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Kinhouzan Academy High School
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“Faster! Move it!”
Despite setter Tobita Mai’s urgent shouting, her parallel toss fell untouched and dropped to the court.
“Take this seriously! That much—”
“You’re the one who needs to take it seriously, Tobita!”
Cutting off Tobita’s protests, Kintoyama High’s coach, Ōtomo Shigeo, roared back at her.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? You’ve been off ever since you got back!”
Tobita’s bad habits, which had been dormant for the past year and a half, were resurfacing. That was Ōtomo’s assessment.
In his eyes, Tobita wasn’t someone who would end her story with just winning the Inter-High or Spring Nationals. Her skills were already unmatched among her peers, and she could even go toe-to-toe—or better—against starting setters for Japan’s U-23 and senior national teams. At 176 cm, she was tall for a setter. Maybe not quite world-class, but easily top-tier for a Japanese player.
However, she had a major flaw in the “heart” aspect of the mind-body-technique triad.
She was too competitive. While that can fuel endless personal effort, it’s a different story in a team setting.
With her superior skill and broad vision, Tobita would sometimes use overly difficult high-speed tosses to try and break through stronger opponents. If that were part of a strategy, fine—but spikers couldn’t adapt to sudden, uncalled-for tosses like that.
Her bad habits, which had been painstakingly suppressed for nearly a year, were now back.
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“So, Tobita. What happened when you went home?”
Coach Ōtomo pulled Tobita from team practice and questioned her courtside. He figured something had shaken her pride. He suspected it had to do with that beach volleyball match that had even been televised.
When he first heard Tobita had teamed up with a total amateur and beaten a professional beach volleyball player who had even gone to the Olympics, he was stunned.
But digging deeper, it turned out to be a small, local promotional event. Most likely, the pro had gone easy on her as part of a publicity stunt. Then Tobita, infuriated at being patronized, demanded a real match and ended up getting crushed.
That scenario would explain why Tobita—her pride wounded by the skill gap with a pro—was now flustered.
But for someone like Tobita, even a pro losing to her shouldn’t be enough to shake her this badly...
Still, if it wasn’t that, what else could’ve caused her relapse into bad habits?
“It’s not something, Coach. It’s just that—”
What Tobita went on to explain was... remarkably petty. Unexpected, yes, but in a way, very Tobita.
“…Three laps around the school perimeter, Tobita. You can take 30 minutes. Go cool your head. And if you’re still hot-headed when you’re done, we’ll have another little ‘chat.’”
The school perimeter was about two kilometers. Three laps meant six kilometers.
For a normal high school girl, this might be tough—but for Tobita, who could easily run a kilometer in under four minutes, this was a mild punishment. Running at a five-minute pace per kilometer should give her time to reflect.
That was Coach Ōtomo’s logic.
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“Yo, Tott-san. Coach Ōtomo really chewed you out, huh? What happened?”
As Tobita was about to leave the gym, a girl on crutches called out to her.
“Tott-san,” short for Tobita. Only one person called her that.
“Chizuru, should you even be at the gym? Your leg’s not healed yet, right?”
“Just some quack of a doc makin’ a big fuss. I borked my landing, got a hairline fracture, that’s all. Nothin’ that won’t fix itself if I just play volleyball.”
“That is definitely not how that works.”
Even volleyball-obsessed Tobita could only grimace at that.
The one spouting such insane medical advice was Miyamoto Chizuru, a third-year at Kintoyama High and the ace of both the school team and the U-19 national team.
“Anyway, back to what I asked—what happened? You go home and something went down, right?”
“I just joined a little local beach volleyball event. That’s all.”
“Oh yeah, the one where Tott-san got paired with that cute-face amateur and somehow beat a pro who’s been to the Olympics? What a mess! I saw it on the news. Pretty wild, huh?”
“…Right. But all the TV showed was that girl messing up. And to be fair, she was technically inexperienced, so I guess that’s how it looked.”
“Huh? But she’s an amateur, right? So what was so great about her?”
“Well, a lot of things. But Chizuru, what’s your max reach height?”
“Just over 3 meters.”
That was top-tier even for national-level female high schoolers. But—
“Thought so. That ‘cute-face amateur’ you mentioned? She jumped about 330 cm—barefoot, in the sand.”
