The Birth of A Volleyball Legend

"Oi, Kobayashi, are you sure this is the right place?" Riku asked, staring at the building in front of him hesitantly.

Yuki sighed, knowing why Riku wasn't so sure about this at all. It was the day after the sparing game and currently, Yuki – accompanied by Riku was standing in front of the building Megumi said to be where her family house was, and just by looking at its exterior, he was sure this place was older than his school.

It was a pretty old-looking building, with the faded sign above the door read 'Paper & Pen' in crooked English letters, and the windows were so grimy that Yuki could hardly see inside. Even though he wasn't a Native of Tokyo and had never explored the city, he knew this kind of place was something any tourist would never know.

Still, since Megumi was kind enough to recommend him, someone she had met once yesterday to work here, he still stepped forward, encouraging himself to enter the building. But as he pushed open the door, Yuki was greeted by the warm and welcoming aroma of old books and fresh coffee, and his hesitation began to fade away.

He took a deep breath, wiped his sweaty palms on his uniform, and stepped inside, where he was immediately enveloped in the cozy atmosphere of the store.

"Are you Kobayashi-kun?" Suddenly, a voice snapped Yuki from his thoughts.

When he turned around, he could see an old lady smiling at him warmly, and it took him a second to realize who the woman in front of him was. Her sharp eyebrows, the dimples that sunk the skin of her cheeks like pits, her warm gaze, everything was so identical to Megumi that if not for the wrinkles on her face, Yuki would mistake the woman as his senpai's mother.

"I have already heard about you, but I don't know about the others?" The lady tilted her head curiously at Riku. It seemed the blonde boy was also in a daze at how similar his senpai was with the old woman before him that he forgot to introduce himself.

"A-Ah! My name is Agostini Riku! Nice to meet you, Ma'am!" The boy stuttered a bit when he introduced himself.

"Agostini?" The old lady furrowed her brows as if she was trying to remember something. Then, out of a sudden, her expression lightened up in realization. "Ah, you are the rude Italian boy in the Face… Face… Face what?" She asked confusedly.

"It is Facebook, Ma'am," Yuki explained, hiding his smirk when he saw the blush on Riku's face. "It is the place where people could send a message to each other without having to wait for the physical letter to come delivered by the postman.

That's why some could still exchange conversation with others even though it was nighttime already." Not the best explanation for what media social was, of course. But Yuki was satisfied when he saw the old woman understood his analogy.

"You young people and your technology…" The old lady shook her head in exasperation. "Anyway, please sit down first."

Hearing that, Yuki and Riku took the chairs close to the windows quickly. Their eyes wandered around the building, noticing for the first time how contrast it was to their expectation. The creaky wooden floorboards beneath their feet seemed to whisper secrets of the past, and the musty smell of old books filled their nostrils.

Yuki looked around, taking in the rows upon rows of bookshelves that seemed to stretch up to the ceiling, their worn leather spines and yellowed pages glowing like treasures in the soft light.

"There should be more than a thousand books here, right?" Riku whispered, staring in awe at the sheer scale of the collection here.

"67,338 books, if you want to be more exact." The old lady suddenly appeared again, now bringing a tray with two cups of tea and a smaller cup of coffee. "That is the amount of the books my husband collected for more than 60 years during his lifetime. Oh, please enjoy the tea here."

"You remember the numbers of the books here?" Riku asked, impressed. He took one cup from the tray and enjoyed it while his eyes were still wandering around.

"Well, I might be wrong, of course. But I have dedicated my last ten years to take care of this building, so I am confident here."

"Ten years?!" Riku widened his eyes in surprise.

"Yup! This is the last work of the love of my life, so there is no way I would abandon it." She chuckled richly, her eyes gazing far away, reminiscing the past. "Anyway, Kobayashi-kun is here to ask for a job, right? Let me introduce myself first. My name is Ayaka Sachi, and as you can guess, I am Megumi-chan's grandmother."

"Nice to meet you, Ayaka-san." Both Yuki and Riku bowed politely.

"Don't be too polite. There might be a lot of Ayaka here in the future, so just call me Sachi-baasan." The old lady waved her hand nonchalantly. "As for the job, honestly, I don't see the need to do it, but-"

"Eh?! What do you mean by that, Sachi-baasan?!" Riku interrupted before Sachi could even finish her explanation. Yuki sent the Italian boy a glare for cutting her words before she could get to the point, yet his heart sunk immediately the first time he heard her words. He had already been thinking of the worst-case scenario where he wouldn't get the job here and had to search for another place.

