The volleyball court's fervor did not fade; it spread, infecting the entire pool area like a pleasant contagion. Students from every class had gravitated toward the commotion, drawn by rumors of the impossible match and lingering to witness whatever might follow.
The crowd around the sand had barely thinned when a new figure burst into its center.
"Sakamoto-kun! Please—please play with me too! Just one game! I beg you!"
Yamauchi Haruki stood with clasped hands, his face alight with the incandescent fervor of the newly converted. The match he had witnessed had bypassed his reason entirely and detonated directly in his heart.
Sakamoto paused mid-stride. His glasses caught the light as he turned.
"Yamauchi-san expresses interest. I would be honored to oblige."
His tone held no condescension, no amusement. Only the simple respect accorded to any opponent who stepped forward.
The match that followed was, by any objective measure, absurd.
Yamauchi's technique was nonexistent. His serves were prayers; his returns, accidents. But Sakamoto—Sakamoto transformed this mismatch into a conversation. Every return was placed with surgical precision at the exact coordinates Yamauchi could reach. Every shot carried the precise velocity Yamauchi could handle. He was not competing; he was elevating, lifting his opponent to heights his natural ability could never reach.
The rallies, miraculously, continued. The crowd, inexplicably, cheered.
Sakayanagi Arisu observed from a shaded bench, her cane resting against her knee.
She did not know this Yamauchi. She did not need to. The lesson unfolding on the sand was not about him. It was about the man across the net—the one who could have ended this farce in seconds but chose instead to craft it into something beautiful.
Academic perfection. Chess mastery. Athletic transcendence. And now this—this quiet, unassuming grace in elevating a hopeless opponent.
"Is he… omnipotent?" The question escaped her lips unbidden, a whisper lost in the ambient noise. But it lingered in her mind, demanding answers she could not yet supply.
Nearby, pressed against a pillar in the shadow of the grandstand, Kamuro Masumi watched with different eyes.
The sunlight found Sakamoto's form at every turn—sculpting the lines of his shoulders, tracing the contours of his back, catching the water droplets that scattered from his movements like tiny diamonds. Her cheeks warmed despite the heat.
Then, mid-rally, he looked.
A soaring save, a twist in midair—and his gaze, sweeping the crowd as if by accident, found hers. Held for a heartbeat. And his left eye closed in the briefest, most casual wink.
Kamuro's head snapped away. The temperature in her cheeks spiked to dangerous levels.
How did he even see me in this crowd?
Her heart, traitorously, refused to calm.
The friendly match concluded. Yamauchi was ecstatic, incoherent with gratitude. Sakamoto acknowledged him with a nod and turned to leave.
"Sakamoto."
The voice was calm, commanding, utterly unhurried. It cut through the ambient noise like a blade.
Horikita Manabu stood at the pool's edge.
He had changed while they played—black swim briefs now, revealing a physique honed by years of relentless discipline. Lean, powerful, efficient. His black-rimmed glasses were absent, replaced by the naked intensity of his gaze.
"President."
Sakamoto turned. His tone carried no surprise, as if he had expected this interruption.
"That was an impressive display." Manabu's gaze moved from the volleyball court to the glittering water behind him. "Your athletic range appears to exceed even my estimates. I find myself… curious."
A pause. The silence amplified.
"I have time. The water is inviting. Would you care to continue this exploration in a different medium? A race. Swimming. Distance of your choice."
The crowd inhaled as one.
Sakamoto vs. Horikita Manabu.
The transcendent newcomer against the absolute standard.
Modern legend versus living history.
Every eye in the vicinity locked onto the two figures at the pool's edge.
Sakamoto's hand rose. His middle finger found the bridge of his glasses—still on, despite the imminent swim—and pushed upward. The lenses flared.
"President Horikita's invitation honors me. I accept."
Manabu nodded once. Then his gaze shifted—past Sakamoto, past the crowd, to settle on a figure standing rigidly at the periphery.
