DIVE!!

Book 3 Chapter 5 - Slump

October. During the period where the rays of summer had completely faded away, and the wind blew coldly through the wet hair that resulted from coming out of the pool, the MDC had never had such a tense atmosphere hanging over the practice grounds.

It was slightly different from being filled with enthusiasm about the upcoming Sino-Japanese Goodwill Competition next month. Before the meet, everyone’s expectations, anxiety, impatience, rival spirit, and so on were always laid bare and surged like the high tide, but only this time, everyone was confining those things within themselves.

It wasn’t that they had no motivation. Rather, it was more like that there was too much that can’t be displayed. It had continued to grow within them, already to the point of bursting, and it seemed that there was a danger of rupturing if it was touched.

In particular, Tomoki’s tension was not ordinary.

Everyone could see that Tomoki had changed ever since he learned of the Olympic representative decision. His former innocence had been shadowed, and he did an absurd amount of practice without laughing, talking, or even showing any expression. Kayoko had to put a stop to it by saying, “If you don’t want to damage your health before the meet, then please leave it here for today.”

Reiji also devoted himself to practice in a way that was influenced by Tomoki. Never a talkative person, because he was the type who did what he had to do at his own pace, his companion Tomoki had become increasingly silent in his present condition.

Perhaps because he was afraid of this silence, Sachiya, now a first-year in middle school, hardly went near the diving tower, and did nothing but watch the mom’s synchro class by himself. Nowadays, he wasn’t only familiar with the power dynamics between the moms, but also the family circumstances and personal worries of his favorite moms. Even though he occasionally joined practice, at best he only dived off the one-meter springboard with the elementary schoolers.

As a result, since Ryou was also present only until recently, the always noisy and lively middle school section of the MDC, consisting of Tomoki and Reiji and sometimes Sachiya, had fell completely silent nowadays.

The two high schoolers—Youichi and Shibuki—were also very quiet.

Shibuki didn’t show his face much at the pool anymore, probably because he was busy with ballet lessons. Although he participated in every dryland training session at the Mizuki Sports Club, he didn’t dive with everyone else at Tatsumi.

According to a plausible rumor that Sachiya was spreading around, Shibuki was said to have visited the sea at Chiba with Kayoko several times a week, repeatedly doing secret special training. Though it wasn’t possible to swallow a story that came from a source like Sachiya, it didn’t seem like a totally groundless rumor, when seeing how the Spartan-like Kayoko sometimes didn’t show up to practice these days.

After ballet, then it was the sea.

What the hell is Shibuki thinking?

Why is he diving into the sea again, in the first place?

Youichi couldn’t help but keep thinking about it, and thought about asking him directly, but every time he wanted to call out to Shibuki in the high school corridors, he always stopped himself because he thought now wasn’t the right time to be concerned about others.

Ever since his one-week break, Youichi suffered from an unprecedented slump.

_______________________________________________________________

He couldn’t dive well. The techniques that weren’t difficult for him yesterday had become impossible today, for some reason. Even as he kept thinking about what he did wrong…no, the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t understand it, and that confusion would make his performance even more jerky.

In short, he was in a slump.

Ever since he began diving in the summer of second grade, Youichi had went through slumps harshly, and knew that everyone had underwent the same kind of suffering if they were divers. In particular, the bodies of Youichi and the others had repeated their subtle growths and changes, day by day, before the adults. Weight control was possible, but in some cases the unstoppable growth of the body threw the whole body out of balance, callously stealing away the performance intuition that had been built up until then. Also, the peculiarities the body unwittingly carried will gradually erode the performances, leading to a serious slump.

The waves of the slump more-or-less visited periodically, but the athlete becomes stronger by overcoming it, boosting themselves up to a new stage. Worrying together with their coach, they lunged and tore at the wall before their eyes, sometimes rationally, sometimes by hurling themselves at it. Youichi had come to that point.

However, this current slump was too intense.

Why did I mess up the entries of such easy forward dives? Why were my pike dives, my strong points, so dull? Why don’t my takeoffs have momentum? Why can’t I achieve the no-splashes that I was so confident in at all!?

He felt like he was going mad.

He had asked Coach Abe to point out the problems in one of his dives, and then used all his effort for improvement. He even brought a video camera from home to try and probe the cause for his slump with his own eyes. But, it was the same thing. If he thought that one problem had been overcome, another new problem arose. And furthermore, the new problem was always more complicated and nasty than the last.

