Chapter 1 – On Your Marks!

1

The tip of the mechanical pencil slid gracefully over the notebook, writing out letters of the English alphabet with a comfortable rhythm. Its lines were light, and its curves gentle.

Mio always liked the feeling of solving problems without thinking, those times when her mind was clear and robust.

It was after school following the closing ceremony that capped off the second trimester. All of Mio’s classmates had gone home, and none of her other friends had dropped in for a chat. In fact, no students had so much as passed by in the hallway for quite some time.

The only sounds were the scratching of a mechanical pencil and the hum of a heater.

Mio turned the page of her reference book, ready to solve the next question. At that exact moment, her concentration was shattered by a metallic ringing. It was the sound of a bat on a baseball, but not the satisfying ping you would hear at a Koshien tournament. It was only a partial hit, definitely a foul ball.

Mio glanced out the window. The third floor classroom window gave a wonderful view of the pale December sky and the grounds of Kashiogawa High School below.

On a typical day after school, the grounds would be split between soccer and baseball players, but only three individuals stood out on the field. All three were in uniforms, and were third-year members of the baseball team. Mio was only privy to that fact because they happened to be her classmates.

Mio’s eyes made their way to one boy in particular, the tall one with short-cropped hair in the batter’s box. He was busy yelling something at the smaller boy on the pitcher’s mound.

Mio’s hand moved unconsciously along the desk towards an eraser. She grabbed it between her index and middle finger and began rolling it back and forth, as if trying to discern its shape.

The eraser rolled around, clacking against its corners once, twice, thrice. Then Mio noticed someone come into the classroom, and her hand stopped. She quickly dropped the eraser.

“You’re still here, Mio?”

The voice belonged to Sanae, a close friend of hers. Mio remembered that Sanae had stayed after school for a meeting with their homeroom teacher, and figured she must have just gotten out. Sanae moved to sit in front of Mio, her long hair fluttering.

Mio lifted up the corner of her English reference book. “I had some time before cram school, so I figured I’d give this a shot.”

That seemed to convince Sanae. “Where’s Mayu and Momo?” she asked. Mayuko, Momoka, Sanae, and Mio had long been a group of friends in their shared class.

“Went off to karaoke.”

“Must be nice… I should’ve just chosen vocational school, too, so I could go goof off,” Sanae mumbled with a sigh. Her listless expression contrasted with her typically straightforward nature, but she somehow managed to pull the look off. It made her look more mature than the rest of her classmates.

“Alright, what’d he say?”

“That I gotta face reality… and my mock exam scores were bad. Ugh, I thought that high school was supposed to amount to more than just one score. Why can’t I just take the exam and graduate already?” Sanae groaned, leaning back to look out the window. “Oh, looks like Souma and the guys are at it again today.”

“He wants to keep going until he hits a home run,” Mio replied, dropping her gaze back to her textbook. She tried to be nonchalant, but no matter how much she played it off, something had clearly sparked in her from the name that Sanae had just said.

“What? Like, right now?”

“Boys just do weird stuff like that.” Mio’s fingertips unconsciously grazed the eraser again.

“Eh, well, whatever. Guess I’m off to cram school. How ‘bout you?”

“Mm, I think I’ll try making it through as much of this as I can.”

“Alrighty then. Later.” Sanae gave a little wave, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. Mio stood up at the same time. “Hm?”

Mio answered Sanae’s questioning look with, “I need a sugar boost.”

After seeing Sanae off at the school entrance, Mio stood alone in the slightly dim shoe locker room. The room served as a transition between the central and northern school building, and the construction of the place made it difficult for sunlight to get in, so the room was dim at pretty much any time of the day. The vending machine against the wall gave off a consistent, healthy glow, and stood out as a result.

Mio fished out some change from her coin purse, slotting each coin in one by one. Her coin purse was significantly lighter by the time she finally pressed the button for strawberry milk.

She always craved something sweet while studying.

She pulled the carton out of the receptacle, leaning her back against one of the giant pillars that supported the ceiling of the entrance hall. Her mouth went around the straw, and her body was flooded with a cold sweetness that shocked a bit of movement into her cells that had grown sluggish from the classroom heater. The scent of the milk followed just a moment later, soothing her exhausted mind and body from her struggle with exams.

As Mio savored the simple joy her beverage offered, she heard a trumpet begin blasting out a melody. It had only been tuning previously, but now a vaguely familiar song was playing into the distance. The music room was on the far end of the southern school building’s first floor, which was attached to the central building in a shape similar to a crank lever. But as far as Mio could tell, the song was coming from a place higher up than the music room.

