"Yuuka-senpai!" Christiana called her out. Yuuka turned around and saw Christiana running to her. "Can you teach me how to serve properly? The coach said I could ask you for help. I can't get a ball over the net properly..."

She smiled and nodded. "Of course. Should we start with the most simple ones?" The German girl agreed and they moved to the side to not bother the others. "First," she started to speak again to her friend when they were isolated. She took a ball from the cart and held it in front of her, "You don't want to throw the ball too high if you want to do an overhand serve. You are good at doing upper hand serve right?" She nodded. "Then, we will focus on overhand serve, go take a ball as well."

"Alright!" She picked a ball and waited for new instructions.

"So as I was saying, don't toss the ball too high, just high enough for your arm to hit it. Then, you put your dominant feet back and held the ball in your non-dominant hand. When you are ready, you toss it over your head and hit it." She demonstrated her explanation and the ball went over the net easily. "Be careful to not send the ball too much on the side or too far from you or you won't be able to serve correctly."

"I get it!" She positioned herself as Yuuka did before, she took a deep breath with closed-eyes to focus on her objective. She opened her eyes again and tossed the ball up with her left hand and hit it when her arm was high-up in the air. The ball did a beautiful arch movement yet, it did not go over the net. "Nooo!" She fell on her knees desperate as her serves did not succeed yet again.

Her upper-class friend crouched next to her and put a hand on her back. "Hey, it was a good serve! Now, you just need to get a bit stronger and hit it harder so it can go over the net pretty easily."

"I'll do a hundred push-ups every day then!" she yelled as she looked back up and stared into her eyes.

"You... don't need to do that, really. If you just come to practice every time and do it properly it will do the trick, I promise."

She nodded again and got herself fired up then continued to train on her serves. Yanni was watching from the side and tried to imitate what her two friends did. She sent it successfully on the other side and quietly cheered at her small victory. She was not bad at serving in the first place but she admired her upper-class and wanted to be as good as her. She continued to train on her own and began to try a jump serve when she started to do very well with her overhanw serves. The coach noticed her trying to do jump serves and walked to her.

"Hondashi-chan," she called for her. The girl stopped all movements when she heard her name being called. She turned to face her coach and bowed politely. "You don't need to bow every time I talk to you. Anyway, I noticed you've been starting to train on jump serves. Do you want some advice?" She nodded and waited for her coach to continue. She started to give her some advice to improve her serves and gave her an example to illustrate her explanation. Yanni listened very carefully to everything she said and nodded every now and then. "Do you get it?"

"Yes. Thank you, coach."

"No problem. But I think you could ask Yuuka for more advice. She's better than me at serves." The girl became stiff and looked away. "You don't want to?"

"It's," she paused, looking at the ground, "it's not that. I..."

"Do you need some help?" said a voice behind them.

They both looked up to see a red-haired girl. "Oh, Yuuka. I was going to ask you to help Hondashi-chan. She wants to learn how to do jump serves."

"Oh really? That's so cool!" She looked at the first year with a big smile. "You can ask me anything, I will help you!" The girl looked down, her cheeks started to heat up. "Are you okay, Honda-chan?" Yuuka asked her as she bent down to look at her face.

"Don't call me that, you," she stopped mid-way then looked up. "Yuubaka!"

The silence felt in the gym as the other girls heard their conversation. Yuuka looked at her dumbfounded. "What did you say?"

"Yuubaka!"

She felt her anger boiled inside of her. "Can I know why you're calling me that?"

"Because you called me 'Honda-chan' and because it fits you well."

"She's true though," Mayu admitted as she walked towards them.

"Don't start now Mayu!"

"Yuubaka! Can you hurry up? We're leaving without you!" a voice yelled in the gym. They turned to see Iwaizumi standing in the door frame with Oikawa behind him.

"Hi everyone!" Oikawa greeted them.

"Don't you start calling me Yuubaka too, Hajime!" she yelled as she stormed to the bench to grab her things.

He raised an eyebrow and repeated 'too' as he did not understand what she meant by that. "Hondashi just called her that and now she's upset," Mayu explained to him.

"Hondashi? Who's that?"

"Her," she pointed to the black-haired girl who was packing her stuff.

"Do we have an Iwa-chan number 2?" Oikawa asked as he stared at the girl. His friend glared at him which gave him goosebumps.

Yuuka glanced at the one who insulted her and she noticed something interesting. Hondashi was herself glancing at someone else with a slight blush on her cheeks. As she realized what was happening, she started to smirk and laugh like a demon. The others stared at her evil looks and felt that it meant bad news. Yuuka felt a hand on her head and she looked up to see an angry Iwaizumi.

