Published at 25th of August 2019 10:19 pm

Book 1 Chapter 8 - The Days Of Gray

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

The wind that still dragged on the coolness of spring gently blew past the water surface that flickered with the hazy sunlight. Speckled clouds floated across the light blue sky, which would soon be peeled off like veil and become a blue fit for summer.

The youthful smell of trees, growing fresh green leaves.

The sprinkled sweet fragrance of flowers.

It was a shining, fragrant early summer, in June, where the wings of insects flutter about eagerly, carrying one grain of pollen on their limbs.

In mid-June, Sakuragi High welcomed the opening of the pool for the summer.

The opening of the Sakuragi High pool wasn’t only an important event for their diving team, but also for the MDC members. It was the day where the seasons changed with a click so that you could exchange your school uniform for summer clothes. Tomoki and the others, who went all the way to Tatsumi during the winter months, will borrow the Sakuragi High pool from today. For Tomoki, this brought both advantages and disadvantages to him.

The advantage was simply that the distance between his house and the pool would shrink. Sakuragi High was around the same station as Mizuki Sports Club, and if he rode his bike quickly, it didn’t take that long to get there. If you think about the two hours it took to go to and return from Tatsumi, then this was extremely close, and because of that, he had some leeway physically and mentally.

The disadvantage was that he had to start battling the cold. Diving was a sport that was colder than it looks. You were only in the water for a moment, and most of the time you were on the poolside, and during that time your wet skin was exposed to the air, which would quickly steal away your body heat. Even in the indoor pool of Tatsumi, which was well-equipped with air conditioning, it wasn’t unusual to see divers rubbing their goosebumps on the steps of the diving platform. To say nothing of the exposed outdoor pool, where the wind blows against you without mercy, its coldness could not be compared to the indoor pool.

There was also rain. There were also gusts of wind. The summer sunshine would dazzle a diver’s eyes, but is too fickle to warm their cold body. Nonetheless, since competitions weren’t always done indoors where the conditions are better, divers must also be familiar with these unfavorable conditions.

After greeting the Sakuragi High Diving Club’s advisor and members, while turning to the outdoor pool for the first time this summer, Tomoki was mentally preparing for the wind, rain, and sunshine he’ll have to deal with from today on.

Of course, it wasn’t just the environment that was an enemy. This year, Tomoki had to face off against an even bigger enemy.

The forward 3½ somersaults in tuck position. Tomoki still hadn’t even once been able to perform that technique successfully, even with the qualifying trials for the training camp coming next month.

“Do the first one.”

Kayoko emphasized this to the depressed Tomoki many times.

“Once you’ve done this technique successfully even once, you’ll instantly get the hang of it. Memorize the scenery of the 3½ somersaults with your eyes. If it’s you, it can be done. So, if you can just do the first one, everything after will be easy if you just tear down that barrier.”

The first one. Tomoki also understood the meaning of Kayoko’s words. Truthfully, once Tomoki succeeded in any event even once, it was all smooth-sailing afterwards. But, he couldn’t do the “first one” of this one no matter what.

From 2½ to 3½. The difference of one turn was a lot bigger than Tomoki thought it would be. Even Reiji and Ryou, who volunteered for it, gave up on the 3½ after just under two weeks of practice, and returned to the steady road of honing their existing skills for the qualifying trials. The barrier of the 3½ must have been very thick, since Ryou, who usually chose to show off over winning or losing, withdrew pretty quickly.

How can I do another somersault?

Youichi, who Tomoki consulted, responded, “if there is a secret to increasing somersaults, then I’d like to know as well. Thinking about it with your head is no good. Practice and fail to the point of death, and when you had enough and was about to give up, you’ll suddenly be able to do it. Techniques are like that.”

Tomoki was going to practice until the point of death. He completed spotting thoroughly and was able to grasp the sense of rotation to an extent, and even in the pool he had to attempt it many times while fighting his fear of failure.

However, he still couldn’t do it.

This was a slump.

