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1.
The official colors of the Shiratorizawa Academy Boys’ Volleyball Club are purple and white, a fitting choice for the strongest team in the prefecture. The white reflects their style of play: unblemished, unerring, polished until each shot and each block becomes a blinding display of strength. Purple is the color of nobility, and Shiratorizawa is the old guard of boys’ volleyball, its tradition of intense force passed down from one crop of teams to the next.
Naturally, the team’s track jackets are in these colors, and the players stand out easily when they step onto the court. Under the fluorescent lights of the gym, the the jackets’ white torsos seem to shimmer, and the bright orchid-violet of the sleeves command attention from audiences and opponents alike. But under different lighting conditions, the jackets take on a different hue. In the orange lights of sunset, for example, the purple becomes magenta 一 warmer, rosier, less about sheer dominance and more about the solidarity that blooms when volleyball’s most gifted players find a home to plant their roots in.
This is the shade that the jacket takes on as Goshiki Tsutomu strides out of the gym on the heels of his first day with the volleyball team. Rather than head straight to their dorms, he and the other first-years hang back in an open yard, wearing their brand-new jackets, snapping photos of each other and chatting excitedly about the chance to play volleyball at their dream school.
One of his new teammates 一 Akakura, if he remembers correctly 一 drags Tsutomu and two other first-years for a group selfie, and they smile to the camera as the sun sets in front of them, trying not to squint. When the photo is done, Akakura shows it to them: a sight of four boys awkwardly smiling in the orange light and pointing to the little foot logo embroidered on the jacket’s breast.
Tsutomu’s eyes sparkle as he stares at himself in the photo. He looks fierce and proud, he thinks, like a real athlete. His gaze is drawn to the jacket in the photo 一 his jacket . His uniform. It’s a tangible sign that he’s made it, that he’s officially a member of the volleyball team. He pulls the real thing more closely around himself and zips it all the way through, letting it hug his frame more. With the sunset light bringing a warm tint to its colors, it looks perfect.
He whips out his own phone and taps Akakura on the shoulder.
“C-can you take a photo of me?! By myself?!”
“Sure, but you have to do me after!”
“Okay!”
Akakura directs him to a well-lit spot. Tsutomu stands as upright as he can: arms crossed, a proud smile on his face, trying his best to radiate the sheer willpower that a true Shiratorizawa player should exude. He ends up looking a little stiff, like a kid trying to mimic an adult, but he’s too excited to care when he gets his phone back.
That night, in his new dorm, Tsutomu sends the photo to pretty much everyone he knows back home: old friends, his middle school teammates, his parents, his grandmother. He receives a steady flow of compliments in return: You look so cool! Wow, you’re almost like a pro! Our Tsutomu is all grown up now!
He reads each reply over and over again in bed, long after lights-out. Before he puts his phone away and closes his eyes, he glances at the photo one last time. His new track jacket, tinted magenta in the warm light, exudes comfort. It’s the jacket he’ll never forget to put on, the one he hesitates to take off when changing back into his school uniform, the one he hangs in front of his wardrobe at the end of the day as a reminder of how far he’s come 一 and how far he has yet to go.
2.
Whenever Tsutomu puts on his kneepads before a match, he always spots the scar on his knee where a scrape used to be. The scar has faded to a dark maroon, the skin no longer bumpy or raised, but he can’t help but glance at it every time he slips his left kneepad on. It’s his battle scar, a badge of pride and hard work.
How he got it went like this: It was during a scrimmage between the first and second years. Tsutomu runs up to take off before a spike, but he trips, his left kneepad slipping off and his knee hitting the ground. He doesn’t have time to readjust it as he scrambles back to his feet, runs up, and jumps to meet Murata’s toss to him.
Up in the air, Tsutomu sees clearly. He sees Kawanishi and Yunohama already in mid-air, rising up to meet him. He sees the path to a cross quickly closed off. He sees a sliver of space between Kawanishi to the left, and the antenna on the right, a sliver barely big enough to spike a ball through. In that space, Tsutomu sees his chance.
The ball quakes under his palm as he slams it straight through. The shot grazes Kawanishi’s arm and lands in, right on the line.
The next thing Tsutomu registers is him letting out an almighty yell, and his teammates rushing to high-five him and clap him on the back. The adrenaline courses through ever fiber of his body, and his blood sings in his ears. The spot where the ball landed seems to quiver in his vision. He gazes up at Kawanishi and Yunohama and flashes them a confident grin, as if to declare his presence. That’s a shot from an ace, he wants to say.
“Goshiki, your knee.”
It’s Shirabu who says it, looking down at his exposed knee. He follows his gaze, and sees it: a scrape, bright red and raw, the injured skin still shining. In his rush to spike the ball, Tsutomu had not felt it all; now, with the scrape in his awareness, a stinging pain shoots up from it, and he winces.
“Get the first aid kit,” he hears Coach Saitou call out to one of the managers.
Tsutomu is made to sit on the bench. The manager dabs antiseptic onto the scrape, and the color fades from a bright red to a dull maroon before being covered up with an adhesive bandage. It still stings, but it doesn’t look as serious as he thought.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a few of the third years watching him from their water break. How embarrassing 一 his moment ruined by an ugly scrape.
