Chapter 78: Sports Festival

Today, this Saturday in early October… was the day of Touka Academy Elementary’s sports festival. The event started on time with good weather.

Everyone had prepared their hardest before this. They weren’t just doing tournament preparations like the flags of all nations and decorating; they had also practiced the entrance procession and the group activities… All grades participated in one rehearsal outside to check and practice the whole process.

A sports festival wouldn’t end at a few events. Preparation and clean-up were part of it too, so sports festivals were something that took a lot of time and effort.

“Your papa and mom are going later; do your best, Yoshizane and Sakuya.”

“In moderation, Sakuya…”

“Yes! Father! Mother! Goodbye!”

“I’m off.”

My mom and dad were watching over my brother and I as we excited the house. Going to watch Touka Academy’s sports festival was very important to my dad. That wasn’t at all because he wanted to watch his kids.

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Vyaldvp qasx xydu qyxkzklp oldv vs oyvnb vbl prsavp qlpvkhyz. Tl oyp ykxkdt qsa vbyv yde rzyddle vs tallv vbl xydu ryaldvp tyvblale vblal.

Ebkzl vbl prsavp qlpvkhyz oyp y cyvvzl qsa vbl nbkzeald, kv oyp yzps y rzynl oblal ryaldvp nswze kdvlaynv okvb ryaldvp qasx svbla qyxkzklp. Rd vbyv oyu, kv oyp yzps y cyvvzlqklze qsa vbl yewzvp… xu eye’p lytladlpp vs yvvlde oyp wdelapvydeyczl.

Rd vbyv oyu, R oyp yzps qllzkdt ralvvu lmnkvle yde ldvbwpkypvkn. Rq ol olal eskdt vbkp, R eked’v oydv vs zspl. Gdusdl oswze cl vbkdjkdt vbyv.

“El yal ldlxklp vseyu, Jasvbla.”

“Mbyv’p vawl.”

Gp vbl nya pbssj, ol csvb zywtble eyakdtzu. R oyp kd Mlyx Mball, yde xu casvbla oyp kd Mlyx Mos… Mseyu, R oyp ldlxklp okvb Zspbkgydl-jwd. R oswzed’v ts lypu sd bkx.

“Wwqwqw… Mlyx Mball okzz okd vseyu.”

“R esd’v vbkdj usw nyd zssj esod sd Mlyx Xdl, vbswtb?”

He didn’t say anything about his own Team Two, but instead mentioned Team One. As expected of Yoshizane-kun. But! Even if we were against Team One or Team Two, Team Three would win.

As we had that conversation, we arrived at the location of the decisive battle.

　　～～～～～～～

We met up in the classroom, then, taking chairs, went outside. We went to our class’s location, arranged the chairs by number order, then sat.

“It is finally the day! We will definitely win, Sakuya-sama!”

“That is true. If we do not aim to win, then there is no meaning.”

Wasn’t it alright not to be first? That wasn’t true. Since we were doing this, if we didn’t aim to win and be number one, there’d be no point.

Don’t misunderstand me; I didn’t mean that there was no point if we lost in the end or if we weren’t first. I meant that if we were doing this, we should aim for first and do our best.

Of course, there were times when we absolutely had to win. A time when losing, whether by getting second or last place, was meaningless and had no value; anyhow, a time when you had to win no matter what. There were definitely times like that. 

But that wasn’t the case most times. If you lost in the end, that wouldn’t mean your journey had been useless. If you went in with the mindset of “If we lose, it’s fine” or “If we’re not first, it’s fine”, then you should probably give up.

If you wanted to win, went at full power and tried your best but still came last, that was unavoidable. If it was just play or a hobby for you and you just lazily did stuff, then you shouldn’t participate.

I wasn’t saying “Give up on your hobbies or on the event”. For example, if there was a club aiming for an international tournament and one person in it said “I’m just doing this because I like it, so it is fine if we are not first place”, then that’d trouble everyone. I wasn’t saying there was a need to stop those hobbies or events, but if those people wouldn’t seriously participate, there’d be no point in them joining the group.

Well, everyone at school was forced to participate in the sports festival, so maybe there were people forced to participate and doing it unwillingly, but… It was probably wrong to bring others down or say “It’s fine if we go easy on them and lose”. If everyone was working towards one goal and if you had to enter in the first place, then you had to do what you had to do.

In the first place, school education wasn’t related to if you’d place first, second, or third in the spores festival. It was important to just aim for number one as a whole team. If you said “Second place’s fine” from the beginning, then that was a mistake.

“Sakuya-chan, let us go line up.”

“Yes. Then, let us all head over there.”

Everyone entered the admission gate and lined up. I knew that quite a few parents had entered already. I didn’t think watching the entrance and opening ceremony was all that interesting, but… a bunch of cameras were going around, and there were many photographers prepared by the school.

Touka Academy was a private school, so it could put effort into these things. They could have private photographs not just for the sports festival, but also for overseas trips and various school functions; they arranged photographers for many different events.

But that wasn’t free; the edited pictures would be sold as DVDs or Blu-Rays. Those were also quite expensive. Even so, the majority of parents would buy recordings of those events. My family recorded the events themselves, but they still bought those things as a kind of donation.

To approve of and support school events and activities, they bought those rather expensive recordings. Their kids weren’t the only ones in the recording, though… Well, that was probably why the family themselves recorded too.

As I thought about that, the entrance began and everyone marched in. We walked in a circle around the grounds while the principal, board chairman, and various big shots from the PTA continued talking. The head of the student council began the athlete’s oath of fair play, the entrance ceremony ended, and we exited. 

