The return journey to Miyagi Prefecture was a silent agony. The engine of Coach Ukai's old bus rumbled in the void of a team that had no more words.
I looked out the window at the city lights passing quickly, but my eyes didn't focus on anything.
I felt the weight of the bib I had taken off, still soaked with the smell of a bench on which I had remained glued while the dreams of my teammates went to pieces.
We stopped at a small restaurant for dinner. It was a tradition.
Ukai had ordered hearty dishes, meat, rice and soup, but the atmosphere was ghostly.
Nobody spoke.
The only sound was that of chopsticks hitting the ceramic plates.
Hinata and Kageyama were sitting opposite each other. All of a sudden, tears began to fall into their rice plates.
Hinata was trembling, trying to swallow a bite that seemed made of sand.
Kageyama, usually so tough, had his face streaked with tears while chewing furiously, as if punishing himself for every mistake made on the court.
"Eat," Ukai said with a hoarse voice, keeping his gaze low. "To become strong you have to eat."
I saw Daichi, our captain. He was the one who had to hold the team together, but his eyes were dull, fixed on the steam of the soup.
Beside him, Asahi and Sugawara remained in silence, aware that for them, as third-year students, that had perhaps been the last chance to shine together.
The sound of the rain hitting the corrugated iron roof of the restaurant was the only sound capable of filling that unnatural silence.
It was not a light rain, but a violent tapping that seemed to want to crush our low heads even more.
Tanaka, who usually occupied every inch of air with his screams and laughter, was motionless this time. He kept his elbows planted on the table and his gaze fixed inside the bowl, but he didn't eat.
His eyes were glassy and his jaw was contracted in a grimace of silent rage that he did not dare to vent.
Beside him, Ennoshita, Kinoshita and Narita stared into the void with an expression of total defeat. They, who had remained to watch like me, seemed consumed by a sense of uselessness different from mine.
I stared at my intact plate. I wasn't hungry. I only had a sense of nausea rising in my throat. Seeing my teammates reduced like this made me feel like a traitor.
I was the one with the "gift", yet I had been the only one who could do nothing while they drowned.
That night, back home, I didn't even turn on the light. I threw myself on the bed, staring at the dark ceiling while the rain began to pitter-patter against the window glass.
The burning behind my eyes had diminished, but the wound in my pride was wide open.
"System," I whispered in the glacial silence of the room.
"WARNING: Sharingan functionality prohibited for neural restoration."
I closed my eyes and gripped the sheets. In that moment, in the dark, I understood the truth. I had sat on my laurels. I had trusted a power that was not mine, thinking that a shortcut would bring me to the top of the world. But volleyball is not a calculation, it is effort.
"I can no longer rely only on you," I thought, speaking to that mechanical voice. "The power must come from me. If my body is too weak to contain these eyes, then the eyes are only a curse. From now on, strength will come from effort, from true fatigue, from my muscles."
I couldn't stay still. I left the house in silence, with the ball under my arm. I reached a nearby park, where a flickering lamppost illuminated a peeling concrete wall. I started hitting the ball.
Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
No slowed down visions, no trajectory calculations.
Only me and the dry sound of leather on concrete.
I continued until my arms became like lead and my hands started to burn from the friction. I wanted to feel the pain of the flesh, not that of the system.
The next day, in the gym, the air was still heavy as fog. The training resumed, but the rhythm was broken.
Sugawara saw me while I was staring at the motionless net, lost in my thoughts. He approached with his usual calm and put a hand on my shoulder.
"Yuya, you have a look that is scary," he said with a sad smile, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
"I feel like a failure, Suga-san. If I had been on the field yesterday, maybe..."
Sugawara shook his head firmly. "Don't think like that. You are not a God, Yuya. You are a player. And players sometimes get injured or collapse. The secret is not to have a perfect talent, but to know what to do when that talent is no longer enough. Go back to basics. Work on your physical strength, on your endurance. If you can stay on the field longer than others without giving in, your chance will come again. Miracles are not needed every second, sometimes you just need a body that doesn't give up."
Those human words made me breathe better than any glowing interface.
The following day, my sister Kaede entered my room without knocking, throwing open the curtains. "Kazuki, move it. I have to go to Tokyo to run some errands for work and I don't feel like going alone. You act as my bodyguard."
