The High School Boys' Volleyball Club wasn't a club. It was an archaeological ruin.
Hinata slid the door open and was greeted by a cloud of dust dancing in the afternoon sunbeam. The smell was unmistakable: old rubber, stale sweat from three generations ago, and neglect.
Inside, the scene was desolate. A ball cart was overturned in a corner. The nets were a Gordian knot on a table. And the balls... the balls were sad, deflated spheres, wrinkled like giant raisins.
Any other student would have closed the door and gone to the computer club.
Hinata Shoyo stepped in, dropped his bag on the clean floor, and rubbed his hands together.
"Well," he said to the empty air. "At least no one will complain if I rearrange the furniture."
He didn't waste time lamenting. His body moved with automatic efficiency. He threw open every window to purge the stale air. He righted the ball cart. He found a manual air pump on a rusty shelf.
Hiss... hiss... hiss...
The rhythmic sound of air entering the ball broke the silence of the annex gym.
Hinata pressed the leather with his thumbs. Still soft. He kept pumping. His eyes, however, weren't looking at the ball. They were looking toward the open gym door.
"If you're going to stand there, you're going to put down roots," Hinata said without stopping the pumping.
In the doorframe, half-hidden by the shadow, Wakana Gojo jumped. He had been there for two minutes, debating whether to enter or flee.
"I... uh..." Gojo stammered, discovered.
"Come in." Hinata put the pump down and tossed him the ball, which now had a decent shape.
Gojo caught it clumsily against his chest, as if it were a bomb.
"You have height," Hinata said, looking him up and down as one evaluates a construction beam. "I need height. That net up there is more tangled than the headphones in my pocket. Can you help me?"
Gojo looked at the net hanging on the high wall hooks. for Hinata, it would require a ladder or dangerous climbing. For Gojo, it only required lifting his arms.
"Ah... yes. Sure."
Gojo put the ball down carefully and approached. It felt strange. Usually, people asked him for things with mockery or impatience. Hinata asked him as if he were the only person in the world capable of doing this specific task.
Gojo raised his arms and began working on the top knots. Hinata attacked the bottom ones.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. The only sounds were the friction of the nylon rope and the focused breathing of both boys.
Hinata, while untangling a stubborn loop, observed Gojo's hands.
They were right at his eye level. They were large hands, fitting for his height. But they weren't rough hands. Hinata had spent years watching the hands of Japan's best setters: Kageyama, Atsumu, Oikawa. He knew how to recognize "intelligent hands."
Gojo's hands had band-aids on the index finger and thumb. They had small specks of something that looked like dried paint or glue near the nails. But the most important thing was how they moved. They didn't pull at the net with brute force; they slid the threads with extreme delicacy, separating the strands without forcing them.
"You have the hands of a creator," Hinata blurted out suddenly.
Gojo froze. His fingers twitched on the net.
"W-what?"
"Your hands," Hinata insisted, pointing at them with his chin. "Those aren't the hands of someone who breaks things. Those are the hands of someone who makes them. You have incredible fine motor skills. Do you play the piano? Surgeon in training?"
Gojo's heart began to hammer. It was the question he always feared. What do you do? Why are you always alone? The usual answer in his head was "weird things."
But he remembered Hinata's voice on the basketball court. "It's an art."
Gojo swallowed hard. He looked at the net, unable to look Hinata in the eye.
"Dolls," he whispered. It was so quiet it was almost inaudible.
"Huh?"
"Hina dolls," Gojo repeated, a little louder, closing his eyes and waiting for the laughter. "My grandfather is a Hina doll craftsman. I... I'm learning. I paint the faces. I make the clothes."
The silence stretched for three seconds. To Gojo, it felt like three years.
"You paint the faces?" Hinata asked. His tone wasn't mocking. It was pure disbelief.
Gojo opened one eye. Hinata was leaning in, invading his personal space to look at his hands more closely, eyes shining with fascination.
"On those tiny heads?" Hinata continued. "The workspace is microscopic! If your hand shakes even a millimeter, you ruin the whole expression, right?"
"Y-yes," Gojo blinked, surprised by the technical accuracy of the comment. "You have to hold your breath when tracing the eyes. The brush is... very fine."
"That's brutal!" Hinata exclaimed, punching his own palm. "That's absolute concentration! It's like a float serve: if you hit it with too much power, it flies out; if you hit it too soft, it stays in the net. You have to find the exact contact point."
Hinata grabbed his own wrist, rotating it.
"I'm loud. I run, I jump, I hit hard. But volleyball isn't just strength. The best ones... the ones that are truly scary... are the ones who can touch the ball so softly it doesn't even make a sound when it leaves their hands."
Hinata ran to get the ball he had inflated. He came back and extended it to Gojo.
"Here."
Gojo looked at him doubtfully.
"Put your hands like this." Hinata formed a triangle with his index fingers and thumbs above his forehead. "As if you were going to hold the head of one of your dolls. Carefully. Don't let it drop, but don't crush it."
Gojo mimicked the gesture. His large hands formed a perfect cup.
Hinata dropped the ball gently onto Gojo's fingertips.
"Use your fingers, not your palms. Cushion the weight. As if you were painting a very fine line."
Gojo instinctively flexed his elbows and wrists to absorb the impact of the ball. The leather settled on his fingertips softly, without bouncing, without sound.
"That's it!" shouted Hinata, with a smile that lit up the dark storage room. "You have a silky touch, Gojo!"
Gojo looked at the ball between his hands. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel like his hands were too big or clumsy. He felt like they were good for something other than his secret world.
"Silky touch?" Gojo repeated, feeling a strange warmth in his chest. It wasn't embarrassment. It was pride.
Hinata took the ball back and spun it on his index finger.
"Most rookies treat the ball like a hot rock. You treat it with respect. You can't teach that; you either have it or you don't."
Hinata walked to the white board at the back, which was gray with dust, and wrote with his finger on the grime: VOLLEYBALL CLUB: RESURRECTING.
He turned to Gojo, who was still standing by the net, looking at his hands as if they were new.
"Tomorrow at the same time," Hinata said. It wasn't a question. It was a summons. "I already have the net ready. Now I need a wall. You're tall and you have good reflexes. I'm going to practice spikes and I need you to try to block me."
"Me?" Gojo took a step back. "But... I've never played."
"I don't need you to know how to play," Hinata said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "I need someone who understands what it means to dedicate yourself to something body and soul. And you understand that."
Hinata walked past him and slapped him on the arm, firm and solid.
"Besides, if you can paint eyelashes on a porcelain doll without shaking, blocking a ball will be a piece of cake. See you tomorrow, Gojo."
Hinata walked out of the gym, whistling, leaving behind a clean room, a tightened net, and a boy who, for the first time, didn't feel like hiding in the shadows.
Wakana Gojo looked at his fingers full of band-aids. He made the triangle gesture in the empty air.
"Tomorrow," he whispered.
And for the first time, the word didn't sound like an obligation, but like a promise.