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On the day I was born, newspapers and TV stations were apparently plastered with my story.
Something about the birth of a next-generation sports star, inheriting the DNA of the century.
And, well, they weren’t exactly wrong. My father was a soccer player from Real Madrid who spent more than ten years on the national team and was known as the Eternal Captain and a national treasure-level striker.
My mother was the undisputed queen of women’s volleyball in her era, a national hero who led a golden age, winning gold every time she went to the Olympics or the Asian Games.
But separate from how amazing my parents were, I hate sports.
By the time elementary school was ending, I’d quit athletics and enrolled not in the prestigious sports school I’d been headed for, but in an ordinary middle school in Tokyo, far from my hometown in Gifu Prefecture.
It was nice to have my body at ease, but the passion I’d poured into sports had nowhere to go. It wandered, then vanished. After a day or two of that, laziness had soaked deep into my body.
Don’t do what doesn’t need doing, and finish what must be done as quickly as possible. The perfect philosophy of energy conservation.
Thanks to that, except when I was hanging out with the few people I could actually call friends, I spent all my time reading novels. My grades stayed right in the middle, neither good nor bad.
It was a gray middle school life. Not fun, but not especially troublesome either.
Back then, I thought high school would be the same: I’d go to an ordinary academic school and live quietly.
But then...
"Next! Number 931!"
"...Yes, sir."
At the examiner’s booming call, I walked inside.
Why was I here, in the entrance exam hall for the athletic scholarship program at the ultra-prestigious Shuchiin High School?
The story goes back about a month.
*
One day, when middle school was nearly over and it was time to choose a high school, I sat on a bench outside the neighborhood supermarket, sucking on an ice cream, and asked the guy next to me,
"So, what high school are you applying to?"
The boy beside me, Shirogane Miyuki, had decent looks, but his cold expression and sharp eyes made people mistake him for a detached, icy type. He let out a long sigh at my question.
"Haa, things got a little complicated."
"How so?"
"I was going to apply to some decent public school, but my damn father submitted an application to Shuchiin for a scholarship student without asking me."
A scholarship application was basically a bonus, so applying upward wasn’t weird. But there’s a limit to how far upward you can aim. Shuchiin?
"Nice. Well, you’ll probably fail anyway, so just focus on another school."
When I said it like he was obviously going to get rejected, Miyuki looked offended, but since he couldn’t deny it, he asked back in a strained voice.
"...I might pass, you know?"
"Pfft."
I laughed before I could stop myself.
"No, that’s not even funny...!"
Miyuki bristled. But reality was cruel.
I decided it was my duty to wake my friend up before he drowned in false hope.
"Your grades aren’t bad, sure. But they’re not good enough for Shuchiin, are they?"
"Grr... hard to deny that, but..."
There was a reason even this guy, who was considered a genius at our middle school, lacked confidence in passing.
Shuchiin Academy.
A prestigious school with a long history, originally founded to educate the children of nobles and samurai families.
Even now, with the aristocratic system abolished, it was said to be attended by many wealthy heirs and future leaders of the country.
Because most of the student body was made up of pure-bloods who had come up from Shuchiin Elementary and Middle School, the cutoff for outside entrants, the mixed-bloods, naturally went completely insane.
Rumor had it you needed to rank in the top 0.1 percent academically just to get in.
A guy who was barely scraping by in second or third place in our class wanted to go to the same school as the top student from a prestigious middle school?
Unless this year’s extra-admission cutoff somehow developed a massive hole in it, that was impossible. Since I figured he’d fail anyway, I casually tossed out a line.
"There’s no way that’ll happen, but if you pass, I’ll come along as an athletic scholarship student too..."
"Seriously!?"
Before I could even finish, Miyuki lunged at me.
I’d only said it offhand, so his reaction caught me off guard more than anything.
"...What the hell, all of a sudden?"
"Isn’t that obvious? I know what happened in the past, but I’ve been wanting to see you get back into sports for a while now."
Miyuki’s voice was a mix of hope and worry.
