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Crazy Rock wasn’t anything like what Koyomi had been expecting. She figured an exclusive skateboarding club would be something fancy like the indoor park where she skated with Miya, just outdoors. But Crazy Rock was massive and unlike anything Koyomi had ever seen. The main course was a dizzying maze of boulders, hard dirt, and dingy curves that all led to an abandoned factory. Miya had already told her about another secondary course, a dangerous one that Adam and Langa had once raced in, but he hadn’t shown it to her because it was permanently sealed off now. Miya hadn’t talked too much about that and had changed the subject to the topic of ramps, but there was something else that Koyomi was curious about.
“So S is the name of the race and Crazy Rock’s the name of the place?” Koyomi asked and vaguely gestured around the shadowy trees and rocky path.
“Pretty much,” Miya said with a shrug and nodded at a skater who waved at them. “Some people use them interchangeably though.”
Koyomi swallowed a yawn as she processed this information. She’d never been awake this long before and the fatigue was starting to get to her, but she didn’t want to leave just yet. Not before seeing Flag Girl, at least.
“Hey, Strawberries!”
Confused, Koyomi stopped and looked up at the source of the voice. Two girls—one deeply tanned with a head of curly black hair covered in tiny bows and the other pale and freckle-faced with blond hair streaming from under a baseball cap—sat on a large boulder, their skateboards sitting next to them. They looked like they were around Reki’s age and both were smiling warmly at her.
“Um, hi?” Koyomi said and meekly waved a hand.
“Awesome job on the course, Strawberries!” the curly-haired girl called. The gold bracelets on her wrist winked in the light as she waved.
The blond girl pulled off her baseball cap and waved it around. “We’re happy to have you here! Let’s skate one day.”
Koyomi’s eyes lit up. “Definitely! And thanks!”
Humming cheerfully, Koyomi waved goodbye and started walking alongside Miya again. They walked past a broken fence, wove through a maze of boulders, and emerged in an open lot filled with ramps, including an eye-wateringly tall mega ramp that easily dwarfed the one at Parrot Park. Skaters crouched together in huddled groups or stood off to the side, waiting for their turns at the ramps.
Curious, Koyomi stopped and tugged on Miya’s sleeve. Annoyance passed over Miya’s face, but cleared when he saw what Koyomi was staring at. Two girls skated up and down the ramp in tandem, evidently picking up speed. Suddenly, they launched themselves up past platform, their skateboards flipping in the air.
“They look like magical girls,” Koyomi breathed in amazement, her eyes captivated by the amount of air each girl grabbed just before they landed back on their boards and skated back down the mega ramp.
Miya elbowed her gently. “You noob, you’ve never seen anybody skate a mega ramp?” he teased.
Koyomi stared at the girls, almost unwilling to blink in case they attempted another aerial. “In videos, yeah, but . . . never in real life. And I’ve never seen a girl skate a ramp this tall. It’s really . . .”
“Really what?”
“Really cool!” Koyomi exclaimed, her eyes sparkling. “It’s so cool, Miya! How do you walk around and not look at everyone like they’re magic?”
“It’s not magic,” Miya scoffed as he looked up at the girls on the ramp. Try as he might, he couldn’t see them the way Koyomi did. “It’s practice and effort, that’s all. And they’re definitely showing off.”
“Like you never show off,” Koyomi said and playfully punched him in the arm. “And I know it’s cause of practice and effort, but that still doesn’t stop them from being magical. I mean, I’ve seen you bail plenty and I still think you’re really magical when you skate.”
Embarrassed, Miya gently shoved Koyomi and looked away, hoping the yellow lights at Crazy Rock were too dim for her to see how red his face had gone. Koyomi laughed and a million sarcastic retorts popped in his head, but when he opened his mouth, all that came out was a mumbled, “Shut up”. He glanced back at Koyomi, but she’d gone back to looking at the skaters on the ramp and from her expression, Miya guessed that she either hadn’t heard him or didn’t care.
“Hey, it’s Miya and Strawberries!”
Koyomi jumped slightly in surprise and tore her eyes away from the girls on the mega ramp. A young woman with an astonishing amount of makeup skated past them with a wink.
“Great race, you two!” the young woman said and stopped next to a guy her age dressed in bright, baggy clothes.
“Yo, Strawberries!” the guy called out as he threw an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Nice skating out there.”
