Kageyama started drifting into Tsukishima’s eyeline during the warm-up.
It wasn’t subtle.
The setter kept positioning himself at the edge of whichever drill Tsukishima was running, his body language doing something between challenge and surveillance.
He wasn’t looking at Tsukishima directly.
He was letting himself be seen, angling for exactly the attention he pretended not to want.
Tsukishima watched him.
The read on Kageyama was still sharp.
The overlay had locked onto the setter in the first ten seconds of the first day and hadn’t let go since.
The fidelity was high enough to be useful and low enough to require attention: he couldn’t coast-read Kageyama like he could Yamaguchi.
The setter was a known quantity, but only barely.
The distance between them was maintained by mutual bristle.
The warm-up cycled through jogging, stretches, passing.
Kageyama’s passes came in hot.
Not aggressive — that would have been easy to dismiss, but precise.
A precision that asked a question of its own.
Can you keep up with this.
Tsukishima received them without comment.
The ball snapped off his forearms and arced back at the same speed.
He wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
He was trying to make the instrument stop asking him to read the setter’s every muscle twitch.
The drill shifted.
Setting practice.
Kageyama moved to the net and began feeding sets to whoever rotated into the hitting line.
His form was textbook: the ball left his hands in a clean parabola every time, the spin controlled, the height calibrated to the spiker’s approach.
Watching him set was like watching someone do arithmetic.
The result was always exactly what the numbers predicted.
Except.
Kageyama set a ball to the outside.
Conventional.
Straight.
A set any competent blocker would read and shut down.
The angle was telegraphed.
The hitter was in plain sight.
The whole play was an invitation.
Tsukishima read it without spending Focus.
The ball would land on the left seam in approximately two seconds.
The hitter was a second-year whose approach was too shallow.
The set was a test.
═══ THE MOON READ ═══ FOCUS · 32 / 40.
No spend logged.
READ · Conventional set, outside.
Resolved on instinct.
Cost 0.
LIMIT · Instinct does not reach three moves.
The skill does.
LOG · Kageyama Tobio flagged: testing the instrument.
═══════════════════════ He didn’t move to block it.
He let the play land and turned away with the specific laziness that drove Kageyama insane.
“You saw it,” Kageyama said.
The words landed flat.
Accusing.
Tsukishima didn’t turn around.
“Saw what?” “The set.
You saw where it was going.” “Everyone saw where it was going.
The hitter was standing in the spot he was going to hit from.
That’s not a read.
That’s basic object permanence.” Behind him, he heard Hinata’s confused “what’s object permanence” and someone else’s attempt to explain it.
He didn’t bother correcting either of them.
“I set it so you could block it,” Kageyama said.
His voice had dropped half a register.
The register of someone who didn’t like being dismissed.
“And you didn’t.” “I was conserving energy.” Tsukishima turned, finally, and let the smirk find his face.
“Is that a problem?
Do you need me to block your sets to feel challenged?” The muscle near Kageyama’s jaw did the thing again.
The almost-not-quite-surprise that had flickered during the first day.
This time it stayed.
“You’re doing it on purpose,” Kageyama said.
“The reading thing.
Monday was real and you’re pretending it was a joke.” Tsukishima adjusted his glasses.
“Monday was a lucky guess.
I told you.” “You told me a lot of things.
You’re lying about most of them.” “Most of them is a generous ratio.
I thought the King of the Court would aim higher.” The title landed exactly where Tsukishima had aimed it.
Kageyama’s whole posture stiffened: a full-body recoil from a nickname he clearly hadn’t chosen and clearly hated.
The reaction was satisfying in a way Tsukishima didn’t examine.
The instrument didn’t have opinions.
The instrument just catalogued.
But the cataloguing was satisfying.
Before Kageyama could escalate, Daichi’s voice cut across the gym.
“Alright.
Huddle up.” The first-years assembled.
The third-years stood at the front with the particular gravity of people who’d been running a club for two years and knew the speech that was coming.
“We need to sort out the first-year roster,” Daichi said.
“Some of you are going to start.
Some of you are going to train.
The way we figure out which is which is simple.” He paused.
The pause was theatrical in a way that suggested he’d learned it from Sugawara.
“Three-on-three.
First-years only.
Winning side gets first consideration for the starting lineup.
Losing side.
gets motivation.” Hinata’s hand shot up before Daichi finished speaking.
“WHO GETS TO PICK TEAMS?” “I pick the teams.” Daichi’s voice flattened.
“You don’t get to pick.
And if you can’t work with whoever you’re assigned, you don’t start.
Understood?” The question was aimed at Kageyama and Hinata simultaneously.
Both of them nodded.
Hinata’s nod was too fast.
Kageyama’s was too stiff.
Tsukishima clocked the three-on-three for what it was: a stage.
A small one.
But a stage.
And on a stage, his reads wouldn’t be private anymore.
They’d be witnessed.
Evaluated.
Remembered.
He should throw them.
He should phone in the match, let the three-on-three pass without incident, preserve the careful architecture of not-caring he’d been building since the first day.
Then he looked at Kageyama.
The setter’s jaw was still tight from the “King” comment.
His hands were already shaping the ball, already calculating the angles, already planning to dismantle whoever stood across from him.
Throwing the match would be the safe play.
But losing to Kageyama on purpose, letting the King of the Court walk off the three-on-three with his chin up, would require more effort than winning.
It would require him to actively suppress the read he’d been honing all week.
It would mean being worse on purpose.
Tsukishima had never been good at being worse on purpose.
The three-on-three would be a proving ground.
The read would be watched.
The team would form impressions that couldn’t be walked back.
The relevance trap was going to close another inch.
He filed the cost.
The cost was manageable.
The cost was also a choice he was pretending he hadn’t made.
“I’m assuming you want to be on my team,” he said to Yamaguchi, later, during the water break.
“Obviously.” “Good.
Don’t miss your serves.” “I never—” Yamaguchi caught himself.
“I don’t always miss my serves.” “The ones that matter, you miss.” “That’s—” He deflated.
“Okay.
Fair.” “It’s not an insult.
It’s a heads-up.” Tsukishima drained his water bottle.
The coolness at the edge of his attention sharpened a degree.
“If the serve matters, don’t miss it.” Yamaguchi stared at him, and the stare was doing something complicated: hope and confusion and the specific look of someone who’d just received a compliment disguised as a warning.
“You’re planning to actually try,” Yamaguchi said.
“I’m planning to not lose to Kageyama.” “That’s the same thing.” “It’s really not.” But it was.
And Yamaguchi knew it was.
And the instrument, humming its monochrome cool at the edge of everything, knew he’d already decided to use the read on the most visible stage he’d had since the first day.
The smirk he wore for the rest of practice was genuine enough that nobody asked if he was faking it.
hey — quick one before you close the tab.
if the cliffhanger is killing you, the future already exists.
you just need a ticket through.
every chapter the second i finish writing it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ P.S.
— in a parallel timeline, the rest of this story runs completely free on unwrittenrealm.com.
just saying.
that timeline also has more chapters.