MONSOON, ushijima wakatoshi

005

'Farewell, my paradise'

Spring qualifiers came in the blink of an eye.

The team had been practicing endlessly and undoubtedly possessed a high potential of winning the qualifier. For this final round, Shiratorizawa was going against the crows of Karasuno. Aiya was pleasantly surprised to see how far they reached and was particularly interested in the small, orange-haired player on the team. The first time she heard about him was actually from Wakatoshi himself, who told her about his meeting with the player—Hinata Shōyō—and the Karasuno setter called Kageyama Tobio outside of the school grounds during one of his morning runs.

His reaction truly astonished her. Ushijima wasn't one to mince his words around and told her that he "didn't like baseless confidence" which was expected. But then the interesting bit was his expression that followed after, feeling the heat of the pure fire that ignited in his eyes at that moment. She was so impressed by Hinata's conviction of defeating Shiratorizawa. Ushijima was definitely looking forward to facing the middle blocker.

The days following the qualifiers were particularly busy for the third years. Aiya, Ushijima, Ōhira, Semi, Yamagata, and even Tendō were often gathered in the library to study for finals and university preparations. She honestly hadn't expected to be this close to the volleyball team but once the guess monster heard that Aiya was helping to tutor the ace, he insisted that he should come along for some "sibling bonding". Soon after, the rest of the guys followed.

Shiratorizawa was, of course, notorious for being one of the most difficult private schools to get into, and that rendered equally challenging courses. Many students including the volleyball ace were accepted by sports scholarships which is why the school had such a strong team. But make no mistake, that didn't mean classes were smooth sailing for them.

To be completely honest Aiya had been half working hard and half free-balling the last semester, knowing that her current grades were good enough to get into decent universities. However, most of her worries were directed toward her boyfriend's studies as she knew he would sometimes struggle. She did whatever she could to help him despite Wakatoshi saying that she didn't need to mind him too much. He reasons that his volleyball career was at a place where he didn't need to so much so blink twice at his grade portfolio. Even though this may sound particularly big-headed, she knew that the ace rarely sugar-coated his words. That was that and it was the truth. He had one of the most impressive resumes for his age and there were no words needed to be spoken about his volleyball skills. The boy was already looking for professional league-level teams to join after graduating.

Speaking of tutoring, one of her fondest memories with Wakatoshi was when he came over to her house—Fujita being incredibly open arms at the request—before a particularly difficult upcoming unit test on physics. They worked endlessly in Aiya's living room knowing the subject required extra effort for both of them. At one point she started a reward system to help her boyfriend, seeing how easily bored he became of studying. Before arriving home she made a stop to the local convenience store around the block and bought these cute panda biscuits with strawberry filling. For every correct answer, she fed him one snack and it was surprisingly more effective than she thought.