JSWGAS Chapter 95

Chapter 95

Chapter 95.

95.

At the end of May, half a week away from the IH preliminary tournament, Aoba Johsai cancelled their usual 3v3 training and increased the proportion of practice matches within the team. The personnel were shuffled and redistributed, which led to the scene of Oikawa Tōru smiling and waving at Kokonoe Taka from the other side of the net. If you looked closely, you could even see what he was mouthing.

Kokonoe Taka didn’t need to strain to decipher it; the tone of his provocation was bound to be gentle, but the content concealed within was sharp. Being able to speak provocative words in a gentle and amiable manner could be considered Oikawa Tōru’s unique skill. Having heard too much of it, he could smoothly filter out most such remarks.

As soon as the match began, Oikawa Tōru displayed astonishing aggressiveness. His tactical choices were bold and expansive, seemingly reckless at first glance, but in reality, every aspect had been carefully considered. He opened the scene with a powerful jump serve, then expanded the advantage with Iwaizumi Hajime’s strong attacks.

In comparison, the second-year setter on Kokonoe Taka’s side was more rigid in his tactical choices. Every toss was filled with textbook-like standards—not that such standards were bad, but ‘standard’ also meant ‘easy to target’. Especially when playing against someone who was adept at discerning people’s hearts.

These thoughts only vaguely flashed through his mind when he met Oikawa Tōru’s eyes. He was right. Oikawa Tōru deliberately left a gap on the left side, while rigorously defending the other areas, gradually causing the second-year senior to rely on strong attacks on the left. Arao jumped again and again, mostly scoring successfully.

However, the occasional quick set also had a strange and uneasy unfamiliarity to it. The trajectory was too obvious, not decisive enough; it was a last resort he had to choose. Kokonoe Taka knew in his heart that others could see what he could see. As expected, the spike was blocked.

Saijo, who blocked the quick attack, gave him a subtle smile, while Oikawa Tōru on the other side cast a knowing glance.

Kokonoe Taka turned around, absentmindedly listening to his teammates’ analysis: His whole body feels awkward, and there’s an ominous premonition in my heart. Is he in bad shape?

Arao called out to the long-silent junior, “Kokonoe? Are you listening?”

Kokonoe Taka snapped back to reality, muttering, “…Sorry.”

Arao patted him on the shoulder, “Are you tired because the physical training has increased recently? Cheer up, it’s your serve.”

Standing on the service line, the haze that had been shrouding his heart faintly dissipated. Oikawa Tōru was deliberately guiding their setter to choose the attacking route, while quietly utilizing the attackers on his side… Now that he was in the back row, his serve needed to restrain the opponent in order to help his own setter open up the situation.

Taking a deep breath, he worked his wrist, pressed down on the volleyball, feeling the fullness of the ball’s compression. After the whistle blew, he began his approach run, his steps gradually growing larger as he chased after the volleyball and jumped. It felt good.

Pulling in his abdomen, he glanced at the intended landing point, and his arm swung violently.

“Bang!”

“A bit of a pity,” Coach Irihata said, explaining after noticing Coach Guchi’s confused gaze, “The approach run was shorter, and the wrist wasn’t pressed down hard enough. Unlike his previous jump serves… Kokonoe was a bit impatient; this ball could have been a direct service ace.”

Those watching from the outside could see more clearly than those on the court: “Oikawa is deliberately putting pressure on Kuda (the second-year substitute setter). Kuda has fallen into the trap, basically abandoning Kokonoe’s side of the attack…”

“Can’t hit the ball, hits a bad ball that doesn’t meet his expectations—sorry, Kuda-senpai, for saying that about your toss. But that guy’s appetite has been spoiled by me anyway—besides that, there’s the anxiety of the gradually collapsing attack system. The team might not feel anything with the lack of a strong figure to form a beautiful offense and defense. But for Taka, it’s like watching something he’s carefully cherished lose its framework and scatter all over the ground… Hmm, it must be very unbearable.”

“Maybe he’ll get angry later, right?”

“No, he’ll definitely get angry.”

