"A monster has entered Shuchiin. A monster who’ll turn the sports world upside down!"
"...There was a time I entertained that foolish hope, too. Haa..."
Tetsuo had watched Hotaro for about a year now, ever since becoming his homeroom teacher.
And the conclusion he reached was—
"This kid has no intention of using his own talent at all!"
Every day, he came to class with an attitude so ambiguous it was hard to tell whether he was actually listening or just spacing out, then went home.
During breaks, he read books. When his friend Shirogane Miyuki finished student council work, the two of them rode bicycles home together.
And that was it.
If there was any sports club at all, or at the very least physical education class, Tetsuo wanted him to use that precious talent. But Hotaro never took the initiative to do anything sports-related.
It was the very picture of a model homebody life. And he was a sports scholarship student, no less! An unprecedented one at that!
Whenever there was a class-versus-class soccer match, Tetsuo would casually say, "You’re a sports scholarship student in name, so you should be required to play,"
and force him into the game...
Whack
In the class match, the ball flew toward Hotaro from far away. It was the kind of ball someone with decent athletic reflexes should have been able to handle—
"Oops, my bad."
The ball struck the top of his foot and rolled away somewhere.
A parade of infuriating mistakes that made everyone watching want to tear their hair out!
Sighs erupted all around!
To a stranger, it would just look like he was bad at the game and making mistakes, but...
"T-this level of deliberate design!"
Tetsuo, who had once been a promising soccer player, could see it.
He always let the ball slip away as if it were a mistake, but wherever he let it go, there was always a free attacker waiting.
But Tetsuo had been a player, so he could read soccer that way. The other students were in a different position.
The goal would somehow get scored, but the reaction was always, "He did that again."
Our team would be driven crazy every time Hotaro touched the ball, and the opposing team would end up grabbing the backs of their necks too, because even though the mistake clearly came from their side, they still got scored on. It was a bizarre situation that left both teams miserable.
The spotlight naturally went to the student who scored, and since the scorer was the type who loved to show off, he would brag loudly as if it were all his own achievement: "I carried, didn’t I? Admit it." "Man, it’s hard even cleaning up after you..."
But Hotaro never seemed to care, not even a flicker of expression changing on his face.
"Does that guy really not care at all even when he’s treated like that...?"
He didn’t seem to be ostracized, at least not on the surface, since he was treated like a lucky charm for victories. But there was no helping the rumors that spread behind his back: that a guy like that getting into Shuchiin as a sports scholarship student must have been due to his parents pulling strings. And since they were strictly forbidden from mentioning his entrance exam scores or his family background, which he clearly didn’t want discussed, the teachers couldn’t step in to explain either.
Tetsuo wasn’t the only one who had high expectations.
The other teachers involved in the selection were professionals famous in their own fields.
All of them had praised Hotaro to the skies, saying he was the kind of talent who could excel in any sport, but after watching that ridiculous parade of mistakes, more and more people were starting to wonder if those teachers hadn’t just been exhausted and out of their minds on the day of the scholarship evaluation.
The plan to make him want to play sports through sweaty, team-bonding class friendships kept failing, over and over.
After a year of trying every trick he could think of, Tetsuo finally had a thought.
With talent like that, and with all sorts of methods being used to keep him away from sports, there had to be a reason.
Tetsuo made up his mind and called Hotaro to the teachers’ office.
The boy wore an expression that suggested he had no idea why he’d been summoned so suddenly. Tetsuo let out a long sigh and said to him,
"Hotaro, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve had expectations of you as a sports scholarship student all this time."
"Yes."
He answered plainly, without even a trace of denial. Tetsuo rubbed his brow and asked,
"Depending on how you answer this question, the way I deal with you from now on will change a lot. So answer honestly."
"...Understood."
"Is there some reason you don’t seriously do sports?"
"......!"
Hotaro looked momentarily flustered at the question, as if he’d been caught by the implication of, You know I’m doing this on purpose, don’t you?
After thinking for a moment, he finally answered.
"...Yes."
As expected, Tetsuo thought, and nodded easily while patting Hotaro on the shoulder.
"I see. Thanks for being honest. I won’t ask any more. Don’t worry, I won’t put any more pressure on you."
"Yes, thank you."
Hotaro bowed politely and left the room.
Watching the boy’s back as he walked out of the teachers’ office, Tetsuo decided to let him do as he pleased.
He kept a small hope tucked away in the corner of his heart that one day, Hotaro might suddenly spread his wings and soar with that talent.
From that moment on, Suzuki Hotaro became the strange thing known as the "sports scholarship student who doesn’t do sports."
Whack
After finishing my counseling session in the classroom, I let out a deep sigh of relief.
Whew. Finally free from all that attention.
It had taken me a long time to escape the expectations of being Shuchiin’s first-ever sports scholarship admit. If I hadn’t made that careless promise to Miyuki, I wouldn’t have done anything so attention-grabbing in the first place, but once water has been spilled, you can’t put it back in the cup. My solution had been to adopt the persona of "actually bad at sports."
