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DIVE!! (Light Novel) - Book 2 Chapter 2 - The First Half
Book 2 Chapter 2 - The First Half
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
For men’s high diving competitions, each athlete was competing with technique and beauty by doing ten dives.
The first four dives in the first half were limited-choice dives. Athletes chose four dives from the Groups 1 to 6, but the sums of their degrees of difficulty must be within the specified regulations. Basically, the basics, rather than techniques, were the things being tested.
The six entries in the latter half were free-choice dives. Athletes choose a dive from each of the six groups. Since there was no upper limit on the degree of difficulty here, the athletes would try to show off the most difficult technique that they could do. The more you tackled techniques with high degrees of difficulty, the higher your chances of getting high scores become.
By the way, what were the “Groups 1 to 6” that were surprisingly unknown by many?
The first group was “forward”, which most commonly involved diving forward while facing forward. All dives, whether there was an approach involved or not, whether there were one or two turns, whether it was pike or tuck position, belonged to this first group if the performance involves diving forward while facing forward (excluding dives with twists).
The second group was “backward”, where the diver’s back was facing the pool and the diver rotates away from the board.
The third group was “reverse”, where the diver was facing forward and rotating back towards the board.
The fourth group was “inward”, where the diver’s back was facing the pool and rotating forward towards the pool.
The fifth group was “twisting”, which included any dive with twists. If the first to fourth groups had circular doughnut-shaped turns, it could be said that the fifth group had twist doughnut-shaped turns.
The sixth group was “armstand”, where the diver did a handstand in the edge of the platform and dived from that posture. Try to imagine the terror of doing a handstand on the very top of the ten-meter where you’d tremble from just standing there normally.
Divers would have to perform four different dives from these six different groups for the limited-choice dives, and dives from all six of them for the free-choice dives. In other words, if they did not learn how to dive from all six groups, they would not be able to participate in competitions. Excuses like “I can’t do reverse no matter what”, “Diving backwards is scary”, and “Blood rushes to my head when I do handstands” were not accepted.
As Tomoki had pointed out, Shibuki had learned the basics of these six groups before he came to the MDC. He, who had never been in a competition, and had no idea that he was going to participate in one, was gifted with all the weapons for fighting in a competition by Shiraha.
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Right now, Shibuki and his remarkably large body were on the ten-meter platform.
The first of the limited-choice dives.
Shibuki was doing the forward 1½ somersaults in pike position that Shiraha had taught him a long, long time ago. It was an elementary dive with a degree of difficulty of 1.6, where you stretched out your knees while rotating one and a half times forward. He was very young at that time and did not know that it was used in competitions, but willingly practiced it a lot of times simply only because he was good at dives with tucks. And without knowing its name, that technique, like many others, soon became ingrained into his skin like a suntan before he even knew it.
Kayoko had chosen this dive for the first round of the competition, and it wasn’t just Shibuki, but everyone who brought their best dives for the first round of the limited-choice dives. As a result, no one would make a big mistake as long as they weren’t too nervous, and most divers would be able to manage it faultlessly.
Indeed, the fourteen people who went before Shibuki all cleared it with mostly no mistakes. Youichi was at first place with a result that was surpassed the previous expectations for him, and Tomoki was also in the good position of fifth place with his clean turns. Pinky Yamada was in second. Matsuno Kiyotaka was in third. Reiji was in eighth, but only Ryou exerted his strength too much and messed up, and started with twelfth place in the water.
And now, Shibuki, the fifteenth person to go, was about to start his performance.
With the sensation of the rough concrete beneath his feet, Shibuki sucked in a deep breath and looked out at the people below.
His rivals who were watching him from the poolside. The sparse spectators who were in the stands. Kayoko was there. Ooshima was there. Coach Fujitani was there. And the seven judges who were on both sides of the diving pool. There were three on one side and four on the other, arranged that way so that they would be able to judge the performances of the divers from every angle, their stern eyes shining with their efforts to make sure that they don’t overlook a single mistake. The timing of the takeoff. The swinging of the arms. The height of the jump. The accuracy of the aerial performance. Beauty. The entry position. The splash. Those things all ran before their eyes in a single moment, never to return again, one-by-one replaced by the figures of the scores.
I’m thirsty, Shibuki thought.
My body feels sluggish.
My feet feel heavy.
I will never get used to that sharp chemical smell of the pool.
That man-made light from the ceiling makes me uncomfortable.
Why am I in a place like this?
Why did I leave the sea…?
“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.”
“Didn’t your grandpa only teach you those basic events so that you don’t make the same mistakes that he did?”
The voices of Tomoki and Ooshima ran around in his head. Just when Shibuki wanted to shout “Why!”, the whistle that prompted the start of the performance sounded.
He lifted his eyes, as if to watch the evening calm of the open sea. There was no wavering horizon or outlines of ships, just the wall that echoed the bustle of the main pool.
