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DIVE!! (Light Novel) - Book 3 Chapter 6 - Never Ever Lose
Book 3 Chapter 6 - Never Ever Lose
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
Youichi’s many many emotional issues come to the surface. A lunch date with Kayoko. More of that weird snowman metaphor.
“It seems that Tomo-kun had been injured during practice.”
After he wandered aimlessly around the neighbourhood, Youichi finally returned home, where he received that piece of shocking news from Yoriko. It had been at night, and the sun had already set a long time ago.
_______________________________________________________________
Tomoki had been quietly engaged in practice on that day. With his usual possessed look, he threw his whole body from the platform, devoting himself to that one moment alone. The pool’s closing time was approaching, and Keisuke had blown his whistle and called, “that’s all for today,” but he climbed the steps of the diving tower as though being pulled by his hair, and stood on the deserted platform.
He might have been impatient, thinking about how little time he had left. Tomoki had been too busy with only doing the 4½, and had attempted the forward 2½ somersaults in tuck position while still catching his breath. However, his takeoff had lacked concentration as well as momentum, and its height and distance were not enough.
As a result, Tomoki, who dived facing the pool, hit the back of his head on the tip of the platform the moment he bent his head backwards, and apparently falling ten-meters below powerlessly, like a twig.
“It seemed that there was a huge fuss because he temporarily lost consciousness and was bleeding, but thankfully, it looks like his injury isn’t that bad. I heard that he is going to receive a thorough checkup tomorrow, just in case, but Tomo-kun is in good health now, so no need to worry.”
No need to worry. The moment he heard Yoriko say that, Youchi’s stiffened body was sapped of its strength. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so any moment now he felt like he was going to suddenly fall on his knees.
It was a million-to-one chance incident. It followed a diver around, like a lightning bolt on a stormy night. Even though lightning was ringing from the other side of the sky, people wouldn’t think it would fall on their own heads. But, sometimes it happened. If a famous veteran diver lost their career in a momentary accident, the shock of it sometimes left a deep trauma in the athlete’s mind.
Trauma.
The after-effects of an unforgettable wound—.
“Forward somersault, huh…”
Youichi murmured unconsciously, causing Yoriko to look at him as if searching for something.
“Did you recall it?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Flustered, Youichi shook his head and asked, “So, where’s Tomo now?”
“He’s still in the hospital. He’s going to stay overnight at the hospital to monitor his situation, but if there’s no abnormalities in the results of examination, then he will leave tomorrow.”
There seemed to be no abnormalities in Tomoki’s examination results, so he didn’t actually have to wait until the afternoon of next day to leave. Keisuke, who had been present at the examination, informed them of that, so Youichi could breathe a sigh of relief once again, but he still wasn’t completely reassured.
Ever since the Olympic representative decision had been passed down, he hadn’t been able to make himself go to Tomoki’s house while he worried about its circumstances, but that afternoon, Youichi decided to pay it a visit.
_______________________________________________________________
It took ten minutes to ride from Higashikitazawa to Kyoudou Station, enduring the looks of the people riding in the same train car as him.
It took eight minutes to walk from Kyoudou Station to Tomoki’s house in a light rain.
It was around two P.M. when Youichi, holding a heavy present to his chest, arrived at the Sakai house.
“Oh my, Youichi-kun. During the time when I haven’t seen you in a while, you’re still as handsome as ever.”
Tomoki’s mother, who greeted him at the front door, had her eyes glued to the gift rather than Youichi’s face as she said that.
“We have other guests here, but please feel free to go upstairs.”
He was told as he went upstairs, and then he pushed open the door with his right elbow.
Those guests who surrounded Tomoki’s bed all turned to face the door.
Ryou. Reiji. Sachiya. Their eyes were focused on the present Youichi was still holding—a huge potted plant.
“Th…those flowers are really pretty.” Tomoki managed, as though his voice was being forcibly squeezed out.
“Aren’t they?” Youichi responded with a nod. “They’re the moth orchids that I got from you.”
“What—”
“I’m lending them to you until your injury is healed.”
Right after saying that condescendingly, Youichi walked towards the writing desk that showed little indication of being used much, and placed the pot on it with both hands. The thud sound that reverberated to the floor eloquently indicated its weight. The queen-like moth orchids did not seem to be perturbed by the change in their environment, spreading its petals aloofly as though the lives of common folk did not interest them.
“Youichi-kun, did you actually bring them all the way from your house?”
