Tsukiko had never been this tired. Not even during winter camp, when Coach had them running uphill sprints until everyone looked like ghosts escaping their bodies. Today drained something deeper. Not just muscles. Not just lungs. Something closer to her spine, or her pride, or both.
If doubles or mixed doubles had been scheduled for the same day, she genuinely might have collapsed on court. A small blessing from the tournament gods: everything else was tomorrow.
She wiped her face with the edge of her towel. Her hands were still trembling. When she finally lifted her head to check the stands, her eyes met Yuto's.
He froze. She froze.
And immediately, Tsukiko's stomach sank.
Brilliant. I lost right in front of him. This cocky first-year probably thinks I'm a fraud. A wannabe queen. I can't breathe. Why is he staring? Stop staring, Kimura. Oh God.
She looked away so fast it probably looked like she'd seen a ghost. Her ears were buzzing, her heartbeat still too loud.
Meanwhile, Yuto Kimura was thinking about… absolutely none of that.
He was replaying her backhand technique in his head. The way she twisted her wrist at the last millisecond. The stability in her elbow. The angle of her shoulders. He wasn't thinking about her losing or embarrassment or anything remotely social.
He was thinking, If only I could hit backhands like that… impossible though… and I can't ask her… she'd kill me.
Down on the court, Tsukiko sat with her head lowered, sweat still dripping from her neck to her collarbone. Her hair clung to her temples, strands sticking from pure exhaustion. She felt heavy, embarrassed, frustrated and numb all at once.
And she still felt his eyes.
Which made everything worse.
Yuto, clueless as ever, snapped out of his trance when he heard the footsteps of Shouta, Koda, and Miiko approaching.
"Kimura, let's goo," Shouta said, slapping his shoulder lightly.
"Yeah," Yuto replied, but his eyes drifted one last time toward Tsukiko.
She was still staring at the ground. Shoulders slumped, posture dimmed. It felt wrong seeing her like that. He didn't know why, but it hit him harder than any loss he'd taken.
Still, he followed his friends out of the arena.
They were halfway through the hallway when Shouta casually said, "By the way, Kimura, if you and Takahashi senpai make it to quarterfinals in mixed, I think you'll run into that girl who beat her today."
Yuto blinked. "Huh?"
"Hana Kuremi," Shouta added. "That's her name."
Yuto repeated it in his mind.
Hana Kuremi.
The girl who took down Tsukiko.
For reasons unclear even to himself, his brain immediately labeled her:
The Great Queen.
Just as they were turning the corner, the air shifted. A cold, steady presence walked past them, smooth but heavy, like gravity itself tightening.
It was Hana Kuremi.
And because Yuto was apparently born to embarrass himself, he muttered under his breath, "The Great Queen…"
She stopped.
The world froze with her.
Hana slowly turned her head, eyes calm but sharp enough to slice him in half.
"You're Takahashi's partner in mixed doubles, right?" she said. Her voice was controlled and clean, almost too polite.
Yuto nodded. He didn't trust his voice not to crack.
"Best of luck," she said. "You'll be facing my partner, Daichi Yamada, in your next singles match."
The hallway temperature dropped ten degrees.
A shiver crawled down Yuto's spine.
Hana continued walking without waiting for a response.
Miiko leaned in, whispering urgently, "Kimura… Daichi Yamada was last year's boys' singles champion."
Shouta added, "My guy, there are monsters even stronger than the King or the Queen."
Yuto didn't need the reminder. He'd felt the aura the second Hana looked at him. Like she had weighed his entire existence in one glance and found it amusing.
Still, his brain clicked into a quiet, stubborn mode. Fear sat somewhere in his chest, sure, but he wasn't backing down. He'd come too far to freeze now.
When he got home, he didn't rest. He fell straight onto his bed and replayed Tsukiko's match in his head, point by point. Her footwork. Her aggression. The insane stamina she'd shown. Her net play. Her backhands. The way she controlled tempo even while losing.
The match replayed like a movie he couldn't stop watching.
But gradually, something else surfaced.
A thought.
A pattern.
A strategy she never used. One he expected her to.
Stall time.
He frowned.
In so many sports, momentum control was everything. If an opponent got too hot, you found ways to disrupt the pace. In football, substitutions. In boxing, longer clinches. In volleyball, timeouts. Even in shuttling, players sometimes tied shoelaces slower, wiped sweat longer, requested grip powder, slowed down the serve routine.
But Tsukiko didn't stall at all. Not even once. She let Hana build rhythm. She met speed with more speed, pressure with more pressure, stubbornness with pure fire.
Yuto sighed into his pillow.
She doesn't play dirty. She won't.
He didn't like admitting it, but…
She needed that today.
It wouldn't have guaranteed victory, but it might have broken Hana's momentum, even briefly. Just one pause, one breath, one mental reset. Enough to swing two points. Enough to stop those impossible rallies at 33–33.
His eyes narrowed.
He wasn't strong enough to beat Hana Kuremi. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But Tsukiko…
Tsukiko could win.
He believed that now. Not because she was "queen" or some school legend, but because he had seen her fight today.
And he had seen Hana struggle.
She can beat her.
She just needs tricks.
Dirty tricks. Mind games. Tempo breaks.
Anything to tilt a monster like Hana.
Yuto clenched his jaw.
Tomorrow wasn't his only match. It was Tsukiko's redemption shot too.
And both of them needed to be better.
The third day of prelims would be chaos.
And Yuto intended to walk straight into it.