“Rena-chan!” Ajisai-san yelled. “You can do it!”
My body felt light as I tossed the ball. It soared through the air tracing the path of a rainbow after a storm. And then…it went in.
The score ticked up: 38–37.
The whistle blew. The ref called, “The match is over!” Those words shook the stifling, sauna-like atmosphere in the gym. Class A had won.
“I…” I muttered. Right at the end there, I hadn’t even been aware that I’d thrown the ball. My body just moved on instinct, like when I shot targets while staring down at them through the crosshairs of my gun. It didn’t even feel real.
Mai came up to me. “I knew you could do it, Renako.”
“I…did it?” I asked. “I won us the game?”
“You did. You scored the final shot.”
I looked down at my fingers. “I did it…”
I never once imagined that I’d be putting a ton of effort into a sport like this. Not only had the idea of me going all-out in an inter-class athletics competition been ridiculous to me, I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined the whole class cheering for me, let alone having friends and romantic partners in high school.
My fingers trembled. “I did it… I won.”
There was a sense of elation inside me unlike any I’d ever felt before. This was what it felt like to accomplish something.
“Rena-chin!” Kaho-chan yelled, pulling me into a hug.
“Whoa!”
“Careful there.” Mai caught me as Kaho-chan bowled me over.
“You were incredible!” Hirano-san said as she and Hasegawa-san rushed up. Both were moved to the point of tears. “I was completely blown away.”
“I’m going to remember this for the rest of high school,” said Hasegawa-san. “No, scratch that. My whole life, my time spent reincarnating, and the life after that too!”
Ajisai-san and Satsuki-san, back after getting her ankle looked at, stood to the side of the court. Satsuki-san looked self-satisfied, like it was only a matter of course that we’d won, and Ajisai-san was weeping.
Thanks, Ajisai-san, I thought. She was the one who’d given me that final push of support to make the ball go in. Or that’s how it felt, at any rate. Oh, shoot. Now that I was thinking about how it was all over, I started to tear up. I tried to hold the waterworks at bay. I should keep a smile on my face! I mean, we’d won and everything!
“I knew you had it in you!” Kaho-chan said. “You did it! And frick you for stealing the moment of glory right at the end!”
“Whoa, Kaho-chan. What’re you tickling me for? Hey, stop!” I burst out laughing.
But just then, I happened to look at Class B. The basketball star girl once again bowed to Satsuki-san. Satsuki-san sighed before extending her hand, and the two shook. I wondered if the girl had just invited her to join the basketball club. Basketball club Satsuki-san sounded pretty darn cool to me.
Yet, meanwhile…Takada-san crumpled to the ground on the spot as her other teammates crowded around her. It wasn’t enough to make me feel bad, but I still wondered if I should say something to her.
After we all stood in a row and bowed to one another, Youko-chan came over. “Congrats, Renako-kun,” she said.
“Yeah, thanks, Youko-chan.”
She stood in front of Takada-san and the others like she was guarding them and smiled ruefully. “I guess, like, you should maybe leave us alone for a while. Sorry. I know it’s a selfish thing to ask.”
“Nah, not at all.”
No one in the Quintet was the type to go kicking Takada-san when she was already down. So long as she apologized to Ajisai-san later, once she was all calmed down, we were chill.
“To be real with you,” Youko-chan said, “I’m kind of surprised. I didn’t think you guys would beat Himiko-chan. You’re something else, you know that, Renako-kun? I guess it’s ’cause you’ve got that special something.”
“No one’s ever said that to me before,” I said.
I think she thought I was trying to be modest, and she laughed. “Or maybe,” she said, “it’s ’cause of the power of love.”
“Wait, what?!”
Youko-chan giggled right into my ear and whispered, “You and your wifey have fun now, ’kay?”
“Wait, no, stop—you have the wrong idea!”
That misunderstanding was still coming back to haunt me!
But while Youko-chan was still deluded, my (fake) wifey lifted both her hands in the air and shouted, “All righty! Let’s go out and paaaaar-tay!”
I guess the class had plans to hold a party to celebrate our victory, although I’d heard nothing about it beforehand. Wait, was I invited? If, after all this, I wasn’t allowed to go, I’d seriously break down and cry. They say there are only three moments in a girl’s life where she can cry: when she’s born, when she dies, and when she gets left out of a party.
“Uh, duh,” said Kaho-chan. “Of course you’re invited.”
Oh, thank god she confirmed that for me. Thank god indeed.
But then she immediately broke out into a grin and teased me. “You ’n me can have our own happy ending at a love hotel party later.”
“Uh, let’s not!”
If Youko-chan heard her say that, the misunderstanding was only going to be compounded! Kaho-chan, could you cut it out? And besides, I already had two girlfriends, thank you very much!
That’s how I said goodbye to the interclass athletics competition. It was a whole hullabaloo from start to finish, an event that left me exhausted mentally and physically. But when it was all done, I thought, Yeah, you know what? That was pretty fun. And I don’t mean just the competition either. All the practice I did in the park was included too. It was all about that feeling of accomplishment: not just doing the stuff you already knew you could do but learning how to do new things too. I think I might have overdone it just a tad…but hey, even I could acknowledge that I’d really tried my best here.
It was still difficult for me to walk alongside these four very special people I admired, but you know… When everyone sang my praises at the diner where we held our party, I felt maybe, ever so slightly, like I was getting cool with it. It wasn’t so bad to give folks compliments.