The echo of Itsuki’s monstrous jump serve was still ringing in the rafters, but on the other side of the net, Wakutani Minami was not a team that shattered easily.
Takeru Nakashima clapped his hands loudly, his voice cutting through the Date Tech cheers.
“Alright, shake it off!” Nakashima yelled, a strained but unwavering smile on his face.
“He’s got a cannon, but a cannon only fires in a straight line!
We’ve received heavy serves before!
Watch the toss, adjust your feet, and get it up!”
“Yeah!” the Wakutani players echoed, their floor-defense pride instantly flaring back to life.
Itsuki stood at the service line, bouncing the ball.
He narrowed his eyes.
Their psychological recovery time is less than ten seconds.
A highly cohesive unit.
He tossed the ball and launched his second jump serve.
The kinetic chain fired, and the ball rocketed over the net.
But this time, Wakutani’s libero didn’t freeze.
He dropped his center of gravity, reading the trajectory perfectly, and shoved his forearms under the heavy top-spin.
The sheer force pushed the libero backward on his heels, but the ball popped up cleanly.
“Nice receive!” Hanayama, the Wakutani setter, called out, getting under it.
“Captain!”
Nakashima took his approach.
From the back row, Itsuki watched the Wakunan ace fly.
He has a terrifyingly fast approach.
He’s going to aim for the—
“Straight!” Itsuki yelled.
At the net, Kamasaki and Futakuchi leaped, throwing their arms over to seal the line.
But Nakashima was a master of mid-air warfare.
Seeing the wall shift, he didn’t swing hard.
He casually rotated his wrist, aiming a soft, wiping motion at Kamasaki’s thick outer bicep.
The ball grazed Kamasaki and ricocheted sharply out of bounds into the referee stand.
“Block out!” the referee signaled.
Nakashima landed smoothly, pumping his fist.
“Alright!
We’re right back in it!”
Itsuki gritted his teeth.
He manipulated Kamasaki-san’s momentum against him.
Wakutani isn’t a team you can overpower; they’re a team you have to out-maneuver.
The set ground into a brutal, tactical tug-of-war.
Wakutani Minami’s defense was a sticky, suffocating web.
They picked up Kamasaki’s power spikes, they scrambled for Futakuchi’s cut shots, and Nakashima continually found microscopic seams in the Iron Wall to tool the ball out of bounds.
But Date Tech was evolving in real-time, fueled entirely by the analytical supercomputer playing Left Wing Spiker.
“Futakuchi-san!” Itsuki called out mid-rally.
“Close your inner arm by three centimeters!
Their setter’s axis is skewed right!”
“Don’t micromanage my arms, rookie!” Futakuchi snapped back, but he immediately adjusted his positioning.
Wakutani’s spiker swung for the inner-cross seam—the exact seam that had been open a second prior.
Instead, he slammed the ball directly into Futakuchi’s adjusted forearms.
THUD.
The ball dropped dead onto Wakutani’s side.
“SHUT OUT!” Futakuchi roared, pointing mockingly through the net.
“Read you like a picture book!”
“He’s acting arrogant, but he totally just listened to the freshman,” Kamasaki muttered to Moniwa.
“Just let him have it,” Moniwa sighed, wiping his brow.
As the score climbed to 18 – 15 in favor of Date Tech, the physical toll of high school volleyball began to show on Itsuki.
He landed after a sharp cross-court spike, his chest heaving painfully.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead.
His newly grown 192-centimeter frame was burning through calories at an alarming rate, and the constant, rapid-fire mental calculations were draining his stamina.
From the sideline, Coach Oiwake crossed his arms.
His processing speed is elite, but his chassis is overheating.
Time to shift the gears and introduce some chaos.
BZZZZT!
The substitution buzzer echoed.
Moniwa looked to the sideline and blinked in surprise.
Holding up the captain’s number 2 paddle was Koganegawa, who was currently trembling with so much excitement he looked like he was being electrocuted.
“Koganegawa?” Moniwa asked, jogging over.
“You’re subbing in for me?”
“I WILL INHERIT YOUR WILL, MONIWA-SAN!” Koganegawa bellowed, taking the paddle and bowing so deeply he nearly headbutted the floor.