If he was only demonstrating fifty percent of his power, he would be able to reflect on the result of his lack of effort. If it was eighty percent of his power, he could encourage himself to hold out a little longer. But, even though he was putting in more than one hundred percent of his hardest effort, he felt incredibly upset that he wasn’t able to do anything. If he had no talent, then he had no self-confidence, and his heart wavered as he wondered whether he should just quit diving now. He wanted to gather his luggage, get on a train, and escape to a town where no one knew him.

However, at the end of June, a month before the qualifying trials, it wasn’t actually Tomoki who got on a train with his luggage, but his parents.

Megumi, who had star-gazing as a hobby, and Hisashi, who stuck his neck into everything, left on a tour with the “Star-gazing Society”, who they were on good terms with. On the same weekend, Hiroya was going camping with his friends from class.

As a result, Tomoki, who was the only one not going anywhere, was left alone in the house along with Chikuwa.

_______________________________________________________________

On the weekend, he was alone at home.

If it were a middle schooler who was a little bit interested in the other sex, they might somehow feel a sweet thrill in this situation. And if there was a girlfriend, they would thank God for this once-in-a-lifetime chance. However, Tomoki couldn’t afford to have such pleasant thoughts because he was exhausted from practice every day. That evening, after he returned from practice he fed Chikuwa, heated up the shrimp gratin that his mom had prepared, he didn’t remember Miu until he suddenly felt lonely at the suddenly silent dining table.

The shrimp in the gratin might be the one to blame. The curved backs of the shrimp unwillingly reminded him of the somersaults he tried hard to forget at mealtime.

Tomoki glared at the shrimp and stabbed his fork through it forcefully. In that moment, he felt an unbearable loneliness. Across Japan, even among the many middle school students, the only middle schooler worried about the “3½” was him.

A worry that he could not share with anyone.

He had no choice but to figure it out by himself.

Tomoki had experienced this kind of feeling many times in doing the personal contest that was diving. The loneliness from the time of his failure stung his skin more than the loneliness from being exposed to the wind while standing on the platform all alone.

After finishing his dinner silently alone, Tomoki suddenly wanted to hear someone’s voice in the silence. Rather than talking to someone, he just wanted to listen. He wanted someone to call his name, and know that he is here.

Tomoki, who was lacking a social life in diving and at school, unusually for him thought about calling Miu himself, but he was worried about a few things.

The first thing was their last phone call. Why did she call him Sakai-kun that day?

Second, since that phone call, contact from Miu had suddenly stopped.

Third, recently, Miu seemed somewhat distant even when they were face-to-face at school.

Although everything was entangled in his mind like untied shoelaces, Tomoki had been too busy to think about it seriously. Did something happen? And while thinking that, what happened? And it wasn’t until Tomoki, who never thought about it seriously before, finally got seriously impatient enough tonight to call her. However, her mom told him that Miu wasn’t there.

“I’m sorry. Miu is camping with her friends from class right now.”

Camping.

Tomoki looked back at the seat where Hiroya always sat at the dining table.

Hiroya went camping with his friends from class.

Miu went camping with her friends from class.

Hiroya and Miu were in the same class.

That means, right now, the two of them were camping together.

…

Rather than the fact that the two of them were camping together, Tomoki was more shocked that he didn’t know about it.

Somehow, his heart was pounding. It was painful to breathe. His chest, which had never throbbed because of Miu, felt like it was about to explode.

Tomoki stepped away from the phone and walked aimlessly around the room. Uselessly, he walked up the stairs, and then came down again, still without purpose. He was assailed with unease for reasons unknown, and it would probably get even worse if he stayed still, so rather than that…he took Chikuwa with him and headed out.

It was during his second run that Tomoki came across an unexpected person.

_______________________________________________________________

Gushed-out sweat. Quickened heartbeat. Hot breath—

The more he kicked at the ground and advanced forward, the clearer his head became. The pain of his body helped numb the pain of his heart.

