The Miyagi mornings were still chilly, but at 5:00 AM, the cold didn’t matter.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
The rhythmic sound of running shoes hitting the asphalt echoed through the empty streets.
Koganegawa was leading the pack, practically sprinting, while Sakunami jogged behind him, panting heavily.
Itsuki brought up the rear, his long legs eating up the distance with a highly efficient, meticulously calculated stride.
Later, sitting at their desks before homeroom, the three of them synchronized via their newly created LINE group chat.
[The Iron Rookies 🛡️]
[Koganegawa]: 🔥 10KM RUN DONE!
PROTIEN SHAKE DOWNED!
I AM READY TO SUPLEX A BEAR!
🔥
[Sakunami]: [Exhausted Cat Sticker] Run finished…
I can’t feel my legs…
[Itsuki]: Morning routine complete.
Caloric intake at 800kcals.
Koganegawa, you cannot suplex a bear.
Your core stabilization is too weak.
[Koganegawa]: I WILL STABILIZE MY CORE TO SUPLEX THE BEAR!
However, the consequences of their grueling new regimen inevitably spilled over into academics.
In Class 1-A, the math teacher turned around from the chalkboard, piece of chalk at the ready.
“Naruse.
Can you tell us the solution to the quadratic equation on the board?”
Silence.
Sakunami, sitting one desk over, violently flinched.
He looked at Itsuki.
The 192-centimeter giant was sitting perfectly upright, his back perfectly straight, his textbook open, and his pencil firmly gripped in his hand.
But his eyes were completely closed, and a tiny, almost invisible string of drool was escaping the corner of his mouth.
He was dead asleep, maintaining his socially anxious, polite posture entirely through muscle memory.
“Naruse-kun!” Sakunami whisper-yelled, poking Itsuki with a ruler.
Itsuki snorted, his eyes snapping open.
“The setter’s axis of rotation is skewed—!” he blurted out, before realizing where he was.
His face instantly flushed a brilliant, catastrophic red as the entire class erupted into laughter.
Down the hall in Class 1-C, things were significantly louder.
Koganegawa was currently standing in the hallway holding two water buckets, having been banished for snoring so loudly he rattled the classroom windows.
After school, the Date Tech gymnasium was a pressure cooker.
Coach Oiwake stood by the doors, quietly reviewing a set of nutrition logs.
Assistant Coach Nametsu peeked over his shoulder, her eyes widening.
“Did Naruse put together these macro sheets?” Nametsu asked, pointing to the terrifyingly detailed spreadsheets tracking Sakunami and Koganegawa’s meals.
“He even factored in the glycemic index of Sakunami’s afternoon snacks.”
“He’s treating their bodies like biological hardware,” Oiwake grunted, though the corners of his mouth twitched upward.
“Good.
If they want to overthrow the third-years, they need the stamina to back up their mouths.
Let them stay late.
Just make sure they lock up.”
When the official practice ended and the seniors finally dragged themselves out of the gym, the real work for the rookies began.
The gym lights hummed.
“Again,” Itsuki commanded, standing at the net.
On the other side, Sakunami slapped his cheeks with both hands, getting low.
“Bring it!”
Itsuki tossed a ball, did a rapid three-step approach, and leaped.
He didn’t use full power.
Instead, he twisted his body mid-air, aggressively dropping his shoulder to hit a nasty, sharp cross-court cut.
Sakunami dove, fully extending his body.
The ball grazed his fingertips and shot out of bounds.
“Damn it!” Sakunami yelled, punching the floor.
“Your eyes went to my hand,” Itsuki corrected, landing lightly.
“I dropped my shoulder to sell the straight, but my hips were already squared for the cross.
The hips don’t lie.
If you read my hips, you’ll be there a full second faster.”
Sakunami scrambled back to his feet, a fierce, hungry look in his eyes.
“Right!
Next ball!”
They ran the drill twenty more times.
By the twenty-first, when Itsuki tried a sharp inner-cross, Sakunami didn’t dive late.
He was already waiting there, absorbing the spin and popping the ball perfectly back up to the setter’s position.
Itsuki smiled.
“Perfect.”
“MY TURN!
MY TURN!” Koganegawa bellowed, bounding onto the court like a hyperactive golden retriever.
Itsuki grabbed a ball and walked over to the giant setter.
“Alright.
We are going to practice our primary weapon.
Operation: Stratosphere.”
“STRATOSPHERE!
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A FINISHING MOVE!”
“It is exactly what it sounds like.
We are height merchants,” Itsuki said deadpan.
“You are 191 centimeters.
I am 192 centimeters.
No other team in Miyagi has a setter-spiker duo with a combined height of nearly four meters.
When the ball is passed to you, I don’t want you to think about the blockers.
I don’t want you to think about finesse.”
Itsuki pointed directly up at the gym ceiling.
“Just push it as high into the air as your arms can physically manage.
Make it rain from the ceiling.
I will jump and hit it over the middle blockers before they can even reach their apex.”
Sakunami sent a free ball over.
Koganegawa tracked it, got beneath it, and instead of a traditional, smooth set, he essentially bench-pressed the volleyball straight up into the air.
It went incredibly high.
Itsuki took his wide approach.
Left, right, left.
He exploded off the floor, his long limbs propelling him upward.
He met the ball at a height that would make most high school blockers dizzy, and with a sharp, downward snap of his wrist, he buried the ball into the three-meter line.
