Chapter Text
FOREWORD
By Jinpachi Toudou
It was such a nerve for me to write this after observing the most teeth-grinding love story I’ve ever witnessed before I even graduated. To be honest, I never thought a story like this will exist in real life. I even thought this only existed in romance novels that my sister always read.
I understand the obvious part of the story where this girl has been in love with her childhood friend and neighbor who couldn’t love her back because he is in love with something and someone else. But what made this story interesting and aggravating at the same time? There is this guy who was actually secretly in love with this poor girl and has been trying to reach her and then there is another girl who has been testing herself how she will feel towards this guy, only to end up falling in love with the guy whom she’ll forever chase his back while he’s looking at the girl he likes and the girl he likes has been trying to reach out to that stupid guy who cares less for her except mountains and a certain idol. On top of that, their stories are just a combination of the story where I initially got my inspiration from when I decided to write a novel again.
You get my drift. And if you’re reading this part, you’ll probably hit your head in a wall, too, out of frustration – unless you’re not planning to finish the entire story.
*****
I, Jinpachi Toudou, witnessed the most head-spinning, heart-shattering love story in my three years in Hakone Academy, in which I, myself, never experienced, but by my fellow teammates at the Bicycle Club. I have to admit, that after finding out this involved my teammates, I decided to get involved as well, the moment I’ve learned that I actually have an ability to guess someone else’s past with another person involved with observation, and learned to control it by sharing them a thing or two on what love is through sharing a plot I’ve been writing... Although, to be honest, it has been since third grade that I have felt it. I thought of helping them as much as I can, by telling them their own story to help them realize the answer, only to end up hurting them... and myself.
I thought that, since I’ve been surrounded by women who admired me from afar, and by learning the tropes and tricks from my sister’s collection of romance novels, those kinds of experiences are enough for me to provide them love advice through my plots, I’ll feel accomplished. It was only in my third year in high school that I understood the joy and pain behind it. If you can guess who gave me that idea to write again, you’ll get a prize from me...
Okay, I’ll give it away, anyway. Fuku did.
Surprised? Fuku rarely talks about his personal life, and if he will talk that much, it will be only about racing and how Hakone can be strong through training. When we talked, just the two of us, he said it himself: he has this someone who liked him back in middle school and surprisingly, he liked her as well, and he was about to confess but got caught in the race, only later to regret joining that race after seeing her, now with a boyfriend. The only person who knows about it is, obviously, Shinkai, because they were schoolmates back in middle school.
Anyway, he once said, when you will realize that someone has been trying to reach you for a long time without looking behind you, and ended up still pushing forward, chances are you will end up being pushed to your failure. This isn’t related to that incident with Sohoku’s ex-captain. It was already too late for Fuku at that time to make up for the lost time to tell how he actually felt for that girl after winning that race back in middle school. As he was about to tell her...
He saw her kissing another guy.
That hurts like hell. Fuku was at his worst after that incident and then he saw that girl with another guy. She has moved on. She might have realized that she’ll never reach Fuku no matter how hard she runs towards him. It was like racing with someone who was too focused on winning rather than thinking that someone has been chasing him for miles away and for years.
No wonder when he learned about this story (or what I’ve called a novel I’ve been working on), he couldn’t help but to share. A great reference coming from the great Juichi Fukutomi, but his story was just the background one, if you will read it as a novel, like a side story or whatever. Because the real protagonists here are those two women in the lives of those two idiots: they chased them, in different ways, almost gave up in the middle, only to end up... Well, if I’ll tell it here right away, it won’t be exciting anymore.
It’s exciting. It’s heartbreaking. It’s even action-packed. I believe that their story is the greatest love story Hakone has ever produced. And I, Jinpachi Toudou, was honored to witness this kind of craziness before graduation – and be part of it. It was the biggest and the most meaningful lesson of love anyone can pick – even by the most laidback and the most annoying characters in the book called life.