It was as though every single one of his body parts banded together to go on strike.

He felt like he had been betrayed at the last hour by the feet, abdomen, arms, shoulders, fingertips and the tips of his toes that he had so desperately trained.

“I want to help you out somehow…but this only made me realize my own inexperience. I really am sorry that I cannot be helpful.”

Coach Abe, who had been worrying together with him, finally gave up. That apologetic voice implied that he did have an excellent father in Coach Fujitani.

Youichi, at the end of his rope, finally went to ask for Keisuke’s opinion, because he was interested in what his father, who had only watched his anguished self from a distance, would analyze about his slump.

But in the end, he thought he had probably lost his mind, and immediately regretted his folly.

“What you are missing now is your heart’s performance. Those who adhere to form will always stumble over it. What do you want to express with diving? What are you diving for? Your priority is to re-examine those things, right? If you want spiritual training, I can introduce you to an acquaintance of mine who is a priest at temple.”

Temple. With that one word, Youichi gave up on any further consultation.

Shutting yourself up in a temple sounded like something that people who didn’t know what they were suffering from would do. Or, maybe people who wanted to make their own troubles clearer. In cases like Youichi’s, where his troubles were already clear, he didn’t need a monk or God, but an expert familiar with those troubles.

A person who knew diving well, had good eyes, and able to make calm judgements.

A person who didn’t express notions or spiritual theories, but detail concrete solutions—.

That person came to Youichi’s mind naturally.

No, it might have been that somewhere in his heart, he had a hunch that the day would come where he would need to turn to that person for help.

_______________________________________________________________

Youichi arranged to meet with that person on the Saturday of that week. It was such a warm afternoon that the blazer of his winter uniform clung heavily to his shirt.

He waited for her on the terrace of an open café in Shimokitazawa, after school ended during the morning.

It was a sunny terrace that faced alleyway that branched off from the main street. The inside of the café was reminiscent of an European street corner, and as it was noon, colorfully painted with the figures of young couples and students, and the tables were also decorated with colorful drinks and crepes. Even Youichi’s simple ice coffee glowed gold from the particles of sunlight that fell past the white parasol.

It was an elegant moment. While he lived in the neighbouring Higashikitazawa, he had never spent time like this in Shimokitazawa until now. The other party was the one who had specified this shop. Youichi fidgeted in this unfamiliar atmosphere, and his eyes curiously flitted everywhere.

It was around the arranged time of twelve that those eyes spotted her.

“Sorry. I heard that a legendary acupuncturist was in Umegaoka, and I had to hear a little bit about that. Although it is more like dried whole fish than a legend.” (1)

As she talked, she placed her bag on the ground, and at the same time she sat down on her chair she took off her hound’s tooth jacket, and at the same time she used her left hand to open the menu she used her right hand to call for the waitress.

“Today’s pasta lunch, please. And some diluted coffee after the meal. And a cup of water.”

After drinking up the cup of water the waitress brought in one go, she finally looked directly at Youichi. Her face, still tanned from summer, was as dazzling as ever today, and despite being in a hurry, she still concentrated on her makeup. Her golden-brown chest peeked through her yellow shirt, and it was strangely sexier than her swimsuit-clad form that he saw everyday.

“It sure is quick when only one person has to order.” She—Kayoko—said as she glanced at Youichi’s ice coffee. “You can also ask for something you like. You still haven’t had lunch yet, right?”

“It’s fine. I’ll buy something later to eat.”

“A woman of marriageable age and a high school student at a café during lunch time. Only the woman is eating lunch. What would you think of that?”

“I wouldn’t think it was sexual harassment, at least.”

“Even if an adult man was full, they’d still go along with it.”

“But I’m seventeen, and a diver.”

“Diver?”

Youichi opened the menu to show what he meant.

“Mushroom cream on hamburger steak, 840 kilocalories. Penne au gratin, 570 kilocalories. Spaghetti Bolognese, 680 kilocalories. Omurice with ratatouille, 920 kilocalories. Club sandwich, 950 kilocalories. French toast, 680 kilocalories. By the way, the pasta lunch you ordered has 1480 kilocalories.”

