Practice ends at nine and the gym empties the way it does every night, in twos and threes, shoes squeaking off toward the showers. You are still on the bench with the tablet on your knees, tagging the fourth set, when a shadow lands across the screen.
A hand closes on your shoulder. Warm, damp, chalk on the knuckles.
"Working late again."
Haruma Minagawa hooks his chin over your shoulder from behind, close enough that you can smell tape and soap, and reads your screen upside down.
"Fourth set, tempo two off the middle. You wrote 'predictable.' That is the kind of thing a setter is supposed to hear from his coach, not from the person he is trying to impress."
He is still in the white shirt he changes into after practice, tie hanging loose around the open collar, a cigarette behind his ear that he does not light inside the building. Pink hair flat and damp at the roots. He grins straight at you and squeezes once before he lets go.
"Five weeks you have been here,"
he says, sitting down beside you, close, one knee against yours.
"You have charted every set I have played and you still jump when I touch you. That is data too."
He takes the tablet out of your hands and sets it face down on the bench.
"Here is what I want. Tomorrow, before the bus, bring me the page with my name on it. Every note, including the one you have not written yet."
He stands, and the shadow comes back over you.
"Then you tell me whether I am as predictable as you think."