BOOM!
“YES!” Koganegawa roared.
“UNBLOCKABLE!”
“Now,” Itsuki said, panting slightly as he grabbed another ball.
“For your jump serve.”
Koganegawa puffed his chest out.
“I’M GONNA SERVE A CANNONBALL!”
“Just toss it straight up,” Itsuki instructed.
Koganegawa threw the ball.
He threw it so hard and so far forward it entirely crossed the net before he even started his run-up.
He panicked, ran straight under the net to chase it, tripped over the center line, and crashed spectacularly into the ball cart, sending fifty volleyballs cascading across the floor.
Itsuki and Sakunami stood in silence, watching Koganegawa groan from beneath a mountain of Mikasa leather.
“…We will stick to the float serve for now,” Itsuki noted in his head.
The first-years weren’t the only ones doing overtime.
On Saturday afternoon, the Date Tech gym was supposed to be empty, but the squeak of shoes echoed loudly.
Aone Takanobu was alone on the left side of the net.
He was entirely silent, but the intensity radiating from his broad shoulders was suffocating.
He crouched, his eyes tracking an imaginary ball.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Naruse jumping.
He saw the freshman’s terrifying mid-air flexibility.
Aone leaped.
But he didn’t just jump straight up.
At the absolute apex of his jump, Aone engaged his massive core, thrusting his thick arms laterally to the right, aggressively sealing off an invisible, mid-air angle change. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
He landed heavily, grunted, and immediately reset to do it again.
The Iron Wall was actively adapting its software to catch a ghost.
On the other court, chaos reigned supreme.
“RAAAAGH!” Kamasaki roared, launching himself into the air.
He cocked his right arm back, trying to mimic the sheer, terrifying rotational power he had seen on tapes of Ushijima Wakatoshi.
He swung with every ounce of muscle in his body.
Thwack!
The ball completely completely missed the court, flying horizontally and nearly taking Moniwa’s head off as it slammed into the gym wall.
“Kamasaki!
Are you trying to kill me?!” Moniwa shrieked, dropping to the floor in the fetal position.
Futakuchi, who was casually bouncing a ball preparing for a jump serve, let out a loud, obnoxious bark of laughter.
“Wow, Kamasaki-san.
That was terrifying.
Truly Ushijima-esque,” Futakuchi drawled, his smirk practically dripping with sarcasm.
“If the goal was to assassinate our own captain, you nailed it.
Maybe you just don’t have the manly strength for a lefty cannon swing?”
Kamasaki’s head snapped toward Futakuchi.
Veins popped out on his forehead, his neck, and his biceps.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY, YOU SNARKY LITTLE BRAT?!” Kamasaki bellowed, stomping across the court.
“NOT MANLY ENOUGH?!
I BENCH PRESS TWICE YOUR BODY WEIGHT!
I’LL FOLD YOU LIKE A LAWN CHAIR!”
“Bring it on, Gorilla-san!” Futakuchi taunted, dropping into a fake martial arts stance.
“STOP FIGHTING!” Moniwa screamed, scrambling to his feet and running between them.
“WE HAVE A MATCH AGAINST THE ROOKIES ON MONDAY!
SAVE YOUR ENERGY FOR THEM!”
Kamasaki ignored him, lunging for Futakuchi.
Futakuchi dodged, laughing maniacally.
Suddenly, a massive shadow fell over both of them.
Aone, having finished his lateral blocking drills, stepped between the two arguing spikers.
Without a single change in his stoic expression, Aone reached out with his massive hands.
He grabbed Kamasaki by the back of his collar with his left hand, and Futakuchi by the collar with his right.
“Hey—Aone, wait—” Futakuchi choked.
“Put me down!” Kamasaki roared.
Aone didn’t say a word.
With raw, terrifyingly casual strength, the giant second-year simply lifted both of them off their feet and gently, but firmly, tossed them onto the floor on opposite sides of the gym.
Thump.
Thump.
Aone gave a firm nod, dusting his hands off, and walked toward the water fountain.
Moniwa stared at his giant middle blocker, entirely in awe.
“Thank you, Aone.”
Sasaya walked over, tossing a towel over his shoulder.
The third-year wing spiker looked down at Futakuchi, who was groaning on the floor, and Kamasaki, who was rubbing his neck.
“You guys are acting like children, but you’re sweating like animals,” Sasaya chuckled.
He looked over at the equipment room, where their freshly washed game jerseys were hanging.
The joking atmosphere faded, replaced by the heavy, shared weight of their pride.
“They’re coming for us tomorrow,” Sasaya said quietly, his eyes turning sharp.
“Naruse is going to try to calculate his way through us.
Koganegawa is going to try to brute-force a set over us.
And Sakunami is going to try to dig up our pride.”
Moniwa nodded, his fists clenching at his sides.
The anxiety that usually plagued the captain melted away, leaving the sturdy foundation of the Iron Wall.
“We are Date Tech’s starting lineup,” Moniwa said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty.
“We’ve shed too much blood and sweat on this court to just hand our spots over to a bunch of first-years.”
Futakuchi pushed himself up off the floor, his smirk returning, though this time it was laced with genuine competitive fire.
“Exactly.
Let’s show those rookies why they call us an impenetrable fortress.”
The day of the 3-on-3 match was looming, and neither side was willing to yield a single inch.