ριℓℓσω//Haikyuu!!

17

I sat in the back of the bus the whole ride to the stadium.

Nobody sat with me, I just kept my headphones on and got into game mode.

It's hard to tell my game mode from my normal mode, honestly.

We got off the bus and entered the stadium.

I trailed in the back of the group, no longer feeling special in any way after my position got stripped during my first real high school game.

Captain took us to take a peak at some of the teams already warming up.

Some of them were fast, some were fragile, and some had a crazy cannon arm.

After a few minutes we all got situated at a hallway where we put our stuff down.

"I'm so nervous." Chizuri is all in her jitters like usual.

"I know. Me too." Manami admits too.

"Was it just me or was their spikes really on point during practice before?" Akari asks, talking about Niiyama's girls team.

"Yeah they did make the top 8 last year." Mao tells us. She gets into a begging position. "Well maybe we won't get matches with them this year."

"We should have showed up to more morning practices." Chizuri tells everyone.

I roll my eyes while stretching, they can't go back now.

"If you look back now, we had more than enough time." Everyone stops stretching and looks at captain, unprepared for one of her talks. "We could've practiced a lot more than we did. We didn't have our priorities straight. "

"Yeah, well it's took late for that now Yui-" Manami tries to tell her but gets cut off.

"But none of that matters now!" Captain exclaims. "We've got 45 minutes till the starting whistle blows. All we can do now is make sure we're properly warmed up, then play to the best of our ability till the very end! And maybe...we can win!"

We takes off her jacket and reveals her number 1 jersey. "Gather round everyone, let's huddle!"

Everyone was hesitant at first but then Manami joins her and takes off her jacket too, revealing her number 2 jersey. "C'mon ladies, you heard the captain!"

Soon enough everyone, including myself had their jackets up and hand in the middle.

"Karasunooooo...fight!" Captain shouts and we follow.

After dismantling the huddle I look at Mao's jersey.

She got her own number to it, number 7. I got to keep my number 9.

Speaking of number 9, I didn't get to see Kageyama today. O-or the rest of the boys team, aside from Daichi of course.

But I hope they do well today. I hope we all do well today.

Okay, game face.

We enter the gym and get in our warm up practice. It actually went out smoothly.

I got a few jump serves in, but also practice hard normal ones just in case.

Captain hasn't said anything about me and my serving today.

Our hitting, receiving drills played out nicely too. No complaints and not too many mistakes.

Feels like any other practice, but with a lot of other teams around us.

Captain told us we were receiving first which meant libero and I started in the back. We got into positions and I became more serious.