The Birth of A Volleyball Legend

After letting Sumida High do their warmup for about fifteen minutes, the game finally was about to start. Now, all the players from both teams were ready on the court, waiting for the result of the coin toss between the two captains.

For Tsunemori, there was a slight change in their roster. In the back row, Kaede and Yuki were still there, protecting their area tightly. Riku was also on the court as the general who strategized their offense. However, on the front line, Ogawa was replaced by Asahi since the new captain proved to everyone that he deserved his spot. He would be there together with Hirano and Koji as the spear of the team. Your next chapter is on empire

That left Ogawa as the bench player, ready to be the super-sub, and Okamura who was waiting for the rotation. Fortunately, they both didn't make a fuss about their lack of playing time, or the team's cohesion would be destroyed once again.

Back to the court, Yuki who was still moving his body around to let it loose accidentally saw his blonde friend bothering Tachi on the opponent's side and he couldn't help but let out a smirk at this. 'As expected, his extrovert personality would never allow him to play without greeting the opponent first.' He thought.

Yuki himself also greeted the bodybuilder boy before, but it was just a short pleasantry as he wasn't good with small talk like that. For now, though, his eyes were wandering around, trying to search for the presence of his benefactor family in the middle of the crowd.

'Caucasian faces should be easy to spot in the middle of the Asian crowd, right? If I cannot see them, that means they won't be here in time. Eh, Maria-san said they would come straight from the airport, so maybe something happened on the road.' He shrugged.

He shook his head, trying to regain his focus back to the court. After a while, Asahi was back, telling everyone that the opponent would have the right to serve first. Without saying anything, Yuki went back to his original position, getting ready for the game.

'Tachi-san is the first one to serve?' He raised one of his eyebrows slightly when he saw the muscular boy grab the ball. 'Well, I should've expected that. He has a powerful jump serve that is pretty decent. For a small team like them – or even us last year – that is enough to guarantee the position as the first server.'

He glanced toward Kaede and signaled his senpai to move back a little. Unfortunately, due to the rotation, for Yuki to have the first serve, he had to start the game on the front line, so he won't be able to help Kaede handle this. However, the glasses boy had his best confidence that his senpai would be able to handle this easily.

"Come on, Tsunemori!"

"You can do this!"

"Kill your opponent!"

As the crowd kept shouting a lot of things that Yuki himself couldn't understand, he took a note inwardly to help them organize it. After all, three hundred students shouting the same thing in unison would be far more intimidating than this, a bunch of meaningless noises with no coordination. Still, that would be a story for another day. For now, he had to put his 100 percent focus back to the game.

BAM!

The first serve was finally launched. It went straight to the corner where Koji was there. It seemed Sumida High had done their research and knew Koji was a liability on the back. Unfortunately, Kaede had a good observation and shouted immediately, "Let it go, Koji!"

The ace didn't have to be told twice, dodging the ball quickly and letting it fall to the floor. When the ball finally slammed the floor, he – and Kaede – turned around to the linesman and clenched his fist when he saw the linesman shake his head.

"YOSSHAAA!"

"Nice observation, Kai! Have you gotten your eagle eyes like Yuki?!"

"Damn, that is awesome!"

Even though this was just a point coming from the opponent's mistake, all the Tsunemori players still celebrated it happily. For them, this point was also what made their tensed nerve loosened immediately, knowing full well that the opponent wasn't a team they couldn't handle. On the other hand, the situation in Sumida High wasn't pretty good. Not only did they fail to gain an early momentum, but what was waiting next was enough to make them all shiver.

"Sorry, Senpai. My hand slipped in the last moment." Tachi apologized.

"Oh, you can say sorry later, Naomichi." Shingo Inoe, the team's defensive specialist said with his shoulder tensed. His eyes didn't move from the glasses boy who grabbed the ball on the other side of the court. "Now, we have something bigger to deal with. If we cannot escape from this guillotine quickly, it will be hard for us to recover later."

As Yuki walked into the service line, cheers exploded immediately from the crowd. By now, his reputation as the king behind the service line had already spread around, and hell, even those students who didn't know anything about volleyball were also excited to see him taking action from there.

"Come on, Kobayashi! Give me five points!"

"Kill all of your opponents!"

"Don't give them any chance to fight back!"

Yuki himself was unbothered by the screams outside. By now, he had already known how to not get distracted when playing in front of so many people like this. His eyes turned to the opponent's side, and he couldn't help but snort at their formation.

'It seems they have done their homework well, even watching the game between the Thunder U-19 and Fukushima Phoenix U-19 back then.'

What Yuki meant by that was the resemblance between Sumida High's formation now and the Phoenix's formation back then that stopped his consecutive serves. Two defensive players were left behind to guard the back row and spread apart to get ready for a serve to a tough spot, leaving the middle area as they believed Yuki didn't have the powerful serve to break through that spot.

It worked for the Phoenix since they had two beasts in the back row; Nakamura and Jun Amano. However, seeing that this formation was set by Sumida High, he had half in mind to get offended.

'Well, let's see if they can stop this.'

The moment the referee blew the whistle, he tossed the ball quickly, catching his opponent off guard. Before they could react, the ball had already traveled fast, piercing through the air with a buzzing sound before it slammed into the floor without anyone touching it.

BAM!