POV: Marin Kitagawa
There is one thing no one tells you about true geniuses: they are scary.
I'm sitting on the gym floor, legs stretched out, my phone recording. I'm supposed to be analyzing the team's "progress," acting like a diligent manager. But what I'm watching through the screen isn't progress. It's a silent slaughter.
On the other side of the net is Wakana Gojo. He's nearly 1.80m tall. He's big, has long arms, and thanks to the torture of the last two weeks, he's learned to jump and make his hands hard as a brick wall.
Facing him is Hinata Shoyo. He's 1.64m.
It's a visual joke. David versus Goliath. But in this story, David doesn't need a sling. David is the damn monster.
"Go!" Hinata's voice cuts through the air. It's not a shout of effort; it's a sentence.
Izumi tosses the ball. It's a mediocre set, too close to the net. For any normal high school player, that would be a dead play, an unforced error.
But Hinata is no longer on the ground.
I see him first on my phone screen, and then my eyes snap to reality, trying to track him. It's as if time bends around his body. Gojo jumps to block, and he does it well; his hands cover the straight angle, casting a shadow over the small attacker.
However, in the air, Hinata isn't small.
In that fraction of a second where gravity seems to forget about him, I see his eyes. There is no panic over the bad set. There is no doubt. There is a cold, calculating, almost surgical boredom.
His body contorts in mid-air. He doesn't use brute force. With a flick of his wrist so fast it looks like a whip crack, Hinata "sweeps" the ball.
Fwip.
The ball grazes Gojo's fingers, deflecting at an impossible angle toward the sideline.
BAM.
The sound is dry, violent. Gojo lands a second later, staring at his empty hands, confused. He didn't even touch the leather.
"Your right hand drops too fast, Gojo," Hinata says, landing with the softness of a cat. His sneakers barely make a sound. He isn't even panting.
He approaches the net, looking up. "If you drop your hand out of fear of the impact, you open up the straight line. An experienced spiker would see that gap and eat you alive through it. You have to be a wall, not a curtain."
I lower my phone slowly. My throat feels dry. "An experienced spiker." He says it as if he's faced hundreds of them.
I watch Hinata walk toward the ball cart. He walks calmly, rotating his shoulder with startling naturalness. Suddenly, I realize something that gives me goosebumps.
Hinata isn't playing. He isn't even training at 100%. He's strolling. It's like watching a lion play with cubs, restraining his claws so he doesn't break them by accident.
That abyss between him and us... it's terrifying. Sometimes, when he looks at us during breaks, I feel like he doesn't see us, but rather the ghosts of much stronger players who should be standing where we are.
"Break!" Hinata shouts, clapping his hands and breaking my trance with a bright smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Great job, Gojo! that jump was way better!"
Gojo smiles, shy and happy about the praise, scratching the back of his neck. He doesn't realize. He doesn't realize that Hinata could have spiked that ball right into his forehead if he had wanted to.
I realize it. And damn, that makes the "Little Giant" a thousand times more interesting.
An hour later, the setting changes drastically.
From the echo and sweat of the gym, we move to the intimate, quiet atmosphere of Gojo's room. The soft hum of the air conditioner is the only sound, along with the rustling of fabric.
We are here for "Operation Shizuku-tan."
To make measuring easier and ensure the suit fits like a second skin, I've stayed in my underwear: a simple black set, practical. I'm not embarrassed; my work as a model has accustomed me to viewing my body as a tool.
The problem is... the tailor.
Wakana Gojo is in a corner of the room, pressed against the wall. He holds the yellow tape measure with both hands as if it were an unstable explosive. His face isn't red; it's a concerning shade of bordeaux.
"I-I... uh... Kitagawa-san, could you... r-raise your arms?" he stammers. He won't even look at my face. His eyes bounce between the ceiling, the floor, and his sewing machine, desperately avoiding the center of the room where I am.
I raise my arms, sighing internally. "Sure, Gojo-kun. Come on, get closer. I don't bite. It's just measuring."
Gojo takes a step forward. His hands are shaking. They're shaking so much that the metal tip of the tape tinkles against itself. He tries to get close to measure my bust circumference, but he stops ten centimeters from my skin, paralyzed by an invisible barrier of teenage panic.
"I can't!" he squeaks, recoiling as if he'd been burned by a red-hot iron. "It's disrespectful! It's... it's too much skin! I can't be that close!"
"Gojo-kun," I say, trying to stay patient, "if you don't measure me right against the skin, the dress fits like a potato sack. Shizuku-tan doesn't wear sacks."
"B-But...!" Gojo looks like he's about to hyperventilate.
Suddenly, the loud sound of someone slurping the last dregs of a juice box shatters the tension like broken glass.
Hinata is sitting on the floor, leaning against Gojo's bed, legs stretched out. He's looking at us with a raised eyebrow, totally oblivious to the hormonal drama.
"Seriously, Wakana?" Hinata says, his voice flat. He crushes the empty box with one hand and tosses it into the trash can on the other side of the room. Clean shot.
He stands up. There is no hesitation in his movements. He walks over to Gojo and, with firm gentleness, takes the tape measure from his trembling hands.