Oikawa Tōru watched Kokonoe Taka’s serve come over, but without even lifting an eyelid, he stepped forward to the number two position. A pair of arms accurately received the ball behind him. Furue was slightly startled; he didn’t expect Kokonoe to actually serve in this direction as Oikawa had said.

“Nice ball!”

With a perfect first pass, the attackers at the left, middle, and right attack points unhesitatingly began their approach runs. The right to choose once again came to the setter, who was focused and standing at the net. He had explained the general arrangement to his teammates before the match, and now everyone was firmly executing the orders, with Iwaizumi in the middle showing even greater momentum. Even though he had been a little hesitant when listening to the tactical arrangements, he was now even more fierce than himself.

The ball slowly magnified in his field of vision. Oikawa Tōru heard his own heartbeat, calm, firm, and powerful, with a flash of afterimage. Taka, I know what you want to do. You want to restrain me, don’t you?

–But I just don’t want to do as you wish.

Switching from a pass to a dump, he accurately assessed the opposing team’s general positioning, aiming at the gap where Kokonoe Taka couldn’t arrive in time, and gently pushed the ball over the net, scoring with a second attack.

The last sound of his heart and the soft sound of the volleyball landing ended simultaneously, as gentle as Oikawa Tōru’s footsteps as he touched the ground. His excessively handsome face had already attracted half of the girls on the sidelines, who had abandoned socializing and immersed themselves in the unfamiliar volleyball match as dazed spectators. At this moment, he revealed a frivolous smile. Even though the subtle emotions within weren’t directed at them, it still caused a small-scale shriek.

In comparison, Kokonoe Taka, who was attempting to save the ball falling in the front court with a diving receive, seemed much more disheveled. His back was a hand’s breadth away from the volleyball, and an arm’s length away was the cunning setter’s recently landed feet. His gaze moved upwards, past the black and white dual-colored knee pads, and finally reached the honey-colored eyes looking down at him.

——You did it on purpose.

——I did.

The silent Q&A ended in the moment of eye contact. Kokonoe Taka propped himself up from the floor, but his body was still filled with inexplicable discomfort and awkwardness… as if he had been stuffed into a cramped box, his internal organs pressing against each other in frustration.

Oikawa Tōru withdrew his gaze.

——What promise? Pompous, a trick of a liar. If you still think so now, you’ll only end up deceiving yourself in the end.

——I wasn’t wrong, was I?

He laughed comfortably at the piercing gaze behind him, not caring about the danger of being targeted. He even became more impatient, anticipating the awakening of a beast that yearned to bite his throat, indulging in the numbing horror of walking on a tightrope.

……

…………

The practice match ended with a score of 2:0, with the scores of the two sets being 25:20 and 25:22 respectively.

This result was not unexpected by Coach Irihata. He had also been listening when Oikawa was making tactical arrangements, and the content of his eloquent speech was full of meticulous considerations from beginning to end. The second-year substitute setter also lost because of his slow sense of tactical awareness. Even with Arao, the team’s ace, in the team, they couldn’t reverse the score difference.

However, despite that, Kuda himself didn’t have any negative emotions. He knew where his weaknesses were, and his self-positioning was as a ‘backup option to stabilize the team in case of unexpected situations’ and as a ‘pinch server’.

His float serve was considered to be of medium strength among pinch servers in high school, and he always took consecutive two or three points each time it was his turn to serve. In stark contrast to him was another server who was rarely out of form and made repeated mistakes.

Serves into the net and out of bounds occurred frequently. Although there were also two or three consecutive serves with great power in the middle, on the whole, there was no longer the alarm that often gave the receiving players a dangerous intuition.

——Ordinary.

Coach Irihata had a bit of a headache—after observing him for a while, he had a clear understanding of Kokonoe’s fluctuating levels. These fluctuations in form were actually difficult to detect. He only realized it after Oikawa first brought out Kokonoe’s strength, and then analyzed the 3v3 data of Kokonoe pairing with others before. Moreover, as Kokonoe gradually became more proficient in volleyball, this discordant note now rarely appeared.

Until this match, when Oikawa Tōru deliberately adopted tactics that ignited this fuse.