“1480 kilocalories…”

“Pasta is already high-calorie even with the noodles alone, and then you’re adding bacon and white sauce to it, of all things. Furthermore, the dessert is marron mousse, which is high in fat. Even pigs before hibernation are not fed that much.”

“Indeed.”

Kayoko raise both hands in surrender.

“Buy and eat something later.”

“I will.”

“But, do pigs actually hibernate?”

“It was just an example.”

Kayoko suddenly smiled, having had a strained expression that said, “Well?” towards the opening tale up till then.

“For some reason, you wanted to talk.”

What to say? Where should he speak from? Despite planning them in advance, now when the time came, Youichi was at a loss for words. It was the first time that he was talking to Kayoko like this with just the two of them, and in fact, being with a young woman in itself was a zone that Youichi had no experience in, at all.

It wasn’t that he was uninterested in Kayoko up until now. Rather, he had a lot of interest, and he was always very aware of her presence. But as a coach, it was Tomoki and Shibuki she had her eyes on. Youichi had been protecting his pride by ignoring Kayoko.

“There’s something that I want to ask…”

When the time came, his pride still took precedence. “What is it?” Kayoko asked, jutting out her chin. In response, Youichi ignored all of his planning and blurted out a rude adlib.

“Why are you trying so hard?”

“What?”

“Coach Asaki, your goal was to send a representative to the Olympics from the MDC, right? That’s why you had your eye on Tomo, and you dragged Okitsu in from Tsugaru. But the right to represent has already been secured, and the MDC is going to survive without being destroyed, right? You’ve achieved your goal. And yet, why are you still desperately busying yourself with stuff like ballet and acupuncturists in Umegaoka?”

Provoking his opponents like that, and bringing them to his own pace by confusing them was Youichi’s usual trick.

However, in regards to winning people over with words, Kayoko had a slight edge.

“Because, those kids were not about to quit.”

“Those kids?”

“Sakai-kun and Okitsu-kun, and also Maruyama-kun…if you saw those kids who kept diving without saying anything after they were left out of the Olympic representative team, you would know that goals aren’t what a coach needs, but athletes.”

The waitress brought a plate of salad. The dressing was Thousand Island. Youichi reflexively added an extra 90 kilocalories, and before his eyes Kayoko shoved it into her mouth heartily.

“To be honest, even I don’t know what will happen five years from now. I might be getting married, I might be getting pregnant. But, for now I’m free at least, and I am in an environment where I can devote myself to what I love. Recently, I had thought that this period of time in life is surprisingly short, isn’t it? I want to completely burn up this precious time with those children. That’s all for now.”

“Haven’t you thought of the possibility of being single and continuing to coach for the rest of your life?”

“The pasta is late, isn’t it?”

“You don’t seem like someone suited to be a housewife.”

“That’s why it’s a talk for the future. I don’t know what kinds of dramatic changes will happen in five years.”

“You’re not going to give up.”

“Why do I have to give up?”

“True. I also thought so, so I kept holding out, but…I’m getting really tired.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m in a slump.” He had intended to casually broach the topic, but the straining of his voice was undeniable. “You might have noticed it, but these days I have been in the worst condition for a while, and I have no idea what to do.”

Kayoko rested her fork for just a moment, then nodded for him to continue.

“I probably shouldn’t be consulting with you like this, but there was only you. Both my father and Ooshima-san acknowledged the skill of your coaching. They said that you have a genius for being a coach. Anyone could see that’s not a bluff by looking at your usual training and Tomo’s growth. If it was you, you would know, right? What’s wrong with me, and why I can’t dive…”

In reponse his desperate complaint, however, Kayoko finished her salad without changing her expression, and then extended her fork towards the pasta.

Spaghetti with bacon and mushrooms mixed in with plenty of white sauce. Kayoko’s fork spun beautiful on the plate, skillfully coiling noodles around itself. There were only so many who would have associated this movement with the “twist” in a diving performance. But, Youichi and Kayoko were one of such minorities. Though they didn’t exactly have a trusting relationship, they both recognized each other’s rarity.

That was why he consulted her.

He threw away his pretensions and pride.

While pushing back the saliva that was gradually rising from his empty stomach, Youichi continued to patiently wait for Kayoko’s pasta dish to become empty.

“What do you think?”

Kayoko, who had been concentrating on her food, finally returned her gaze to Youichi. The marron mousse and coffee appeared in place of the cleaned pasta plate.

