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DIVE!! (Light Novel) - Book 2 Chapter 12 - Swan Dive
Book 2 Chapter 12 - Swan Dive
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
It was August 31. On the last day of summer vacation, Asaki Kayoko, who remained alone at the Sakuragi High School’s diving pool, stared at the sun which sank over a bench on the poolside. She had already changed into her everyday clothes, and did her makeup beautifully, but though she was unusually fidgety as her restless gaze swam every few minutes, she didn’t get up at all.
There were two reasons why her heart was pounding.
The first was because of the good news that Ooshima brought just before noon.
“Shibuki’s coming back today.”
From the moment that Ooshima whispered that in her ear as they passed each other on the poolside, Kayoko unconsciously became unable to concentrate as usual on practice. Even though he shouldn’t have been home yet, she felt like Shibuki would come soon, that he would show that brazen face in this pool, so she couldn’t sit still.
The figure that she had waited a month for did not appear, and time had passed. The figures of the Sakuragi High diving club members, having finished their practice, disappeared from the pool, and the MDC members also disappeared an hour later. Even when Ooshima said that he had to go prepare sukiyaki and went home, Kayoko still couldn’t abandon the feeling that Shibuki would come here.
Persistence. Vindictiveness. Once she got into something, she didn’t let it go. Kayoko never thought of those tendencies as her good points, but since she was born like that, she decided resignedly that she had no choice but to live like a soft-shelled turtle.
She walked several more laps around the pool that was filled with red. She climbed up the diving platform to look at the redder sky. When she wandered alone like a child continuing to play around in the park that everyone returned home through, she recalled her girlhood, when she always got tired of waiting for someone, and was drenched in hopelessness that she would never see anyone there. Kayoko, who had settled down on the bench for less than an hour, still had her eyes wandering between her watch and her phone. When she looked at her watch she was thinking about Shibuki, and when she looked at her phone she was thinking about Coach Fujitani.
She wasn’t waiting for a love call from him. It seemed disturbing that she still hadn’t heard anything about the results of that meeting.
The meeting. It was the second reason that Kayoko had lost her composure. Right now, there was a special meeting held at the JASF headquarters. The new JASF chairman, calling himself a “medal ghoul,” had put together the next Olympics executive committee after the Asia Joint Training Camp, three months after he took his position, and today he was already holding the first meeting for determining the plan for representative selection.
Information abut this meeting, which wasn’t made public, came from Coach Fujitani’s wife who worked for the secretariat of the JASF. Everyone knew that the new chairman was scrambling to acquire more medals from now on, but still, the too-soon urgency and secrecy of this meeting caused a lot of voices of doubt from within the JASF.
The diving team for next summer’s Sydney Olympics would be decided next April or May. Although that was considered the case until now, there was a possibility that it might be overridden depending on today’s meeting. Being told that, Kayoko continued to be frightened by an unpleasant uneasiness all day long.
Good news and bad news.
As soon as she thought that she only had one worry left, a new one comes.
As the future where the Olympics weren’t very distant at all drew closer, the anxiety and uneasiness assailing Kayoko also became more powerful. In order to bounce back from that, she needed to have more power and belief than ever before, as well as the willpower of a soft-shelled turtle. Was it really possible for her to train a Sydney Olympics representative from the MDC and to safely carry out that heavy responsibility?
If one thought about it, the path to the Olympics was a stack of miracles. Physical fitness and mental aptitude. Daily practice and the environment that allows it. An encounter with an excellent coach. Understanding from family—. If one of those were missing, then the conditions for the miracle were incomplete. And then lastly, only by drawing in the ally called luck, could the athlete stand on the stage of their dreams for the first time.
Kayoko lightly closed her eyes, and pictured the Olympics one year later in her mind.
Who would really be able to stand at the top of the diving tower at that greatest stage?
Japan had three reserved representative spots, but she didn’t think it was possible for Shibuki, Tomoki and Youichi to all compete. Anyways, in Japan it was said that Teramoto Kenichirou was a powerful force on a whole other level, so he already had a seat reserved for him as a representative, with a cushion on it. The battle for Olympic representation was effectively a battle for the two remaining seats.
The remaining two.
If they managed to get them, at once…
Kayoko opened her eyes, as if seeing the Olympic pool engulfed in cheers.
There was no spectators, horizontal banners, or heated enthusiasm here, but there was a single athlete in the darkness who was going to start fighting for the stage of his dreams that was still far away.
“I’m back.”
Kayoko smiled.
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“There’s only one thing that I really want to ask.”
Shibuki, who had been quietly walking away from the other side of the darkness, did not change from how he was a month ago, and stood in front of Kayoko with his usual sulky eyes. She wondered if he was deliberately showing how he had changed when he uncharacteristically brought presents and said, “These are from my mom.” Even so, Kayoko, a former diver, understood painfully how much doubt and conflict he felt here at the end.
“I already cannot become an international diver like your grandpa hoped.” Shibuki said, not complaining, but merely stating the facts. “It’s better to leave the role of protecting the MDC that your grandpa created to Fujitani or Sakai. Even you should know that.”