In response to Tomoki emphasizing the word “actually,” Youichi swung his shoulders in circles. “Yep. It’s good to do some muscle training.”
“Ee—”
“But I still had to put the pot down three times on the way here to rest.”
“Why did you take so much trouble…”
“I was also thinking that while I was coming here.” Youichi said disappointedly. “Even though I thought it was a pretty great idea, it’s not that great when you are trying to do it the hard way, isn’t it?”
Tomoki was agape for a moment, and then suddenly smiled.
“No, it’s great, really. Thank you. Those flowers really do seem a little bit like princes, don’t they?”
His voice contained a carefreeness that had been obscured by a shadow lately, and when Youichi looked into Tomoki’s eyes again, it seemed as though his former cheerfulness had returned to his eyes somewhat.
Or, it might be because of the friends who were surrounding him.
“Hey, Youichi-kun, Ryou-kun came.”
Turning at Sachiya’s voice, he saw Ryou sitting cross-legged next to the bed and looking embarrassed. “Hi,” Ryou said, and ducked his head. He hadn’t seen him since the announcement for the Asia Joint Training Camp members.
“Yo, it’s been a while.”
“Sorry for going off without permission.”
“The old man was waiting for you. He was wondering if it wasn’t time for Ryou to come back soon.”
He responded with a light tone, but Ryou fell into an awkward silence, and Tomoki’s and Reiji’s eyes lost their calmness.
“That’s because Ryou-kun isn’t coming back.” Sachiya piped up innocently. “He started to play basketball.”
“Basketball?”
“Well, it’s…” Ryou shut his eyes, embarrassed. “At first, I was just playing around with the guys from the basketball club, but unexpectedly, I seemed to have some talent, and everyone said that I should officially join the club…and I want to try it out seriously, a little bit.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t like doing either one halfway, so I am planning on filing a withdrawal notice to the MDC soon.”
“Oh…”
He would be lying if he said he wouldn’t miss him. However, Youichi also felt that he had anticipated Ryou’s limits quite a while ago. As a diver, he was missing something. It seemed cruel, but in reality, the field of sports is a cruel thing. Even so, whether one continued to dive in search of improvement of oneself, or go a different way in search of new possibilities, the only one who had the right to choose was oneself.
One’s future is something belongs only to oneself. No one else can shoulder it on someone else’s behalf, huh…
While reflecting upon Kayoko’s words, Youichi turned to Ryou and said, “I’m going to tell this now.”
“When we were kids, when everyone went to the Junior Olympics, there was some sort of big fuss because your bright red swimsuit was gone.”
“Oh yeah, for some reason it was found in the women’s washroom…”
It wasn’t just Ryou, but also Tomoki and Reiji who nodded nostalgically.
“Well, the one who hid it was me.”
“Huh?” Ryou exclaimed, startled at the sudden confession. “But Youichi-kun, you felt sorry for me at that time, and you loaned me your spare swimsuit, didn’t you?”
“I think of myself as a petty brat, but your bright red swimsuit was flashier than my yellow one, wasn’t it? Since a long time ago, because I had to be number one in everything, I couldn’t allow you to stand out more than me. I had enough rivals with Pinky Yamada alone. Sorry about that.”
“So that’s why you gave me a plain, dark gray spare…”
“But on that day, because I caught the cold or something, I lost big in the end, so I got really angry realizing that even if my swimsuit stood out it was meaningless if I lost the competition. I remember that in desperation, I took off my swimsuit and threw it into the pool, then returned to the locker room completely naked.”
“Oh, I remember that too,” Tomoki raised his voice. “Was that the background for the swimsuit incident?”
“On that day, when I saw Youichi-kun lose his temper over losing the competition, I was deeply moved that he was also a human being after all…” Ryou murmured in a daze. Excluding Youichi, the other four performed the work of revising their memories in silence for a while, and then somebody burst out laughing.
“I’ve been tormented by the pangs of my conscience for a long time,” Youichi said while laughing. “Well, because I have such a selfish personality, an individual sport like diving fits me perfectly. But Ryou, a team sport like basketball might suit you surprisingly well. You’re always touchy around people, but that’s just because you’ve always watched everyone carefully.”
“Youichi-kun…” Ryou was blushing.
“Good luck with basketball,” Youichi told him encouragingly. “If you ever get tired of being a team player and want to be alone, then you can always come and climb up the dragon.”
“Really?”
