After the practice game, the girls walked down the street to the sit-in frozen yogurt shop. Saki and Emiko pushed past the other customers in the store to start taste testing all 32 flavours. They were like chubby-children at the Chocolate Factory.

Hoshi sighed. "I'll keep an eye on 'em. You two want vanilla, right?"

Rina and Mirae nodded. The sisters found a small booth at the corner of the store and sat down. "Dad wanted to come and see ya, but he got called into work."

"It's fine," Mirae lied. "Besides, I came to see you."

"Right, well, we still need to talk about what'll happen from here on out. Dad went to court last week but the judge wasn't convinced. Apparently, mom and her lawyer showed that she's been sober for these past four months. Dad filed for an appeal; he's goin' to try again."

Mirae had only met her father a handful of times and she frowned, trying to understand why it was so important for him to have sole custody of her now.

"You made it to the quarter-finals last year at nationals, right?" she changed the subject. "This year, you've got to make it to the semi-finals."

Rina rolled her eyes. Her sister had a way with words but she should have known better than to manipulate her. "We'd dominate nationals if ya were our setter."

"Your setter now is pretty good."

"Yeah but she plays by the books. Like I get it, give an accurate toss and the spiker handles the rest but she needs to be a bit more dangerous on the court."

"I was your setter for only one year," Mirae grinned. "We were kids."

"That's when I started to gain attention as a spiker. I'm not one to boast-"

"Oh really now?"

"but-" Rina glared playfully, "my popularity and recognition is thanks to you. Listen, Mirae, I've played with ten different setters and practiced with dozens more. They're all talented and good, but none of 'em could hold their own against ya. I think I'm allowed to say it, ya know, being a top-three Ace and everything."

Hoshi approached their table with a cup of frozen yogurt in each hand. "We'll sit over there," she motioned to the opposite side of the room. Emiko and Saki were currently trying to clean spilled yogurt off the table.

Mirae grabbed a stack of napkins off their table and gave it to Hoshi.

"Coming to live here is one thing. Playing volleyball on a team is another. I don't think I'm ready for that."

Rina stirred the chocolate chip flakes into her yogurt. "Ya say that now but the second you're on the court I guarantee it'll change. Look, I know what happened in your last year of junior high was bad. But from here on out ya can play on different teams with different kinds of players. Players who want to push themselves and each other to new heights. You're the type of setter that can make that possible."

"I'm starting to think you want me here just so I can set for you."

Rina shrugged. "I'm your sister, remember? We've got the same hallmark personality traits."

One and the same. Although the Ando sisters were twins, it was rare for someone to confuse them. Rina basked in the spotlight and took daring leaps. Mirae preferred to make her mark from behind the scenes.

Rina could make friends in the blink of an eye and enemies even quicker. Mirae preferred to keep everyone at arm's length.

"Doesn't seem like it's just about playin' on a team again," Rina said. She pointed her spoon at her sister. "This is about managin' Karasuno, isn't it?"

Mirae's eyes widened.

Watching those boys practice and play made her want to do everything she possibly could to help them. The dedication to the sport, the athletic abilities, the strenuous hours of training, the competitiveness that came from knowing they would eventually become worthy opponents, it warmed her heart. She wanted to be there to see them win. She wanted to be there for every moment of it.

"Just so ya know," Rina teased, "the feelin' of victory coming from being on the team versus being on the sidelines is different. Don't forget that you're a manager. You're not really on the team."

On the other side of the store, Emiko rubbed her temples. "This is so good but it hurts so bad."

"I know what ya mean," Saki groaned.

"That's what ya get for eatin' too fast," Hoshi scolded. "Like, I know it says free refills but there's a limit to bein' stupid."

"Heck no, I'm gettin' my money's worth." Saki and Emiko high fived. This was their fifth serving in the last fifteen minutes. Initially, they were going to make a competition to see who could eat the most, but one harsh glare from Hoshi made them pause.

Emiko looked up from her phone and peaked over to where the Ando twins were sitting. "What do you think they're talking about?" she asked.

"Family problems."

"Oh."

"Yeah, Mirae might move here."

She frowned at the idea. "Mirae didn't tell me that."