The next day, after warm-ups, Coach Washijou calls the whole team for a meeting. As they assemble, the coaches’ eyes focus on Tsutomu, glancing up and down at him. He tries not to meet their stares and instead trains his eyes on the broad outline of Ushijima’s back. Perhaps, if he looks away, he’ll realize that he’s being overly self-conscious, and that they’re not actually looking at him at all.
The meeting begins, and Coach Washijou turns to face him. “Tsutomu,” he says.
“Yes, sir!”
He stiffens and braces himself for the coach’s words. Is he going to get scolded? Is his knee scrape going to be used as an example of a perfectly avoidable injury? Is he getting demoted to he C team?
“Starting today, you’ll be practicing with the starters at Court 1. You’ll start with them in the next official match in a few weeks. Don’t disappoint.”
Tsutomu’s mind goes blank at first. He feels his heart stutter, and his voice catch in his throat. His initial nervousness is replaced by a new wave of emotions as the words sink in, and he trembles. The meaning of it dawns on his consciousness: This is his chance.
“Y-yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” His voice comes out shaky, this time not from nervousness, but from a new excitement rushing throughout his body.
Before practice that day, he adjusts his new kneepad 一 longer than his old one, but more snug and with less chance of slipping off. He spies a peek of the patch of maroon across his knee, and smiles to himself. It’s a shame he has to keep that badge of pride covered up.
3.
Ushijima Wakatoshi scores the winning point against Aoba Johsai at the Spring Interhigh semifinals. When his spike lands and the ball thunders down on the opposite side of the court, the lights flicker off, and for a split second the entire court goes black.
The crowd gasps. Then the lights flicker back on, and Shiratorizawa’s cheer squad erupts into shouts, as if Ushijima just invented a new type of spike on the spot. Tsutomu knows that’s not the case; he’s been practicing his spikes for months, and probably for years even before they became teammates. The spikes don’t make the gym lights literally flicker like it did here, but every time they land, Tsutomu swears that his surroundings go black.
It always happens the same way, too. First, there’s the figure of Ushijima himself, illuminated by the lights of the gym, like a glossy photo from a sports magazine leaping off the page and into real life. He hangs in the air just a second too long as he leaps, then makes contact with the ball. For a few moments, everything looks bright, harsh even. Then, as swift and as sudden as lightning, his spike booms down on the opposite side of the court. The whole gym is plunged into darkness.
Every spike seems to do that: first, white-hot blinding light, the deep dark. What impresses Tsutomu isn’t so much the spike’s ability to do that, but the consistency at which Ushijima is able to do it. Another spike, another round of black. Yet the consistency of it also gives Tsutomu hope: it’s neither a miracle, nor a fluke. It’s something doable.
Tsutomu wishes he could do that: a spike so thunderous it seems to drain out every other color and source of light from a place. Each day at practice, he polishes his spikes in the hope of achieving the same effect. But no matter how much he practices, he can never get it right. He doesn’t hang in the air for long enough. His arm doesn’t swing enough. He doesn’t hit the ball with enough impact. When he spikes, the gym doesn’t go black; the air might shift for a bit, or his surroundings might flicker and distort like a glitch in a screen, but the colors of the gym stay where they are. But he persists nevertheless; he practices day after day after day, watching the glitch stay a little longer, or the air shifting just a bit more, but never yet achieving the black he hopes to see.
Ushijima does it in every practice and in every match. He does it in the final point against Aoba Johsai, and the gym literally goes black. It only stokes the fire in Tsutomu’s spirit all the more.
It’s dark when the team bus arrives back at the Shiratorizawa campus following the match; the night sky reminds Tsutomu of that final point. As everyone alights, gathers their things, and heads back to the dorms, he runs up to Ushijima, already ahead of everyone else.
“Ushijima-san!”
Ushijima turns to him, expression neutral.
“I’m going to spike even better than you did against Seijoh today,” he declares. “Tomorrow, I’m going to be the team’s ace!”
He can see it in his mind’s eye: one day, his spikes will produce an even darker black. His captain won’t rest on his laurels for long.
But Ushijima only softens at Tsutomu’s words. “Okay,” he says. “Good luck.”
Tsutomu doesn’t want luck. He wants to get that spike right.
4.
When Shiratorizawa loses to Karasuno at the Spring Interhigh finals, Tsutomu’s world is drowned in grey.
The thud of the ball on their side of the court rings more loudly in his ears than any spike he’s ever dealt with. He feels the loss in his senses, even as his mind struggles to consciously grasp it: the cheers from the Karasuno contingent sound muffled, and his body feels heavy, as if it has finally absorbed all the blows from their opponent. Already, Tsutomu can feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and his throat beginning to constrict in a sob, but he forces a heavy gulp and blinks back the tears.
He can’t act shamefully, he tells himself. An ace carries himself with pride, all the way to the bitter end, win or loss. So he carries on as usual; he lines up with the rest of the team at the service line, and shouts his thanks for the match. He shakes hands with the Karasuno players, with that persistent middle blocker with the glasses, with that insatiable number 10. His body trembles as he does so, as if carrying the weight of disappointment and regret, but he refuses to buckle from it. He can’t. A good ace wouldn’t.