“Wearing something other than a bright red swimsuit, that is.”
A slippery smile spread across Ryou’s face, like he had just joined the MDC. “Of course,” he said, giving a nod.
_______________________________________________________________
After that, the laughter in the room never died out, as the five of them crowded it with stories about when they were little, or made “I can say this now” confessions, until around five, when the middle school trio of Ryou, Reiji and Sachiya got up. Even though only Tomoki, Youichi and the moth orchids were left after they went, the warm air was forever fragrant with the scent of friends. It was always around Tomoki. No matter how many tens of kilometers he ran, no matter how much he trained his abs, that was the only thing Youichi couldn’t obtain.
When it was just them, Youichi pulled the writing desk chair to the bedside and sat on it.
“Are you scared to dive?” he started off by asking what he had been thinking about the most.
“What, why?”
“There are some guys who cannot dive immediately when they get into an accident during practice. The fear of not knowing if they will be injured again takes precedence, becoming a serious trauma. Retirement is the worst-case scenario. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. I mean, I don’t remember the fear or the pain, since I fainted when I hit my head. Coach Fujitani said I was lucky.”
“You are.” Youichi gave a bitter smile at Tomoki’s nonchalant remarks. “But you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“Yeah. I understood from this that it’s not good to be impatient and to force myself.”
Tomoki smiled wryly, pushing his white bandage-wrapped head against the backboard of the bed.
“When I heard about the Olympics decision, I was definitely incredibly shocked. I was so shocked that I forgot about my heartbreak, couldn’t eat pudding, and had no idea if it was autumn or spring… Of course a reason for that is because I wasn’t chosen, but it’s not just that, um, how do I say this…I, well, I didn’t think that I wanted to surpass that box.”
“Oh, the box.”
It was a word that Tomoki often spoke of.
He always felt like he was closed in by something. He felt confined in that narrow box created by the adults. But if he dived, he could surpass that box—.
“Somehow, before I knew it, I thought surpassing that box meant going to the Olympics. I got those two things mixed up in my head, so I think that’s why I wanted to go to the Olympics that much. But, even though I say this in front of you, when I heard the reason that you and Teramoto-san were chosen as representatives, somehow in the end, I realized that the Olympics is also a box created by adults… The decision was made earlier than usual because of medals, the number of representatives was changed, and it seems like the JASF is working hard in different ways, but, but this…how do I put this, this feels like it isn’t our Olympics…”
It isn’t our Olympics.
Youichi was shocked at what Tomoki expressed. He felt that he had been able to guess exactly the core of all of his pent-up feelings in his chest.
“After all, even if we did or did not win medals, that really isn’t a problem for us. We practiced as hard as we could with our coaches, we are the ones going to the Olympics, so we don’t only have to be pleased or disappointed. But, that’s not it. After all, if you think about how adults in the center of the Olympics never saw our faces, then all of a sudden everything becomes so boring…”
I can’t say this well, but…Tomoki trailed off, but Youichi understood.
It was true that the JASF was working hard for the sake of medals. If it was advantageous for winning medals, they’d reduce the representative spots, and carefully arrange for a safety blanket and attendant for Teramoto-san as well. For them, an athlete might just be a chess piece for carrying medals.
But what were medals?
What was the Olympics?
What was sports?
Tomoki was also hiding feelings that were stuck in his heart, but cannot be shaped well, in his chest.
Youichi was surprised at that fact, but Tomoki was still not finished talking.
“That’s why, I wanted to do the 4½.” As though looking for something beyond the window frame that enclosed the dusk sky, he fixed his eyes there as he spoke. “I want to make the 4½ my own box.”
“The 4½?”
“Yep. It sounds like a dream, but that’s why I thought it was worth overcoming. It’s a box that I have decided on and I will overcome. That’s why no one will get in my way. If I succeed, then I’ll know it for sure, and everyone will see it. I wanted this clear box.”
His lower lip trembled faintly. Despite talking at his usual gentle tempo, a quiet anger dwelled in Tomoki’s eyes. Far from expressing that anger and changing it into hatred, he transformed it into a new goal. That was Tomoki’s strength, his unconscious stubbornness. Youichi shivered.
When I was absent from practice and struggling with my slump, was Tomoki thinking about these things?
Was that the meaning in his ferocious training?
While his head was wrapped in painful-looking bandages, looking like an injured warrior, sitting there was no longer his sensitive and delicate junior, but a single diver who tried to maintain his own tough will.
