🔹🏐The Courts Calling🏐🔹- A Haikyuu Fanfiction

The Full Moon Games (Part 3)- It's Time

(Flashback: 10 Years Ago)
Akiraa, Age 8

No matter if you're in the heart of Tokyo or high up in the mountain province, the mid-summer heat can be felt throughout every corner of Japan, but even in the blazing heat Akiraa refuses to waste a second of her summer vacation stuck inside.

A thick layer of sweat coats her forehead while she runs through the freshly cut green grass of her backyard, but she just wipes it off and keeps her eyes focused on an object that she had tossed into the air seconds before.

She ignores the continuous nagging from her two friends, who chose to relax in the shade of the big oak tree behind her house than engage in her summer fun. "Akiraa, come sit down for a little bit!" Kiyomi urges from where she sat on a picnic blanket spread out over the grass. "If you keep this up, you're gonna pass out from heat exhaustion!"

There is shuffling by Kiyomi's side as a mess of blonde hair rises from the ground, holding something in her hand. "Your dad also brought us popsicles, remember?" Mika says as she pokes her fluffy head out from under a giant sun hat. "If you don't eat yours soon, it'll melt."

"Hold on, I've almost got it!" Akiraa tells them, her eyes still locked on something in the sky.

The two girls share a knowing glance before bracing, and they make it just in time before a ball comes hurdling back down toward the ground. With a loud grunt, Akiraa leaps forward to try and get under it in time, but her wild swing sends the ball rocketing toward the oak tree. It slams into the trunk only inches above the girl's heads, where the bark had already been chipped away from her past attempts from earlier that day.

Unfazed, they lower their arms and look back up at Akiraa just as she's running over to retrieve the ball for another try. "What are you even doing anyways?" Kiyomi asks while adjusting the glasses on her nose. "Shouldn't you be practicing for the fall soccer season?"

"Ah, I don't need to practice soccer, I'm already good at it!" Akiraa snorts. "This is something I seen on tv the other night when Dad and Mori were watching some sports thing. It's called volleyball."

"You mean the game I see people playing on the beach?" Mika asks, blinking up at Akiraa with her round, yellow eyes.

Akiraa nods excitedly. "Yeah, but apparently people play it in these big arenas too. It's even in the Olympics! Dad got me this ball at the corner store and I've been practicing ever since, but it's really hard!"

Kiyomi raises an eyebrow as Akiraa turns back around to attempt another receive. "Then why are you even trying?" She asks. "You're already on the soccer team, the baseball team, the basketball team, and taking karate on the weekends. You don't have time for anything else!"

She sees Akiraa come to a stop in the middle of the yard, her head angled down at the volleyball in her hands. "I don't know." She admits, giving it a few spins between her fingers as she thinks.

Kiyomi opens her mouth to add something else, but is suddenly cut off when there is a knock at the backyard gate, and nobody has to ask who it is thanks to the tuffs of wild red hair peeking up over the fence.

After the gate is kicked open, another kid runs into the yard and over to the girls still standing by the tree. "I'm here!" Reisa announces, combing a few sweaty strands of hair out of her eyes. "My brother has been annoying me all morning! He kept stealing my shoes every time I tried to put them on, I almost never got out of the house!"

"I know what you mean." Mika jumps in, her cheeks already puffed up in frustration. "Miyu is always barging into my room and taking my stuff. I can only imagine how awful it's going to be when the twins get here."