"Suzune. You will give the start."
Horikita Suzune's breath caught.
Her brother. Her impossible, unreachable, perpetually disappointed brother—asking her to officiate his match. Not as a spectator. Not as an afterthought. As a participant.
Was this acknowledgment? Approval? Or simply convenience?
The questions swirled, but beneath them, something else stirred—a warmth she had long stopped expecting to feel in his presence.
She stepped forward. Her voice, when it came, was steady.
"Understood."
The changing rooms emptied. The two competitors emerged.
Sakamoto had replaced his glasses with a pair of streamlined goggles, pushed up on his forehead. His physique, already admired on the volleyball court, now stood revealed in full—a classical sculpture translated into flesh, every muscle group in perfect harmonious proportion.
Manabu's form was different—more utilitarian, forged by function rather than aesthetics. But no less formidable.
They stood at the pool's edge, side by side.
The crowd had swollen to capacity. Sakayanagi had maneuvered closer, her cane finding purchase on the wet tiles. Kamuro and Ichinose had gravitated to the front, their earlier positions abandoned for proximity. Even Ayanokoji had shifted, his expression marginally more engaged than usual.
Horikita Suzune raised her hand.
"On your marks—"
Both men leaned forward. Muscles tensed. Focus narrowed to the water before them.
"Get set—"
The silence was absolute. Even the distant splashing seemed to pause.
"Go! "
Two bodies launched.
The entry was simultaneous, the splashes merging into one. Beneath the surface, two streaks of motion arrowed forward—one a disciplined blade, the other something far more fluid.
Manabu's technique was flawless. Years of training manifested in every stroke: powerful pulls, precise rotations, kicks that drove him through the water with mechanical efficiency. He was a machine built for speed, and within seconds, he had established a visible lead.
The crowd gasped. Sakamoto was falling behind.
But the crowd's attention had already abandoned Horikita Manabu.
Sakamoto had entered the water—and then he had simply... vanished.
"Where is he?"
"Why isn't he surfacing?!"
"Did something happen?"
Panic rippled through the spectators. The water in Sakamoto's lane, which should have been churning with the violence of competitive swimming, lay unnaturally calm. No splash. No turbulence. No sign of the man who had entered it moments before.
Only Horikita Manabu remained focused, his strokes powerful and metronomic, his eyes fixed on the lane ahead. True strength required no distraction.
Then a voice cut through the murmurs—high, excited, utterly certain.
"LOOK AT THE WATER! IN SAKAMOTO-KUN'S LANE!"
Morishita Ai had materialized at the pool's edge, her eyes wide with the particular gleam of someone witnessing their obsession made manifest. She pointed with trembling excitement.
Every gaze followed.
The water surface in Sakamoto's lane remained eerily placid—but slicing through that placidity, advancing with silent, terrifying purpose, was a fin.
Not a hand. Not an arm. A dorsal fin, sharp as a blade, cutting the water with the predatory grace of an apex hunter.
"IT'S A SHARK!" Morishita's voice soared with delight. "HE'S SWIMMING LIKE A SHARK! COMPLETE SUBSURFACE IMMERSION! MINIMUM RESISTANCE! MAXIMUM HYDRODYNAMICS!"
The crowd stared, transfixed.
The fin moved. It was not merely keeping pace with Horikita Manabu's explosive sprint—it was gaining. Silently. Inexorably. A predator stalking its prey from the depths.
Manabu touched the wall first—but only by a hair. He spun, executed a flawless turn, and launched into his return leg with everything he had. The gap was negligible. The race was far from over.
The fin reached the wall. Touched. And then—
Stillness.
Sakamoto did not turn. He did not resurface. The fin simply disappeared, and the water in his lane became a mirror, reflecting only the anxious faces of the crowd.
"What's he doing?"
"Did he run out of air?"
"Is he okay?"
