The circle Start spent most of its time playing scrimmage games.
We didn’t spend much time practicing because we didn’t have any major aims. If pressed to give a goal, it would be to win a tournament between the university’s other basketball circles and secure funds for drinking parties and training camps. But honestly, we just wanted to get some exercise and have fun playing ball.
Start was a gathering of like-minded people, so it naturally led to a focus on playing the game. Of course, I was one of those people.
Joining a club never occurred to me when I enrolled in university. I’d longed for the freedom of campus life, so I considered clubs an unnecessary obstacle between me and true fun. But I was in the basketball club in middle and high school, so I was reluctant to let all of that effort go to waste. It wasn’t all fun and games, but it was those years that made me who I was now. With that in mind, around the start of my first semester, I was naturally drawn to a basketball circle.
I dribbled the ball lightly as I reminisced. It bounced off of the floor and rose right back into the palm of my hand. I always liked the feeling of it returning exactly where I wanted even after I released it.
As I did some light dribbling, savoring the coarse texture of the ball for the first time in a long while, I spotted a third-year student approaching, so I stopped and smiled at them.
“Long time no see!” they greeted me. “Doing well?”
“I am. Sorry I haven’t been around.”
Thus began a rerun of the exchange I’d been through countless times today.
That’s just how it was—when you didn’t join in for a while, everyone wanted to say something. They apparently knew what had happened too, because some people commented that they’d heard about the breakup. I didn’t really mind, though. It would be a lot more difficult to have to tell them all myself.
I shot the ball toward the hoop. It drew a clean arc, and at the end of it, the net shook. Even in university, it was just too satisfying to shoot a swish.
“Nice one!” someone called out, and my vision darkened.
“Whoa!” A towel had been wrapped around my face from behind. I peeled it off, and as expected, Shinohara was there with a hand on her hip. She’d changed into a basketball jersey.
“Why…?” I asked.
She giggled proudly and replied, “Senpai! Do you know what surveys say is the most exciting romantic situation for guys in sports? Hint: it starts with an M!”
“Mannequins and social media fame.”
“No, that’s not it! What does that even mean?!” she shouted back, devastated. Then, she picked up the ball that had rolled over to her and offered it to me with both hands.
“Beats me. What is it?”
“The correct answer is having a cute manager! Please restart your life and try harder next time time.”
“Pretty harsh for one little mistake.” I let the ball return to my hands once more and took another shot. Once again, nothing but net.
“You’re really good, aren’t you?”
“I’m just in rare form, is all.” After a two-month hiatus, your shooting abilities dulled quite a bit. Those two swishes were just flukes. I suppressed the emotions welling up inside me and asked her, “Did Toudou ask you to be our manager?”
“Hmm… I won’t say he asked, but he did give me the option.”
“What do you mean?”
Shinohara picked up the ball again. This time, she awkwardly dribbled it toward the basket and answered, “He said it’d be boring if I just watched, so he let me into the manager’s room. This is my first time being a manager, by the way!”
“Wow. Well, stay out of our way.”
“Mean!” She tried shooting with both hands, but her form was all wrong.
Because she’d thrown it way before the peak of her jump, it went straight toward the basket.
The ball hit the underside of the hoop…and bounced right back at her face.
“Bmmph!”
I heard a low, muffled kind of sound that didn’t normally come from her.
That looked pretty bad.
She curled up and trembled, so I approached to ask if she was okay. Suddenly, she lifted her face. As expected, her nose was bright red.
“Senpai!”
“What?”
“I hate basketball!”
“Okay?!”
It was painfully obvious from her shot just now that she hadn’t played much before. Our circle welcomed newbies, but it was winter, so our beginners had long since grown into experienced players.
It’d probably still be fine to let her join in the game, but letting her be our manager was surely the optimal choice both for her and for us.
“Help me up!” she begged, spreading her arms wide.
I gave up and grabbed one of her arms near the shoulder. It was surprisingly soft.
“Peeerv.”
“Shut up, dummy.” I dismissed her and yanked her up. She unsteadily got to her feet and rubbed the spot where I’d grabbed her.
“I didn’t think you’d grab my arm. I held out my hands. You’re weird.”
“Feels too intimate to grab your hand.”
“I think my upper arm is a hundred times more intimate… Oh, never mind.” She rolled up her jersey sleeves and took a hair tie off her wrist. Then, she quickly pulled her hair into a ponytail and twirled in front of me. Her tied-up hair brushed against the tip of my nose. “What do you think?”
“Cute. Very cute,” I replied and headed to the basketball cage.
“Huh? Wait! That’s it?!”
I ignored her devilish voice and picked up a ball with one hand.
She looks so different when her hair is up.
It had to be her hairstyle that made her look so mature so suddenly. For the first time, I realized how much women were cheating by being able to change their vibe with ease time after time. Now I was starting to understand why men fell for that little devil.
The buzzer rang, signaling the end of warm-ups.
✦ ✦ ✦
Men’s matches and women’s matches were held on a rotation. It was already getting close to the end of today’s session—all that remained was a women’s match.
That match had just started. I was fully out of commission by now, so I sat and stretched my legs. They were much heavier than usual, a sign of how my skills had deteriorated. I was still young, sure, but the body tended to feel heavy when you go months without proper exercise. If I was aging like this already, I feared what would happen when I started my career.
✦ ✦ ✦
While I worried about that, a plastic bottle suddenly came flying and hit my thigh.
“There ya go,” Toudou said, pointing at the fallen bottle.
It was a newly released sports drink. He must’ve bought it from a vending machine in the lobby for me.
“Ooh, thanks.” I decided to ignore the fact that he’d thrown it at me.
He wiped his sweat and sat next to me. “Your girl’s real popular, eh?”
“Not my girl,” I grinned wryly.
He smiled back. “I dunno about that.”
I looked at Shinohara, who was passing out drinks to the circle members. The water fountain, which was usually ignored, was surrounded by mostly men right now. She lacked the basketball knowledge necessary to manage a team, but if she could raise morale this much, then surely she belonged here.
“Nah, I doubt that could ever happen.”
“What?” Toudou stopped just as he was about to take a sip from his drink. Then he cocked his head at me.
“I mean, she probably can’t be our manager.”
“Yeah, of course. It’s already amazing that she’s joined a circle she came to just watch, especially without a particular goal.”
“Honestly, I think her goal is just to kill time.” I considered the fact she was spending more time with me as proof of that too. That also explained why she could so comfortably come to my house whenever she wanted.
Toudou laughed. “I’m impressed if she can show that much initiative just to kill time.”
“No doubt.”
“You gotta learn from her, Yuu. Live a little.”
People often talked like that to me. And to be fair, they were right. I wasn’t as energetic like Shinohara or sociable enough to know exactly how to treat every person individually like Ayaka.
“Unfortunately, it’s easiest to just be me.” I wasn’t about to change the fundamental way I lived.
He patted me lightly on the shoulder. “Yeah, I figured. Good. It feels like you’re back to normal.” That brought a slight smile to my face.
For a while, I just savored the nostalgic echoing of the basketball bouncing on the gym floor.