“I WILL SET THE BALL TO THE HEAVENS!”
try not to hit the ceiling fixtures,” Moniwa sweatdropped, patting the giant’s arm as they swapped.
Across the net, Nakashima and Kawatabi stared at the new Date Tech setter.
“A 191-centimeter setter?” Kawatabi gulped.
“Is that even legal?”
“He’s huge,” Nakashima narrowed his eyes.
“But height doesn’t equal setting skill.
Watch his hands.
He’s probably stiff.”
Koganegawa marched onto the court, taking his position near the net.
He looked over at Itsuki, who was currently taking deep, measured breaths to regulate his heart rate.
“NARUSE!” Koganegawa yelled, throwing a massive thumbs-up.
“OPERATION STRATOSPHERE IS A GO!”
“Please lower your volume by forty percent, Koganegawa,” Itsuki panted, though a competitive spark reignited in his eyes.
“But yes.
We run the sequence.”
The whistle blew.
Wakutani served.
It was a tricky floater aimed directly at Itsuki, trying to exploit his visible fatigue.
But Date Tech had planned for this.
“I got it!” Sasaya called, stepping in front of Itsuki and bumping the ball high and clean toward the net.
“IT’S HERE!” Koganegawa roared, lumbering clumsily beneath the falling ball.
Wakutani’s blockers instantly tensed.
They watched Koganegawa’s hands.
They were wide, unrefined, and entirely lacking the delicate touch of a seasoned setter.
He’s going to fumble it, Coach Onikobe thought from the Wakutani bench.
Koganegawa didn’t fumble it.
Because Koganegawa didn’t use finesse.
He planted his massive feet, grunted like a weightlifter, and violently thrust his huge hands straight up, shoving the volleyball entirely out of the standard vertical play space.
“What the—?!” Nakashima gasped, craning his neck upward.
The ball shot toward the rafters.
It was a ridiculously, absurdly high set.
Itsuki was already moving.
His legs were burning, but the geometric perfection of the play overrode the pain.
He took his wide approach, exploding off the floor.
Wakutani’s blockers—Kawatabi and their middle blocker—jumped frantically, trying to form a wall.
But the timing was completely alien to them.
They reached the apex of their jumps…
and the ball was still descending.
Gravity claimed the Wakutani blockers.
They began to fall.
Itsuki, suspended perfectly at the peak of his 192-centimeter jump, waited for the block to clear his line of sight.
He engaged his core, violently twisting his torso in mid-air to adjust for Koganegawa’s slightly off-axis set, and snapped his arm forward like a whip.
KRA-KOOM!
The ball blasted over the descending hands of the Wakutani blockers, slamming into the exact center of the court with terrifying velocity.
19 – 15.
The gym was stunned.
“YES!” Koganegawa bellowed, flexing both biceps.
“THE STRATOSPHERE CANNOT BE BLOCKED!”
“His setting form is absolute garbage!” Wakutani’s setter, Hanayama, yelled in disbelief.
“He just shoved it!
How did their spiker hit that?!”
“Because their spiker has the mid-air control of a gymnast,” Coach Onikobe muttered, adjusting his glasses, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple.
A massive, unrefined setter who throws the ball into the sky, paired with a giant, hyper-technical ace who can adjust to any toss mid-air.
It’s…
a completely chaotic synergy.
Itsuki landed, clutching his right side with a sharp wince.
“Naruse?” Aone stepped closer, his heavy gaze scanning the freshman.
“The axis of the set was skewed by fifteen degrees,” Itsuki whispered rapidly, refusing to let the opponents hear.
“I had to over-torque my oblique muscle to compensate.
Koganegawa, you need to square your shoulders before release, or you are going to snap my spine in half.”
“MY BAD!
I WILL SQUARE THEM LIKE A PROTRACTOR!” Koganegawa yelled back.
Wakutani Minami refused to roll over.
The Little Giant of Wakunan bared his fangs.
On the next rally, Nakashima received the ball himself, immediately sprinting to the net for a back-row attack.
Hanayama set him perfectly.