About four months since he started self-training, Tomoki’s runs with Chikuwa had seen a lot of progress. At first, he could only run for an hour at best and was often frustrated along the way, but recently he was even able to include slopes and stairs as parts of his run and enjoyed the scenery of the neighbourhood.

For Tomoki, who usually jogged in the neighborhood at dawn, running at night was a fresh experience. It was already past seven p.m., but the sky was still faintly colorful with the remnants of the red of sunset. Grilled fish. Curry. Simmered foods. Miso soup. Stew. While inhaling “tonight’s scents” from the windows of the houses lit with warm lights, he slipped through the waves of office workers going home, and turned transparent as though he was also one of Earth’s scents. He became soft, feeling like he was going to dissolve into the air.

That night, in the park that Tomoki continuously stopped at to let Chikuwa drink water, there was a strange figure tightly pulling on a rope.

When he first saw it, he thought it was a ghost or something.

It was in a sandpit at an unpopular park. A black shadow was swaying as it rose to the top of a metal pole in that corner—

As soon as he understood that it was actually a person, Tomoki let loose a weird “Hii!” sound. The figure wasn’t just on the metal bar, it was also grasping the rusted metal bar with both of its hands, and doing a handstand on it. It gathered its two feet and pointed them up high at the sky, and kept still without moving the hands that supported its whole body an inch.

Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds…Tomoki timidly approached the sandpit, finally saw its face at the forty second mark, and was surprised.

“Okitsu-kun!”

The man who was doing a handstand on the iron bar was Shibuki.

“Oh.”

Maybe because Tomoki’s voice interrupted his concentration, Shibuki jumped down from the metal bar with agility, and when he turned around to face Tomoki and Chikuwa, he said, “Oh”, again.

Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds…a long silence visited again. This was the first time the two of them met outside of practice, and neither of them were sure what to say to each other.

“Um…were you practicing for the sixth group?” (1)

Tomoki finally opened his mouth.

“No, something else.” Shibuki looked away, embarrassed, and rubbed his rust-covered palms on his jeans.

“But you were upside-down. It’s really cool to be able to do that in a place like this.”

“It’s just a way to kill time. Your house is close by, huh,”

“Ah. Yeah, I live around here.”

At the feet of the two having an awkward conversation, despite Chikuwa dribbling his thirsty tongue, he was waggling his tail with all his might to get Shibuki’s attention. He was not a particularly thoughtful dog, so he believed that everyone he met was a lovable human being, and that if he just waved his tail, then they would return his love.

Looking at that pitiful figure, Shibuki suddenly muttered, “Throat”.

“Throat, it’s thirsty, this dog.”

“Oh, I came to give him water.”

“Hmph.”

Shibuki returned his gaze to Tomoki from Chikuwa, and then smile broadly, like a tense string had been cut.

“You too.”

“Eh?”

“Your throat, aren’t you thirsty? You ran enough.”

Tomoki’s cheeks suddenly flared red. He wasn’t panting. He already stopped sweating, too. Nonetheless, Shibuki was able to perceive that Tomoki was doing self-training rather than just taking his dog for a walk.

“Come to think of it, I’m thirsty too.”

Shibuki took out a 500-yen coin from the pocket of his jeans, while looking at the shaken-up Tomoki with a seemingly pleasant face.

“Wait. Let me buy us something first.”

After letting Chikuwa drink water, the two of them leaned on the bars on the jungle gym side by side, and Tomoki pulled open the tab of the sports drink Shibuki bought for him. The scent of lemon, his favorite flavor, rushed in from his nose to his throat. Tomoki raised it to his lips and drained it down, gulping repeatedly, as it became a more reliable liquid to quench his thirst.

A sports drink given to him by the grandson of a genius diver from Tsugaru, and he was drinking it with him shoulder-to-shoulder. Tomoki felt weird, but the night wind was cool. Chikuwa was at his feet sleeping soundly, and the sky was unusually clear, so somehow, he felt comfortable and forgot about it, and just when he felt that way,

“It’s my housemate.” Shibuki suddenly spoke up. “My housemate can’t stop talking, or rather, it’s hard to calm down when we’re together, or it’s more like, I feel an itch to do something…well, sometimes I escape here.”