“What do you think is the reason for your slump?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, so that’s why…”

“Think about it with what you already know.”

Youichi thought. About how on the following day after he received the explanation about the Olympic selection, he had such a terrible chronic headache that he wanted very much to take a break from practice. How even though he always, if possible, drove himself on to do too much, he had no motivation for overworking. He tried to be absent from practice for one week. However, he reluctantly came back because of November’s Sino-Japanese Goodwill Competition. After that, his unprecedented, absolute slump continued…

“Seriously, this is the first time that I’ve been so wrecked. I know that my self-confidence is quickly decreasing. I won’t be myself if it disappears anymore than that.”

“Sakuragi High School’s Fujitani Youichi. The thoroughbred who everyone speaks of as having great confidence in himself.”

“Genetics are irrelevant. I always thought that my self-confidence was kept by my own effort, along with my stamina and physical strength.”

“But it’s different now?”

“It’s not my efforts that bring me confidence, but the results of my efforts. You can’t have confidence without results. I don’t know why, but when I see Tomo taking on the 4½, and Okitsu doing ballet, I lose my confidence even more. I feel like I have to hurry up, that I’m the only who isn’t progressing ahead…”

While thinking that there was no point in complaining about these things, Youichi couldn’t stop his mouth.

His usual feeling of frustration.

An unclear anxiety.

Just like footsteps that resound in the darkness, simply because he can’t clearly identify the origin, they chased Youichi down even more.

“I don’t know if I know, but…”

Kayoko finally put down her fork, leaving only the bowl of marron mousse.

“For most of your misdives, you relaxed your chin at the moment of takeoff. When you lift your chin up a little bit, your line of sight will also naturally be raised. Because of that, all of your intuition goes amiss from then on. After that, it seemed that you may have been troubled about the rhythm of your approach lately, because you’re too concentrated on your feet, and not paying enough attention to your upper body, right? For your bad jumps, it’s not just your feet, but the swing of your arms that has problems. While I’m at it, I had wondered if you were aware that reverse somersaults are your weak points. Your performances were stiffer than the ones for other dives, and your takeoffs were always one beat behind.”

Chin. The swing of his arms. Reverse somersaults.

Youichi was dumbfounded and couldn’t speak as she pointed out his weaknesses one by one.

How long had she seen the things that even Coach Abe, who watched Youichi everyday, hadn’t noticed?

Kayoko continued where she left off, as Youichi succumbed to his fear-filled thoughts.

“But, those are merely superficial issues. The essence of your problem is deeper within you. You don’t seem to care for Coach Fujitani’s idealism, but everyone can see that this slump is something mental.”

“Mental?”

“You were chosen as an Olympic representative. But in reality, you don’t understand how you were chosen. Isn’t that why you feel reluctant to come to practice? But for the Sino-Japanese Goodwill Competition…and consequently for the MDC, you were not able to resist until the end. Your mind and body are falling apart. This is why you can’t dive well. You were agitated when you saw Sakai-kun and Okitsu-kun, perhaps because even though they lost the chance to go to Sydney, they were doing their own diving with their own intents. In contrast, you are set on rails prepared by someone else, which has nothing to do with your own volition.”

“Rails…”

“You might have been happier if you could just go with it without thinking anything. But, you stood still and thought about it. In that way, you weren’t able to move forward or go back. You will become useless if you stay like that.”

“…”

The wind was blowing. The dust was dancing. When Youichi’s gaze went up to escape from the bustle of the terrace, he saw the clear, lush autumn sky spread out overhead on the other side of the parasol. The hazy feelings within Youichi were like smog that could make that sky cloudy, and Kayoko had put it into shape extremely easily. They had successfully spread to the table, like the salad, pasta, marron mousse.

“It’s a bit like imaginary snow.”

He muttered that, as though talking to himself. “Snow?” Kayoko asked, reflexively looking up at the sky.

“Snow without substance is falling. Even if you touch it, it doesn’t melt, and it’s not cold. Everyone’s rolling it.”

“Everyone?”

