Kagao stood in his backyard and tried to feel it again, but he felt nothing. He'd felt it clearly in the park. The domain had opened, and everything inside it had been his. He tried to remember the exact feeling. The moment before the domain appeared, he felt in his chest.
He tried to emulate that hunger, but nothing still came. He sat down against the wall, deep in thought. He knew he'd won, but the ankle break Aomine did on him left a bitter taste in his mouth; it cancelled the feeling of his win.
The domain had opened once, and a mini version, he guessed, also opened during P.E., which meant it could be open again. Kagao stood up and went inside, promising himself that he would keep trying.
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He pushed aside the neat stacks of shirts his mom had folded on his desk in his room and sat down, and for a while, he just looked at the wall. He was never going to let another dude break his ankle again.
His mom had a book. He found it on the shelf in the hallway when he was walking to his room, it was where she kept her cooking guides, the home remedies dictionary, and a thick encyclopedia of medicinal plants. The book was sandwiched between two others and looked old; it was called Building a Healthy Body.
Kagao brought it to his room and read it cover to cover. It was written for women, and some of it made no sense for what he needed - the section on hormonal health he skipped entirely, but the nutrition chapter, those were the ones he paid attention to.
He opened up his school notebook and wrote at the top Diet and Training Plan, underlining both words. The book described caloric needs in terms of body weight. He didn't know exactly what he weighed, so he estimated, wrote a number with a question mark next to it, and moved on.
He built the diet first - breakfast - tamago kake gohan, because it was protein and carbs, and his mom was making it. Grilled fish, because fish was what the book called "complete protein." Miso soup, natto, milk. He wrote 250ml next to milk.
The book lists metabolism on page forty-seven. He read the definition, and it was something about converting food into energy, the rate varying with muscle mass and activity level.
He wrote metabolism and then under it the definition in his own words. The body turns food into fuel. More muscle = faster burn = need more food. He drew a small arrow pointing down at the next line: Eat more protein.
Snack - onigiri and a banana before practice. Dinner - he made a rotation schedule. He didn't know the exact names for all the meal types he wanted, so he wrote descriptions: grilled fish (mackerel, salmon, whatever mom buys), chicken (teriyaki or karaage), and beef on weekends. He wrote vegetables every night; his mom already did this, but he wanted it in the plan.
Now it was time for candy; he liked candy, but he wasn't the kind of kid who hoarded it. His mom bought those small melon-flavored jellies sometimes, and on the walk home from school, there was a convenience store where they sold those chocolate-covered crackers he always got.
He drew a line through the candy, then drew a line through soda and chips, and wrote limit next to the lines. Downstairs, his mom was in the kitchen. He could smell her cooking miso for dinner. He went down with the notebook.
Misa was at the stove, back to him, stirring. She heard him come in and glanced back over her shoulder.
"Hungry?"
"Not yet." He put the notebook on the kitchen table. "I want to eat like this from now on." He opened to the diet page and set it on the counter for her to see. "The fish and chicken rotation, and the breakfast stuff. I need more protein."
"You want me to cook these?"
"Yes, please."
"I'll need to pick up more mackerel tomorrow. We're out."
"Okay."
"You can have the jellies or sweet stuff on Sunday, you know, like a rest day."
'Mhhmm, the book did say rest days were part of the system after all.' Kagoa thought.
"Okay," he replied.
He went back upstairs and started writing the workout section. The book had a chapter on progressive calisthenics - bodyweight exercises designed to build strength without weights.
Monday / Wednesday / Friday — Full body. He wrote the exercises in a column: push-ups, squats, planks, superman holds, vertical jumps. Then, beside each exercise, add two more columns: sets and reps. He'd start at the lower end. He wrote Week 1-2 above the numbers, then drew an arrow indicating progression.
Week 1-2: Basketball, knee push-ups, three sets of five. Squats, three sets of ten. Plank, fifteen seconds. Superman hold, eight reps. Vertical jumps, five reps. He drew a table in the notebook. Six columns across the top - Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and three blank checkboxes beside each. He would mark them when he finished.
Tuesday / Thursday - Basketball only, no extra workout.
Saturday - Light workout, plus basketball.
Sunday - Rest. Then next to it: melon jelly.
He should start now. He went out to the backyard and started doing push-ups: three sets of five, knee variation, then squats - fifteen reps, three sets, then the plank, twenty seconds, the shaking starting around twelve but he got through it, then he did some superman hold and now it was vertical jump, he made sure to make his knees absorbed the impact. He went inside and wrote the checkboxes in, three marks on the Saturday column, and went to sleep.
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100 ps- 1 bonus chapter
200 ps- 2 bonus chapters