it yourself? Bet you can't even do it.”
“Hah. That stuff's a piece of cake—I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Of course, she couldn’t do it.
Seeing that exchange, Okumura-senpai from their side stepped in. She asked, “What’s that training routine? I’ve never seen it before.” Her best friend, Eri-senpai, explained that it was part of the cutting-edge physical training used by Japan’s national women’s volleyball team, which a first-year had brought in.
Upon hearing that, Okumura-senpai expressed interest in incorporating it into their own regimen.
We had no reason to refuse, so we agreed to share the training.
Then came May 3rd, a national holiday. The gym was reserved only for the basketball and volleyball clubs, and we were set to go through the physical fitness menu from the morning.
However, our volleyball club’s airhead Asuka and the basketball club’s airhead Maejima-san suddenly claimed it was a club-versus-club competition. And since we were doing it anyway, both team captains got caught up in the mood, and for some reason the training turned into a competition.
As a result, by the end of the physical training, over ten people had become what you might call “breathing corpses.”
It was unusually hot for May that day—the forecast predicted a high of 28°C. The gym was stiflingly warm. Moving around in that heat was brutal. Even I found it tough.
Some members were waving their jackets to cool off, but that was as effective as throwing water on a hot rock. Also, your bra’s showing. Not very modest.
Some volleyball and basketball club members had collapsed face-down on the floor, but that was just their attempt to cool off by maximizing contact with the slightly cooler floor.
The absence of any guys around was another factor. If there were boys here, they wouldn’t be acting this shamelessly.
“Ugh, it’s so hot!”
One of the basketball girls began to take off her top. Hold on a second. That is not okay!
“N-No! Senpai, seriously, you can’t do that!”
“Ehh, come on, it’s fine. No worries, no worries. There’s only girls here. I mean, the only guy who might show up is Ucchi—uh, I mean, Uesugi-sensei, the basketball club advisor, but he won’t come over here for at least another hour.”
No, actually… there’s a guy right in front of you. Sure, I used to be one, but still! This isn’t a situation where flashing your bra—never mind fully exposing it—is okay!
But it didn’t look like anyone was going to listen to me. Fine. I’ll just leave.
I changed into my outdoor shoes and moved to the shade outside the gym. But even there, I didn’t get to rest. Because…
“Yuuri. Come practice with me.”
The one who called out was none other than the training demon herself, Reiko. She had a volley ball in hand. I knew what she wanted. She probably figured I still had the most stamina left and dragged me out accordingly.
“Resting during break time is part of proper training, though.”
I returned her serve with an overhead pass.
“This is more like play during rest. Besides, we’re still not used to the ball, and the only way to catch up is more practice.”
Reiko returned my pass with an underhand receive. It was just a simple rally. Since the point was for the other person to be able to receive, the intensity was super low.
But for volleyball beginners like the two of us, we did a lot of these drills under the motto “Getting used to the ball is an important part of training” (courtesy of Mika-nee). Then, the wind blew and messed up the ball’s path!
Using my absurd athleticism, I jumped and forced a receive! The return was pretty wild, but Reiko saved it with a solid receive!
A month ago, when we’d just joined, there’s no way we could’ve pulled that off.
So maybe we’d gotten a little more used to the ball after all…?
“Nope. That’s not good enough, you two. Receiving isn’t about your arms—it’s about moving with your knees. Don’t forget that.”
So much for that thought. We got shot down by our receive master. When did she even show up?
“I think I told you before, but both of you have enough strength that you can more or less send the ball where you want just by swinging your arms. But that’ll only take you so far. You need to carry the ball carefully with your knees.”
“Thank you, Master. Is there anything else we should work on?”
Reiko’s tone stiffened. She’s such a serious person.
“Don’t forget to get under the ball. That’s the foundation of underhand receiving. Even this rally drill is meant to help you build the habit of getting under the ball.”
“The basics of receiving are: Get under the ball and move it with your knees!”
“Exactly. …You two—especially you, Reiko—are over 30cm taller than me. That means your reach is way longer. If you really master the technique, you’ll be a far better receiver than I ever could.”
“I can’t even imagine surpassing you, Master…”
Honestly, I can’t picture myself becoming a better receiver than Yuki either.
At the very least, with only one month left until the Inter-High prefectural prelims start in June, catching up to her is out of the question. Still, I’d like to at least pick up a fragment of what this tiny master is teaching us.
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