Manabu swam. His strokes were desperate now, stripped of their earlier mechanical precision. He could feel it—something gathering in the water behind him, something vast and terrible.
Two-thirds of the return leg completed.
A sound emerged from the depths.
It was low. Thrumming. A vibration felt not in the ears but in the chest, in the bones, in the primitive core of the brain that remembered ancient predators. The water behind Manabu began to move.
A vortex formed—slowly at first, then accelerating, a spiral of current that grew and swelled and screamed with contained energy. The pool's surface distorted, bulging upward as something massive prepared to breach.
Sakamoto's voice, impossibly, reached every ear through the water and air alike:
"Secret Technique— "
The vortex compressed. The energy focused.
"—FANG OVER FANG. "
The water exploded.
A spiral of current—not a swimmer, not a human form, but a torpedo of concentrated hydrokinetic force—launched down the lane. It tore through the water, leaving a wake of violent white turbulence. The pool seemed to scream in protest. The crowd stood frozen, mouths open, eyes wide.
CRASH!
The spiral struck the finish wall with the force of a depth charge. Water geysered upward, a column of spray that caught the sunlight and fractured into rainbows. Droplets scattered across the pool deck, drenching the front row of spectators.
And through that curtain of mist, a figure ascended.
Sakamoto burst from the water like a dolphin breaching—soaring, spinning, his body tracing perfect arcs in the air. One rotation. Two. Three. Each movement was controlled, elegant, impossible. He hung suspended for a heartbeat at the apex, silhouetted against the sun.
Then he descended.
His feet touched the pool deck with the soft finality of a closing book. Water sluiced from his form, catching light, refracting into diamond droplets that scattered at his feet. His body, already admired on the volleyball court, now stood revealed in the full glory of this impossible feat—every muscle defined, every line perfect, the living embodiment of transcendent physicality.
He straightened.
His hand rose.
His middle finger found the bridge of his goggles and pushed upward with that signature, elegant finality.
Behind him, Horikita Manabu touched the wall.
He surfaced slowly, tearing off his goggles, gasping for air that his lungs desperately required. Water streamed from his hair, his shoulders, his defeated form. His eyes found Sakamoto—already standing at the finish line, already composed, already dry.
The pool deck was silent.
Then, softly, impossibly, Horikita Manabu laughed.
It was not a laugh of bitterness, or frustration, or wounded pride. It was the laugh of a man who had just witnessed something he could not explain, could not replicate, could not even fully comprehend—and who, in that incomprehension, found a strange and unexpected joy.
"Extraordinary," he said, his voice carrying across the stunned silence. "Truly extraordinary."
Sakamoto inclined his head—that same perfect bow, that same humble acknowledgment.
"President Horikita's skill is formidable. I was merely fortunate in my choice of technique."
The crowd remained frozen. Minds struggled to process. Bodies refused to move.
And in that frozen moment, scattered across the pool deck, a dozen different hearts beat with a dozen different rhythms—some awed, some envious, some confused, and some, in the quiet privacy of their own chests, beating with something far more complicated than simple admiration.
For a single, suspended moment, Horikita Manabu's stern facade cracked.
Astonishment. Raw and undisguised, flickering across features that had spent years learning to betray nothing. Then, slowly, it transformed—into something he had not felt in a very long time.
A smile. Relieved. Almost... grateful.
He had lost. Completely, utterly, and in a manner he still could not fully comprehend. And in that loss, he had found something rarer than victory: the pure, uncomplicated joy of witnessing human potential stretched beyond its imagined limits.
The silence broke.
Applause detonated across the pool deck like thunder. Cheers erupted from every throat—first-years and upperclassmen alike, swept up in the impossibility they had just witnessed. Voices overlapped, blended, rose in a chaotic chorus of disbelief and adoration.
"THAT WAS INSANE!"
"HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?!"
"SAKAMOTO-KUN! SAKAMOTO-KUN! SAKAMOTO-KUN!"
