When I Told the Most Beautiful Girl in the School That My Confession Had Failed, She Suddenly Started Coming at Me With Unbearably Heavy Feelings

Chapter 32: Morning and the Past

At 5:45 a.m., I woke up earlier than usual and sipped coffee while dragging out running gear I hadn’t worn in a long time.

Instead of the sneakers I usually wore, I changed into running shoes and headed outside.

The outside was still dimly lit. The clear air chilled my lungs, bringing a familiar sensation that cleared my head just a little.

How long had it been since I went running in the morning? I hadn’t done it since quitting the club, so it was truly two years.

I wanted to get at least a little more mobile before the ball game tournament. That was my current driving force.

My destination was the nostalgic running course.

A park a few minutes’ run from the apartment had a running track attached. During my active days, I had run here often.

Perhaps because it was still early, there were few people around.

A middle-aged man in running gear like mine, an old man for whom walking was probably a daily routine, students in junior high jerseys from the neighborhood. Among them stood out one particularly loud-voiced man.

“Ah, that’s good, Grandpa! This much is a piece of cake in the morning! ……Oh, it’s Renji!”

“Sendou……!?”

“What’s up, you running too? You’re surprisingly motivated~”

“You’re the one whose house is far from here. ……Did you run all the way?”

“Well, yeah. After playing soccer, this distance is a breeze.”

(Soccer idiots are terrifying……)

I ended up running with Sendou, whose morning voice volume hurt my ears.

I matched Sendou’s fast pace and talked with him while running. Despite the morning hour, Sendou was full of energy.

“Man, the exams are coming up soon…… I hope we can all get through somehow and join the ball game tournament together.”

“It depends on your effort.”

“I know! Don’t bring up studying first thing in the morning!”

“You’re the one who started the conversation……”

“……That said, it was surprising that Renji can play volleyball. I figured you were tall, but…… Were you into some sport?”

“……Well, up to middle school. I quit midway.”

“What, you quit? You’re not totally hopeless at it, right?”

“Um, how should I put it…… A bunch of tough things piled up, and the passion inside me just got snuffed out.”

Family matters. Anxiety about the future. Regret over the past. All sorts of things overlapped, and my passion for volleyball cooled completely.

Until then, I had loved it so much and thought I would continue forever, but suddenly it grew cold. The sensation, like waking from a dream, lingered, and I still couldn’t return.

I glanced at Sendou’s expression and saw it had grown uncharacteristically solemn, as if he were disciplining himself for some misdeed. His profile looked that way.

“I get it. I played soccer in middle school too, and I even got called to the youth team. I was pretty good regionally. ……But in the youth team, I was dead last.”

Sendou wiped the sweat from his forehead with a wry smile.

Frustration in the face of talent. I had experienced it too.

His subdued tone, unimaginable from the usually cheerful Sendou, clearly revealed his inner conflict.

“Up until then, I was so full of myself as being strong, but once I realized there were guys this strong out there, I lost confidence in a flash. On top of that, the team guys started calling me a genius or whatever and kept their distance. It was a total mess.”

“……How did you bounce back?”

“Hmm~ Who knows. I don’t really get it myself.”

“What kind of answer is that……”

This time, I got his usual idiotic response. But then he wove his words with a serious expression.

“No matter how much despair I felt, no matter how awful the experiences, I love soccer.”

I thought those were pure, unadulterated words straight from Sendou’s heart.

By tossing aside complicated thoughts, Sendou had reached the truth of action. He had protected with his own will the passion I had lost.

“No matter how much they mock me, I can’t really imagine a future without soccer. No matter how awful the treatment or the baseless things they say, in the end, what I’m thinking about is soccer. Like, what practice should I do tomorrow, or how could I have handled that play better? By pushing through like that, I even got recommended into this academy.”

“Come to think of it, you and Kira got in on sports recommendations……”

“Probably, playing soccer is like breathing for me. If I don’t, I fall apart. The reason to do what you love is just that you love it. Loving something probably means it pops into your head no matter what you’re doing.”