So that’s what it was. While nodding, Tomoki suddenly turned his head.

“Housemate?”

“It’s Ooshima, the guy who teaches the elementary schoolers.”

“Oh…you live with Coach Ooshima?”

It was the first time he heard of this. Shibuki was still a second-year in high school, so even though he came to Tokyo from Tsugaru, he wasn’t at an age where he could live alone.

“My mom couldn’t come with me since my little sisters are at home, Fujitani-san’s busy, and I couldn’t possibly stay with that female coach. On that point, Ooshima is single and has no responsibilities. And if I lived there I’d get a special allowance, so I decided to stay with him, but I’d never thought he was a guy who talked so much. When I’m ignoring him, he talks to the TV and the fridge. He even talks in his sleep. That’s just not normal.”

Tomoki stared at Shibuki’s weary profile.

“Something wrong?”

“No, um, I was just thinking that you weren’t going to talk so much either. Since you don’t talk a lot at practice.”

“Oh, that’s just a habit. I practiced with Gramps ever since I was little. When he died, I dived by myself, and I never had the habit of being noisy with my friends. Besides, it’s more like…I’m not good with pools. It’s weirdly hard to breathe when I’m over there.”

Shibuki’s expression suddenly stiffened. To Tomoki, it looked a little pitiful.

“Do you hate the pool that much?” He asked in a low voice. Shibuki instantly nodded.

“It’s too narrow and shallow. Too cramped, stuffy and noisy. You guys do so well in such a small space. Is it fun to think about how many points you can get from those old judges, or how much points will be taken off, while you’re diving? I’m different. For me, diving isn’t a tool to butter up a judge, or anything like that.”

“Well then, what is it?” Tomoki asked immediately. “What’s diving for you, Shibuki-kun?”

“What’s diving for me?”

“Is it something like a grudge, or revenge? Do you hate diving, or not?”

Shibuki bitterly smiled, “No way.”

“There’s no way I can hate diving. For me diving is, to put it strongly, the Okitsu blood.”

“Okitsu…blood?”

“Diving is a sacred ceremony passed down through the Okitsu family. For generations, someone from my family had been the head of the fisherman’s union of the fishing villages, but a long time ago in our village, every time there was a poor catch, there was a ceremony where the head fisherman had to jump down from a cliff in order to appease the wrath of the sea god. They had to sacrifice their bodies to sea to request a big catch. That’s why, the men of the Okitsu family have the skill of diving from a rocky surface hammered into them ever since they were little. In my old man’s generation, it was already abolished since it became a problem that was deemed an anachronism and a danger, but Gramps thought it would be good as a hobby, and continued to teach diving to me, his grandson. He told me while doing so, that I would be the last man to succeed the Okitsu blood.”

As if to check that, Shibuki stared intently at the blue veins criss-crossing the back of his hands.

“I don’t believe in the sea god or anything like that. But I do believe in this blood. It’s the blood that I received from those reckless people who threw themselves into the wild sea in the distant past. For me, diving is a challenge to the sea that had spurred on this blood. But then, suddenly…I was at the pool.”

Before they knew it, the traces of color had disappeared from the sky, and the darkness spread, like purple pearls being sprayed against a deep, dark blue. While looking up to search for stars above the trees, Tomoki felt that he now knew, deep in his skin, why Shibuki kept on rejecting the pool. It was the sky without a ceiling, the outdoors without walls, the soil without pavement. In that situation, this might have been the first time that Shibuki could be himself. However…

“Okitsu-kun, you diving into the sea, and us diving into the pool, might be two completely different things, but…” Tomoki said while still looking up at the night sky. “But, Okitsu-kun, I think your grandfather challenged even the pool seriously. I think that even with you, he was trying to raise you into a diver who could also be accepted in the pool.”

