Saitama Dungeon - Chapter 5

Episode 5: At School(2)

After the second period, Math, I safely completed the third period, English and the fourth period, Social Studies.

In English class, the teacher simply read and translated the textbook, but just by doing that, I ended up remembering both the translations and the vocabulary.

Have I become more attentive?

Once the fourth period ended, it was time for lunch.

I couldn’t quite recall if I was on lunch duty or not, so I asked the girl sitting next to me since my memory was fuzzy.

I couldn’t remember the girl’s name from ten years ago. Sorry.

“Was I on lunch duty?”

“I’d be happy if you were on lunch duty, but our group is on duty this week. Last week, wasn’t it Hasegawa’s turn?”

“I completely forgot. Thanks.”

I had truly forgotten, as the saying goes.

The girl next to me stood up, put on her apron, tied a scarf around her head, and left the classroom with the other duty students.

Ah, so being on lunch duty required wearing an apron and tying something around the head. I had completely forgotten about that too. I was worried about keeping up with the classes, but considering the four classes I’ve had so far, it seems like there shouldn’t be any problems. However, I seemed to have completely forgotten about these kinds of rules.

……

During lunch break, instead of the lively scenes of friends gathering around tables to eat depicted in anime, in reality, if you were to move the tables after lunch was served, dust would surely rise, and if something happened, the lunch spread out on the tables might spill. Was that a bento box scene?

Anyway, at our school, we don’t move the tables.

I finished my lunch while reminiscing.
Since lunch break until the fifth period is quite long, most of the boys in the class usually go out to the schoolyard to play. I think I used to go out to play in the schoolyard ten years ago, but somehow I didn’t feel like it today, so I stayed seated at my desk and looked out the window. The sky seemed somewhat hazy.

While I was gazing out the window like that, Yuna came over.

“Ichiro, you seem lost in thought. Is everything okay?”

“Nah, nothing’s wrong. Even though it’s supposed to be a clear sky, it feels somewhat cloudy.”

“Is that so? The sky looks much bluer today than usual.”

Ah, I see. This is Saitama, next to Tokyo. And it’s southern Saitama at that. From the perspective of someone from Tokyo, they might completely deny it, but it’s mostly Tokyo. At least the sky shouldn’t be much different from Tokyo’s sky. In that case, even a slight reduction in haziness would make it appear blue.

Today’s fifth period is Physical Education. During P.E., changing clothes is basically done inside the classroom for both boys and girls, but girls usually wear something under their uniforms, so they just take off their uniforms. Girls who are in clubs, like Yuna, change in the club room. Boys change in the classroom without much concern. Whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know, but no one complains. I don’t know why, but I just remembered that.

So, just before the start of the fifth period, I changed into my P.E. clothes, leaving only my underwear on.

Of course, no one was interested in a boy in his underwear, so no one paid any attention to me.

I felt quite impressed having taken my clothes off.

Or so I thought, but when I felt someone’s gaze and looked in that direction, it was the girl who told me about the lunch duty. She was staring at me intently, then quickly averted her gaze.

Let’s pretend I didn’t see that.

After changing, I joined the others and moved to the gymnasium for today’s basketball session.

As we walked, I remembered where the gymnasium was.

When the bell for the fifth period rang, the P.E. teacher blew the whistle, and when everyone lined up,

“As I mentioned last week, today we’ll have matches divided into four teams for boys and four teams for girls. The teams remain the same as before. Let’s start with warm-up exercises.”

Once the warm-up exercises were done, the students who were in charge of preparing for P.E. ran to the back of the gym and brought back the balls and bibs.

Each match lasts 20 minutes with a 10-minute half-time. Two matches, one for boys and one for girls, are played simultaneously on two courts.

Since I was in the second half of the second match, I sat with my team by the gym wall to watch the game.

The problem was, out of the five members of my team, excluding myself, I couldn’t remember the names of two people. I think it’ll work out once the match starts, but despite feeling like a hero and having my brain in top gear, there was an unexpected pitfall.

Now then.

As the match began and I watched the boys game, it seemed like everyone except me was paying attention to the girls game. If the boys game was something remarkable to watch, it might provide useful insights, but it seemed to be on par with the girls game. Even if I watched the girls game, the educational value of P.E. wouldn’t change much. The teacher didn’t say anything either.

By the way, the referee for the boys game in the first match was the teacher, and for the girls game, it was probably a member of the basketball club. I couldn’t remember their names as usual. Oh well.

Moving on to the second half, that girl would probably play in the match, and the teacher would referee the girls game while a basketball club member currently on the court would take charge of the boys game.

As expected, the actual basketball club members were strong. They smoothly bypassed the opposing team’s defense, intercepted passes, and easily stole the ball.

In the 20-minute match, it was 16-41. In the end, there was a considerable gap.

Now then, it’s our turn.

We put on our bibs, did some light stretching, and stood on the court. Since it’s a class, I want to take it seriously, but standing out too much could be a problem. Should I show off or just go with the flow?

The basketball club member who had just performed well stood in the center of the court with the ball. The tallest boy in our team, Abe, became the jumper.

By that time, I had remembered the names of the two people whose names I couldn’t recall earlier.

It seemed like the tallest player from the opposing team became the jumper.

The whistle blew, and the ball was tossed.

Both jumpers tried to get the ball, but in the end, the jumper from the opposing team hit the ball, and a player from their team caught it.

Our team hurried back to defense, but the player who caught the ball seemed to be bad at dribbling, so I ran up and easily intercepted it from the side.

I picked up the rolling ball and threw it directly into the opposing team’s goal ring with an overhead throw, and it went through the net.

“Hooray!”

Perhaps because of the mindset that a match equals competition, before I knew it, I had thrown the ball.

A bit late, the referee blew the whistle.

Everyone stopped and silently looked at me.

It was a direct three-point shot from our half of the court.

Perhaps I went a bit overboard. Did I?

Should I have at least used both hands to make it look more like a long-range basketball shot?

My teammates finally reacted to me.

“”Hasegawa, amazing!””

The boys and girls watching the first match from outside the court were in an uproar.

Even the referee from the basketball club looked surprised and asked, “What was that just now!?”

“I just threw it in desperation.”
I gave a casual answer, but it didn’t look like an act of desperation at all.

Since it seemed like it would be bad to stand out any further, I let it go from there.

So, that shot was dismissed as a mysterious shot.

I shouldn’t openly display my physical abilities.

That was the lesson I learned in today’s P.E.