It took a while for the rejection to sink in, but sadness gradually took root.
Man, I don’t feel like doing anything. It’s like nothing matters now that I can’t date Hoshimiya. I joined the basketball team to become popular. If my crush doesn’t like me, then maybe it’s finally time to quit. I sluggishly went through the motions of practice, such thoughts running through my mind all the while.
“Hey, Haibara! What’re you doing?! Focus up!”
I was already down in the dumps from a broken heart as it was, but being reprimanded by the upperclassmen demotivated me even more.
Nagiura came up to me and gave me a warning. “Natsuki, what’s wrong? You’re the worst player on the team, so if you don’t show some drive, you’re gonna be in for it.”
I know that much, but I can’t shift gears so easily. Sigh after sigh involuntarily left my lips.
Nagiura watched me with an incredulous expression. “If you’re not motivated, then quit.” He turned around and got back to practice.
What a coldhearted guy. He should’ve at least tried to console his heartbroken friend.
I wasn’t in the mood to stick around for individual training, so I returned to the clubroom to change clothes. I was about to open the door, when I heard voices coming from inside.
“Dude, what is Haibara’s deal?”
It was Kijima-kun’s voice.
“It’d be one thing if he just sucked, but he didn’t have any spirit today. We should kick him out already.”
“We can’t. Yanagishita-senpai is looking after him.”
“Yanagishita-senpai’s just doing that to look out for the team’s atmosphere. We don’t need that loser on the team.”
One after another, teammates who I had considered my friends continued making similar remarks.
“Huh...?” I couldn’t open the door. My mind went blank. I simply stood there in a daze.
I usually stayed behind in the gym for extra practice, so they probably hadn’t thought I’d return so soon. Or maybe they didn’t care if I overheard. The clubroom bubbled with trash talk directed at me.
I heard footsteps. Before I knew it, Nagiura was standing behind me. He pushed me out from in front of the door, his expression devoid of emotion.
“Sorry, man, but I can’t stick up for you anymore. Besides, you piss me off,” he said, and entered the clubroom.
I stood off to the side, still unable to move for a good while. Sure, I had been demotivated today. But this wasn’t just because of that. Frustration about me must have been building among the team since a long time ago. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have talked about me like that.
It finally hit me. I had been too slow to realize. Or maybe I had pretended not to notice:
My high school debut was a total failure.
✦ ✦ ✦
Perhaps I had been out of my mind this entire time. When I finally woke up to reality, my failings were thrust into my face. My world was dyed gray. The bright rainbow I had seen was just a figment of my imagination.
“Look, that’s the guy. I heard Hoshimiya-san rejected him.”
“Wait, seriously? Shooting out of his league much?”
“Apparently, he confessed to her in their classroom after school. Hasegawa said she saw it happen.”
“It was so obvious that he had a thing for her, but that’s some audacity. He’s got me in stitches!”
Everyone was laughing at me. They all knew I could hear them gossiping, but no one cared about that anymore. Now that even Nagiura had washed his hands of me, I had nowhere to belong in the classroom any longer. I was even more miserable than when I had merely been a loner in middle school.
It had taken me far too long to realize several things.
For some time now, virtually no one would ever speak to me first. I had always been the initiator in conversations. I had thought that was necessary to be an extrovert, so I hadn’t noticed anything strange about it. But if they had been my friends, normally they would’ve chatted me up too. The fact that no one ever did meant that they had never considered me their friend in the first place. That held true for Hino, Shiratori, Okajima, Sakura, Nanase, and Hoshimiya too.
The one person who ever struck up a conversation with me was Nagiura and only Nagiura.
At least, until yesterday. Today, Nagiura wouldn’t even acknowledge me when we made eye contact. It had taken me this long to realize that Nagiura had been my only friend. And being shot down by Hoshimiya was the final nail in the coffin—everyone was flagrantly trash-talking me.
When did I become so hated? It wasn’t like this in the beginning. I’m pretty sure people talked to me around April and May. But before I knew it, the people around me vanished.
Summer vacation began the day after I saw the reality of my situation.
The boys’ basketball team lost in the third round of prelims, and the third-years retired. With Yanagishita-senpai gone, I had no one who would stand up for me. I became air. Despite that, no one openly disparaged me on the team. More precisely, Nagiura was keeping them in check.
I didn’t quit the team. Though I knew no one else wanted me there, I wished to live up to Yanagishita-senpai’s expectations, and little by little I was finally coming to enjoy basketball. My high school debut was a failure, so pouring my energy into basketball was all I had left.
If I were to quit the team now, I could envision a summer vacation where I did absolutely nothing. That future terrified me much, much more. At the very least, I wanted to add meaning to my life with extracurriculars.
Summer vacation eventually ended, plunging me into my second semester. No one gossiped about me anymore. Now that I was aware of where I stood on the social ladder, I stopped trying, and people lost interest.
No longer a source of entertainment, I turned into air.
Why did things end up like this? That question whirled around in my head every day.
✦ ✦ ✦
As I lived my adolescence in drab gray, eventually the final realization dawned upon me. I replayed and reflected on my high school debut day after day.
Why did I fail? What did I do wrong?
The answer was simple. I had looked down on others. Thinking back, I concluded that everyone had given me many hints that I would be in trouble if I kept up my act. I hadn’t heeded any of their advice—because I hadn’t even realized it was advice in the first place.
Why hadn’t I seen it? Because I wasn’t interested in others. The only thing I cared about was making my high school debut a success. To me, my peers were just tools to add color to my youth. Not even Hoshimiya was an exception to that.
I truly did like her; there was no doubt about that. But I’d confessed to her because I wanted a girlfriend as an accessory. I had thought that dating was essential for a glorious high school life.
Camouflaging as an extrovert had been the only thing on my mind, and I hadn’t paid attention to the people around me. Meanwhile, everyone else saw exactly how I was. That was why they had distanced themselves from me once they’d noticed my true nature.
I know. It’s all my fault. It was going well in the beginning. No, actually, I just assumed it was going well. That’s why I got cocky. As a consequence of my hubris, everything fell apart.
I could still vividly remember the decisive moment when everything started going downhill.
I was an idiot. That was all.
From then on, I devoted myself to living an upright life. However, I knew that regaining lost trust was much harder than building it fresh with someone new. In the end, my naive rainbow-colored dreams died, and my high school life stayed the same dull gray from start to finish.
I’d been haunted by these regrets ever since, and I’d probably stay haunted until I died.