But Tsutomu isn’t the ace just yet. As he walks off the court, he catches a glimpse of the scoreboard one last time: 2-3, 19-21 in the final set. The score seems to taunt him. With it comes dozens of memories of the match: too-long serves, botched receives, spikes that didn’t land right. And that repeating thought of if only, if only, if only.
If only his receives were cleaner, if only his serves were more accurate, if only his attacks were more forceful… he has far too many things to work on, he knows. Some ace he is.
He can no longer stop the sob that rips its way past his throat, or the tears that flood out of the corners of his eyes. Tsutomu breaks, and every emotion spills out freely, the reality of the loss fully sinking in the more he cries. With every tear comes every nagging if-only, every pang of regret.
His vision blurs so much from crying that the colors of the gymnasium blend into a murky grey.
Even after he stops crying, the rest of the afternoon passes by in a blur, as muddled and as grey as if his vision were still blurred by tears. The bright colors of the cheering squad and even the polished wood of the gymnasium seem drained of their usual brightness and shine. He barely registers the awards ceremony. He does, however, remember the feel of cool metal as the second-place trophy is passed into his hands, and how it looked a lot duller than he thought it would be. Even its usual shine seems to have greyed out.
If he had actually been the ace he wanted to be, then maybe they would be holding a different trophy now.
5.
The weekend after the loss to Karasuno, Tsutomu’s idle time is interrupted by a knock on his dorm door. Tendou and Yamagata are waiting on the other side, looking giddy as usual. Ushijima, Oohira, and Semi are standing behind them.
“We’re getting ice cream!” Yamagata declares.
“The whole team is getting ice cream,” Tendou adds. “C’mon, Tsutomu, you’re coming with us!”
“Ice cream?!” Tsutomu tilts his head at his senpais. “Why…?”
“Why not? Like you need a reason to get ice cream,” Tendou says.
Ushijima speaks up from behind. “It’s to boost team morale.”
Tsutomu raises his eyebrows. Normally, he would have no objections to ice cream, especially if it means bonding with the rest of the team. But he still feels a little too heavy from the loss to head over to the ice cream shop, of all places. Ice cream is for good days, for pleasant summers, for the alternate reality when the team is going to nationals and wants to celebrate. Ice cream now feels like something out of a completely different reality.
Still, he can’t argue with his senpais, especially when Ushijima himself is vetting the operation.
Tendou and Yamagata collect the rest of the team, traipsing ahead of everyone else down the dorm hallways. Even Shirabu doesn’t resist the idea. In one big group, they all head past the dorms, out of campus, and into the ice cream shop at the nearby mall. On most days, the team would try to be discreet about their ice cream visits 一 they are on a strict diet, after all 一 but for just this instance, they can slack off a little. It’s not like they have any nationals matches to train for, after all.
As captain and vice-captains, Ushijima, Oohira, and Soekawa offer to pay for everyone’s ice creams, splitting the cost evenly among the three of them. Tsutomu stares at the menu in front of him: there are too many choices, from matcha to dark chocolate, from banana to birthday cake. He’s still too tired to sift through the choices, not to mention that many of them feel far too festive for the occasion. In the end, he goes for a vanilla cone.
Tendou takes his order for him, and soon receives a perfectly swirled, cream-colored ice cream cone in his hand. The ice cream looks soft and smooth, the milky cream color seemingly glistening in the shop light.
“Here ya go. Don’t feel bad about taking it, okay?” Tendou tells him as he hands it over. “We want you to have this!”
“O-okay!” Tsutomu takes the cone from him; as he does, the tip of the swirl brushes his nose, leaving behind a cream-colored spot.
Tendou lets out a laugh, loud and carefree. “Careful, Tsutomu! Don’t get too excited!” He takes a napkin and wipes the spot off his nose.
Tsutomu looks at the napkin and the cream spot. Then he laughs, too.
There’s nothing particularly funny about it. But the sound of Tendou’s laugh, the spot on the napkin that he had cared enough to wipe off, and the smooth cream swirl in his hands 一 somehow, it all feels right. It breaks the tension and heaviness he’s been carrying, and the break bubbles through in his laughter.
He looks around and sees his teammates seated, eating their own ice cream cones, talking, laughing. Yamagata and Kawanishi are comparing cones in one corner; Semi and Oohira are chatting away in another. The whole scene would have been unthinkable just a few days ago, but now everything has shifted back into place. He wouldn’t be with anyone else in the world, Tsutomu thinks, even if things didn’t turn out as he wanted to. It’s good to be here, on this team, with these friends. No loss, no matter how devastating, can change that.
Tsutomu smiles to himself. and readies himself to eat his ice cream. Before he can, he spots Ushijima picking up his own order, a creamy vanilla cone identical to his.
Old habits die hard.
“Ushijima-san!”
The captain looks up at him.
“I’m going to eat his cone faster than you!”
Ushijima blinks. “Okay.”
Tsutomu gets a head start, but Ushijima still beats him. Yamagata has to nurse his brain freeze on the walk back.