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Look, old man. You still have family. You’re knobby-kneed and fish-eyed again, now. Look, the world is ending.

First , look at the family. Have you ever seen a more unsightly one? The Boy has met countesses and princes. Heiresses and kids raised by wolves. Numbers one through seven (minus six) are each less bearable than the rest. See—Five’s had decades to grow up. They’re still disgusting twenty nine year-olds. With addled brains. With purposelessness and helplessness and stupidity.

--

The Boy is a man is a hunger artist is a soul haunting his own body like snarled toes in a loafer five sizes too small.

Kageyama Tobio considers quitting volleyball only once in his life, a year after his grandfather passes suddenly and unexpectedly. Less than a week after he tosses the ball—a perfect toss for C-quick, just as he’d practiced for an hour the night before—and it falls, untouched, onto the court where it completes its arc. He thinks about it, seriously quitting, for less than 24 hours. He still thinks about it, but not seriously.

Coach benches him without another word about it. He watches the rest of the meet from the bench. And feels nothing. There’s nothing left to feel when he realizes he doesn’t want to be on the court. Not after watching the ball fall. Abandoned again. First Miwa, now grandfather. If this time, it was his fault, which means the others may have been his fault as well, right?

Miwa seemed very free after quitting. She started doing other things. She tied her long hair up in pretty, intricate styles, and never looked at a volleyball again.

That’s how it works. On the bench he doesn’t cry but something in him releases. Everything feels very much over, in the moment. The king is gone, off the court.

I miss them. I’m tired. I want to play. I don’t want to play.

The sets pass, until they lose in the third round in a blur of nothing. The swell he’d always felt from the court, the energy of the stadium, putters out. No sting of loss. No rush of victory. No twisting frustration. No images, instant replay, of all the things to practice for next time. None of it. Just the ball rolling towards the far wall and twelve players walking away from the net.

He was going to win the tournament for his grandfather. He was going to win for him and for volleyball and now he’s on the bench. He’d told him, the only time they’d let him visit the hospital, that he was going to win for him. Look, you made me strong. I love volleyball more than them.

He doesn’t quit. Turns out, it’s not that easy.

Too bad he can’t keep his hands off a volleyball—a well-worn plain white ball from camp—at home, even if he doesn’t want to stand on the court like that ever again. He sets it at the ceiling, lying on his back, before he sleeps. He continues his receiving drills against the wall of the house until his mother’s car pulls into the driveway.

Monday is the day that Miwa calls. From Tokyo. A reminder that she’s still out that. They she’ll talk to him, but only for ten minutes a week. Straight out of senior high and she’s off to the big city with a pat on the head and a promise to call and to message. She’d gone to work as a hairdresser and go to beauty school. She was back for the funeral with a new haircut and a second piercing in her left ear.

She calls the Monday after Kitagawa Daiichi loses to Kousen. Instantly, he realizes she’s calling him from inside a gymnasium. He hears it, balls bunching and shoes squeaking, before she says anything. And she says something before he can say, “hello”.

“I joined the local municipal intramural team, so you better keep playing, quitter.”

Mom must have told her he’d stopped attending practice after the prefectural junior athletics meet. He wants to ask her why she quit in the first place. Why she went back, now, of all times. But he doesn’t want to talk about Kazuyo. And it’s probably about him. Her picking up the ball again and him getting kicked off the court are both about him.

“Do they make you cut your hair?” He asks instead.

“No, of course not. They’re not stupid high school students,” Miwa says. There’s a referee’s whistle in the background. It makes him cringe, the way it filters through the phone speaker.

“Oh.”

“The team is actually co-ed.”

“What’s co-ed?”

“Like, men and women. I’m setting to guys.”

“But you’re super short. You were a libero.”

“I’m a better setter than the other guy, so I’m setting for now.”

“Oh.”

His sister was a good setter. But she’d played all positions. Libero, in her final year of junior high when she didn’t grow. She’d been one of the best liberos in the prefecture, despite only switching in the middle of her second year. Her stats almost matched with Shiratorizawa Junior High’s starting setter, who plays for the national team now, she’d told him once.

“I’ll be there for your graduation, so don’t flunk out. I already have my train ticket.”

“Okay.”

And that’s that.