I’d refused outside interviews, so the media had gone wild for a while over the rumor that the first admit had finally appeared, but once I stopped showing my face, it died down quickly. Inside the school, especially among the sports clubs, my admission had apparently been a huge topic, but after I kept fumbling so badly, the conclusion seemed to have settled into: he got in because his parents pulled strings. It was a little surprising that no rumors had spread about who my parents actually were, though.
My first year had been more or less fine too. Since I was a mixed-track student, it had been a little hard to adjust among the Shuchiin students who had gone through elementary, middle, and high school together, but it wasn’t bad. My grades were always dead last, though...
As I walked down the hallway, I spotted Miyuki.
"Hey. Where are you off to?"
"To finish student council work. Honestly, I can’t catch my breath."
This guy was in his prime these days.
If I summed up Shuchiin’s current evaluation of Miyuki, it would look something like this.
Healthy, strong, brilliant. Unshakable number one in the academy mock exams.
A powerhouse who could stand toe-to-toe with geniuses fighting for the top even on a national scale.
A remarkable student who earned awe purely through academics, and who, despite being an outside admit, was chosen as student council president thanks to his exemplary attitude and behavior.
That kind of embarrassing praise was plastered all over him.
Was this really the same pathetic Miyuki I used to know...?
It was a truly heart-swelling situation.
I was proud of my friend for evolving from a duck into a swan in just one year, but...
"So, have you thought about it?"
"You’re drilling a hole in my ears. Is this about the student council again?"
He’d been pestering me for months over that student council business, and it was getting seriously annoying.
"Yeah, because I figured you’d definitely..."
"Nope, not going."
"I haven’t even finished talking! At least think about it seriously!"
"...If you’ve been rejected this many times, maybe give up already."
"Ugh..."
I knew why Miyuki was asking me. He was student council president now, but since he was an outside admit, there were probably some things that were hard to control properly. If I, someone who had known him for a long time, helped support him, it would make things easier in some areas.
But the student council and an energy-conservation type like me were a terrible match. There would be plenty of social butterflies around just being near them would be exhausting, and there’d be tons of work...
I couldn’t see a single merit in it. If I had to name one advantage, maybe honor, but I wasn’t the type to care much about reputation.
My conclusion was always the same: the student council was just too much for me. To make him give up, I started listing reasons one after another.
"If you’re only asking because we’ve known each other since middle school, forget it. My grades are always dead last, I don’t even have that many friends, and my reputation’s bad too. There’s no merit in forcing me into the student council, so—"
At that, Miyuki’s expression hardened as he stepped closer to me.
"Do I look like the kind of guy who’d give someone an important role just because I’ve known them a long time?"
"...That wasn’t what I meant."
"Your grades? I’ve never judged you by numbers. If I needed someone for their grades, I’d have lined people up in order and brought them in based on rank."
"Then why do you need me?"
"Ahem. It’s embarrassing to say it myself, but..."
"Just don’t make me cringe."
"You have a way of getting to the essence of things."
"...?"
"Your energy-saving attitude might be called laziness if you put it badly, but when it comes to doing the minimum necessary, you’re more efficient, sharper, and more flexible in your thinking than anyone else."
So that’s how he saw me.
He was saying all this embarrassing stuff so openly, when I’d asked him to tone it down.
He cleared his throat once and continued.
"The student council gets everything from urgent matters that need to be handled immediately to all kinds of trivial nonsense. In the limited time we have, the only person I can think of who can keep a critical eye, grasp the point quickly, and resolve things in a concise way is you."
"........"
"Friends? You think becoming top of the grade and student council president means I’ve built some dazzling social network? Not at all. You’re the only person here I can really open up to from the heart. This is a lonely, frightening position. If you keep failing to produce results, you’ll just be left behind."
"...Hmm."
I knew how hard he’d worked to get to that position.
And I knew how desperate and bloodstained that effort had been, too.
"Rumors? It’s your freedom to sit there and do nothing after hearing that nonsense, but you got in on merit, fair and square."
"...People who talk like that don’t really care about the truth."
There are plenty of people who just want something to chew on and enjoy, and the truth doesn’t matter to them. But...
"Maybe I don’t know about anyone else, but I know. No matter what anyone says, I need you."
This guy was different.
At least on that point, I was certain.
"..."
Then he held out his hand to me.
"Join the student council, Hotaro."
"Miyuki, you..."
He was really saying such embarrassing things first thing in the morning.
Even when I was trapped in emptiness with no expectations at all, he was the type to suddenly reach out a hand.
Yeah, Shirogane Miyuki really was that kind of guy.
At this point, it’d be hard to refuse...
"Nope, not going."
I almost got fooled there.
In the end, no matter how much he dressed it up, it just meant he was insanely busy. Then it was a no-go.
"Hey, come on...! Just once—!"
Throwing away all trace of his cool image from a moment ago, Miyuki instantly switched into groveling mode and latched onto my pant leg.
Fed up with his persistence, I only managed to get free after saying I’d come by for a week as a trial.
So the pathetic side of him really hadn’t gone anywhere after all...
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