You really are utterly pathetic.

“The opponents are a third-year doubles pair with excellent chemistry, Takashi Domo and Hayato Matsui. But the combination of Jin Akutsu and Ryo Shishido can’t be underestimated either,” Yanagi Renji, with her short, close-cropped hair framing her face, murmured softly.

“Fusaki Middle School has been knocked out in the first round for three consecutive years. Our Doubles No. 2 has a 99% chance of winning,” Sadaharu Inui analyzed, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“One set decides the match! Fusaki’s serve! Matsui to serve!”

“Go, Matsui! Domo! Show them what you’re made of!” The Fusaki students in their gray and white tracksuits cheered loudly from the stands. The Evergreen students were not to be outdone—their shouts rising in waves, each side determined to outdo the other with sheer volume.

“I’ll make you cry and cut your hair yourself,” Hayato Matsui muttered through clenched teeth as he faced Ryo Shishido diagonally across the net. With that, he tossed the ball and served.

“Smack!” Shishido dashed to intercept the ball, immediately engaging Matsui in a fast-paced rally.

“As expected of Shishido from Hyotei—he’s formidable even in doubles…” Mamoru Inoue stroked his chin thoughtfully, closely observing Shishido’s every move, while Saori Shiba beside him hurried to capture the moment with her camera.

“But that’s all it is!” Shishido returned Matsui’s shots with ease. Though he’d been paired with Akutsu partly on Matsubara Mei’s suggestion, he was also eager to try his hand at doubles.

“Tch… Not bad,” Matsui thought, realizing Shishido’s tennis skills were impressive and that he couldn’t afford to focus solely on one-on-one exchanges.

“Smack!” Seizing an opportunity, Matsui deliberately sent the ball between Shishido and Akutsu. In an instant, both players reacted to the streak of yellow-green, lunging simultaneously.

“Heh, crash into each other, why don’t you!” Matsui sneered, the words forced out through his teeth.

“Oh no! Both going for the ball at once!” Inoue cried out anxiously.

Yet, just as everyone braced for Shishido and Akutsu to collide, Shishido’s figure vanished from view, drawing gasps from the crowd.

Shishido’s sudden disappearance didn’t affect Akutsu; on the contrary, it allowed him to swing freely. “Hrah!” The tennis ball shot off like an arrow, slicing between Domo and Matsui.

“I’ll handle this!” Takashi Domo wasn’t one to stand idle. With a shout, he dashed to the back court, catching up to the ball in a couple of strides and returning it with a swift swing.

“I was waiting for you!” Shishido’s voice rang out from nowhere. As everyone looked over, he leapt up from under the net, arms stretched taut as his body soared.

“He was lurking under the net?!” Domo, who had just played a lob, was stunned, as was Matsui. When did this guy get there… Could it have been just now?!

The scene of Shishido nearly colliding with Akutsu flashed through Matsui’s mind. Frozen in place, he watched as Shishido struck with a grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “Beautiful ball!”

“Thud!” With a resounding smash, the ball slammed into the ground, leaving a faint white mark.

“Fifteen-love!”

“Incredible…”

“A smash from that height—can a first-year really pull that off?”

“That was amazing!”

The spectators could hardly contain their astonishment, bursting into praise. Saori Shiba lowered her camera, her face full of disbelief. “Inoue-senpai, Akutsu and Shishido’s doubles play—can first-years really achieve that kind of coordination?”

“I’m not familiar with this Akutsu Jin, but as for Shishido from the Hyotei tennis club, I noticed his potential during an interview some days ago. Still, seeing such seamless teamwork with Akutsu, they must have put in an extraordinary amount of practice…” Inoue shook his head, equally taken aback. Two players, seemingly bound to collide as they each chased the ball, had instead pulled off a feint worthy of a magician. It was almost unbelievable.

“They did well. In just three days, they’ve overcome the issues they had during training,” Fuji said with a gentle smile, arms folded.

“If they’d used my suggested ‘A-Un Tactic,’ their opponents would never have managed to exploit the gap between them,” Matsubara Mei grumbled, clutching her head in frustration.

“That tactic is straightforward, and it’s true that it can help a new doubles pair avoid mistakes due to lack of coordination. But as long as you keep talking on court, the other side will quickly catch on and exploit the weakness,” Yanagi replied.

“But I didn’t expect the two of them would be able to predict each other’s moves just by reading facial expressions. That defies normal probability—88.5% unlikely,” Inui added, scribbling rapidly in his notebook, recording every new detail about Shishido and Akutsu’s partnership.

“Maybe it’s because both Shishido and Akutsu have excellent dynamic vision. They can pick up the subtlest changes in each other’s expressions in a flash, allowing their brains to issue commands for extreme maneuvers almost instantly,” Matsubara explained.

Even back when Matsubara first decided to bring both Akutsu and Shishido into Evergreen, she’d wanted to pair them for doubles. But their initial attempts had been less than ideal, even counterproductive—if she hadn’t intervened, they’d probably have ended up trading blows instead of rallies.

To get them in sync, she’d borrowed the ‘A-Un Tactic’ that Momoshiro and Ryoma famously used in the original story. But ever-stubborn Akutsu found the whole “A-Un” call embarrassing, and for some reason, Shishido actually blushed, refusing outright to use the tactic Matsubara suggested. In the end, she could only let them figure things out on their own.

At first, when she heard they could coordinate through observing each other’s body language and micro-expressions, Matsubara thought they were pulling her leg. But now, seeing it with her own eyes, she realized such ‘detective logic’ really existed!

So, it’s just that poor eyesight limits the imagination…

In the next three rallies, Matsui and Domo abandoned the strategy of targeting the gap between Akutsu and Shishido and instead focused their attacks on a single player.

After a meaningful glance, they decided to concentrate all their firepower on Shishido, who was slightly smaller in build.

To their surprise, though Shishido might lack any dazzling special moves, his stamina was unrivaled in Evergreen Academy—if he claimed to be second best, no one would dare claim first.

“Tap, tap, tap!” Shishido darted around the half-court, returning every ball Matsui and Domo sent his way. Each exchange lasted only two or three shots before the ball was forced out of bounds and the umpire shouted the score.

“Thirty-love!”

“Forty-love!”

“One game to zero! Evergreen leads, change ends!”

As the four approached each other in the middle of the court, Shishido shouldered his racquet and grinned, “Losing without giving it your all—how pathetic.”