“Rena-chin!”
“Huh?” I said. I looked up to see Kaho-chan standing there, frowning at me.
“You okay?” she said. “You’re spacing out like crazy. You’re not running another temp, are you?”
“Nah, no way,” I said.
The other girls and I had changed into our PE clothes before coming into the gym. Kaho-chan shoved a basketball jersey at me and pursed her lips. “Get it together, girl. It’s almost time for the big game!”
“Yeah, sorry. I guess I’m getting a little nervous.”
I pulled the jersey on over my PE clothes. My number was four—a pretty good one, I felt.
“Good luck to us, Amaori-san!” Hirano-san called.
“I-I’ll do my best to make this my greatest memory of high school,” Hasegawa-san promised.
I hurried to force a grin and nodded.
Satsuki-san, her hair tied back in a ponytail, tilted her head. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Huh?” I said. “Uh, nothing, really.”
“I see.”
Out on the sports field, the boys were playing futsal and the girls were doing softball. The boys’ volleyball and the girls’ basketball would be in the gym. On the next court over, the Class A boys huddled together, totally amped.
I heard cheers from the field outside. I couldn’t tell which, but I guessed one of the games had started. Finally, I snapped out of my tunnel vision.
There were four classes in the first year, A to D, but we didn’t do round robins or tournament style games here. It was just a simple A vs B, C vs D matchup. That meant we had only the one basketball game too.
“We gotta do our best, just like Mai-Mai and Aa-chan!” Kaho-chan said.
Oh yeah, we’d cheered for the softball match that started a bit ago. Class B had a lot of girls on the softball team, so their batting lineup was pretty impressive. But in spite of that, with Mai as pitcher, we struck them out one after another. Whenever Mai showed off her power as the star player, both guys and girls alike squealed in joy.
I lost track of how many matches we watched, but once class C and D’s basketball game was done, we were called up to play. I could still feel the enthusiasm thick in the air in the gym.
And then there they were in front of me: the five members of the Class B gang, Takada-san included.
“It is finally time for the showdown, Quintet,” Takada-san said.
Kaho-chan, standing in the center of our group, chuckled with pride and pointed straight at them. “We’re gonna crush you flatter’n a pancake!”
Seeing the sparks beginning to fly, the onlooking boys oohed and aahed.
Our opponents were Takada Himiko-san, Haga Suzuran-san, Kamesaki Chiduru-san, Nemoto Miki-san, and…
“Thanks for having me today,” said the last girl, a freaking giraffe of a strong, athletic-looking girl.
“Huh?” I said. “Not Youko-chan?”
Youko-chan stood on the narrow walkway on the second floor of the gym and gave us a big wave. “Good luck out there, guys!” she called.
“What the heck?!” I yelled. “How come you aren’t on the 5déesses’ team?”
Youko-chan laughed. “I’m not that good at sports!”
“That’s no fair! That’s no fair at all!”
Now even Kaho-chan joined in on the yelling. “Geh! You guys brought along the first-year ace of the basketball team, didn’t you?”
“She’s an honorary 5déesse for the day,” Takada-san said like it was nothing, not the bombshell it was. (Ace-san made a face like that was the last thing she wanted.)
“That’s fine,” Hirano-san said. “We’ve got a superstar who used to be on the basketball team too! Don’t we, Amaori-san?”
“Huh?” Her words upset me mightily, but I couldn’t say anything to lower the team’s morale just before the match. “Y-yeah, true. Yup, just leave it all to me! And then let’s get the ball to Satsuki-san whenever possible.”
“Okay!” Hirano-san said.
“Fine, if you insist,” said Satsuki-san.
And thus we lined up with questionable team unity. Ugh… Haga-san, Kamesaki-san, and Nemoto-san kept sneaking me pleading looks. I tried my best to drive those earlier conversations from my brain.
After her classmates talked, Takada-san tried to rally her troops too, saying things like, “We’ll win for certain!” and “No matter how many points they score, we’ll pay them back double!” and “Don’t be nervous now, girls.” You know, maybe she wasn’t such a bad person after all… Wait, but that’s what they wanted me to think! Was this all some strategy to throw me off mentally? Well, even if it wasn’t, it had the same effect.
Nope, nope, nope. Right now, the only thing on my mind had to be the game. I couldn’t let all those days of training with Kaho-chan and the other girls go to waste.