I didn't feel like going out, but Kaede didn't accept a no as an answer. The train journey to Tokyo was long. She noticed my silence in these days.
"Stop torturing yourself," she said looking out the window. "You're just a kid playing volleyball, not the savior of the world."
Arriving in the frantic crowd of Shibuya, I felt dazed.
Kaede stopped suddenly right in the middle of the Shibuya pedestrian crossing while thousands of people streaked past us like faceless shadows.
She turned slowly and the lights of the giant screens were reflected in her blue eyes making her gaze even sharper than usual.
She was exactly as tall as me and staying face to face with her always gave me a strange feeling of awe. Her long black hair fell down her back to her hips and swayed at every gust of wind like a dark cloak that made her even more severe.
She took me by the arm and her grip was cold and decisive as if she feared I could evaporate at any moment.
"These days you've seemed strange," Kaede told me and continued the sentence." You don't even seem like you anymore since you joined the volleyball club."
In that moment I felt a shiver run down my spine because her words hit a truth that even I couldn't yet fully understand. I didn't answer her but lowered my gaze to my hands which continued to tremble without ceasing.
I didn't answer her but lowered my gaze to my hands which continued to tremble without ceasing. I felt an atrocious conflict inside my mind as if two different lives were punching each other to decide who had the right to stay.
I thought I was someone who came from outside but the memories I had told me the opposite. Maybe I had never gone away and I had never arrived anywhere. Maybe I had always been Yuya Kazuki and I had only awakened memories that didn't belong to me, but that were now suffocating my true soul.
Kaede looked at me for a few seconds thoughtful while she placed her hand on her chin.
"In my opinion you should just stop thinking too much."
Maybe she wasn't wrong.
"Yes, maybe you're right," I answered her.
I stared at my palm and suddenly all the chaos I had in my head vanished.
I understood something deep down that had haunted me for all these days.
I was Yuya Kazuki and that girl as tall as me was really my sister.
I finally accepted my life and felt a pleasant warmth in my chest. My body relaxed completely and I stopped looking like a piece of wood.
Kaede noticed it immediately and let go of the grip on my arm taking a good breath.
"Finally you've recovered?" she said, fixing her long black hair that reached her hips.
"Yes" I replied with a true smile. "I had just remained stuck in my thoughts."
She gave me a pat on the shoulder so hard it made me stagger.
"Good because if you continued to make that funeral face I would have dumped you here. Move it, we're late."
We walked for a bit away from the noise until we found ourselves in front of a huge place.
It looked like a fortified city in the middle of Tokyo. There was a giant gate with a symbol that I knew all too well.
WHATT????
WHY HERE???
I knew this place, I had already seen it.
"But this is the Totsuki" I exclaimed, stopping with my mouth open. "The cooking school of the rich?".
Kaede looked at me as if I were stupid. "Yuya but where do you live? I told you a thousand times that I work here. I am the official organizer of events and the assistant of the Director in person."
"What!? You work for the director!?" I said surprised as I widened my eyes.
"Exactly" she replied while we entered with extreme confidence. "As soon as I left university I managed an international congress that went great. Senzaemon Nakiri, the 'General of Cooking', was there.
He liked how I managed a crisis with suppliers and offered me the position on the spot. In practice I am his right hand. If there is an important banquet or a high-level Shokugeki there I am behind the scenes."
"So you spend your time with starred chefs?" I asked her with sarcasm.
"I spend my time making sure that these geniuses of cooking do not destroy the reputation of the school" she said naturally ignoring my sarcastic tone.
"Food here is a serious thing. So make sure you don't touch anything and especially don't taste anything if you don't want to end up with your clothes exploding."
"What? Why should my clothes explode?" I asked confused following her inside.
"Forget it, it's a long story" she said greeting the guards. "Now stay here in the park of the school and don't move. I have to take these documents to the office. If you see someone with a professional knife run in the opposite direction. I'll be right back."
Kaede's figure became smaller and smaller until it disappeared in the distance.
I stayed there alone sitting on one of the benches in the park observing the space around me. The air smelled of delicious things and the building was so large that I felt very small.