At the moment, one of these two children was hanging a shallow smile that was no different from his usual self, standing quietly in place; the other was unsmiling, with a cold face, and the look of frowning between his eyebrows was a bit fierce.

It feels like they might quarrel.

Coach Irihata thought for a moment and still didn’t choose to intervene. When he called Oikawa Tōru to the office a few days ago, he actually asked this very opinionated child about his thoughts on the team’s arrangements—especially regarding Kokonoe. Oikawa was the teammate he cooperated with best at Aoba Johsai, and Coach Irihata wanted to hear his thoughts.

“Kokonoe’s advantages are obvious, and his problems are also obvious.” He frankly told Oikawa, “He gives me a very peculiar feeling. He hasn’t found his position in the team, but in reality, he should have the ability to do his best in every position… But he doesn’t go deep, only dabbles.”

“My arrangements for him are actually very difficult. In his current state, that child can still form a strong cooperation with you. If he can truly find his position and the method to ‘connect’ with the team, he will definitely show a level of excellence that will surprise everyone.”

“Teacher, are you struggling over whether to include A-Taka’s name on the list of official team members for the preliminary tournament?”

“Yes.” Coach Irihata said helplessly, “I’m thinking that maybe he can truly seek a breakthrough in actual combat… Although this approach is a bit risky and extravagant.”

——However, Oikawa’s choice to solve the problem at this time is even more risky than his.

Coach Irihata thought worriedly: Moderate quarrels are also important, as long as they don’t fight… Otherwise, not to mention Kokonoe, if they fight, the setter position in the preliminary tournament will definitely be vacant. Sigh, I’d better let Iwaizumi watch over the two of them.

Oikawa Tōru didn’t know that his coach had thought so far ahead.

Coach Irihata’s worries were not without reason. Today, after training, it happened to be Oikawa and Kokonoe’s turn to clean up. The people in the gymnasium gradually left, leaving only the empty hall and two people who didn’t talk to each other for a while. Iwaizumi did not leave. Coach Irihata’s instructions before leaving made him stand by, staring dangerously at the two of them, striving to end what Coach Irihata was worried about with a more high-dimensional, one-sided beating before the fight began.

But he watched the two of them quietly take the cleaning supplies, and rarely seriously and harmoniously start cleaning the venue on one side each, and for a while, he suspected whether the coach’s guess was correct… Although the two seemed to be sulking with each other. A-Taka was probably targeted by Oikawa’s tactics on the side, Oikawa… He had never understood where Oikawa Tōru’s brain circuit was connected, and he generally adopted a policy of direct ignoring.

Therefore, in comparison, he was more willing to believe that the coach had misunderstood something. After giving a brief explanation, he took the lead in going to the locker room to change his clothes.

After Iwaizumi’s figure disappeared, the gymnasium fell into an even more unsettling silence. Compared to what Iwaizumi thought, the atmosphere between them was actually closer to a stalemate of mutual unyielding.

In the long silence, Oikawa Tōru took the lead in breaking the illusion of peace, just like countless times in the past.

“I’m not happy.”

He said.

Kokonoe Taka almost thought he had misheard—even the first thing that came to mind was familiar speechless choking. Shouldn’t I, who was targeted and provoked, be more unhappy? He looked up, but the questioning look was cut in half and disappeared.

Because he found that Oikawa Tōru was serious—but now, this seriousness could obviously only serve as firewood.

“What are you talking about?”

He retorted.

Oikawa Tōru straightened his back.

“You’re lying to me, shouldn’t I be unhappy?”

“What am I…”

“Then why don’t you do it with all your might?” Oikawa Tōru interrupted in a cold voice. If he had deliberately pushed the situation to this possibility from the beginning, he now clearly felt annoyed, “Ah, isn’t this person in front of me someone who has always believed in the creed of ‘even if you don’t like it, as long as you can do it, you must do it to the best of your ability’?”

His breathing became rapid, and the questions rolled like beads in a row: “Saying you want to accompany me, but actually you’re scared, so you ran away, right? And you want to find a reason for your cowardice—you don’t even dare to admit that you’re afraid. I was right before, I knew you were a clumsy liar.”

