Chapter 4

The start of my next chapter in life, namely high school, was about to start in a week, and I had just chosen my high school after much consideration (author: will be revealed in next chap).

Over these past few weeks, I had become much leaner and muscly. All my baby fat was gone, furthermore, I just entered my growth spurt, which was awesome to say the least. In the past month and a half, I grew by 3 inches, making my height 6'0. I was quite proud, and by keeping myself groomed, i.e. keeping my hair short and styled, fingernails clean, washing my face, using my dad's expensive cologne, my ego was at all-time high and in my opinion, I looked like a fucking billion dollars. During my workouts, girls would check me out, including some married women, girls I'm fucking 14 okay, chill!

Life was good, and my game was coming along. Then suddenly I got a call from Shinji.

Shinji: "Hey dude, listen, I I need to ask you something."

Me: "Yeah quickly, I have to be somewhere in 5."

Shinji: "Are you and Ichika going out?"

Me: "What?! No man, relax, I ain't."

Shinji: "Well people be saying that you two are out a lot and she is literally on your lap all the time."

Me: "Listen man, that's all bullshit. She sometimes fools around, but we're not going out, you get me?"

Shinji: "Fuck! Listen, we need to talk man-to-man. Meet me at the nearby bridge in 10."

Me: "I need to do something."

Shinji: "Fuck you! You mess with my girl and think its okay to do whatever, come here in 10, okay motherfucker!"

Shinji then ended the call. I could sense this was not going to be a pleasant experience, but against my better judgement I went to the bridge. I was curious to see his reaction, and for some reason, I was feeling the urge to fuck him up.

I saw Shinji at the bridge and walked up to him. It was a rather hot day.

Shinji: "What the fuck?! Why the hell are u messing with my girl? I thought you were a friend, and u turned into a fucking traitor!"

Me: "You need to relax dude, I ain't done nothing with Ichika, plus she's not your girl. So even if something happened hypothetically, it ain't your fucking business bitch!"

Oh yeah, I was definitely trying to provoke him. Shinji was a baseball player, and strong, but he was two inches shorter than me, and much weaker than me. I wanted the pretext to beat the living shit out of him. Maybe I'm going crazy, or this testosterone is going absolutely wild, but I don't give a flying fuck at the moment. I want him to hit me.

Predictably, he struck out, and I caught it due to my elite reaction time, and kneed him in the face. He crashed down horribly, bleeding out of his nose. I then kicked his stomach hard, and made him squeal in pain. He started bawling, and before escalating the situation further, I calmed down and left with a sentence.

Me: "For the record, I didn't do shit with Ichika, and I don't really care for your feelings for her, but the next time you decide to pull some weird shit, check who the fuck you are talking to."

After that incident died down, I went back to my daily practice. However, I stopped communicating with Ichika, as at the end of the day, she played Shinji, as well as myself. I was grateful for her tutelage, but her antics and messing around with me, despite being in a somewhat ambiguous relationship with Shinji, messed my relationship up with a friend.

I needed to focus up and train and for the next week, I just locked in and honed my skills. Right now, wasn't the time for high-school romance, as in order to become great, I have to make some sacrifices. I am not about to let some girl fuck my ambition up.

After measuring my vertical jumping stats again, as I thought, I improved dramatically. I can jump 40.2 inches stationary and 49.8 inches with a running start. Not bad at all! I was in excellent shape, and I could tell my body fat percentage was really healthy. I'm definitely one of the best athletes in the country already!

In this last stretch of summer vacations, I just prepared my body, did a lot of studying tape, including tape of myself at the Neighborhood Association, to dissect my flaws and make improvements and tweaks to my game. I also did a lot of strength and conditioning to make sure when I'm coming down from such great heights, I don't injure anything. I did all the right things to prepare my mind and body for a tough and grueling volleyball season.

On the last day of summer vacations, I took it rather easy and my family and I went to the local temple to pay our respects as well as wish for a successful high school year ahead. I had my cheat day, as I ate a lot of greasy Japanese foods as well as sweets, that I probably shouldn't have consumed. But deep down, I knew this would be the last day of such over-consumption. We finished the day with some fireworks of our own and it was quite nice to be part of a family dynamic once again. I missed my original family, but I was starting to grow attached to my new family. I realized I needed to take better care of my mental health by doing more enjoyable high school stuff once in a blue moon.