Come to think of it, he was the only friend who knew everything about my situation. It was kind of nice that he felt that way, but—
"You know I have no intention of doing that. The reason I said that was..."
I cleared my throat once, feeling like I needed to steer the mood back to normal, and continued.
"Because your chances of getting in are that low. Besides, the Shuchiin athletic scholarship exam is basically a dead letter anyway."
Since the school was founded, the Shuchiin athletic scholarship exam had produced exactly zero passers.
Every year, sports monsters from all over the country flocked to it, but not a single one had ever passed.
As expected of a school where only the top 0.1 percent can get in academically, the cutoff for entering through athletics alone was absurd beyond belief.
The passing standard was to be graded A or higher in all ten categories of physical ability.
I remembered seeing a variety show where they talked about this year’s rookie of the year in professional soccer: when he was in middle school, he took the Shuchiin scholarship exam, got five As, and still failed. Even that was treated as an impressive story.
That meant this was a test where even someone with the potential of a pro sports rookie could only barely make half marks.
So why did monsters from the sports world keep swarming Shuchiin’s entrance exams every year? Apparently there were several reasons.
First of all, since it was a special admissions track, it was held a month later than the regular exam, so it didn’t even take up an application slot. On top of that, you could earn the title of the first-ever successful athletic scholarship student. There were also plenty of rich kids with ties to pro teams, the school supported its athletic clubs generously, management was strict...
And these days, sports also place a lot of importance on things that are hard to quantify, like game intelligence and diligence. Because Shuchiin athletes are guaranteed to be strong in those areas compared to other schools, pro teams tend to prefer them first.
Of course, the people who actually wanted to join Shuchiin’s athletic clubs didn’t even look at this garbage system clearly designed to make people fail. The catch was that most of the students who got in were top-tier in both sports and academics.
Even knowing all that, Miyuki must have decided that a straight approach wouldn’t work, because he flashed that nasty little grin of his and provoked me.
"Oh? Scared, are you? Come to think of it, it’s been about three years since you quit sports. At this point, calling you washed-up wouldn’t be wrong."
"Hah? Washed-up? Me...?"
So that’s how he wanted to play it. Fine, then I had a way too.
"Even if it’s the Shuchiin athletic scholarship exam, it’s still sports in the end. There’s no option where I fail."
"Then go take the exam and prove it...!"
Hook, line, and sinker.
"But think about it. Wouldn’t I be the only one losing here?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don’t really have any reason to go to Shuchiin, but if you pass, I’d have to follow you there. In the end, I’d get nothing out of it."
"Hmm, that is..."
"So if you’re going to lose, shouldn’t you put something on the line too? That’d be fair."
He realized something was going wrong, but—
"Wait, you were the one who said you’d come if I got in..."
"You’re scared."
"...Fine. I’ll accept that challenge."
In the end, he agreed.
Miyuki’s eyes gleamed with a stubborn determination that said he wouldn’t back down an inch.
Yeah. This was more like us.
"So what are you putting on the line?"
"Hmm..."
He asked, but I’d come up with it on the spot. There was no way I’d already thought of something.
What should I say to make this guy’s blood boil? Ah, right. That was it.
"...How about you introduce me to your little sister—"
"You bastard, do you want to die—!"
The moment I brought up his little sister, Kei, he grabbed me by the collar. Wow. A terrifying siscon.
I’ll admit your little sister is kind of cute, but she’s not my type.
I knew Kei a little, so if I’d been interested, I would’ve asked her out separately long ago.
Of course, watching him lose his cool was entertaining enough, but that wasn’t the point right now.
"Honestly, high school is a matter of my life. Can’t you at least set up one meeting? It’s just one meeting."
"Ggh, that’s..."
He flinched at my perfectly reasonable argument. I drove the final nail in.
"Not confident?"
"Damn it, don’t come crying to me later...!"
Clap!
We slapped hands and sealed the deal.
If Kei had seen that, she’d probably have shouted, "What about my opinion!?" But relax. Your brother’s fault was being too fun to tease.