'Well, I shouldn't expect to get a job this easy…'

Sachi herself blinked her eyes for a moment, shocked by Riku's interruption. It was clear by her expression that it was rare for her to receive this kind of treatment. Well, at least Riku had the decency to look sheepish and apologized immediately.

"Wow, you really are like what Megumi-chan said, rowdy boy through and through." She chuckled.

Fortunately, the old lady wasn't offended by Riku's behavior. The blonde boy himself blushed, cursing the manager of the team for filling her grandmother's head with lies. Not that he would dare to say it out loud, of course.

"Well, before I was interrupted by your overly enthusiastic friend here," She turned her attention back to Yuki, yet still didn't forget to throw a playful jab at Riku. "I am content with this building as it is and don't have any plan to change it.

However, an old colleague of my husband came last year when I was taking care of the book and he advised me to make a digital catalog to make it easier to track down every book here. So, that is the job if you want to. What do you think?"

"What about the wage?" Riku quickly asked.

Yuki didn't mind though. Unlike the constant rude interruption that the blonde boy did several times earlier, this time, he asked it politely, and his question was also essential in whether he was willing to do the job or not. It was good to have a spokesperson out of nothing. He just didn't expect Riku to be such a chatterbox, couldn't help but keep his mouth running loose.

"Hmm… Let me think about it…" Sachi pondered for a second. "Well, the minimum wage right now is about 700 yen per hour, and I can input at least 8 to 10 books in one hour, so I could give you about that amount of money for every eight books you input to the catalog. What do you think?"

Yuki was hesitant before asking another important question. "What about the work time?"

"It is up to you, of course." The old lady replied easily, surprising the two boys in front of her. Then, she smiled amusedly before continuing, "I heard that you two are members of the volleyball team like Megumi-chan, right? I know it will take a lot of your time in the future, so you can adjust it as much as you like.

Your payment won't depend on the amount of time you spent but how much effort you put in here, so you don't need to be so strict about this."

Yuki did a hasty calculation inside his head before asking, "How long do you want me to work here?"

Honestly, this sounded like a dream work for Yuki. Not only the time was flexible and the wage was good, but the employee, his senpai's grandmother was also a kind woman who didn't have too many requirements for him. Now, he should consider how long could he work here to plan for the future too. However, what Sachi said next was something beyond his head.

"Well, you can work as long as you can, Dear." The old lady smiled gently at him. "Out of more than sixty thousand books here, only about 2000 books had been catalogized by now. That is just three percent of all the collections in this building. It would take forever to complete this task, so I don't mind being accompanied by you in the future."

"Would it take a lot of money to pay, though?" Riku asked hesitantly.

Sachi just chuckled richly as if she heard the funniest joke in the world. "Even though you cannot see it, my husband and I have been working hard and made a big fortune from a lot of good investments in the past.

The money wouldn't run out even if the next seven generations of my family didn't want to work, and considering all my sons and granddaughters inherited our hard worker trait, I said that money would be the last problem my family had to worry about."

Sacchi laughed merrily when she saw the flabbergasted expression on the boy's face. Even though she was a private person and didn't like to flaunt her wealth, it still amused her to no end whenever she witnessed the reaction of the others who heard about her wealth.

As for Yuki and Riku, they smiled at each other wryly, were too speechless to express their feeling. While they had expected her to be wealthy – with the amount of the books here, of course she was – never crossed their mind that this kind, gentle woman was the owner of such incredible wealth.

Those two boys felt like they had been living in a world of black and white, and suddenly everything had turned into a vibrant Technicolor. Their reaction was a mix of awe, wonder, and confusion. They didn't know what to say or do next. All they could do was stare at the old lady in amazement, their mind racing with questions and doubts.

Who was this woman and her husband?

-0-

At the end of the day, Yuki decided to accept the job offer from her, thinking that this was too good to be passed. To his surprise though, Riku decided to do the same. Not to belittle the blonde boy's intelligence, but Yuki had never seen him as a person who was patient enough to work in front of a computer for too long.

However, Riku was determined to do so, and who was Yuki to object to his decision?

However, Yuki was amused when he overheard the blonde boy mumbling about his motivation to join here. he wanted to beat the 'four-eyes' in everything no matter how silly it was, thinking that this was a part of their rivalry that he couldn't run away from. Thinking about him, Yuki just chuckled, letting the Italian boy do whatever he wanted to do.

It wasn't like Riku was disturbing him, and Yuki was sure the blonde boy would get tired of this sooner or later.

That was the naïve thought that he would regret in the future.