If the words initially spoken were a carefully designed trap, now they had more or less genuine emotions. Oikawa Tōru’s nerves stopped him from saying more sharp and direct words, but when he found that another person’s steel-like gray eyes were flashing with wild anger, he yielded and became quiet.

Oikawa Tōru was not tamed by this wild danger, but instead felt a silent pleasure bursting out of the water, gradually spreading to his internal organs and limbs with the tense atmosphere that was sinking heavily. He obediently revealed a naive and pure smile, as if at this moment he was in the deep sea, reaching out to touch the core of a huge, silent sphere—it was warm.

“Did I hit the mark?”

The silent answer fueled the possessiveness he had always had. Are you very angry? Are you very angry? Is it because you are being questioned? Or because I trampled on what you think is real?

Kokonoe Taka had never shown his dark and violent side in front of people he was close to. His face had shown intense colors from a very young age. Even if he smiled, it was not suitable to be placed in a church and accompanied by stained glass, but only suitable for stormy nights, under dangerous walls, and at more sharp and dangerous moments.

This appearance full of head-on aggressiveness made Oikawa Tōru feel more pleasing to the eye than before.

He laughed softly.

“Why don’t you talk?”

His gaze even made Kokonoe Taka feel like he was seen through. He was also questioning himself. Why don’t you talk, why don’t you refute, why don’t you tell him he’s wrong?

–What else could there be.

Another him answered indifferently.

–He’s right, isn’t he.

At this moment, the cause of the matter had become less important. Kokonoe Taka questioned himself, listening to the answer in his heart: Your farewell also means that you will permanently leave a part of yourself in a certain gap in the corridor of time; you were destined to fall as soon as you took off, your decisiveness and confusion are like the melody of water and fire, from beginning to end, eternally intertwined.

His breathing was heavy and slow, like an old man who was about to die. He didn’t regret it, he didn’t regret all the choices he had made so far. Even if they were negated by what he sought at this moment. But annoyance and madness still ignited his blood, not towards anyone, only towards himself. The shame of having a secret exposed almost made him have nowhere to escape. He stammered and couldn’t refute him.

Oikawa Tōru had been watching all of this in the process. The habitual frivolous mask on his face was being torn off step by step. Even if that came from the pain of another close object.

After a long silence, the person who raised his hand to surrender took a step forward. And the person who bit his lips until they bled still maintained the original posture, like a lifeless steel sculpture.

“When you said you came back for me, I was happy.” Oikawa Tōru ignored what the other party had said at the time, and now the figure of the third person who should have appeared, “I should have invited you earlier.”

This sentence actually had the suspicion of hindsight. Everyone knew that the past could not be repeated, and Oikawa Tōru even understood that without this stumbling all the way, it was possible that the person in front of him would never be so close to him in his life.

——Player and spectator. This is the role they should play.

Thinking of this, he paused slightly, and the smile on his face disappeared, “But that doesn’t mean you need to obey others.”

People often think that Oikawa Tōru is a lively and frivolous guy. The facts prove that when he is serious, he can also shed all the factors that make people feel unstable. His tone was calm and gentle, no longer deliberately raised, word by word, his pronunciation was particularly clear.

“I don’t need you for me, and Iwaizumi doesn’t need it either. No one needs to take on your desires.” He said, “Admit it, you are fascinated by the unknown ahead, and you are eager to pursue it—volleyball is attracting you.”

“You have already admitted its charm.” He seemed to be asking a simple question, “Then why are you still afraid of it?”

The broken light flashing between the steel sculpture’s eyes disappeared, it was unclear whether it was the scorching sun that rose from the sea level in the illusion, or because the night was approaching outside the window, it made the gymnasium with the lights on look like a cluster of sparks in the wilderness.

Complex, chaotic, noisy, greedy.

Silence quietly enveloped, and only the sound of his own heartbeat could be heard.

Dong, dong, dong.

Until someone pushed the door open, as if knocking down a wall.

“I said,” Iwaizumi frowned as he looked at the two people who were in a stalemate, his tone suspicious, “What tricks are you two playing? Red light, green light?”