I used to love the summer. But right now, I want to hate it.
She smiled at him. Sitting by the pool, she smiled. The summer air felt particularly hot that night. Still, she smiled. And the moon, reflected in the water, wavered slowly.
A hand was held out, but it didn’t reach.
Always out of reach.
Never to return.
Surely…
✦ ✦ ✦
It’s never me that gets hurt. It’s always somebody else.
I often wonder why it doesn’t happen to me. Instead, it’s always someone precious to me who gets hurt.
After class was dismissed, he went to the library. He didn’t exactly read any books, nor did he study. Instead, he stood by the window and looked outside absent-mindedly.
Before summer had even arrived, Asano Mitsuki had quit club activities.
The summer of his third year in junior high was supposed to be a special season. A member of the boys’ basketball team, Mitsuki played starting point guard, a position that had earned him the trust—more or less—of his teammates.
But he’d quit. It wasn’t because he found the activity worthless. And it wasn’t because he’d gotten tired of the sport. One reason, he supposed, was that he hadn’t grown as tall as he’d hoped. Generally speaking, that was a bad sign. He remembered with envy the energy that he’d had when he was younger, when he had still been so engrossed in basketball.
My dream now is to become a Major Leaguer! he told himself.
The Major League was baseball’s professional league, as the NBA was to basketball.
But Mitsuki’s main reason for quitting basketball was “that.” He felt as if there was something else he needed to do. He couldn’t explain it.
However, upon quitting, he found there was actually nothing else to do. In other words, he quickly grew bored. All of his friends were still busily immersed in club activities, concentrating on the remaining time they had left before they graduated. In contrast, Mitsuki— who had been a basketball gym rat ever since grade school—now had too much time on his hands.
So he went to the library, not because he wanted to read, but because the library’s air conditioning offered refuge from the summer heat.
Things didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped. Global temperatures were rising year by year, as if something in this machine called the Earth was broken. Reciting the catchphrases of ecological and environmental preservation, the people in charge of Mitsuki’s school had instituted a policy of energy conservation and had decided not to operate the air conditioning system even during the summer.
Mitsuki wanted to scream out loud, Are you guys stupid?! Last year the air conditioning had been turned up so high it had felt like it was freezing, even when he was playing basketball.
—Ring, ring, ring.
“…!”
The sound startled him slightly. But it was only the wind chimes near the window, swaying in the breeze.
It wasn’t the ring of the bell.
Summer scenes unfolded outside the window. Mitsuki could see the swim team practicing in the pool. There were so few team members, it made the pool seem too large. The water’s surface reflected the sun’s rays, shooting them straight into Mitsuki’s eyes.
Although he had quit club activities, at that moment all he wanted to do was join the swim team.
“Come to think of it,” he said to himself, “there’s swim class tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow…” Mitsuki mumbled in a voice so low that even he couldn’t hear it.
He wasn’t aware that he was speaking. His expression never changed, but his voice trembled terribly. However, the trembling was faint and probably would have been inaudible even if he’d raised the volume of his voice.
It wasn’t necessarily true that tomorrow would be better than today. So today had to be lived to the fullest.
Club activities was neither worthless nor boring. Somehow he had gotten through it, and he could have continued to “get through it”; it might even have been fun. But he couldn’t compete with guys who were serious about the sport and who considered the hard court a battlefield where one proved his self-worth.
His reasons for playing, compared to theirs, would be like a dash of cold water on their serious endeavors. Because he thought that way, Mitsuki had quit.
But there had to be something he could do. Something he was able to do. What in the world did he want to do?
Nothing came to mind.
So the days simply passed him by. Time progressed gently and vanished in an instant. And just like that, it seemed the time had come for Mitsuki to…
—Die.
Or so it seemed.