The teacher who was acting as the ref stood in the middle of the court with the ball. We’d start off with a jump ball. On the other side of the center circle stood, of course, Takada-san. And on our side, we had…
“Get ’em, Rena-chin!” Kaho-chan cheered.
“Wait, what?!”
Kaho-chan pushed me out there.
“But Takada-san’s got a good twenty centimeters on me!” I protested.
“Yeah, but you’re the leader, aren’tcha?”
“Am I?” Since when? Well, then as the leader, I decided to delegate. “Please, Satsuki-san, take over!”
“I don’t mind,” she said.
Phew. Satisfied, I wiped the sweat from my brow. I’d completed my responsibilities as a leader. Kaho-chan stood next to me and gave me a Look that said, “Are you sure you can do that?” but, as our leader, I elected to ignore her.
The match was finally starting. I’d be okay. I’d be okay. I had Kaho-chan and Satsuki-san with me. Sure, our opponents may have been pretty tough, but I had good, reliable people on my side. Plus, I’d also try my best…to support Satsuki-san, that is!
Satsuki-san managed to get possession of the ball, and Takada-san harrumphed in anger. Kaho-chan grabbed the ball from where it fell.
“Time to go, go, go!” she said.
Nemoto-san tried to cut in, but Kaho-chan nimbly sidestepped her. She tried to pass to me to get it closer to the hoop, but—guess who was guarding me. The basketball ace. Uh, why?
“Uh, ’scuse me,” I said, “um…”
The pressure was too great. I didn’t think I could get past her! While I was stuck, Kaho-chan passed it to Hirano-san, who sent it along to Satsuki-san, and…she leaped and launched a jump shot.
A Class B kid screamed, “Whoa!” The ball traced a stable parabola and swished through the hoop. It was a perfect throw, the kind of two-handed shot that was the go-to of female basketball players.
“You’re rocking it, Saa-chan!” Kaho-chan crowed. “Now there’s a girl who can get the job done!” She slapped Satsuki-san on the back.
“Oh my god…” Hirano-san gushed. “I passed a ball to Koto-san…and she scored with it!”
“Is that what they call teamwork?” Hasegawa-san said, overcome with emotion.
Heh heh heh. Now this was the true power of the Quintet… Keep it up, Satsuki-san! I thought.
The other team seemed pretty peeved. “They are indeed formidable foes,” Takada-san said. “But we already knew that. We’ll make up those points, girls!”
Her command meant it was time for us to go on defense. “All right,” I told the others. “Let’s bust out that strategy we talked about!”
“What strategy is this?”
While the other team frowned, we banded together in solid defense, a tactic bequeathed to me from my sister: put all members on defense! Any thrown-together team in an interclass athletics competition would be largely made up of amateurs, and their lack of team practices would make coordinated teamwork downright impossible. So, what was a girl to do?
“Lower their chances of making successful goals,” my sister said, imparting to me some advice from a friend of hers as we sat in her room, “and then boost your chances at making good shots. It’s going to be pretty much impossible for an amateur to throw a three-pointer when they’ve got someone guarding them, see. So completely ignore anything outside the three-point line. If it goes in, switch it up. Have your guys go after the rebounds on any shots you don’t make. That gives you guys more chances to score, and they should go down naturally.”
It was a perfect, surefire way to win in a match of amateurs vs amateurs.
“Well, but I guess it only works if you can actually score goals,” my sister added.
That’s why I’d been focusing exclusively on practicing my shooting—well, that and because it was hard to learn intercepting passes, defense, dribbling, and all those other things! So when we were on defense, we’d all work together to pass the ball down court. Then we’d make sure not to miss when on offense and keep stealing their offensive opportunities. And that was Class A’s strategy!
In fact, Suzuran-san tried to run up our side of the court with the ball, where she had her hands full with Kaho-chan and Hirano-san on defense. Since they blocked her from passing the ball forward, she passed the ball to the open Kamesaki-san. I made sure not to move forward any more than was needed but got in between her and Takada-san, who was closer to the hoop. Kamesaki-san looked stumped, so she tried shooting from where she stood, and…she missed!
Satsuki-san, already in the perfect position, snatched up the ball. Boy, that was a girl who was made for jumping high! Now it was our turn to take the offense. She passed the ball to Kaho-chan, who was already running.