The sound wasn't just noise; it was a vibration that rattled his very bones.
— ¡Vai, Shoyo! ¡Manda ver!
The shout in Portuguese blended with the roar of the crowd and the thunder of samba drums. The Rio de Janeiro sun beat down lead-heavy on the scorching sand, but Shoyo Hinata didn't feel the heat. His body was a perfectly oiled machine, cooled by sweat and adrenaline.
His feet sank into the sand; his calves—hard as steel and weathered by years of hellish training—flexed. One, two...
The jump.
It wasn't just jumping; it was flying. That sensation of weightlessness, that fraction of a second where the world stopped. He saw the Brazilian block rise, two immense towers nearly two meters tall. In the past, that would have intimidated him. Now, he only saw the gaps. He saw the trajectories. He saw everything.
His right arm cocked back like a whip. His abdominals contracted violently to generate the power. He was going to smash that ball against the baseline. The impact was imminent. His hand connected with the leather and...
Silence.
Sudden. Seamless.
The roar of fifty thousand people vanished. The scorching heat of the beach evaporated. The smell of salt and sunscreen was instantly replaced by something much softer: old wood, tatami mats, and the scent of miso soup cooking in the distance.
Hinata opened his eyes.
He didn't see the infinite blue sky of Brazil. He saw a wooden ceiling with a water stain in the corner that looked vaguely familiar.
"Huh?"
His voice came out raspy. He tried to sit up with his usual explosive movement—a "kip-up" he used to pop to his feet from the ground in the blink of an eye—but his body didn't respond to the command.
His brain sent the signal: Engage core, drive with legs. His body responded: Error 404. Muscles not found.
"Woaah!"
Hinata tipped sideways, losing his balance clumsily and falling off the bed to the floor with a dry, pathetic thud.
"— Ai, caramba..." he muttered in Portuguese out of pure instinct, rubbing his head.
He sat there on the wooden floor, blinking. The sound of cicadas outside was deafening. It was the sound of the Japanese summer. There was no samba. There was no ocean. He looked at his hands.
They were clean.
Too clean.
Where there should have been calluses hardened by thousands of receptions, the skin was soft. Where there should have been scars from minor injuries and the deep tan he had earned on the beach, there was pale, almost milky skin.
His heart started pounding, not from exercise, but from a cold suspicion creeping up his spine. He stood up wobbling—feeling strangely light and heavy at the same time—and walked toward the full-length mirror hanging behind the door.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
What he saw in the reflection froze him to the bone.
The 22-year-old man who played in the Brazilian Super League wasn't there. "Ninja Shoyo" wasn't there. The broad shoulders he had widened through protein and weights to compete against the monsters of the world weren't there.
In front of him stood a child.
He had orange hair messy like a bird's nest, huge bright eyes full of an innocence he thought he had lost years ago, and a body...
Hinata lifted his pajama shirt with trembling hands.
"— Meu Deus..." he whispered, horrified and fascinated at the same time. "I'm soft."
He touched his stomach. Flat, yes, but zero definition. He squeezed his arm. Like a noodle. He looked at his legs, his prized legs that were his engine, his greatest pride, capable of inhuman jumps. Now they looked like twigs.
"I'm a baby," he said aloud, in Japanese this time, hearing his own high-pitched, almost squeaky voice. "I'm a damn little chick again."
The irony hit him so hard he almost laughed. He had the tactical knowledge in his head to dismantle the Argentine National Team, he knew how to read a triple block in microseconds, he knew how to nourish his body at a molecular level... but he was trapped in the vessel of a kid who would probably get tired running five kilometers.
"This has to be a prank by Atsumu," he muttered, frantically looking around. "Where's my phone?"
He spotted a device on the study desk. It wasn't his latest-generation smartphone. It was his old mobile phone, a model he hadn't seen in nearly a decade. He grabbed it and pressed the button to light up the screen.
The date glowed in blocky pixels:
April 10, Year X (3rd Year of Junior High).
Hinata let the phone drop onto the bed.
Yukigaoka.
He hadn't gone to Karasuno yet. He hadn't met Kageyama yet. He hadn't lost yet.
Hinata looked at his pale, soft hands one more time. He clenched his fist. It was weak. Physically, he was pathetically weak compared to what he remembered.
But then, a slow, calm smile—strangely mature for his childish face—crept onto his lips. His eyes changed. The innocence of the reflection was eclipsed by the predatory gaze of a veteran.
"A whole year before high school..." he whispered, feeling an emotion distinct from adolescent anxiety. It was the calm of a pro. "I have time. This time, I'm not going to run blind."