Miwa starts sending him videos of her practices. All of her games are practices. It’s all for fun. She looks like she’s having fun. Her long hair is tied up in a high ponytail. Instead of the typical girl’s volleyball uniform, she’s wearing long shorts like a basketball player and a sleeveless T-shirt. Her arms look stronger than he remembers them.

Me

[ Why aren’t you wearing kneepads. ]

Sis

[ I haven’t bought any yet. ]

Me

[ You’re going to hurt your knees. ]

Sis

[ It’s nice to know that my little brother is looking out for my knees. ]

Kageyama goes to the last mandatory practice of the year. He tries (and fails) to ignore the looks he gets from everyone on the team. Hashikami doesn’t say a single word to him. Kindaichi and Kunimi whisper to each other in the locker room.

“Look who finally showed up, king.”

He slams his locker door shut. It rattles in its hinges.

Practice is less intense than during the year. They have no matches to prepare for. Only to keep up their skills going into senior high.

And everyone’s chattering about senior high. Kageyama can hear it from where he’s standing for warm up, at least a meter away from the closest players—two first years he’d helped learn to serve-recieve, and who’d given him looks of pity when he’s been kicked off the court.

“I heard the king didn’t get into Shiratorizawa. Didn’t pass the entrance exams.”

“Serves him right. Did he think they’d just let him in for being a genius setter? I guess even they don’t want him on their team...”

“Ya think he’ll go to Seijoh?”

Kageyama does nothing but jump serve practice during open gym. He can tell he’s being watched by coach. He doesn’t ask. He has a ball and a net and nobody’s trying to speak to him. Good enough.

“Kageyama-kun!” Coach yells his name after blowing the whistle to end practice. He watches the ball he spiked land in the far corner of the court, just inside the line. Direct hit.

While he jogs over to where coach is sitting, dread kills the excitement from his pinpoint serve.

“Yes, sir?”

“I hear your teammates are considering where to attend senior high school. If you do not wish to go to Seijoh, I believe that coach Ukai may be returning to coach the Karasuno boy’s volleyball team. I believe he will have sound advice with regards to how you might succeed in the future, there.”

Kageyama had expected scolding or punishment of some kind. Coach had said nothing about his problems with his teammates until they had all made up their minds. He had nothing to say to him on the bench. But now he’s telling him to go to a school he’s never heard of.

“Ukai” sounds a little familiar.

He looks up Karasuno High School when he gets home. He knows he won’t pass the entrance exams for Date Tech, and Johzenji is too far away. Karasuno, “the fallen crows,” he reads.

Karasuno has no entrance examinations. Karasuno isn’t a private school, but it has two volleyball gyms. The school is located closer than any other besides Aoba Johsai. He tests into class 3 on a lonely Saturday morning, the answers to the singular Shiratorizawa entrance exam appearing in his mind at the wrong time. He doesn’t care what class he gets.

Kageyama doesn’t go to Karasuno because he’s looking for any advice. He’s all caught up in Kazuyo’s advice. His grandfather’s advice made him an effective volleyball player.

He wants a good volleyball coach who will let him play.

He goes to Karasuno because he finds a photograph of his grandfather, number 2, next to Ukai’s number 3 at Shiratorizawa’s volleyball hall of fame. They make him go back to pick up his failed entrance exam and he sees it. A hall with every framed photograph of past nationals-competitive teams.

Shiratorizawa Boy’s VB — Spring 1965, Nationals Top 8.

It takes him many years to realize it was the best decision of his life.

He doesn’t know what would have happened if he had gone to Aoba Johsai. Or, by some miracle, had gotten into Shiratorizawa.

Never one to believe in anything besides what he could do for himself, he never bothered to create a mythology around finding the photograph. Nor about his junior high coach taking pity.

Every sports writer writes about him as though he was destined to succeed. Miwa sends him articles when he makes the national team. “Diamond in the crow’s nest”, “genius setter,” “youngest men’s volleyball Olympic team member since 1994.”

She follows it all up with a pleasant:

Sis

[ Don’t get a big head. And block out all the news sites and armchair bloggers right now. ]

She would know. She’s dating a supermodel. “The press are vultures in every industry, brother mine.”

Senior high was a three-year bright spot between the loss and learning, nineteen and boarding a direct flight to Rio, that there is more than one type of grief.

For those years after, he keeps his head down and plays.

And his grandfather’s words find their way back to him, again. Punctuation but not an ending to the career he knows, for himself, wasn’t predestined.

“One day, you’ll find someone even stronger.”