Even so, I’ll fly here.
I came here to fly.
I can’t go back now.
Thoughts that resembled resignation moved Shibuki’s body.
Raising his meaty arms high overhead, his large body leaped. His body, which was unstably released, nose-dived as he lost his support. In order to somersault while resisting that shock, it was necessary to go against speed and air pressure with force. His body, whichwas trained to not loosen his knees even a little as he rotated, drew a huge, powerful arc while falling at sixty kilometers per hour. And just when his body submerged into the water at almost a right angle, the water surface kept silent, as if whatever had been accepted into there had been completely forgotten.
No splashes arose.
No-splash—
“That kid never did saves even once during practice…”
No wonder Kayoko couldn’t believe her eyes from the stands. Shibuki’s specialty was a dynamic aerial performance with a dynamic splash, and everyone was apprehensive that the problem was the latter. The judges had heard the rumor that Okitsu Shiraha’s grandson was going to be participating, and thought the same way. They were ready to take off points for his entry.
And right there was a splendid no-splash.
In the first half of the competition, where the judges tended to keep the scores low, Shibuki’s first entry had unexpectedly high scores, probably because the impact of his entry betrayed their expectations.
8.5 points.
9 points.
8.5 points.
9.5 points.
8.5 points.
9 points.
8 points.
As a result of this judgement, Shibuki’s performance had the high score of 41.76, despite being an ordinary dive with a degree of difficulty of 1.6.
At that point, Shibuki took second place, right after Youichi.
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Even so, if you simply add up the scores, you’d get 61 points, so why was it only 41.76? Many who watching diving on TV often wondered about the scoring, but in fact, the calculations were rather more complicated than for gymnastics or skating.
The scores of a diving competition were determined by multiplying the “the average of the five remaining scores from the seven judges, with the highest and lowest scores having been discarded” by the “degree of difficulty of the dive” by three. (1) Why it was multiplied by three at the end was a conundrum, but it’s too complicated to answer so it won’t be touched on here.
In the case of Shibuki’s first entry described above, with the highest score of 9.5 and the lowest score of 8 discarded, the scores of 8.5, 9, 8.5, 8.5, and 9 were the subjects of evaluation. And when you multiply their average (8.7) by the degree of difficulty of the forward 1½ somersaults pike (1.6), then tripling the product, it would be equal to the 41.76 that we got earlier.
According to these calculations, if Shibuki was scored earlier from a dive with a degree of difficulty of 2.5, his score would have reached 65.25 points. If it had been a super dive with a degree of difficulty of 3.5, it would have been 91.35 points. If you saw that gap between the scores so far, you would know just how important the degree of difficulty is in diving competitions, where there was often a lot of crying over a one-point difference.
On that point, for Shibuki who did not possess a lot of high-level techniques, today’s competition should never have been advantageous to him. But, because everyone was competing with dives of the same degree of difficulty in the limited-choice dives of the first half, his performance that made use of his large body for a big performance and coupled with the excellence of his entry would allow him to steadily pile up points.
It was still Youichi who maintained a good performance in the same way as before. Though he was surprised at Shibuki’s unexpectedly good performance, he was not discomposed, and had high scores for each of his performances with no possibility of danger.
The high school third-year duo of Matsuno Kiyotaka and Pinky Yamada were pursuing them after that.
And it was still the middle school second-year Tomoki who showed them that he was by no means weaker than them.
Tomoki had improved dramatically, and at the morning practice, everyone felt that today’s Tomoki was like a completely different person. Together with the heights of his jumps and the lightness of his rotations, he felt a vigor, like there was electricity running through every one of his movements. This reality was reflected in his scores.
While some got excited because they were doing very well, others cried because they performed poorly. Although Reiji managed to perform his dives somehow while being a little stubborn, as the score differences began to widen, Ryou’s ability to concentrate on his performances waned.
When a small mistake was made, the fear of diving snowballed with every round. One would try to recover their previous failure. Which would lead to new mistakes by straining the body and throwing off the rhythm. This was typical for Ryou today.
After the first half’s limited-choice dives were over, Youichi was in first place with 180.12 points.
And Shibuki was surely in second place 172.61 points.
In third place was Pinky Yamada with 159.19 points, who had attracted the judges with his inherent flashiness.
Tomoki had 157.55 points, surpassing Matsuno and jumping to fourth place. Tomoki, who got tenth place at last year’s Kanto meet of the Junior High Championships, and wasn’t able to make it to the Nationals.
In fifth was Matsuno Kiyotaka, who even though put together solid performances, was overall a little dull.
Tsuji Toshihiko managed to get sixth place by earning cheap points.
Flaming Jirou still hadn’t had a lot of failures yet, so he was in seventh place.
Reiji was in eleventh, not having stood out in any way, and Ryou finished at sixteenth, which was last place.
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The trouble occurred at break time.