“The JASF is going to take me to Sydney as Teramoto-san’s assistant-slash-safety net. Mizuki is thankful for that right of representation, and trying to drag me into a sh*tty commercial. Maybe there is something going on behind the commercial appearance and Olympic representation right, maybe not. The little kids of the MDC who don’t know anything already treat me like a star, my father thinks of me as the chairman of the MDC Survival Committee, and I’m trying to make myself think so, too. Everyone’s disconnected, and yet they’re all making a big deal out of it. But I’m not even officially an Olympic representative yet…”

Youichi pressed his forehead against the back of his clasped hands in front of his face.

“A snowman is steadily growing bigger in places that have nothing to do with me.”

“That’s what the Olympics have always been, more or less.”

Just for a moment, a painful shadow flitted across Kayoko’s eyes.

“But, you don’t acknowledge that. You deny it with all your power.”

“What should I do?”

“Do you want to stop the snowman that’s rolling up?”

“I don’t know. But, I want to roll it by myself, at least.”

Kayoko let out a puff of breath, and wiped her lips with a paper napkin.

“If that’s the case, then you should be rolling it, right?”

“What?”

“It’s your snow that’s falling, so you should roll it by yourself.”

“By myself?”

“You only have to do what you want to do in the way you want. In any case, you don’t have the disposition where you can be moved at the wills of others, and if you’re trying hard to kill yourself, then this is the way to go. Therefore, do you have any choice but to do what you like?

Youichi was confused.

“But, I’m carrying the futures of the thirty people who go to the MDC on my shoulders.”

“The future of the thirty people is carried by the shoulders of each of those thirty people. No one else can carry it for them. Even if the MDC was forced to close down, children with true passion will continue elsewhere.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“That’s why, you have to decide. It’s your life after all.”

Kayoko stated flatly. Youichi immediately snarled back at her.

“You…you were the one who wanted to save the MDC more than anyone else. Why are you saying that?”

Kayoko rejected the hysterical Youichi’s question with her eyes. Despite having ingested about 1570 kilocalories, those eyes still looked hungry, greedily wanting something.

“Because, you have talent. A splendid talent that is no way inferior to Sakai-kun’s and Okitsu-kun’s…I don’t want it to be wasted in such a place. I want to see it with my own eyes, how far can you grow. I want you to see what’s ahead of you.”

_______________________________________________________________

It seemed like he had been walking around the bottom of a five-meter deep diving pool. Even when Kayoko headed for Tatsumi after they left the café, saying that she should “burn up all of my calories completely,” Youichi didn’t feel like going to practice together. He hadn’t dared to invite Kayoko either, and so he remained behind to prowl around aimlessly the young people’s neighborhood by himself.

A reality difficult to see directly.

The conflict of the mind that he had been turning a blind eye to.

He had thrusted those things before Kayoko, and he had carried them heavily in his head, on his shoulders, and on his chest, and he felt like the more he walked, the more he was sinking down to the bottom of the water.

And yet the weather was so nice. The flow of people did not end in the neighborhood, and though as long as one went along with it there, one could find one’s way somewhere almost without mistakes. He wondered just when had he missed that energy.

Youichi looked over the faces of the people who were swept along easily. It seemed that everyone in this neighborhood was wearing clothes that they wanted to wear, eating what they wanted to eat, and buying what they wanted to buy. Because he was hungry, his eyes were randomly caught by the good-smelling food that was everywhere.

Hamburger, 250 kilocalories. Curry bread, 300 kilocalories. Fried chicken, 150 kilocalories. Chocolate banana crepe, 560 kilocalories. Imagawayaki (2), 200 kilocalories. Potato chips, 500 kilocalories. Vanilla ice cream, 220 kilocalories. Chocolate ice cream, 250 kilocaloriesー.

Crap. This neighborhood is a sea of fat and cholesterol. I have to escape. Escape. Escape. Youichi raced up the stairs of an empty building in order to escape from the grotesque whirlpool of calories. A shabby barbershop was on the first floor, and there was a sign for a used record shop on the second floor. While listening to the tones of jazz leaking out from the second floor, he sat down with a thump on the cold staircase. My head feels like crap…he sighed.

He can neither go forward nor go back.

He was stuck in a dead end.

It’s your snow that’s falling, so you should roll it yourself.

When he recalled Kayoko’s voice, Youichi carelessly let his field of vision blur, almost letting out something like a sob.

_______________________________________________________________

Notes:

1. Legend (maboroshi) sounds similar to dried fish (maruboshi)

2. Imagawayaki is a cake filled with bean paste, and is a popular street snack.