Chapter 70: End and After the Match
Ichise Guren's sudden shout drew the attention of everyone present. Karasuno's members naturally understood who Ichise Guren was calling out to and why he was shouting like that.
But for Aoba Johsai's players, Ichise Guren's appearance seemed somewhat baffling.
Except for those who knew of Ichise Guren's past record from Kitagawa Daiichi and the members of Aoba Johsai's coaching staff, everyone else looked at this suddenly yelling substitute with confusion.
However, Hyakuzawa Yudai suddenly came to his senses.
'That's right.'
'What am I doing?'
'Why am I stubbornly fighting against something I clearly can't do yet when there's obviously a better solution?'
'If I'm not satisfied, then I'll go back and practice receiving like crazy.'
'But right now, what I need to do is trust my teammates!'
"Hoshino! Daichi-senpai!"
Hyakuzawa Yudai also raised his voice: "Please!"
"Oh! Leave it to me."
Hoshino Masaru readily accepted Hyakuzawa Yudai's request, and captain Daichi also nodded seriously, indicating he would receive this ball.
Hyakuzawa Yudai retreated to the back line, and taking his place in the back row were Karasuno's current libero, Hoshino Masaru, and setter Kageyama Tobio. Despite being a setter, Kageyama Tobio understood perfectly well that without a first touch, the setter's existence would lose all meaning.
So they had to receive this ball at this moment!
Meanwhile, Sawamura in the front row also moved back as much as possible within the positioning constraints before the serve, trying to maximize his movement range for rescue when the serve came.
Oikawa Tooru raised an eyebrow slightly.
"The brave giant has set aside his stubborn pride and chosen to trust his teammates, no longer fighting alone."
"And I, naturally, will oblige you."
With a mischievous smile, Oikawa Tooru continued to serve with maximum power within his control safety line, aimed straight at Hyakuzawa Yudai.
Another serve that broke everyone's expectations. Oikawa Tooru always pulled out completely unrelated weapons when others had prepared for something, catching people off guard.
Hyakuzawa Yudai was also caught off guard by this sudden serve, barely managing to receive the ball without letting it hit the ground, but the powerful impact made the quality of this first touch terrible.
There was almost no room for tactical setting.
"This is exactly what I want - a head-on confrontation with us!"
During warm-up, Oikawa Tooru had already figured out that Karasuno's powerful offensive core was the speed attack combination formed by his genius underclassman and that little middle blocker.
As long as he disrupted the opponent's first touch and prevented them from continuing to use tactical quick attacks, he could force them into high ball confrontations. With the opposing two-meter giant rotated to the back row, relying solely on that bald spiker's attacks.
Aoba Johsai could compete using their height and blocking, avoiding the situation where they were suppressed by Hinata Shoyo's quick attacks earlier.
But it was precisely in this situation with no room for tactical setting options.
Kageyama Tobio showed no hesitation whatsoever. Instead, he decisively, even somewhat eagerly, sent out an ultra-long quick attack set from the back row.
As if someone was urging him to set quickly.
The Aoba Johsai players in defensive positions all focused their vision on the volleyball, their bodies moving ahead of their minds, beginning to chase after the volleyball.
But this ball wasn't something you could defend against by moving after seeing the set.
'Freak quick!'
Hinata Shoyo's dramatically shifting figure tore through everyone's sense of space on the court. The orange-haired boy appeared in front of the volleyball as if teleporting.
To be precise, Hinata Shoyo's jump was even earlier than Kageyama Tobio's set. He was like a magnet, attracting the attention of all setters.
The volleyball flew into his hands.
With the sound of wind, the volleyball in the orange-haired boy's palm thundered toward Aoba Johsai's court.
Spike score!!
"Nice! Hinata!"
Karasuno's players gathered around Hinata Shoyo, celebrating this spike that broke the opponent's consecutive scoring momentum.
Among the celebrating crowd, Tanaka Ryunosuke was the most enthusiastic, holding Hinata's head and continuously rubbing his hair: "You little guy, you've really got something!"
Meanwhile, Sugawara Koshi on the bench was worried about Kageyama Tobio's emotions. Even though it was his set, the one being praised was Hinata Shoyo.
"Nice set, Kageyama!"
But the suddenly addressed Kageyama Tobio seemed confused: "Huh? Ah, yes~"
Sugawara Koshi's emotional perception ability and ability to break atmosphere were indeed very friendly and useful for ordinary people. But for someone like Kageyama Tobio, whose eyes only had volleyball.
His way of thinking was simple.
'The points I spike are my points. When you spike my sets for points, those are also my points.'