Tomoki was continuing to grow.
Not only outwardly, but inside as well.
“Six months ago, you were barely getting the hang of the 3½, let alone the 4½.” Before he knew it, his mouth was moving on its own. “Before you went to the training camp, you kept complaining that you couldn’t do the 4½ unless you grew wings.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“But, now it’s different. You’re seriously going to dive it.”
Tomoki nodded, for the first time looking at Youichi with the eyes of a rival.
“Even if I can’t do it now, I might grow wings half a year or a whole year later.”
An indescribable sensation, as though the cells within his body were bursting all at once, as though those that were bursting were running for the top of his head, assailed Youichi.
The level of it was different from his feelings when he saw Ryou’s bright red swimsuit when he was little, but they might have come from the same deeply-rooted place.
It was a fighting spirit that thrusted out immediately after acknowledging a rival that possessed something “good.”
I don’t want to lose.
I’m not going to lose.
I’m the one who’s going to be number one.
As those feelings came to a boil, Youichi’s body was immersed in the stirring of his forgotten instincts.
He had to always be number one or else, he wanted to be more noticed than anyone else, he wanted to dive beautifully and coolly, he wanted to look down on everyone in the MDC, so he had always thought that diving was the only thing for someone like him who had a somewhat sharp tongue, uncooperative, and would hide his junior’s bright red swimsuit. No one would notice the likes of me if I stopped diving.
Tomoki was a junior who couldn’t be left alone. His honest personality and hidden, unknown talent were even moving. However, I, who never had a girlfriend in my entire seventeen years of life, cannot lose to him, who’s always surrounded by friends, lives in a normal, relaxing family, and even got a girlfriend in the first year of middle school.
He couldn’t lose to Shibuki, who thought of returning to Tsugaru when he was suffering from his back injury, and spent all summer having sex with his girlfriend.
I will win.
I will keep on winning.
But, for that to happen, I need to compete first—.
“What is it?”
It was like he had been roused out of a deep sleep. Youichi stood up straight, took long strides towards the writing desk, and picked up the motivating moth orchid’s vase with both hands.
“It’s stupid to give flowers to your enemy, and princes are more than enough by themselves. I’m taking this thing home after all.”
“What?”
“You were stupid too, but so was I. I’m getting a fresh start, once more. In the meantime, heal that injury of yours.”
Leaving a stunned Tomoki behind, he briskly walked out of the room. Tomoki’s mother was also stunned as she saw off Youichi, who was once again holding the potted plant and going back home, at the front door, but he didn’t care, and left with a “sorry for bothering you.”
The neighbourhood in the evening was not completely dim, like a bad manga artist pasted a screen-tone over it.
Youichi fended off the steadily strengthening rain by holding up his umbrella with his neck and shoulders, protecting the moth orchids from getting too much water on them.
If you couldn’t protect anything, then you should firmly determine what’s important to you, what’s dear to you.
While chewing on those kinds of thoughts, he stepped firmly on the road back, step by step.
_______________________________________________________________
“Excuse me.”
It was nighttime when Youichi visited Keisuke’s study.
Keisuke liked the setting sun, so he used the room on the west side of the second floor as his study. And yet, he was rarely at home during the time the setting sun shone, and on this day as well it was past nine when he returned home. It was past ten when he finished dinner and bathing and closed himself up in his study. Youichi opened the door to the room before eleven, when Keisuke had his reading glasses on and was writing in his practice log.
“All of the middle schoolers are absent today. They probably got together at Tomo’s house.” Glancing briefly at Youichi, he sighed grimly on his notebook.
Youichi was at a loss as to whether to tell him Ryou’s decision, but as soon as he thought of saying it himself, what came out of his mouth was his own decision instead.
“Um, I have a favor to ask.”
“A favor?”
Keisuke turned in surprise. Youichi had never been the type to cut straight to the point.
“Can you let me meet JASF’s Chairman Maebara?”
The fountain pen fell from Keisuke’s fingers,
“President Maebara?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I can’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“If I do, you’ll feel awkward about being torn between the chairman and me.”
“…”
“And, you’ll definitely be on the chairman’s side.”
The illusionary snowman that had been enlarged to its limit was melting, and the running water was lapping at their feet.
Keisuke stayed as unmoving as a stone, and Youichi also didn’t move. Only time did.
It was the first time that father and son looked at each other for such a long time, and so directly.
