Room to Grow (Asahi Azumane)

Chapter 32

       The next day we were back to practicing by ourselves.

"If we win twice in tomorrow's preliminaries, we'll go to the qualifiers in October to decide the representative team. On top of the eight schools that win the first round of preliminaries, eight powerhouse schools will join for October's representative deciding tournament." Takeda spoke as we stood in front of the team. 

"We only play two games in the first round of preliminaries?" Hinata questioned.

"Since we got to the top 16 in the Inter-High preliminaries, we got a bye for the first round." Suga answered. 

"Wow! We're awesome!" Hinata said facing Suga completely. I smiled lightly. Practice started up again, as they went the stretch quickly. It was the last games for the third years, I watched the group stretch. Practice went smoothly, at the end they were working on serving. Yamaguchi was struggling with his serve. I placed a hand on his back lightly, causing him to jump slightly. 

"Oops, sorry, didn't mean to scare you." I say with a smile. "How about don't think about it to hard, if you try and force the ball to go where you want it, it won't follow, let it come naturally. Once you start getting used to it, the ball will go where you want it to go." I say lightly, I picked up a ball and placed it in his hands. "Naturally, not forcefully." 

"Right." Yamaguchi said nodding his head, he walked back and began to ready his serve again. I continued my walk around, Asahi was working on his jump serve. A ball he served landed in the net. He grunted lightly. 

"Easy, dear. You've been doing good." I say lightly patting his back. I passed by him. 

"Watch out!" I heard someone yell, I turned my head and got nailed in the face by a volleyball. I fell back in my butt, my hand went to my nose as blood started to pour out of it. People surrounded me with worried expressions

"I'm fine, I'm fine." I say waving at them, trying to get them back. Asahi kneeled next to me he started to gently clean up my nose. 

"You're already bruising." Asahi stated. 

"Who even hit that? That was like a super hard hit." I questioned. Kageyama raised his hand. "You're fine Kageyama, I should have been paying attention and I wasn't." My eyes watered as Asahi gently poked at it to remove the blood. 

"Alright, guys just go back to practice. I can take care of her and make sure everything is okay." Ukai said. Asahi helped me up, Ukai led me to the side lines and sat me down to tend to my nose. 

"Do you think it's broke?" Takeda asked. 

"It's a possibility, the bruising happened almost instantly." Ukai answered, once the blood stopped and cleaned, he gently poked around my nose area, when he hit the bridge of my nose, I hissed pulling back, my eyes started watering. "It's almost to swollen to tell, but it is pushed off to the side a little." Ukai pointed out. Takeda, Kiyoko and Yachi stood around looking at my nose. I sighed quietly, has I took the ice pack from Kiyoko to place on my nose. 

"Great, now I'm gonna look like I got beat up." I say laughing lightly. 

"Hey, I say it'll make you look tougher and meaner." Ukai said with a smile patting my leg lightly. 

           After practice, Asahi, Suga and Daichi took me to the hospital to make sure everything looked good, which means I had to skip out on the practice with Hinata and Kageyama. I sat on the edge of the hospital bed talking to the guys quietly.  

"Alright, Ms. Sawamura. I took a look at your x-rays." The doctor said standing at the foot of the bed. "It looks to be broken, just some simple displacing of your cartilage and bone, but it's nothing to serious so no surgery will be needed, I can go ahead and see about straightening it out, just a simple click click, then placing a splint in your nose." I nodded my head as he rounded the bed, he sat down in the chair, he used a nasal spray to help with the discomfort and used what he needed to use to help place my nose back in place. "Ready, one, two and three." There was a pop and pain as my nose move back into place, my eyes water significantly.