High Speed! Volume 2

Chapter 10: Feel

–– Before practice begins, I'd like you to come to the back of the pool.

Summoned by Ikuya, Haruka unwillingly walked after Makoto and Asahi with a reluctant expression. It's bound to be something bothersome anyways. It stank of the presentiment that he'll get caught up in something useless.

When they went to the back of the pool, Ikuya was standing there with a serious face. There's a hole dug at his feet, and a cookie tin is placed inside it with its lid off. And a bunch of photos in Ikuya's hand.

"Everyone, thanks for coming. Now, I'm going to break away from the past. So, I'd like you to see it through."

Oh dear. Just as Nao had told him, it seems that he's intending to reveal himself. He leaves the complaining to Asahi.

"Why do we gotta see it through? S'thing like this."

"Aren't we in the same first year boys' group?"

Ikuya's long eyelashes quiver.

"Like I care. Do it alone!"

Makoto grabbing his arm as he tries to turn on his heels, Asahi grimaced.

"All right, Ikuya-kun. We'll see it through properly."

From Makoto's words, Ikuya's stiff expression suddenly softens.

"Okay."

Ikuya puts one photo into the cookie tin.

"Sports day."

Then, he puts in another one and another one.

"Amusement park. Playing in the sand. Bath. New Year's. Kite flying......"

There were three people in every photo.

"This is a photo of when Natsu-nii won a competition for the first time. This is when Satomi's essay won a prize. And this is when my picture got the Mayor's Prize."

It was a photo where they were holding a portrait of the three of them. Each of these are probably filled with memories, he thinks. He understands the sentiment, but couldn't he put them all in at once? Also, he thinks that Makoto doesn't need to nod after every single one.

"I thought that it's enough if the three of us are together. I thought that I can live with just the three of us. I thought that I didn't need anyone else. I thought that I... don't need something like friends."

While saying that, he puts in photos one by one. Watermelon splitting, and a photo of eating that watermelon. Tanabata, fireworks, the Milky Way. The stars don't show on it, but it was written as such on the border of the photo.

"But, I've decided to stop being fixated on the past."

Pancakes, ice cream, takoyaki.

"From now on, only forward––"

Snowman, snow hut, snowball fight.

"I'm going to gaze at only the future!"

Photo of a pool.

"And when I graduate, the me who has grown will dig up these photos!"

Photo of a pool. Then, a photo of a pool again.

"Me, who'll have grown enough that everyone can laugh away that I used to be fixated on the past––"

Putting a close-up of the three of them in last, he puts the lid onto those smiles. While making the ends of his long eyelashes glimmer just a little, Ikuya covers the cookie tin with dirt.

Makoto is watching over Ikuya with a kind look in his eyes.

Perhaps because he was influenced by Ikuya's ceremony, Asahi is unusually tight-lipped with an earnest look on his face. All of a sudden, that Asahi raised his voice.