A wide grin spread across Koyomi’s face. She waved a hand and called out a thank you. Miya shoulder-bumped her and motioned for Koyomi to follow him. He wasn’t sure how much time they had left, but wanted to show Koyomi the bowl before they left.
“You gonna keep smiling all night?” Miya asked with a teasing note in his voice.
“Maybe!” Koyomi exclaimed with an embarrassed little laugh. “I just . . . I didn’t know people were nice here. During the race, everyone I passed was yelling at me to give up ‘cause I kept bailing. I thought they didn’t like me ‘cause I’m just a kid—”
“I’m a kid too,” Miya interrupted with a raised eyebrow. “I’m only a year older than you.”
“But you’re a genius kid. And it’s pretty obvious that I’m not, so . . . I dunno, it felt like people were telling me I didn’t belong here. Just like . . .”
Koyomi’s ear to ear grin slowly shrank into a tiny smile as she trailed off. It annoyed her to think of the incident at Parrot Park now, especially when she should’ve still been riding high from successfully completing the course.
“You do belong,” Miya said matter-of-factly. “And now everyone knows it.”
Koyomi perked up. “I guess they do, huh? Hey, so why do people keep calling me Strawberries?”
“They probably think it’s your S name now.”
“My what?”
“Your S name,” Miya repeated. He stopped under a tree and pulled a branch off, then wrote his name in kanji on the dirt. He added an equal sign, and then wrote his S name beside it in blocky, capital letters. “Secret places require secret names. Mine’s just my name written in romaji. Reki uses his name too, just in katakana. Langa’s Snow, but he didn’t pick it. Everyone started calling him that ‘cause he’s a snowboarder. And you’re Strawberries ‘cause you had the misfortune of being called that by Adam.”
Koyomi watched Miya as he wrote down Reki’s and Langa’s names and added their corresponding S names. She frowned when he wrote down her name and added Strawberries at the end in katakana.
“But I don’t want to be Strawberries,” Koyomi said and rubbed out the name with the heel of her shoe. “I wanna use my name, like you and Reki do.
“Then you’re gonna have to keep correcting people,” Miya said bluntly. “Unless you manage to impress everybody in another race and tell the world your name while everyone’s listening.”
Koyomi grinned. “That’s easy. I’ll just win against you and people will remember my name. Hey, so how does my name look in romaji?”
“Probably something like this,” Miya said. He wrote down her name in the same blocky letters and named each one for Koyomi’s benefit since she wasn’t studying English yet. “K . . . O . . . Y . . . O . . . M . . . I.”
It was a little funny seeing her name written out in another language, especially stretched out over so many letters, but Koyomi liked it. She motioned for Miya to hand her the stick and clumsily copied the letters to write her name. “I like it. That’s gonna be my name here and everyone will know it as soon as I beat you.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Miya said sarcastically. “You wanna stand here and keep practicing your name all night or do you wanna see the bowl?”
“The bowl!” Koyomi exclaimed as she dropped the stick and beamed at Miya. “Where is it?”
Smirking, Miya started running. jumped on his skateboard, and disappeared through a thicket of trees. Koyomi blinked in surprise, then started laughing and did the same. She coasted through a well-worn path and kept her eyes on the back of Miya’s hoodie.
“Start slowing down,” Miya called.
Koyomi slowed. Miya did the same and stopped at the edge of a small slope. He stared down at the bowl complex for a moment and looked up when Koyomi gasped with delighted surprise.
“Is that . . .?”
Miya nodded. “Yeah, that’s the bowl.”
“You didn’t tell me there was more than one!” Koyomi exclaimed with glowing eyes.
The bowl at Parrot Park was vaguely kidney-shaped, despite being painted to look like a watermelon, and had distinct shallow and deep ends. The bowl at S wasn’t just one bowl, but a series of inter-connected bowls. Two were clover-shaped and one had a large concrete cradle jutting over the top. A long tunnel connected one of the clover-shaped bowls to a large, squiggle-shaped bowl at the far end. Each one was spray-painted with an array of acid colors and overlaid with hundreds of graffiti tags.
“Are you just gonna stare at it all night or are you gonna go skate?” Miya asked.
There was nothing Koyomi wanted more than to take in one of the bowls. At least the smaller clover-shaped one since it was so different from the bowl at Parrot Park, but all the bowls were crowded. She was used to waiting for her turn at Parrot Park to skate the bowl, but turn-taking didn’t seem to be a thing at Crazy Rock’s bowls. If people wanted to skate, they just dropped in and somehow managed to weave past all the other skaters. That was a skill Koyomi didn’t think she possessed yet, but the hum of these bowls were calling her in like a siren to a sailor.