There’s no reason to love something other than that you love it. Those words cleared the fog hanging over my heart.

Rinne’s figure crossed my mind no matter what I was doing. She was the one who acknowledged and accepted a guy like me, so cowardly and spineless.

My previously unseen field of vision opened up, and I felt like I could face forward just a little.

……Maybe that’s all the reason to love something needs to be.

“I’ve turned all the tough stuff and the fun stuff into muscle. That’s why I won’t quit no matter what happens. Probably, the time I quit soccer will be when I die or when a woman sets me up.”

“I pray it’s not the latter……”

“Who knows~ My dream is to become a soccer player and marry a good woman.”

“You’d probably fall for a honey trap right away, Sendou.”

“Probably~ No, nine times out of ten.”

With that, Sendou and I laughed together.

We ran for another ten minutes or so, and when fatigue started to show, I suggested a break. We bought water from a nearby vending machine and headed to a certain spot.

“Renji, where are you headed?”

“Is this your first time at this park, Sendou? It’s big with all sorts of facilities. There’s a field, a sandbox, and stuff. And there, without fail, is that guy.”

The tall red-haired man stood by the 100-meter tartan track next to the branching running courses that I pointed to.

“Hey, Ryuusaki!”

“……Renren, Takayan.”

“What, Homare, you’re doing solo practice too?”

“Yeah. I come here every morning. ……You two running?”

“Yeah. A bit for the ball game tournament.”

The three of us sat on a nearby bench to rest. It felt fresh to have just the three of us together.

“Did you know Homare was here, Renji?”

“Yeah. He’s been coming here since middle school.”

Ryuusaki and I had actually known each other since middle school. Our schools were different, but chatting here during our morning runs had become routine.

“It’s been a while since we met here, Renren. You hadn’t come for a bit.”

“The passion for this ball game tournament is on another level for everyone. I can’t drag my feet.”

“Hey hey, what was Homare like in middle school?”

“Um…… To put it bluntly, a delinquent?”

“Ehhh…… Totally doesn’t match the image.”

“……I was just a delinquent back then. It was around the time I was injured and considering quitting track.”

My first impression of Ryuusaki when we met was of a man with an unapproachable aura.

Ryuusaki, who had been at the bottom of despair over possibly not being able to continue track due to his leg injury, had been agonizing over what to do.

Ryuusaki in that state, and me troubled by family issues. Faint memories of him, burdened with such great worries, flashed through my mind.

“Seeing Renren working hard made me think I should keep going too.”

“And now you’re a triple jump idiot.”

“I’m a total idiot chasing even one centimeter farther, but it’s totally the best.”

“You guys are all idiots.”

“Us idiots are the best. ……So Renren, let’s do our best.”

Ryuusaki spoke to me with an expressionless face that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.

His voice had no inflection, so I couldn’t really know his thoughts, but I understood he was trying to encourage me.

“……What is it, why so sudden?”

“Renren, you’re troubled about something, right?”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s the look on your face when you’re worried. Intuition from old friends.”

“What’s up, Renji, got troubles? Love troubles~?”

“Shut up…… But, thanks, that helped a bit.”

Their smiles were so bright that my self-pity from comparing myself to Rinne felt trivial. The shadow in my heart naturally vanished.

To gain confidence in myself, I had to start by believing in myself.

With the ball game tournament looming, for now, I would run straight toward that goal with my friends. That was the first step in believing in myself.

“You can thank me by introducing a girl. Like Shinomiya-chan!”

“No way. Amane is my cute li…… junior, so I can’t hand her over to a guy like you.”

“Oh, all three are here!”

I turned at the familiar voice and saw Kira.

Kira ran up, waving his hands wildly.

“Another loud guy’s here……”

“What, you three running too?”

“Yeah. You too, Kira?”

“Yeah! I got invited by those two.”

Looking where Kira pointed, there were Nekomiya in a near-death state, barely breathing, and Amasaki tending to him.

“Nekomiya…… You’re about to die, huh?”

“Hah, hah…… Thank you very much.”