“…”
In response to Shibuki seeking her true intentions, Kayoko promptly answered without hesitating, “The reason is…The reason is because you are still going to dive. And because your diving is interestingly irresistible.”
“Interesting?”
“From the moment I first saw you dive, I have always been attracted by that interestingness. It isn’t just the degree of difficulty of the technique that you compete with that makes the dive interesting. It feels like that I’m watching you from the bottom of my heart, and if I could I want to teach that to people all over the world. Advanced techniques are not everything.”
Shibuki twisted his lips into a sneer. “You say that, yet you’re trying to teach Sakai Tomoki the 4½.”
“There are certain things that suit certain people. If there are athletes who are suitable for acrobatic-based techniques, then I would like to bring that ability to the limit as a coach. That’s all.”
Kayoko fixed her strong gaze on him without so much as a twitch, and continued. “And, I want to teach you your diving.”
“My diving?”
“It’s true that today’s diving became a mainstream competition based on number of turns, the degree of difficulty of the dive, and entry technique. I think that it’s the natural desire of humans to want to see amazing techniques that they themselves cannot do. But on the other hand, I also think that it’s good to do a performance that returns to the original beauty of diving.”
Kayoko’s voice was tinged with passion, and her eyes glowed like a cat’s. When she talked about diving, she was like a wild animal that had her eyes fixed on nothing but her prey.
“Diving was originally just a simple sport that only involved jumping from a height. But it took a long time to spread to the entire world because there was something that simple dynamism that fascinated people. It was just jumping. And yet people were still captivated by that one moment.”
“Just jumping…”
“If you apply that to the current dives, then it would be a forward stretch. No one dives that plain technique now, but a hundred years ago divers competed with that forward dive for victory. That’s a story from before competitive diving came to Japan. Back then the top two countries were Britain and Sweden. At that time, the British group dived in a style later called the ‘English header’ because of the diving posture where the two arms were raised overhead. In contrast, the Swedish group returned fire with the ‘Swedish swallow’ style, where the arms are stretched out horizontally. Even though the difficulty was higher for English headers, Sweden seemed to have always won complete victory in competitions. It was because their Swedish swallow was beautiful. That technique looked just like a swan soaring in the air, so subsequently people named it after that.” Kayoko said with a challenging look. “They called it a ‘swan dive.’”
Swan dive—.
Shibuki never saw that dance, of course. It was also the first time that he had heard that story. Nonetheless, at the moment Kayoko spoke those words, Shibuki felt a stir like thousands of swans flying out from within him all at once.
Swan dive.
Or perhaps he had felt the encounter of fate in those words.
“My grandfather said that he had seen that swan dive when he was young. He always said that he wanted to see it again. He also said that he didn’t know if there was a diver who would be able to do it, though.”
“He said he doesn’t know if anyone could do it…isn’t it just jumping?”
“Because it’s a simple performance with only jumping, it’s proof against any smoke and mirrors. If we could condense the beauty and power that was originally in diving in one single line, and furthermore let shine the intense presence of the diver themselves, we wouldn’t be looking at just an ordinary forward stretch.”
“Beauty and power. A strong presence…”
“Anyone could impress people if they pulled off a 4½ successfully. If the diver was a little dexterous they could excite the audience with even a 3½. But, it’s just jumping. There’s only one person I know who can grasp the hearts of people with that alone…Okitsu Shibuki, only you can do it.”
“!”
It seemed like the wall that had blocked up Shibuki’s path had crumbled under Kayoko’s coercive rocks.
What opened before his eyes there was only a single, mysterious feather that was still unreliable. But, if he wore it, he would be able to fly again. He could urge himself onto a new challenge again.
Shibuki reached for that feather with zero hesitation.
“Teach…teach me that swan dive.”
It was then that Kayoko’s phone, which she had thrown aside on the bench, played a high-pitched melody.
_______________________________________________________________
The entire phone trembled.
The theme of Rocky swept away the tense atmosphere at once.
In front of Shibuki who was unintentionally listening attentively to the ringtone, which suited her very well, Kayoko, who had her important talk interrupted, annoyedly picked up her phone.
“Hello?”
Her voice revealed her displeasure at first, but she toned it down after hearing the other person’s voice. After saying “Yes…yes…” a few times calmly, the irritation in her voice strengthened. He seemed to be seeing the heat that had been burning her just a moment ago, suddenly dropping down to below the freezing point.
“What was that?”
After that five-minute conversation, Kayoko turned to face Shibuki with a frighteningly empty expression.
“The JASF have decided on the representatives of the next Olympics Games, without waiting for the April of next year. Only two people have been chosen. Teramoto Kenichirou, and Fujitani Youichi…”
Struggling with indecision by himself, and deciding by himself. It was supposed to have been Shibuki, but the world continued to turn coldly at the place that was very far away from an individual’s feelings.
What the hell happened?
Why were the Sydney representatives chosen so soon?
Those overflowing questions spilled out of Shibuki’s mouth, but he became taken aback when his eyes met Kayoko’s. Flustered, he averted his eyes towards the sky. Above the head of the unfeeling, towering concrete dragon, as though it saw Kayoko’s out-of-place eyes, the red, bleary moon floated hazily.