"Give me that, Artisan. Or we'll finish next year and Marin is going to catch a cold."
"Huh?" Gojo blinks, confused. "But Hinata, do you... know how to do this?"
Hinata doesn't answer with words. He just shrugs and walks toward me.
His presence is radically different. Gojo radiated an electric, chaotic nervousness. Hinata radiates absolute calm, dense like gravity.
He stands in front of me. We are very close. He doesn't have to look up much because we are almost the same height, though I have a few centimeters on him.
"Arms up, Marin," he orders.
It's not a request. His voice is a tone deeper than what he uses at school. It's professional. Clinical.
I obey slowly.
Hinata steps into my personal space. I feel the heat radiating from his body, a mix of high body temperature from training and... something else. He smells like clean soap and sports deodorant.
He extends his arms to surround me. For a second, it's like a ghost hug. I see his face inches from mine. His eyelashes are long. His amber eyes aren't looking at my cleavage or my legs. They are fixed on the tape, focused.
"Inhale... now exhale normally," he murmurs.
I feel the brush of his knuckles against my ribs as he adjusts the tape on my back. A shiver runs down my spine. His hands aren't shaking. They are steady, warm, and the skin on his fingers is slightly rough, hardened by hitting thousands of volleyballs.
"Eighty... six," he says in a neutral voice. "Wakana, write it down."
"Y-Yes!" I hear Gojo scribbling frantically behind us.
Hinata lowers the tape. His eyes follow the movement, but they don't wander. He kneels in front of me to measure my waist.
The air in the room seems to have grown heavier.
He places his hands on my waist to secure the tape. His thumbs press gently on my obliques to find the exact spot. The contact is electric. It's not the indecisive touch of a virgin boy; it's the touch of someone who knows human anatomy, who understands muscles and bones.
I stand motionless, looking at the top of his head, his messy orange hair. My heart starts beating fast. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
"You're tense," he says, without looking up. He adjusts the tape a millimeter more. "Relax your abdomen. If you flex, the fit will be fake."
"I-I'm trying," I reply. My voice comes out a little higher than usual.
Hinata looks up. His eyes meet mine from below. For a second, time stops again, just like in the gym. But here, there is no ball. It's just him and me.
"You have a strong core," he observes. It's not a compliment; it's a technical fact. "I can tell you maintain your posture when posing. That's good. It helps prevent back injuries."
I feel my cheeks burning. "T-Thanks..."
He stands up and moves behind me. Now I can't see him, which, strangely, makes me more nervous. I feel his warm breath near the nape of my neck as he measures my shoulder width.
"Shoulders... thirty-eight."
His fingers trace an invisible line from my neck to my shoulder. It's a fleeting touch, necessary to measure, but my skin remembers the path seconds after he has pulled his hand away.
"How do you know so much about this?" I ask in a whisper, trying to fill the silence that is killing me. "You seem like a pro."
Hinata begins measuring the length of my arm, sliding the tape (and his fingers) from my shoulder down to my wrist.
"When you're the size I am... you become obsessed with your body," he answers. His voice sounds a bit distant, nostalgic. "I had to measure my own muscle growth every week. I had to know if my thighs grew a millimeter, if my back was getting wide enough to withstand the impact."
He finishes measuring the arm and coils the tape with a rhythmic snap of his wrist.
"When your body is your only weapon against giants, you learn to know every inch of it. And by extension, you learn to view other people's bodies as machinery."
He steps away. The loss of his body heat feels immediate, like stepping out of a hot shower into cold air.
"Done. Measurements taken. No drama." He tosses the tape to Gojo, who catches it clumsily in the air.
Hinata goes back to his corner and drops down to sit on the floor, pulling out his phone as if nothing happened. As if he hadn't just touched me with more confidence and maturity than any guy I've met in my entire life.
I stand there for a second, unconsciously rubbing the arm where he touched me.
I look at the "Little Emperor."
On the court, he is a monster playing with his prey. Here, in this small, quiet room, he is an adult trapped in a student's body, capable of turning an awkward situation into something... strangely safe. And exciting.
"Hey, Hinata," I say.
"Hmm?" he murmurs, scrolling on his screen.
I smile. A real smile, small and private, not the bright "Marin the popular girl" smile.
"Thanks. You have good hands."
Hinata pauses. For an instant, his fingers stop moving on the screen. He looks up and meets my gaze. A small, almost imperceptible smile curves the corner of his lips.
"You're welcome, Manager. Now let the Artisan work. I want to see that costume finished by Monday."
My heart gives a painful lurch against my ribs. Ba-dump.
Shit. This is dangerous. The abyss isn't just on the volleyball court. I think I just fell into it right here, in the middle of Gojo's room.
Author's note: You have no idea how much trouble I had translating this chapter.
I always fix grammatical errors and translate chapters with Gemini.
The AI decided to change the whole chapter; suddenly I was reading about Gojo mistreating Hinata while taking his measurements?
Just plain weird.
And it doesn't end there. After staring at the monitor to make sure I read it correctly, I asked it to translate what it had written, nothing more... Now Satoru Gojo has appeared to train Hinata....
Don't ask me what the heck happened.