Sugar || Bokuto Koutaro

II

        "Kenma is our setter. He's basically our brain. The setter controls everything. He thinks of the best course of action, where is the best place to hit, where the blockers are, and who to send the toss to." Kuroo has been rambling about volleyball ever since he stopped crying. He was a little scatterbrained at first until you asked him to slow down and start with the basics.

It's been a week already, but Kuroo has yet to say anything more about this Bokuto guy he thinks you'll like, or why he thinks you'll like him. He just hopped from one thing to another, mentions of other names like Akaashi and Tsukki and someone he called a shrimp from Miyagi. Honestly, you've been having a hard time keeping up.

Every day since you've joined, you've heard Taketora mumble something about finally having a lady manager at least once before practice ends. He also started going on about people from another school. At this point, you've listened to the boys mention so many people from a number of other schools that you're not even trying to keep track anymore. You'll meet them eventually.

You know Kuroo is never going to let you live this down when he finds out, but you are slowly starting to enjoy volleyball the more you learn about it. He always used that as an argument point whenever he tried to get you to join, but you always ignored it. You never paid attention to what was happening in all the time you spent just visiting them, so you never knew that even the simplest things require a lot of practice and technique. You also never realized how hard it was to get the ball over the net but inside the court. Kenma called you "worse than Shoyo" and said "At least he can receive the ball and get it over the net."

You can be a manager. You can learn everything given time and commitment. But you cannot, and will not, actually play the sport. It will take a miracle, and the absence of Kuroo and Yaku, for you to want to try again.

~*~

"I'm actually kind of impressed." Kuroo comments as he flips through the binder that you've dedicated to volleyball. "Surprised too. You're a lot more committed to this than I expected."

You frown at his comment. How low are his expectations of you? "Oi." "I'm not saying I thought you were gonna be lax, but I really didn't have very high expectations. It did take almost six years to get you here. These are really neat too. They look like your class notes, doodles and everything." Your frown deepens and you throw a pencil at him, but it flies harmlessly over his head. "Aren't you the one who's always called me an overachiever? Why would I be anything less with volleyball?"

You take the binder from him and put in the new pages where they're supposed to go. "Besides, I won't be the only one affected by this. There's no 'I' in 'Team,' after all. What I do and learn will benefit you boys more than it will me, so why not commit to it? You know I don't want to be a good-for-nothing manager. What good am I if my only use is standing still and looking pretty from the sidelines?"

A grin spreads across Kuroo's lips and he wiggles a pen at you. "You have no idea how much having a lady manager boosts morale. Even if you're still learning, just having you around motivates everyone that much more." You narrow your eyes at him. "Boost morale? What are you, soldiers?"

The two of you sit in silence as you continue to scribble things on pages and place them into your binder. Kuroo finally scoots over and watches over your shoulder as you begin to fill in the calendar you printed out. "Coach gave you the week's schedule?" "The month's. You have everyone's numbers right?" Kuroo hums in affirmation and fishes his phone out of his backpack. You hand him a pen and point to an empty page, and he begins to scribble everyone's names and numbers onto it. You make a mental note to re-write it if you want to keep it in your binder.

"Is there a group chat for the team?" "Yeah, I'll add you into it." "Tell everyone we have a practice match here at the end of the week with Fukurodani, and another next week in Miyagi with Karasuno."