Sakayanagi Arisu's slender hand pressed against her lips. Her eyes, usually so carefully controlled, were wide with an astonishment she could not have feigned if she tried. Her condition had always excluded her from aquatic activities—she had understood swimming only as theory, as observation, as the mechanics of ordinary human movement.
This was not ordinary human movement. This was something else entirely. A realm she had never conceived, populated by a man who apparently resided there permanently.
Beside her, Kamuro Masumi's cheeks had not cooled. If anything, the impossible finish had only intensified their warmth. She watched Sakamoto's composed form with an expression she could not have named if asked.
On the other side of the crowd, Sakura Airi's camera had been working overtime. Her finger had pressed the shutter at the exact apex of Sakamoto's ascent—the moment he hung suspended against the sun, water droplets frozen mid-scatter, his form traced in light.
"AMAZING! Sakura! You HAVE to send me those!" Yamauchi Haruki was practically vibrating beside her, his earlier fervor now escalated to religious devotion. "That's it! THAT'S the image of youth I want to capture!"
On the observation deck, removed from the crowd's ecstasy, Ryuuen Kakeru's tongue clicked against his teeth.
"Tch."
His brow was a knot of consternation. Athletic ability. Academic perfection. Strategic acumen. And now this—this transcendent, physics-defying display of pure physical impossibility.
Is this bastard even human?
The question, once asked, refused to leave. It coiled in his mind, a problem demanding solution, an obstacle demanding demolition. But for now—for the first time in longer than he could remember—Ryuuen Kakeru had no answer.
Horikita Suzune watched her brother emerge from the water.
His expression was not the one she had expected. Not frustration. Not disappointment. Not the cold, measuring disappointment she had so often seen directed at herself.
He looked... satisfied.
She realized, with a small internal shift, that she felt no surprise at the outcome. Of course Sakamoto had won. Of course he had won in a way that defied understanding. This was simply the natural order of things now.
If anything, she felt a faint, almost protective twinge.
Did Sakamoto-kun... bully my brother a little too much?
The thought was absurd. She almost smiled at it.
Beside her, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka remained a statue. But behind his flat, disinterested gaze, something moved. Calculations. Analyses. Biomechanical extrapolations that reached conclusions his conscious mind was not yet ready to accept.
That acceleration profile. That rotational momentum. Those energy requirements.
His eyes, for once, were not empty.
Horikita Manabu reached the pool deck, accepting a towel from a nearby student. He approached Sakamoto with measured strides, his composure fully restored.
"That was extraordinary, Sakamoto-kun." His voice carried no rancor, only genuine appreciation. "I concede completely. Your abilities exceed my capacity to even properly evaluate."
Sakamoto inclined his head in that familiar, elegant bow.
"President Horikita is too generous. Your technique was flawless. I merely employed an unconventional approach."
Manabu shook his head slowly. He knew what he had witnessed. He knew that "unconventional" was a laughable understatement for what had just occurred.
His eyes met Sakamoto's—those calm, unreadable depths behind the glasses.
The uninhabited island exam. If he performs at even a fraction of this level...
The anticipation was not competitive. It was something purer: the excitement of a connoisseur who has just discovered a vintage beyond his previous experience.
Sakamoto acknowledged the president's expectations with a final, slight nod. Then, with the same unhurried grace that characterized all his movements, he turned away from the crowd.
He walked to the pool's edge.
And dove.
The entry was minimal—barely a splash, barely a ripple. He simply merged with the water, becoming one with its cool embrace.
When he surfaced, he was among the ordinary students. No longer the center of attention. No longer the object of worship or analysis or desire. Just another figure, floating lazily in the summer sun, enjoying the simple pleasure of cool water on warm skin.
The cheers continued around him. The awe persisted. The legends would grow.
But Sakamoto simply floated, face turned toward the sun, utterly at peace.
This was his secret technique, after all. The most important one.
The ability to be extraordinary—and then, in the next breath, to be simply, completely ordinary.