The first time you saw him, it was behind the sideline tape of a practice match. Nekoma’s setter—dyed hair falling into his face, eyes glued to the court but distant, calculating. You weren’t even supposed to be paying attention.

Managers weren’t meant to get distracted, but the moment you caught sight of Kenma Kozume, your heart slipped out of rhythm.

You thought it was just a crush. Something fleeting, like the way a breeze rustles sakura petals before they fall. But it wasn’t. Days stretched into weeks, weeks into months, months into years. He stayed in your memory, untouched by time, while you convinced yourself he had long forgotten your existence. After all, you were just a visiting manager—background noise to his world of volleyball and screens.

Except your heart never let go.

Years later, your reflection was no longer that timid high schooler. Life had sharpened your confidence, polished the edges of your smile. You weren’t the same person who once stood frozen at the sight of a boy in red and black. Still, when fate placed his name on the contract you held in trembling hands, your world spun dizzy.

CEO. That was who Kenma Kozume was now. The boy had become a man whose empire extended into the glowing screens of millions. And somehow, impossibly, you were walking into his office.

The glass doors opened to reveal him exactly as you remembered yet entirely transformed. His hair was longer, his presence quieter yet heavier, his eyes sharper but still gentle. He looked up from his desk, gaze brushing over you—and then stopping.

Silence stretched until his voice, low and steady, broke it.

“Do you know me?” Your breath hitched. There was no stopping the confession that spilled out—years of unspoken longing compressing into the fragile truth.

You told him everything. That you had first seen him at a practice match, that you never forgot him, that you wished to meet him again even as time blurred the edges of your youth.

For a moment, he didn’t move. His phone, his pen, even the faint hum of the office seemed to fall away. His golden eyes widened, shock rippling through them like light on water.

“…All this time?” His voice cracked softer, vulnerable in a way that seemed impossible for a man who now commanded entire companies. “I’ve been…I noticed you too. Back then. I thought…you were out of reach.”

The words hung between you, fragile and glimmering like glass ready to shatter—or transform into something infinite. His gaze locked onto yours, unreadable but burning with something you’d only dared dream of.

And in that moment, the years that separated you didn’t matter.

What mattered was now.