Wings of Steel

Part 19~Bombs

Shoyo frowned as he tapped his feet, waiting for a way to get back. "I should have asked to use Kozume's GPS."

"Hinata!" Suga sighed as he spotted the ginger. "Man, I was looking all over."

"Yeah, that's my bad. I should have paid more attention to where I was going, but usually, I run on muscle memory." Shoyo laughed as Suga began to lead him back.

"Hinata, you go all out in every practice, don't you?"

Shoyo snorted, laughing as Suga gave him a weird look. "You think this is me going all out? Nah, no, no, no. Me going all out is very different."

"This isn't you going all out?"

"I think you've got your wording wrong. Going all out is about pushing what your body is capable of to the brink. It's about reaching the pain barrier and going beyond to train your body in a way no one else can achieve, and it's not something I have the luxury to do."

Suga frowned, repeating the word 'luxury' in his head.

"If I went all out, I have about a 50% chance of not walking at all the next day and a 30% of not being able to walk for a week and a 10% of not being able to walk for a month and 1% chance of doing enough permanent damage to never be able to walk again. Going all out in every training session can be a useful tool, but it's not one I can use. Instead, I work on raising everything slowly. You think I go all out because I'm always training, but you don't realise my biggest secret. I have tons of different training exercises for each part of my body! If I can't move one, I work on the other until I can. If you call that going all out, you're mistaking dedication and physiotherapy for training. It's better to do what I can now and focus on forcing my limbs to work with me later, you know?"

"No. Did you just say physiotherapy? Should you be at this club?"

Shoyo smirked, chuckling. "Just try and stop me coming. I don't care about any of that. I don't care if there are days I can't come or if I can't be an amazing volleyball player in the future, I want to be playing volleyball now. As grandma says, 'Forget about tomorrow; ignore what happened yesterday. Live only for today because you don't know where the next landmine is waiting.'"

Suga chuckled softly. "She sounds wise."

"She does until you realise that's not a metaphor. She has about thirty percent of her brain missing, so she can't remember episodic information- things that happened, events in her life etc.; part of that is she can't remember where she buried the bomb. It was deactivated, but she specialised in bombs, so we're not sure that when she woke up fully medicated, she didn't activate it again before burying it. There is an entire part of the natural park blocked off because they couldn't find it."

Suga stopped dead in his tracks. "What?"

"Don't worry. I don't have a bomb." Shoyo paused. "Or the materials to make one."

"You know how to make a bomb?"

"You don't? Come on, we're going to be late back."

"You know how to make a bomb?!"

Shoyo blinked. "Why are you screaming at me?"

"Why do you know how to make a bomb?"

"Why don't you?!"

"Cause I'm not a terrorist in the making!"

"I'm not either! Grandma just wanted to pass down her knowledge. Arisa can do it, Suda can, we all can because to know how to dismantle a bomb, we need to know how to make one."

"Why would you need to know how to dismantle one?"

"Because grandma buried one in the back garden?! Have you not been listening?!"