After I joined in, the real practice could finally begin.
Unlike Umi, I was a complete amateur at basketball, so they let me dribble before shooting the ball.
"Ah…"
"Alright, that's a miss, Maehara-kun. Another set for you, Umi-chan."
"Fine… Maki, I'm okay, so don't panic. Just focus."
"Y-yeah… Got it…"
I remembered doing this in P.E. If I recall correctly, the trick to lay-ups was to aim at the corner of the inner box of the backboard.
I received the ball from Houjou-san, and dribbled towards the basket for the layup. I tried to mimic Umi's movement.
The ball bounced a few times on the rim before falling in.
"Nice, Maehara-kun. Five more to go, Umi."
"Ugh… M-Maki… I-I'm almost finished…"
"G-Got it…"
After that, Umi managed to finish her push-ups before I could make another mistake and add more sets to her punishment.
Her footwork seemed to be improving. She shifted her footing so that she could shoot right as she received a pass.
And so began the cycle of Umi running back and forth, receiving the ball and shooting. Whenever she succeeded, she repeated the drill and whenever she missed, she did more push-ups before starting again.
As the practice went on, the originally energetic Umi now looked exhausted.
"Alright, last one. After this, you'll get a one minute break. Prepare yourself, you'll be up against us next."
"O-Okay…"
After she nailed the last shot and Nitori-san blew her whistle, Umi let out a deep breath and crouched down on the spot.
"Good work, Umi. Here's some water."
"Thank you, Maki. You did really well for your first time."
The end result was, Umi missed five shots in total while I missed three. She ended up doing eighty push-ups in total. The two coaches said that we'll get used to this eventually, doing that drill for ten minutes without missing was expected, but I couldn't help but wonder how much time it would take to actually achieve that.
I knew that they were amazing girls since they could keep up with both Amami-san and Umi for years, but I couldn't help but be amazed all the same.
It was hard to associate the way they were currently with their ladylike conduct as Tachibana High's students.
"You two, ten more seconds and we'll start our practice again. No slacking, we don't have much time!"
"I know… I'm going, Maki."
"Mm. Good luck, Umi."
We did a high-five.
After the shooting drill was done, they would be doing defensive practice. Umi would try to defend against Nitori-san and Houjou-san in one-on-one matches or two-on-one practice. My role would be to pass the ball to them, a simple job, but for someone with low stamina like me, this was enough to make me feel like dying.
"Okay, that should be enough for now! It's been an hour, so take a five minute break! Umi-chan, we'll do rock-paper-scissors, the loser will buy drinks for everyone, okay?"
"Mm… Rock paper scissors!"
The three of them did rock paper scissors.
"Ugh…"
"You lost, Umi-chan~ Manaka and I will have barley tea, okay? What about you, Maehara-kun?"
"Water is fine… on second thought, I'll go with her instead."
"You can't! What's the point of us doing rock paper scissors if you're going to accompany her? Here's my phone, Umi-chan. Use my money to buy the drink."
"Roger… You two are such slave drivers…"
"We've been treating you kindly since we reconciled, no? We have to be mean to you sometimes to balance out… Anyway, go quickly! The break will be over soon!"
"I hate you…"
Umi then rushed toward the vending machine while grumbling.
Both Nitori-san and Houjou-san were still acting reserved toward Umi, probably because of what happened to them during middle school. This was probably an attempt to slowly repair their relationship with Umi.
That was probably what Umi wanted too.
"She's gone now, Manaka."
"Mm."
After confirming that Umi was out of their sight, Nitori-san and Houjou-san stared at me.
"Um? Can I help you?…"
"Hehe… Nothing much~ I just want to get to know you better~"
The two of them were smiling at me, but there was this strange pressure coming from them and that kept me rooted in my spot.
I wanted to run away, but there was no way that I could outrun them.
"Maehara-kun, can I ask how you and Umi got to know each other? Umi-chan just told me that you started dating at Christmas and she refused to say anything more. I want to know how you guys first met, or who confessed their feelings first… Something like that!"
"Right?~ I want to know what you guys usually talk about. How did your first kiss taste? We've been in an all-girls school our whole lives, there's no one to talk to about this kind of thing~"
"Ah… Uh… We did nothing special… I think…"
Since they've spared some time from their busy schedule to help Umi, I should try to pay them back by answering their questions properly, but I wasn't sure how much I could tell them.
At first we got along because we shared similar hobbies, then we got closer and closer until we kissed at Christmas— No, I shouldn't go that far…
"Ah, right, I heard that both of you won the prefectural tournament back in middle school, is that right?"
"Why are you trying to change the subject?… But, yeah, we did. Both of us were regulars on the team."
"Mhm. We only won the prefecturals though. We lost in the first round at nationals."
Both of them were good, but they simply weren't the best. I occasionally watched sports matches on the TV and I understood that those people were usually the cream of the crop.
But this wasn't the thing I wanted to talk with them about.
"Do either of you remember what happened back then? Who did you face in the semifinals?"
"Yes, we kept notes to review our games after each match, we can remember everything if we just read it."
"What about the players? Do you remember them?"
"As long as I wrote their names down, yes."
Then there was a chance that they knew about Arae-san.
If she was actually that good, she would be a regular player back then. What made me doubt her was the fact that she quit as soon as she entered high school.
She didn't seem to be injured, so I could rule out that possibility.
Anyway, I asked the two of them about Arae-san and they told me that they'll tell me about her the next day we got to practice. After that, our training continued.