The divers were given a twenty-minute break before the start of the free-choice dives, and they used that time to jump into the bubble bath one after another in order to warm up their cold bodies. Kayoko ran indignantly from the stands to the one person who was going against this wave, Shibuki, who was resting by the poolside.
“Did you skip all the way from Tsugaru to Tokyo just so you could do that half-assed diving?”
“Half-assed diving?”
Before Shibuki could gather his eyebrows together, Ooshima, who had chased after Kayoko, butted in with a “hey.”
“What are you saying? This is Shibuki’s first competition, and he blocked off second place from his opponents among the middle and high school students present here. Isn’t that a big deal?”
“His result is second place. He flew faultlessly, did his entry in one go, and his performance stood out reasonably. But that was all that was. A dive like that can only be done if you weren’t Okitsu Shibuki. I was moved to tears while watching it, wondering if I went all the way to Aomori to scout and train such an amateur.”
Kayoko’s voice aggravated Shibuki as usual. Every one of his sleeping cells made the veins on his head stand up tensely.
“Hey, wait a minute. You said not to make splashes.”
“Did anyone tell you to kill yourself for that?”
“Kill…myself?”
“I know. You didn’t kill yourself. You just couldn’t keep yourself alive. You curled yourself up in your first competition. Your body turned stiff, became hardened, your movements became smaller, and you panicked…and you couldn’t do your usual lively performance. Because you don’t even know why you’re here.”
“Stop it.” Ooshima interrupted Kayoko. “You don’t know anything. Shibuki is fine, so stop here.”
“What’s fine?”
“If there was nothing wrong, then it’s fine. It’s okay to look smaller than usual. The lively diving you talked about was burdened by his back.” He blurted that out at once, and realized what he had done.
When Ooshima turned around, Shibuki had widened his eyes in shock.
“Back?”
Oh no, Ooshima’s face seemed to say as he looked down, refusing to look up even when he was asked something. “What was that, what does that mean?”
“…”
“Hey, what is it? What’s wrong with my back…”
Shibuki was obviously panicking. It could even be said that he was scared. He came to Tokyo from Tsugaru all by himself, and was agitated by the urban noise and his new life, so now he was exposing a face that was too defenceless.
“We are coaches.” Kayoko said, unable to just watch. “We notice the problems of our students. No matter how desperately you try to hide it.”
“!”
Did they notice it?
Kayoko impressed her words upon Shibuki, whose face froze instantly. “It might be damage to the cervical vertebrae or the cervical spinal cord. This isn’t uncommon with divers. Especially you, who dived in your own rash style up until now. As I said, saving is an essential technique for reducing the burden to your own body.”
“…how long have you known?”
“Coach Fujitani seemed to have guessed it somewhat from the beginning. Your diving was truly dazzling, but when you got up from the water, you were grimacing for a moment. When I was carefully watching you, you were casually protecting your back during your daily life.”
“…”
He had been hiding it so hard until now. An unexpected funniness that was not possible to put into words pressed onto the chest of Shibuki, who had intended to casually disclose it. It was out. Everything had been seen through from the start.
Shibuki was driven by an urge to laugh loudly, and when he realized it, he really was laughing out loud.
“I don’t mind you laughing.” Kayoko’s expression didn’t change. “But the competition will start in five minutes. The free-choice dives are the most important parts. How are you going to dive?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“If you dive without any problems and finish with a skillful entry, you might be able to leave good results. It will be difficult to surpass Fujitani-kun in first place, but if you do well, you would be able to keep your current second place. It will be a very good job if you got second place in your very first competition. I don’t know yet whether you would be chosen as a representative athlete, but for the time being you are being praised by everyone, and you would be able to return home in a good mood. And you would be basking in that good mood for two or three days. But, that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“On the morning of the fourth day, you would have forgotten everything about the competition. The judges and the spectators would have also forgotten you. You think competitive diving is like that. That comes with giving a passably coherent performance. But, if you do your own diving in this competition even once…if you remember the momentary thrill of doing your best in front of the public, you’d never forget it, ever. Not for the promise with me, but diving for that moment of exhilaration from now on.”
“A momentary thrill…”
“That will surely affirm you, who was here, right now.”
Kayoko’s eyes calmed down, like the sea in the evening.
Shibuki’s reflection flickered over that sea surface, like an unstable little boat.
“I just want to hear one thing. Can I go all the way to the Olympics?”
“As long as you are willing to go, I will accompany you until the end.”
The small boat in her eyes stopped moving.
An announcement from within the venue informed the restarting of the competition.
Shibuki tilted his head and looked up at the diving tower that was illuminated by the sunlight from the window. The huge dragon waited for him calmly as always.
“Concrete dragon, huh.”
Right now, Shibuki felt like he was facing the dragon head-on for the first time.
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Translation Notes
1. This probably seems confusing so here’s a better explanation