“…The hell? No way. I saw her on TV, she’s barely 160 cm tall! And in sand? That’s not even possible.”
“But she did. In the gym, she’s hit 354 cm. And at the All-Japan training camp, they told her she could add another 10 cm.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait. 354 cm!? At her height!? Even guys can’t do that! That’s not human! And wait, All-Japan camp!? Not U-16, but the full team!? And she can go even higher!?”
“I know, right? I don’t get it either. It’s just... unreal.”
“…Then why was a girl like that treated like some random amateur?”
“The media coverage came from a local station, and the reporters didn’t look like they knew volleyball. Maybe the sponsors had a hand in it too?”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
Both of them understood how sponsors influence pro sports.
Sadly, the fact remained—volleyball didn’t have high recognition in Japan. So most people didn’t understand what great play looked like. The same went for beach volleyball.
Expecting volleyball knowledge from reporters sent to cover local promo events was asking too much. At best, they saw it as “some high school girl team beat some pros somehow. Their plays looked kind of amazing?”
The real issue was that the opponents were well-known, glamorous professional beach volleyball players.
They weren’t Japan’s top team, but they were still in TV commercials and sponsored by major companies.
Letting them be visibly defeated by unknown high schoolers would be a PR disaster.
However, one of those high schoolers was Tobita Mai—well-known for her skills in the U-19 national team.
Even if the reporters didn’t know her at first, once the other girl (a vaguely Eastern European-looking kid) said something like, “Mai-san from U-19 was amazing, that’s why we won,” they probably looked her up.
So instead of “random high school girls,” it became “they had a prodigy on the team, that’s why they won.” That was a passable narrative.
The other girl’s lack of interview polish, which made her seem like a true beginner, actually helped the media framing.
Tobita’s confident presence made the other girl’s supposed amateur status stand out even more—highlighting Tobita’s greatness.
And with swimsuits showing off physiques, even non-athletes could tell that the other girl didn’t look like she trained. Tobita, on the other hand, clearly had an athlete’s body.
All this fed into a convenient media narrative:
“Tobita Mai, the genius setter, struggled with a clumsy amateur partner but still managed to defeat a former Japan beach volleyball rep.”
That’s what the media ran with.
“That girl—her name’s Yuuri—is a monster. She started volleyball in April. She’s only been playing five months. So yeah, her technique is still raw. But her physical ability is beyond most men, let alone women. Even with her inexperience, considering her short career, her skills are incredible.
And now, she’s our enemy.
Her unfair jumping ability, insane reflexes, and inhuman stamina—being able to run around the sand like that nonstop... To beat her, we’ll need to—”
“Enough. This is all your fault, Tott-san.”
Chizuru cut Tobita off and smacked her on the head with a solid chop before she could complain.
“Seriously, Tott-san. I don’t know how amazing that girl is. But what’s with not trusting your teammates, huh? We’ve been together over two years—are you really saying you think we’d lose to a five-month newbie?”
“Ah…”
“And it’s not even you going head-to-head with her at the net. That’s my job. So just give me the kind of perfect toss you always do. I’ll smash right through her block. Just being tall doesn’t make her a threat.”
“…”
“Volleyball’s a team sport, remember? No one can do it alone. So talk to us. Tell us if there’s someone crazy strong we need to plan for. You’re the captain, aren’t you?”
“…Yeah. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“It’s fine. You get tunnel vision sometimes—I know that.”
“But I feel better now. Coach gave me 30 minutes, but... no rule says I can’t run 6 kilometers in 22–23 minutes and get back early, right?”
“He’ll probably yell if you come back too soon, but you’ll live. Oh, and Tott-san—let Coach know I’m skipping practice for a while. If she’s as scary as you say, I won’t beat her unless I’m at 100%. I’m gonna sleep off this busted leg.”
Chizuru waved and hobbled off on her crutches. But—
“Hey. That Yuuri girl—do you think she’ll be in the National Sports Festival this September? That prefecture sends a select team, right? Would they pick her over that Himesaki girl?”
“…How would I know?”
Even Tobita didn’t know the lineup of other prefectures’ teams.
She answered with a wry smile.
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