From Tokyo to Sendai, one hour and forty minutes on the Shinkansen. Kuroo Tetsurou was not looking out the window. Behind his closed eyelids, the same face kept surfacing. The lobby of the national tournament, the space with its lighting dimmed to half. A man he'd happened to encounter near the vending machine corner. Aoba Johsai's jersey. Height: 184.3 cm. Oikawa Tooru. "You lost too, then." That was all. That was all he'd said. But in that single sentence, three years of weight had seeped through. The twisted sincerity of a man who was not a genius, who had tried to catch up to one, who had failed, and yet never stopped moving his hands. In the seat beside him, Saiga Hayate gazed quietly out the window. Seventeen years old. A setter from an obscure school in Miyagi. His thin frame wore the Miyagi Umebachi Kita High jersey, and his jaw was slightly pointed. When Kuroo had first met this man in Karasuno's gymnasium, there had been something in the depths of his eyes—a light that s