Nakashima flew from the backline.
A terrifying, towering wall of nearly four meters of combined flesh.
I can’t go over.
I can’t blast through, Nakashima calculated mid-air.
But the big blonde setter is clumsy.
There’s a gap between his arms!
Nakashima aimed a surgical spike directly at the seam between Koganegawa’s flailing elbows.
It was a perfect read.
But Nakashima had failed to factor in one crucial variable: Koganegawa’s sheer, unadulterated panic.
Seeing the ball rocketing toward his face, Koganegawa didn’t hold his blocking form.
He flinched, violently squeezing his eyes shut and wildly swinging his massive arms inward to protect his nose.
SMACK!
Nakashima’s perfectly aimed spike slammed directly into Koganegawa’s accidentally flailing right forearm, ricocheting straight back down into Wakutani’s court.
“BWAHAHAHA!” Futakuchi absolutely lost his mind on the court, pointing and laughing.
“HE BLOCKED YOU WITH HIS FACE BLOCK!
HE DIDN’T EVEN OPEN HIS EYES!”
“I TOTALLY MEANT TO DO THAT!” Koganegawa roared, peeling one eye open to confirm the ball was on the floor.
“THE BLINDING IRON SHIELD!”
Nakashima landed, staring at the Date Tech setter with a mixture of absolute horror and profound annoyance.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
The momentum had completely shifted.
The addition of Koganegawa’s raw, unpredictable height, combined with Itsuki’s cold, calculated strikes and Aone’s suffocating presence, turned the Dateko side of the net into an impenetrable, chaotic fortress.
24 – 21.
Set point for Date Tech.
“Last one!” Kamasaki roared from the backline.
Wakutani served.
Sasaya passed it cleanly.
“KOGANEGAWA!” Itsuki commanded, his voice slicing through the gym.
He was completely out of breath, his stamina utterly depleted, but his eyes were burning like blue stars.
“I GOT IT!”
Koganegawa got under the ball.
This time, he remembered Itsuki’s words.
Square the shoulders.
He planted his feet, aimed his massive frame, and pushed the ball upward.
It wasn’t a perfect set.
It had no spin control.
But it was high, and it was directly in front of the antenna.
Itsuki ran.
He poured every last ounce of his remaining energy into his kinetic chain.
Left.
Right.
Left.
He soared.
The Wakutani blockers leaped to meet him, but the fear of his mid-air contortions made them hesitate for a fraction of a second.
They didn’t fully commit their hands, terrified he would wipe their pinkies again.
That hesitation was all Itsuki needed.
Hanging at his apex, Itsuki didn’t twist.
He didn’t drop his shoulder.
He stared directly into Nakashima’s eyes across the net, and swung with a perfectly straight, fundamentally flawless, 100-percent power spike directly down the unguarded line.
KABOOM!
The ball blasted past the block, obliterating the chalk line in the deep corner before Wakutani’s libero could even dive.
TWEEEEEEET!
The referee blew the long whistle, pointing to Date Tech’s side.
25 – 21.
Set one goes to Date Tech.
The gym exploded.
“UWOOOOOOHHHHH!!!” Koganegawa grabbed Itsuki and literally lifted the exhausted 192-centimeter freshman off the floor in a massive bear hug.
“WE WON THE SET!
STRATOSPHERE SUPREMACY!”
“K-Koganegawa…
oxygen…
required…” Itsuki choked, tapping out on the giant’s shoulder.
“Nice kill, rookie,” Futakuchi smirked, offering a hand to slap.
Aone walked over, placing a heavy, reassuring hand on Itsuki’s shoulder, giving him that same, intense nod of approval.
From the bench, Sakunami was cheering with Moniwa, while Coach Oiwake wrote a final note on his clipboard.
Naruse’s stamina is a liability for full three-set matches, Oiwake noted mentally.
But his ability to act as the brain of the Iron Wall, and his synergy with Koganegawa’s raw height…
Oiwake looked up, watching Itsuki finally wriggle free from Koganegawa’s grip, a rare, genuine smile lighting up the socially anxious freshman’s face as he bumped fists with Kamasaki.