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DIVE!! (Light Novel) - Book 2 Prologue
Book 2 Prologue
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
The Asia Joint Training Camp could be said to be the first step to the Olympics. On the eve of the competition that they were gambling the right to represent at the Olympics on, Ooshima Chikara stood before the door to a silent room, hesitating as to whether or not he should open it.
It had been about three months since the grandson of the late genius diver, Okitsu Shibuki, came to live with him, and during that time Ooshima had never felt this much reservation around Shibuki. When he first met the brusque high-schooler who came to Tokyo from Aomori all alone, honestly, he was confused as to how to deal with someone who was twenty-eight years younger than him. After he was about to give up on asking him goofy questions like, “I want to hear one thing. Do you want me to treat you like you’re my own son? Do you want me to treat you like a younger brother? Or, do you want us to just act like good friends, ignoring our age difference?” Shibuki finally answered him without smiling.
“Please treat me like how a coach treats his athletes.”
Ooshima, who decided to just act as normal in that moment, looked after Shibuki at his own pace without feeling awkward after that.
The MDC, which he belonged to, had prepared the eighth floor of a fifteen-year-old apartment on the outskirts of Setagaya for two people. From the entrance, Ooshima’s room was on the right side, and Shibuki’s room was on the left, with the dining kitchen in the middle just barely separating them. That said, Ooshima was able to rudely go across the kitchen and open the door to Shibuki’s room without knocking if there was anything. Even if there wasn’t anything, in his spare time he meddled with everything. Towards Ooshima, who couldn’t stop talking about baseball, horse racing, or his wife from whom he divorced ten years ago, Shibuki grumbled “noisy”, though he didn’t try to close his door.
Shibuki was a boy of few words, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t let people get close to him. Though he seemed to be “closed” when he was approached, his interior was unexpectedly “open”. Was this a boy who was raised in the majestic natural world?
However, tonight was a night where Shibuki wanted to be alone.
Ooshima didn’t know the details of the contract between Shibuki and Kayoko. But, it was definitely true that tomorrow’s competition had a significant meaning for Shibuki, and if that was the case, he should have already begun the struggle behind this door. Expectations and anxiety about the competition. Fear of failure. Nervousness. Ooshima also remembered those things. Moreover, for Shibuki who had been called the “phantom diver who only dives into the sea” up until now, tomorrow’s qualifying trials were the real deal, the first competition that he had ever been in.
It was nine PM. If he was asleep, he would close the door at once.
Ooshima couldn’t stay still, and finally put his hand on the doorknob.
Shibuki was lying on his stomach on his bed, absorbed in a magazine.
“Ah…what is it.”
He was startled when he turned and noticed Ooshima, and quickly shoved his magazine under his pillow.
His face quickly turned red.
At the same time, Ooshima’s face also turned red.
It was because Shibuki was desperately trying to hide “Close-Up! Adult Paradise”, which used to be under Ooshima’s pillow.
“Wha…what are you doing?” Ooshima sounded like he had just been drinking aojiru.(1) “When did you find that?”
No, no, Ooshima thought.
“I’ll give it back.”
No, no.
“You have an important competition tomorrow.” There. Ooshima finally got back his coach’s face.
“If you can afford to look at something like that, there’s more…like that, but there are lots of different things to think about.”
“I thought about them.”
“Ah?”
“I’ve been thinking too much, and now I don’t want to think anymore.” Shibuki jumped up with his inherent instantaneous power, and scowled at Ooshima while he sat cross-legged on his bed.
“Hey, why do you think Gramps taught me the basic events of diving?”
“Basic events?”
“Sakai Tomoki told me that. He said that I had learned all the techniques used in competitions before I came here. Was Gramps trying to get me to compete one day? Was he going to let me repeat the same mistake that he did?”
“Mistake?”
“Gramps’ mistake was leaving the sea. If you were the one who said all those nice things about winning a medal at the Olympics or being the savior of the diving world, then you go to Tokyo and get locked up in a tiny pool for years and years…but then you ended up having everything destroyed by the war. The people in our village believed that Gramps would go to the Olympics, and they all eagerly chipped in for the travelling costs of the cheering party. But he came back empty-handed. The village mayor used the no-longer-needed money to build a bronze statue of Ninomiya Kinjirou* in the elementary school’s schoolyard. When I was a kid, whenever I saw Kinjirou carrying firewood on his back, I was always made to realize that Gramps failed, that going to Tokyo was a mistake, and that people should live diligently and work hard. So why did Gramps teach me all those competition techniques?”
Shibuki was being unusually talkative. It was like he was being driven on by something. On the contrary, Ooshima was calm.
“Calm down. Everyone gets agitated before a competition.”
“I’m not agitated.”
“It’s okay. No one can act normally pre-competition.”
“The competition doesn’t…”
“Listen, calm down!”
Ooshima’s angry voice shut Shibuki up.
Shibuki’s foot, which had dropped onto the floor, was practically vibrating. When their voices became silent, only a nervous clicking sound remained.
Ooshima sighed, then turned to speak to Shibuki. “I don’t know anything, but I can make a guess. The question isn’t ‘Why did Okitsu Shiraha teach you the basic dives of competitions?’, but ‘Why did he only teach you the basics?’”
Shibuki’s foot stopped shaking on the floor.
“Your grandpa didn’t teach you those basic events so that you’d make the same mistakes that he did. Didn’t he only teach you those basic events so that you don’t make the same mistakes that he did?”
“What does that mean?”
“Think about it.”
“It’s you…” he swallowed his voice. “It’s your body.” Ooshima corrected himself. “Your body already knew what I meant, a long time ago.”
When Shibuki gathered his eyebrows together and looked down, Ooshima slowly moved forward and pulled out the magazine from under the pillow. Then he left Shibuki’s room with an innocent look on his face, like nothing happened.
Only a drowning silence, like the calm of the Sea of Japan in the evening, remained in the room that he had left.
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Translation Notes
1. Aojiru is Japanese kale juice. Also called green juice.
2. Ninomiya Kinjirou is the birth name of Ninomiya Sontoku. He’s a 19th century agricultural leader and philosopher.