“Can I?” Koyomi asked hesitantly.
Miya gestured at the pin on the collar of Koyomi’s dusty pink sweater. “You have that now. You can skate wherever you want.”
Koyomi rocked back and forth on her feet. She scanned the bowls, hoping to see Flag Girl. If she saw her, Koyomi would take it as a sign that it was okay to skate in the clover, but none of the skaters looked like her.
“Maybe I should try it out another day,” Koyomi said and smiled brightly to hide her disappointment. “It’s kinda late now, isn’t it?”
Miya frowned suspiciously and leaned over. “You know it’s really easy to tell when you’re lying, right?”
“What? No, it’s not!”
“Yeah, it is. Your eyes get really big and you smile like everything’s perfect, but I know it’s not because your smile doesn’t reach your eyes.”
Koyomi’s face flushed pink and she took a step back. She’d somehow been under the impression that she was an exceptionally good liar and it was a little embarrassing to realize Miya could see right through her. The only other people who could do that were the members of her family and her best friend.
“Yeah, well, you get all moody and snarky and pretend things don’t bother you when you lie,” Koyomi said with a small pout.
Miya’s face went red with irritation and he jabbed a finger in the direction of the bowl. “Would you stop stalling and go skate already? You’re a bowl skater! Isn’t this like a dream come true for you?”
A dream, Koyomi thought and turned her attention back to smaller of the two clover bowls. What sound does a clover make?
A female skater in the clover suddenly kicked off a hip and jumped onto the coping. Sparks flew from the underside of her skateboard as she slid across the coping. To Koyomi, it looked as though the girl was casting a magic spell. The female skater dropped back in and carved so effortlessly and with such height that Koyomi swore to herself that the girl had fashioned wings out of air.
“I wanna do that!” Koyomi exclaimed eagerly.
Eyes shining with excitement, Koyomi hopped back on her skateboard and skated down the small slope. Voices called out to her, using that name Adam had bestowed upon her, but she ignored them all. She circled around the edge of the small clover bowl, quickly drawing the line she would skate and double-checking for any debris. Satisfied, she dropped in without a second thought.
It’s different, Koyomi thought as she focused on her line. Smoother . . . with a different song . . .
The colors of the bowl whirled past her at a dizzying rate as the sound of dozens of wheels grinding on the well-worn concrete hummed in her ears. People skated past her, kicking off the hips, and Koyomi hurried to keep up with them as she fought an overwhelming urge to show off a frontside air.
No knee pads. It’s gonna hurt bad if I bail, but . . . I’m gonna try it!
A determined grin spread across Koyomi’s face. She pushed hard and flew straight up, her wheels bonking over the coping. For one breathless second, she was weightless, hovering above the bowl like a bird mid-flight.
Skating really is . . . like magic . . .
Inhaling sharply, Koyomi grabbed her skateboard, looked over her shoulder, and focused on the tags spray painted in the bowl as she came back to earth. A giddy laugh bubbled out of her throat when she landed cleanly. She skated around the bowl one more time, then coasted straight up and jumped over the coping onto the dusty concrete.
“Nice one, Koyomi-chan.”
Startled, Koyomi nearly fell off her skateboard as she quickly whirled around to find the owner of the familiar voice. Flag Girl smiled down at her, a skateboard tucked under her arm.
“Ane-san!” Koyomi exclaimed.
Flag Girl winked and pressed a finger to her lips. “Suzuhana Amane doesn’t exist here, okay? Just Flag Girl.”
“Oops, sorry,” Koyomi murmured, her face red with mortification. “Miya just told me about the different names you use here, too. I’m sorry. I didn’t blow you cover or anything, did I?”
“Nah, you’re fine,” Flag Girl said with a carefree shrug. “And I’m happy to see you too. I’ve been a little worried about you. How’s Haruko-chan?”
Koyomi knitted her brows in confusion. “Huh? Harurin’s doing great, but why were you worried about . . .? Oh. You . . . you heard about what happened at Parrot Park, huh?”
“Yes, I did, but I’m glad to see you’re doing so well,” Flag Girl said, her warm face creasing into an understanding smile. “It’s hard getting back on the board after suffering a major injury like that, isn’t it?”
“Well, it wasn’t really a major injury,” Koyomi said with an embarrassed little laugh. “I just sprained my wrist.”