As for now though, they were currently in one of the rooms hidden behind all the books there, staring in awe at the four latest released laptops displayed perfectly on the table, their monitor was still shining and reflecting their face as if it was a new mirror. This was just another proof of how ridiculously wealthy the old lady in front of them was.

"So, we are going to work with this?" Yuki twitched the corner of his mouth exasperatedly. He felt pity that such a cutting-edge technology like this was only used to catalog this massive library with Microsoft Excel, never been utilized at its fullest.

"Well, just don't touch the two in the corner. That is reserved only for my granddaughters to use." Sachi pointed at the laptop she mentioned. "As for the other two, you can use it as much as you like, but don't bring it outside of the building. Those are gifts from a dear friend of mine."

Once again, Yuki twitched the corner of his mouth exasperatedly, now thinking what kind of friend would send the latest released laptop as a gift to an old lady?

Well, nevertheless, Yuki decided not to question everything too much, afraid it would fry his brain alive. He listened carefully to the old lady's explanation of what they had to do, and Yuki was surprised at how easy it was. It was just inputting the book's general information from its title, the writer's name, the publisher, genre, to the synopsis before putting the book back on the shelves.

When Yuki tried to do that, he blinked a few times, couldn't believe how fast he could do this.

"Only three minutes?" Riku mumbled, also in disbelief. Then, he turned to the old lady and asked, "Obaasan, are you sure you didn't miscount your time when you did all of this?"

A fair question, Yuki thought.

"Well, of course, not! I have been doing it for a while, there is no way I would miscount something so simple like this." Sachi denied the idea immediately.

"However, if I saw a book with a good synopsis, I would get distracted easily and read it first for a while until I realized there was still a lot to do before continuing my job again, so, maybe that is why my speed is not that fast." She grinned mischievously, making both Yuki and Riku have sweat drop on their face.

'What a carefree lady.' Yuki shook his head in amusement.

However, he was the one who was happiest the most here. After several times trying to do the job, Yuki found out he could do at least one book every three to four minutes, making it almost twenty books per hour. With that kind of speed, he could gain about 4200 yen just by working for three hours, and if it was a weekend, the amount of the money could be doubled since he didn't have to go to school.

Thinking of the financially free life in the future he imagined yet hadn't come yet, Kouki was excited. A pang of guilt suddenly appeared from the bottom of his heart though, thinking he was scamming the kind old lady in front of him.

However, before Yuki could say anything, he could hear a shout from the outside.

"Obaasan! We are here!"

Sacchi raised from her seat immediately, an ear-to-ear smile formed on her face when she heard the greeting. "Oh, Megumi-chan! You are here!"

After exchanging hugs with each other, Megumi's eyes suddenly turned to Riku and Yuki and suddenly asked, "So, how is it?"

"Well…"

Although there was a chance his wage would be reduced, Yuki still told her his concern. He didn't want to go against his morale, knowing that it was wrong to scam the elderly. However, Megumi brushed off his concern immediately, explaining why his assumption was wrong.

"As you might guess already, my grandmother has so much money she couldn't spend even in her seven lifetimes. What she needed right now though, was a friend to have conversations with and relieve her boredom. So, this job is just a cover for her to meet new people, so you don't have to worry about her."

"I told you, Megumi-chan! I am not alone!" Sacchi's shout from inside could be heard out loud.

"Yes, Obaasan!" She shouted back, yet still rolling her eyes in exasperation. "It was a lie, of course. She had been crazy after her late husband – my grandfather died from an old age a few years ago. Also, I hope you can be more patient with him, okay?"

Yuki nodded slowly, still didn't know how to react.

"Don't worry about her, Kobayashi-kun. She is okay." Megumi said one more time. "Anyway, where is that girl? I swear, she would always – Ah, here she is! Kobayashi-kun, I want you to meet my little sister! She is also a freshman in our school.

Come here!"

Yuki blinked his eyes several times, not expecting Megumi to have a little a little sister. Well, he should expect that, considering the hint Sacchi had been dropping earlier by saying her granddaughters, as in a plural form. The next surprise though, was also something he should expect too.

Here, stood in front of Yuki, a familiar girl frozen on the spot as she saw him too. They both recognized each other in a second, and the girl's cheek flushed red in embarrassment as if she was caught doing something illegal.

Megumi who saw their expression stared curiously at her little sister before asking, "Have you known about each other?"

"W-W-Well…." Her little sister stuttered, stealing a glance at Yuki secretly.

Taking pity on her wreck situation, Yuki sighed before deciding to explain, "Well, we are in the same class and I sat in front of her, so of course, I would know about her. Nice to meet you again though, Ayaka-san."