"It hasn't been decided yet. Ya know how it is with divorced parents; the lawyers, judges, and the paperwork."

"Right," Emiko narrowed her eyes. She turned to Saki. "Mind telling me what The Rat means? Those two weirdos called Mirae that earlier."

Saki and Hoshi shared a look.

"It was what her old teammates called her after the incident in their last year."

"Don't forget the first year of high school."

Hoshi sighed. "I don't know if ya play sports but there's this unwritten rule that everyone follows. It's that the senior players get first dibs on the roster no matter how talented or experienced they are. There are exceptions but if ya look at every team, half the players on the court are in their last year of school."

"Mirae's old team was the same. The coach had all the seniors players on the team. This sense of entitlement, that ya didn't have to work as hard for your position, it makes people lazy. Her teammates stopped coming to practice, when they did they wouldn't set up or clean afterwards. They treated the younger players poorly. Mirae talked to their team captain who did nothing."

"The team captain didn't do anything?" Emiko asked. She had a hard time imagining Ennoshita ignoring a problem that someone brought up to him.

"Yeah. So, she went to the Coach. He wouldn't listen to her either."

"In our prefecture, Mirae's junior high school team was in the top four, always. They had strong and skilled players, but it didn't sit right with her conscious. She believed that the younger ones who came to practice every day, the ones who tried their best, deserved to play. They deserved to be given a chance to make a name for themselves."

"Mirae thought that if the captain and Coach wouldn't do anything, she would. In an important game, one that had recruiters from top high school teams watching, she played in a way that helped the opposite team trap her spikers."

"Her team realized it. They usually played freely knowin' that as the setter, Mirae was gonna make it easy for 'em. But at that game she didn't. For the first time since she was their setter, they had to play full sets and they barely won."

Saki pushed her phone towards Emiko. The picture was from a few years ago, captioned Komoi Junior Barely Passes! and showed a scoreboard.

16:25, 25:23, and 28:26.

"She figured that if they lost, the senior players would leave and the younger players had a chance."

"It was a good plan. Honestly, none of us realized that Mirae was making these mistakes on purpose until she told us."

"Yeah, I never thought I'd see a setter who could make the opposite team's blockers look stronger than they were. Everyone thought their opponents were advanced."

"Those two girls who came to our school earlier were the first to realize. After the game, in the changin' rooms, they told the rest of the team. That's when they called her the Rat."

"It wasn't just name callin'," Saki grimaced, "it got physically violent. They tried to break her knee."

Emiko glanced over at the sisters.

"She thought it would be old news by the next year, but her old teammates ended up at the same high school. The bullyin' continued, and then there was that incident with her mom, so she moved to Miyagi with her grandmother."

"Have you heard about that?"

"Just that her mom got sick."

"That's put nicely," Saki scoffed. "No, Mirae was studyin' late that night when she heard her mom fall. She called the ambulance because her mother wasn't breathing. The doctors brought her back from the brink of death."

Emiko aimed her empty cup at the trash can and chucked it across the room. "And then I entered the story. Well girls, I hate to say it, but I hope Mirae doesn't move back here. I'd miss her too much."

Saki and Hoshi glanced at each other.

They wanted to use this visit as an excuse to persuade Mirae to come back. Not just to volleyball, but back to them.

Saki, Hoshi, Mirae, and Rina practiced volleyball in the same club when they were five years old. They played together and against each other for years. The four of them had even competed in the All-Japan Tournament for Under 10 and celebrated their golden victory.

They had been through a lot together, but ever since the twins' parents divorced and Mirae went to a different middle school the four of them became strangers.

"It was disgusting!" Emiko exclaimed. She was showing them a picture of a nasty bruise on Mirae's face and narrating to them how a boy from Karasuno had accidentally hit her with a volleyball.

If Mirae had brought Emiko here to meet them, then it wasn't done on a whim. It meant that Mirae had finally learned to trust someone again, trust them enough to meet the only people she still cared for. Even if she cared for them at a distance.

Saki and Hoshi stared at each other and smiled.

|Note|

This won't be the last of Rina, Hoshi, and Saki ;)

Up next is the Tokyo Training camp! We hope you're as excited as we are, and please don't forget to vote!

|End Note|