You outshine everything, even the sun / at its zenith
POEMS FOR AKHMATOVA, MARINA TSVETAEVA
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Life is full of lessons Yoshimura Mizuki learns the hard way. In no particular order, they are:
1. Not everyone is cut from the same cloth.
Some people are born brilliant while others have to work twice as hard. Mizuki was eight years old when she held a volleyball in her hands for the very first time and discovered that she has more talent in her pinky toe than most people have in their entire bodies. She was nine when she said told her parents this is what I want to for the rest of my life and they signed her up for every youth volleyball camp they could find.
From there, she followed in her sister's footsteps, eventually going on to lead the Aoba Johsai Girls' Volleyball Club to Nationals two (soon to be three!) years in a row. And even though they lost both times, placing 7th and 2nd respectively (the latter a loss that hasn't quite healed yet), Mizuki made a name for them in the world of high school volleyball. Carved a legacy for them that will last for decades, reminding everyone they are the Masters of the Court.
(Mizuki didn't realize it at the time, but her talent is not blessing so much as it is a curse.)
2. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
An old saying, and maybe even a little pretentious of her to say, but it's true – though Mizuki does not wear hers as if it is as light as a feather. Dubbed one of the best high school volleyball players in all of Japan by her second year and nicknamed the Star of Seijoh for that very reason, Mizuki's crown is heavier than most. No one warned her the fate that befalls young prodigies like her, forced to carry the weight of their team on their shoulders. Seconds away from being crushed under a mountain of expectations they cannot possibly meet.
(It's only a matter of time before Mizuki cracks under the pressure.)
3. The higher you climb, the harder you fall.
This is a fact. This is science. The higher an object goes before it falls, the more gravitational potential energy it has, which is then converted into kinetic energy, which in turn increases the final velocity of the object. In Layman's terms, the object will accelerate to higher speeds the longer it falls. And the longer it falls, the bigger the impact is. Butterflies like her are fragile little things. Let the wind carry their wings and they can reach great heights, but their survival is dependent on their environment. They're cold-blooded creatures, meaning they use light from the sun to warm the muscles they use to fly. Take the sunshine away and you'll be clipping their wings, watching them fall, a feeling Mizuki is starting to know all too well these days.
(So maybe it is fate, then, when she meets a boy who just so happens to be sunshine incarnate.)