“No way. Gramps hated the pool. His years as an athlete were like a complete nightmare for him. That’s why he came back to the sea of Tsugaru. That’s why he never thought of me trying to dive into a pool.”

“Well then, how did you do the forward 1½ somersaults in pike position?”

“Ah?”

“What about the inward 2½ somersaults in tuck position? The armstand forward 1 somersault in pike position? From who did you learn the forward 1½ somersaults and 1 twist? You had never been in a competition, so you probably don’t know, but all of your techniques are basic dives that divers frequently use in competitions. You had firmly mastered them before you came to Tokyo. You have learned all the necessary things.”

Shibuki’s sharp eyebrows trembled.

“Are you saying that Gramps wanted to put me in a competition?”

“I feel like that when I watch you. You even have the body alignment that Coach Asaki is so obsessed about. You were perfect from the beginning.”

“What the…well, are you saying that Gramps wanted my diving to be scored? To give a performance that the judges would like, or doing a quiet entry? He wants my diving to be like that?”

Tomoki took in a deep breath besides Shibuki, who raised his voice as he got worked up. He didn’t know how Shibuki was feeling. But, as Shibuki who grew up near the sea would think of the sea, those who grew up in a pool would think in the way of someone raised in a pool.

“Of course, our diving might be a lot more inconvenient in many ways compared to your diving, Okitsu-kun. Anyways, since it’s a scored competition, if there are no judges nothing could begin, and nothing could be ended. We always cared about our scores, and get scared of deductions.”

Tomoki looked up at Shibuki with great effort.

“But, that’s not just for diving, everything’s like that. You may have lived freely in a wide environment, but our lives are always constantly scored or deducted. There are judges in all kinds of places, and if you spent your life well, it would be held up as the model for everyone else to live by. I can’t really say it well, but I want to dive to overcome that…not for things like winning a competition, or getting full points. Someday, my own best moment when I will break through will come. I believe in that, which is why I dive.”

“The best moment?”

“Yep.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with judges…”

“Yep, but if that moment ever comes, it’d be nice for it to be on a big stage, if possible. In order to get to the big stage, I’d have to win from a small stage first. I think that the qualifying trials are one of those.”

“The best moment on a big stage, huh.” Shibuki narrowed his eyes as he bent his back while leaning on the metal bar of the jungle gym. “I guess you guys will have your best. But for me, my best is only at the sea.”

Then why did you leave the sea?

What is your contract with Asaki Kayoko?

At the moment Tomoki got up the courage to ask him, Shibuki raised his right hand and hurled his empty can into the air.

Thunk. A sound like empty plating being hit. The empty can landed in the trash cans next to the swings. The sound caused Chikuwa to flutter his eyes open, looked around uneasily, and gave a big yawn.

“I should be going home soon. My housemate is even more of a worrier than a talker.”

Shibuki didn’t really sound like he was complaining, as he stood up first and stepped forward. He then walked a few steps before turning back to Tomoki with a “You” like he was giving him something that he had forgot.

“You candefinitely do 3½ somersaults.”

“What?”

“I also have a little pride. I had complained to Asaki Kayoko about why a second-year middle school kid gets to be taught the 3½, but I can only count the number of splashes. She said, ‘Because that kid has the diamond eyes.’”

Diamond eyes.

“What does that mean?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you.” He murmured as he turned his back and flicked his hand while leaving. Chikuwa waved his tail three times affectionately, then yawned again. Tomoki had no way of knowing what Kayoko’s words meant, but they left a strange sense of weight in his chest.

–because that kid has the diamond eyes.

Was it his own trump card?Was it the strongest weapon that Youichi mentioned?

Whiling repeating Kayoko’s words in his head, Tomoki felt some sort of unfathomable power well up inside of him as he got up, and started to jog back home with Chikuwa.

_______________________________________________________________

The 3½ somersaults of the forward dive that he had struggled with.

The first time Tomoki succeeded with this technique was a few days later.

_______________________________________________________________

Translation Notes:

1. A reminder that the sixth group of diving is the armstand dives

Share