I tossed my finished ice cream stick into a trash can, stood up, and grinned.
"Then I’ll be counting on you, brother-in-law."
The moment I finished speaking, I took off running.
"I’m really going to kill you...!!"
After a thirty-minute chase, I got hit a few times. But I was going to win anyway, so this was basically just affection.
Still, I had no idea that a promise I’d made without thinking would turn my life 180 degrees...
*
One week later
"W-What is this...?"
The hand holding the paper was trembling violently.
"Can’t you tell just by looking?"
With a smug smile, Miyuki leaned in close to my ear and whispered,
"...My Shuchiin acceptance letter, isn’t it."
Holy crap. No way.
"Forging official documents is a crime, Miyuki. You really went all out on the fake."
I desperately tried to deny his acceptance and looked for evidence of forgery, but this was definitely real.
I’d heard the cutoff was a little loose this year, but this piece of trash actually got into Shuchiin?
"Hey, my memory’s bad, so what was that promise again?"
My hand started shaking harder.
God, why would You give a school like that to a guy like him—
"...I’ll go."
"What was that?"
"I said I’ll go take the exam!"
Annoyed, I shoved back my chair and stood up. He just flashed a grin and gave me a thumbs-up.
After parting ways with him and heading home, I pulled out my phone to check the date.
"Exactly one month left..."
I put the phone in my pocket and stretched.
"It’s been a while since I’ve exercised enough to work up a sweat."
I hadn’t sweated once since quitting sports.
One month. I’d give it my all.
*
Shuchiin Gymnasium
Since it was full of renowned athletic prodigies, there were plenty of famous names here that anyone with even a little interest in middle school sports would know.
But the Shuchiin judges seemed to think differently.
They’d glance at someone, shake their heads, stamp the application as failed, and send them out without mercy.
"Number 36! Eliminated with a two-point deduction!"
"Failed! Faaailed—!"
Voices announcing eliminations echoed from all around.
"Looks like we’re doomed again this year..."
Tetsuo, the teacher in charge of Shuchiin’s athletics program, let out a deep sigh.
The Shuchiin athletic scholarship test was divided into ten stages.
It wasn’t that they wanted to reject people, exactly, but the founder of Shuchiin had said that if you wanted to come here on athletic ability alone, every aspect of your body had to be perfect.
The resulting passing standard was to receive A or higher in every one of more than ten physical ability categories. At Shuchiin, an A was practically pro-level, so there was no way this would be easy.
There had even been talk in meetings about lowering the standard to passing if you got As in more than half the categories, but the board chairman had flatly rejected it. People at that level showed up by the dozens every year anyway, and if they compromised even a little, the prestige of the great Shuchiin would fall, or so he said.
A student carrying documents entered his office, the final screening room.
In name, this was the room you could only enter after passing every subject, but aside from people who got lost, he had never once seen an applicant come in here.
"Haa, looks like you came to the wrong place, student. How many subjects do you have left?"
"They told me to come here to get the stamp."
"The failure stamp can be given elsewhere, no need to say it—"
There was only one meaning to being told to get the stamp here, at the final judgment room.
"Huh? Don’t tell me..."
For a moment, Tetsuo thought he must have misheard, and hurriedly snatched the documents from the boy. And on those documents—
"No way..."
All A’s in physical evaluation.
In nearly ten years of running the Shuchiin athletic scholarship exam, he had seen all kinds of geniuses, but he had never seen a result sheet like this.
He rubbed his eyes in disbelief, and then finally—
Bang!
[Pass]
The boy who saw the stamped result showed no reaction at all.
With a face that made it seem perfectly natural, he turned and headed outside. Tetsuo sprang to his feet and hurriedly stopped him.
"W-Wait, you!"
"Me?"
"What’s your name!?"
"...?"
The boy looked as if he were wondering whether it wasn’t written right there, then opened his mouth.
"...Suzuki Hotaro."
And as he turned and walked out, Tetsuo’s hands trembled violently.
Shuchiin had let a monster in. A monster who would turn the sports world upside down!
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