"I said, hurry up."

He grabbed her by the collars and dragged her out of the gym. Despite her cries, he continued to drag her out outside until they left the gym. Oikawa followed them closely but did not try to help her friend. "Are they always like that?" Yuki wondered as she watched them from afar.

"Yes, they are. They're all close friends after all," the coach answered. "Now, hurry up and clean up. They had to leave earlier so Yuuka is exempted from cleaning duty for today."

"Not fair," Akane mumbled as she picked the balls up.

"Stop complaining and hurry up!" the coach yelled at her and everyone started to move faster.

Akane hurried to Mayu's side to ask her a question that had been bothering her. "Why did they leave early by the way?"

She thought for a moment. "Oh right, they had a duty as siblings to do."

"Siblings?"

"Yuuka had to pick her sister's up and the same for Iwaizumi because their siblings were on a school trip."

"Their siblings are in the same school?" Mayu nodded and continued her explanation.

"And Touru was supposed to pick his nephew up."

"Does he?" Sasha asked. "I'm pretty sure he didn't want to go back home alone." Mayu agreed with her and they went back to clean the gym.

"So Touru," Yuuka started after they left the school. "Why did you tag along? You could have stayed and trained a bit more."

Oikawa turned to look at her then looked away with a bit of a blush. After a moment of silence, Hajime answered for his friend. "Pretty sure he didn't want to go home alone."

"That's not true!" His blush grew stronger and he puffed his cheeks.

Yuuka rose an eyebrow. "Since when does it bother you?"

He hesitated for a moment. "I don't like you two going home without me."

"Why?" He did not answer and kept looking away with his red cheeks. "Do you feel alone?"

"N-no!"

Yuuka giggled. "You're so cute when you want, Trashykawa."

"Don't call me that!"

They reached Yuuka and Hajime's siblings' schools. They walked towards the bus that was parked in front of the school. Lila, Yuuka's sister, noticed them and ran as fast as she could into her sister's arms. The latter lifted her up and hugged her as well. Soon after, Hajima's sibling came running towards them as well.

"How was your day you two?" Oikawa asked the little ones. They wore huge smiles and Lila answered him with a lot of enthusiasm how awesome it was. "What did you do?"

"We went to the zoo in Tokyo!" Iwaizumi's brother answered.

"And we draw some animals!"

"Oh, really? What did you two draw?"

"A giraffe!" they both said.

They continued to talk while they walked back home. Oikawa did most of the talking like always but the two children liked him very much and they always had fun together. Lila and Iwaizumi's brother, Shô, were very close to each other. Ever since Yuuka became friends with Hajime and Touru, Lila and Shô also became friends very quickly. They are the "bestest of friends" as they liked to say. They eventually reached Yuuka's home and they waved goodbye before the two girls entered their house. The three boys waited a bit in front of the house, Oikawa and Iwaizumi seemingly worried, then they went back home as well.

Before they parted ways to go to their house, Oikawa spoke up. "Shouldn't we do something?"

Iwaizumi sighed as if he knew he was going to ask this. "You're always asking the same thing. You know we can't do anything as long as she doesn't want us to be involved."

"Yes but," he stopped for a bit, looking at the ground, "it's out last year before going to college. We both know that there is no way that witch is going to let her go wherever she wants! She has to go to a school where she can continue her path to become a professional volleyball player!"

"Did you ask her if it was what she wanted?"

He hesitated. "She told me once. Twice even. Back in middle-school before her brother died and a second time a year ago when she was in the hospital."

"I see. But, you know," Iwaizumi put a hand on his shoulder, "I think she'll be able to leave her house after high-school."

"But for Lila? She'll never leave her there."

"She'll be able to take her with her, maybe. She's always wanted to leave this place with her so I'm sure she'll be able to do it. Believe in her."

Iwaizumi left as he carried his tired brother on his back. He turned his head towards Oikawa and gave him a small nod like he understood his feelings. Oikawa clenched his fists and walked away once his friend was out of sight. He walked back home, wearing a grave look. He walked to his room and greeted his family members, trying his best to smile so he could hide his gloomy feelings. He sat down on his bed once he reached his room and felt on his back. He closed his eyes, his mind wandering with the thought of his best friend. He hated the fact that she had always lived a horrible life and the only way for her to escape all her problem was school. He hated that he could not do anything. He wished he could take her away from all this. But what could he do other than waiting for school to finish? For now, he should focus on volleyball and keeping a smile on her face as much as he could. The tournament was coming so he needed to focus on it to beat his opponents and especially Shiratorizawa.