“A sprained wrist is still pretty bad. I hope you got it taken care of.”
“I sorta did,” Koyomi mumbled, unwilling to admit that all she’d done was ice it. “Hey, Ane—I mean, Flag Girl . . . Do you like skating here?”
Flag Girl blinked, then burst out laughing and spread her arms wide. “Of course I love skating here! Everyone you see here loves it. This is the one place where we can be ourselves. Nobody has to let themselves be defined by how the outside world thinks we should act. Who wouldn’t love it here?”
“Do you like it even when people aren’t nice to you?” Koyomi asked and awkwardly rocked back and forth on her feet.
“Yes, I do,” Flag Girl said sincerely and looked over at the bowl complex. “The unfortunate reality is that there are always going to be people who won’t be nice to you for whatever reason. The worst are the people who think you’re sticking out too much by letting your skills shine. And they might make you angry and they might make you scared, but never let them chase you away from this place or any other place.”
Koyomi stopped rocking and looked over at the clover-shaped bowl. “You almost sound like you’re talking about personal experience.
“Oh, I am, but that was a long time ago, and . . . ”
Flag Girl trailed off and whistled softly. Koyomi followed her gaze. A girl on a longboard bailed and slid across the flat on her side. The other skaters stopped and waited. Suddenly, the girl started laughing and everyone in the bowl laughed as well. Koyomi smiled when she saw two boys helping her to her feet. She could tell from the looks on their faces that they were asking the girl if she was all right.
“Hey, Tuesday Notes!” Flag Girl called with a laugh. “You okay?”
The girl—Tuesday Notes?—grinned and held her two thumbs up. She jumped up and down a few times, then stepped back on her board and started skating again.
“People here have really . . . interesting names,” Koyomi said with giggle.
“Koyomi! Hey, Koyomi!”
Koyomi jumped slightly when she heard Reki’s voice. Surprised, she looked over in the direction of the small slope and saw her brother wildly waving his arms. Langa stood next to him, hand over his mouth in mid-yawn. Miya had his hands over his ears and rolled his eyes when Reki started shouting again.
“Come on! We gotta go or Shadow’s gonna leave us here!”
Koyomi cupped her hands over her mouth and called, “Okay! Be right there!”
“Guess you gotta get going, huh?” Flag Girl said. “I’ll see you next time, okay?”
“Ah, wait a moment, please!” Koyomi said just as Flag Girl started walking away. Suddenly shy, she looked down at her shoes and started pleating the hem of her sweater. “I . . . I wanted to say . . . thank you. For teaching me how to carve. For helping me learn how to fly. I hope that . . . maybe one day . . . we can run the course together?”
“Of course,” Flag Girl said.
Koyomi stopped playing with her hem and immediately looked up with stars in her eyes. “Really?!”
“Yes, really,” Flag Girl laughed and held out a fist. “One day for sure.”
Koyomi carefully curled her bandaged hand into a fist and fist-bumped Flag Girl. “Okay!”
“Have a good night, Koyomi-chan,” Flag Girl said with a nod as she skated past Koyomi and dropped in the clover bowl.
Koyomi waited a few beats, hoping to see the trick that had amazed her the first time she’d walked past the stone parrot at Parrot Park. Reki called her name again, then Miya joined in, but she ignored them both and waited with bated breath.
Suddenly, Flag Girl flew up and dropped a hand on the coping. Her hair whirled out like a heroine’s cape as she floated upside down on an invert, disappearing in the blink of an eye when she dropped back down into the bowl. Koyomi gasped softly in wonderment, then smiled and skated away.
“Took you long enough,” Reki said when she returned to the slope.
“Sorry about that,” Koyomi said. “Hey, Onii-chan, can we stick around a little while longer? Please? I wanna look around some more.”
“I didn’t get to show her everything,” Miya said and shot Koyomi a quick smile. “We really should stay a little longer.”
“No can do. It’s nearly two in the morning and we gotta leave before the gates close,” Reki said. Seeing Koyomi’s disappointed face, he quickly added, “But I’ll show you around next time, okay, Koyomi?”
Koyomi considered protesting, but then she felt a yawn coming on and had to clamp her jaw to suppress it. “Okay, next time. But you’d better promise to show me everything that Miya didn’t.”
“I promise,” Reki said with a sunny smile. “Hey, what were you and Flag Girl talking about anyway?”
Koyomi stared up at the starry sky and smiled. “Magical girls.”