The band always divided performance practice into instrumental sections, so it wasn’t unusual to hear instruments in all sorts of places.

“Are they really doing club activities at this point?” Mio wondered aloud.

‘She’ had been carrying her trumpet case earlier that day. The girl that everyone else thought was modest and blended into the crowd.

Morikawa Hazuki.

The girl that had always stood out to Mio.

‘He’ was always watching her. That had become painfully apparent the day Mio finally got in the same class as him.

It could be a random moment in class, or passing in the hallway, or when someone called the other girl’s name. There would be that brief flicker where Souma Haruto’s eyes moved towards Morikawa Hazuki. It was the kind of expression that could only be seen by an outsider looking in. A position Mio was very familiar with.

Mio had been nurturing her one-sided crush ever since middle school. She couldn’t deny that she had made it more complicated than necessary. But she had never acted on it, or even really tried to, and the present day was no different.

Just as she was starting to fully wallow in her sorrows, the click of a shutter sounded nearby.

“Mh?!” Mio’s eyes darted around reflexively to find the culprit. Directly beside her was a girl holding a camera. A girl that Mio was well acquainted with. She was the second-year Komiya Ena, a member of the photography club and a year below Mio in school.

“Stop taking photos of whatever you want. I’ll take you to court one of these days.”

“The usual strawberry milk again, Prez?” Ena commented, checking the LCD screen of her camera to judge the picture. The girl’s shoulder-length, slightly wavy hair brushed against her cheek as she looked down. It was a bold, light color that displayed Ena’s ability to live to the fullest. Mio had always liked the color, but never had the courage to fully commit to it. Well, that and she didn’t really want to be associated with Ena.

“I’m not president any more.”

Ena had started chatting with Mio a lot more since the previous summer, back when Mio was still the Student Council President. Ena had been hitting her up to increase the budget of her photography club.

“So get this, Prez-”

“What did I just say…” Ena continued to call Mio ‘Prez” even though her tenure as the president had already ended, and a new official Student Council President had been installed.

“Watanabe-sensei’s trying to disband the photography club! He’s tryin’ to say that as our advisor, he recommends we give away our club room to a bigger club, and stuff like thaaaaat…”

“We already had this conversation last year. Besides, it’s not a dissolution, it’s just a merger with the broadcasting club, right?”

“I bet if we win a photography competition, that’ll set him straight.”

Ena set up her camera, facing the shutter towards Mio, like she always did.

“Look, I told you not to-”

The sudden onset photo did not come out looking very appealing. Mio wanted her to delete it as soon as possible, but Ena was already rocketing into a new subject.

“Oh yeah. There’s a transfer student.”

“Huh? How is that related?”

Ena’s topics of conversation changed just as swiftly as her facial expressions, going this way and that, wherever her heart desired. It was another reason that Mio didn’t like her very much. She was never able to act like that. No matter how carefree she wanted to be, the thought of what others would think always stopped her in her tracks. Realistically speaking, she figured everyone was like that, and Ena was the unusual one.

“He was wearing a gakuran uniform, and he looked really tired. You didn’t know he was coming, Prez?”

“I’m sure he was just tired from his move,” Mio answered offhandedly, distracted by the vibration of her smartphone. Her eyes dropped down. 

Ena seemed to catch on, and waved as she walked away towards her club room. “Well, sure.”

Once Ena was out of sight, Mio fixed her full attention on her phone. She had received a group message on the LINE app from Mayuko and Momoka.

They were sending cheerful selfies of themselves holding karaoke mics. Momoka added, Once exams are over, we can all go together! Not only were the duo the top of the class in grades, they also took excellent selfies. The photos were really fun and cute.

Mio sent a short You bet! as a reply, but as soon as she hit send, her true feelings spilled out.

“But I want to go now…”

She chucked her strawberry milk carton towards the trash can. It sailed in a gentle arc, falling atop of the mountain of trash heaped out of the bin. Unfortunately, her disturbance of the pile caused several more empty cartons to tumble onto the ground.

For a moment, Mio pretended she hadn’t seen it happen, but she didn’t even manage to take a single step away before sighing and beginning to pick up the fallen trash.

“Did she say something about a transfer student? …Now of all times?”

Only after asking did Ena’s words come back to mind.

A gakuran uniform… and a tired boy.

It was already the end of the second trimester. The next day would commence winter break. The transfer student probably wasn’t a fellow third-year, but the idea brought to mind another student who had transferred away in the past.

“Sounds like… Izumi.” She found herself saying the name of the boy who had transferred away at the same exact time of the year back in middle school.

Saying his name for the first time in so long tickled her nostalgia just a bit.