Although everyone was praising Hinata Shoyo, Kageyama Tobio actually didn't mind this at all.
The moment Hinata Shoyo spiked, Oikawa Tooru's pupils contracted, as if he had seen some interesting toy.
Although the impact of the freak quick brought him considerable shock, this kind of setting might be extremely attractive to all excellent setters.
However, Kageyama Tobio's absurd setting accuracy still brought Oikawa Tooru considerable pressure.
'Tobio-chan, your changes are very interesting indeed.'
His plan to force the opponents into high ball attacks had failed, and in this attack, the most important factor was Kageyama Tobio's ultra-long but exceptionally precise quick attack set.
The emotions of both hating and loving this quick attack were clearly visible on Oikawa Tooru's face.
He hated Kageyama Tobio's innate ball sense, but loved this quick attack method.
...
After breaking serve, Karasuno pressed their advantage with their storm-like offensive methods, bombarding Aoba Johsai's court in waves. Oikawa Tooru, after scoring four points with his serves, was substituted by the coach to rest.
In the coach's consideration, although he didn't know Ichise Guren was at Karasuno before, the fact that they weren't putting him on court meant they were hiding something.
Naturally, he wouldn't expose all their trump cards either.
The match ended with Karasuno successfully taking victory with a 2-0 score, while both sides intentionally or unintentionally held back something.
After the match, under Takeda-sensei's words, Karasuno concluded their training match journey.
These words could be called the main theme of the entire Haikyuu!! manga.
When one person meets another, a chemical change occurs. At this very moment, somewhere in the world, encounters that change destiny are happening. That might be somewhere in a distant country, might be on the other side of the earth, might be on an eastern island nation, in an extremely ordinary high school in the north, or might be in an extremely ordinary volleyball club. I believe such encounters exist here at Karasuno too. Although there's no basis for it, you must believe that from now on, you will definitely become stronger and stronger.
On the way to the team bus, Sawamura Daichi was still telling his teammates that their receiving definitely needed further strengthening to face off against Aoba Johsai with Oikawa Tooru.
"Worthy of being captain, you understand the situation well."
Oikawa Tooru was already waiting on the inevitable path.
After delivering some harsh words, Oikawa Tooru prepared to leave. He hadn't really expected his words to pressure Karasuno, nor was this psychological warfare.
It was simply his personality showing through.
Meanwhile, Kageyama Tobio, this child, was still using all the emotional intelligence he had learned in his lifetime, trying to mediate between his team captain and the senpai he once greatly admired.
But Sawamura Daichi didn't refute or get angry, only leaving his teammates with one sentence.
"Karasuno's guardian deity is about to return."
After returning to school, once Karasuno had assembled, Sawamura Daichi gave the order to head home after cleaning up the court.
Takeda-sensei indicated that they already had a coach candidate in mind.
Ichise Guren, who seemed possessed by Hoshino Masaru today with his extremely low presence, still didn't speak again, just quietly watching everything.
Until
In the equipment room, Yamaguchi Tadashi pointed to a broken mop and said:
"This is dangerous. Should we throw it away?"
But Sugawara Koshi responded:
"No need, we don't need to throw it away. This can still be used if we fix it, right?"
Looking at the somewhat touched expression on his senpai's face, Yamaguchi Tadashi looked confused about what Sugawara-senpai was talking about.
"If there's new complete equipment available, why not use it?"
At this moment, Ichise Guren spoke up for the first time in a while, wheeling in a set of wooden floor-specific wash-mop-vacuum integrated machines.
Looking at the pointed implications from Ichise Guren, the usually gentle and cheerful Sugawara Koshi uncharacteristically opposed Ichise Guren's words.
"Hahaha, even if new things are better and more amazing, they still need breaking in and learning how to use properly, right?"
"Besides, they're not necessarily more handy than old ones. New high-tech always has areas it can't cover, while mops that have been passed down for thousands of years always have their own unique advantages."
"This is senpai's words of experience."
After saying this, Sugawara Koshi stared directly at Ichise Guren without backing down.
Ichise Guren scratched the back of his head: "Hahaha, you're right about that."
Hearing this, Sugawara Koshi breathed a sigh of relief. Although he didn't know if Ichise Guren was hinting at something, no matter what, he didn't want to give ground on this matter.
But then Ichise Guren continued:
"But we should at least compare them, right?"
"After all, I went through the trouble of bringing this new cleaning equipment over. If we don't even compare once and just stick with the mop, forget the machine even I would feel unsatisfied."
Sugawara Koshi fell silent for a moment, then raised his head.
With a smile, he replied to Ichise Guren:
"Alright."
***
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