For now, I returned to my own seat. I was pretty free to do what I wanted until I had to appear in my events. These seats were all chairs that were prepared by the students.

In a rich school for nobles like Touka Academy, I thought that maybe companies would do it, but that wasn’t true here at all. Students cleaned the classrooms. They also mainly set up the tents, admission gate, and prepared the decorations.

Of course, the teachers and adults would help with the dangerous things, or rather, the adults would do those things by themselves, but everything that the students could do was done by the students.

If this was another school, you might think “Isn’t that normal?”, but… in my imagination, a school like Touka Academy wouldn’t let its students do that. I thought they’d claim “What if the students got injured?”, but they didn’t do that at all.

Well, almost all of the parents had graduated from here, so if it was an unbroken tradition, then they probably wouldn’t oppose it themselves.

Anyway, there was only a little time until my event, so I was just standing by. If my friends appeared in an event, then of course I’d cheer them on, but it was pretty hard to cheer at an event where no one I was close to was participating.

I wasn’t the only one who thought that; everyone was having conversations here and there. At times like this, I didn’t think there was a big difference between them and other normal students.

“Sakuya-sama, do you not need to stand at the admission gate?”

“That is true. The broadcast will come on soon…”

Azami-chan called out to me, and I answered. After the entrance ceremony had ended, the people who were part of the first event were already lining up. The participants of the previous event had already exited, so the broadcast for the next event could come on, and we had to line up behind the entrance gate when it was called. Every school probably did that.

The short-distance race was the morning’s showpiece, so it was quite early. Then, the mixed-gender relay between teams was the climax of the afternoon. Well, maybe they were both star events, but maybe the fact that the preparation and clean-up were simple was the real reason.

Rolling a ball, sending off a ball, tamaire, tug of war, the centipede race, and the three-legged race took time to get the tools and prepare. Clean-up didn’t take much time and effort, but if you held the events first or last, there’d be a lot of wasted time in preparation and cleaning. That was why they avoided putting events that needed equipment first or last.

I was in the short-distance race, which was the highlight of the morning events. The short-distance runners would be called when those waiting at the admissions gate came in.

“Competitors participating in the short-distance race, please gather at the admissions gate.”

“It has come. Then, I shall leave.”

“Do your best, Sakuya-sama!’

“Sakuya-chan won’t lose, though~”

I received everyone’s cheers while heading to the admissions gate. A normal school wouldn’t gather kids in lower elementary and would have to call them multiple times, but the kids attending Touka Academy were all very polite, so they wouldn’t have to do that. The moment we were called, they checked that everyone had gathered and we stood in a line and waited.

The previous event had ended and the competitors left; we then came in to replace them.

I thought the cheers from the audience were pretty loud, but that was all because of Ibuki… It looked like Ibuki was also appearing in the short-distance race. And the cheers for Ibuki were pretty loud. Most of those cheers were from adults. There were also kids whose cheers I could hear, but that was only one section.

In the game “Love Flowers”, I thought that Ibuki would get shouts of encouragement and excited cheering just by moving, but the Ibuki in this world wasn’t that charismatic or popular yet. Or maybe no one would cheer for him in the first place because he’d become a useless prince from the world changing… I thought he was getting a cold response from the kids.

Compared to that, he was getting enthusiastic cheers from the adults who associated with the Konoe faction. Not just from families that were part of the Konoe monryuu; other families who associated with them were also cheering.

Well, that wasn’t related to me. Let’s just stay obediently in the corner. It was fine for me to just win the event. I shouldn’t establish too big a lead or stand out; I could just do it moderately. There was no way I’d lose to a first-grade girl in a sprint.

The short distance race was separated into boys and girls, where different representatives from the same year would line up and start. The time didn’t matter; points were added based on order of arrival, so your points wouldn’t change if you won by a huge lead or by the skin of your teeth. If it was too close, then the decision would be argued, so it was enough to win farther away and with a clear time difference.

They started with the first grade girls and the representatives were ordered by time, so I was third. Three girls would run, then three boys would run, then the second-graders, then the third-graders. It’d continue like that.

The other two had finished running, and it was now my turn. I was free to do a crouch start or anything I wanted, but I didn’t see a reason why I should do that, and it’d probably slow me down since I was just a first-grader. A starting block was prepared, but none of the first-graders had used it.

“Take your position… ready…”

The starting pistol sounded with a bang. I leapt off at the same time that the signal rang, and the other footsteps were already far behind. As expected, it wouldn’t even be a competition with first-graders… I made it to the finish line without taking a huge lead or standing out badly.

“Aah! Sakuya-chan! I’ll go over to Sakuya-chan! Get away from her!”

“Oogimachisanjou-san! You cannot abandon your post!”

The moment I reached the finish line, we were made to sit down in order of arrival by high school sports festival executive committee members. But none of them were Kaya-san. Kaya-san was on the other side for some reason. I could hear her, but I pretended that I didn’t…

That was also true… committee members had lots of different jobs, so she couldn’t conveniently assist me. It had gone the same way that my apprehensions had told me when I talked with Azami-chan. When you normally thought about it, Kaya-san should’ve known that too… Well… I guess… all I could say was “Do your best at work”.

　　～～～～～～～

Once the short-distance race had ended… Team Three had only gotten first place a few times. Most of the people who were representatives for the short-distance race were probably also in the relay, so I didn’t have much hope for the relay if we had this lineup.

The relay was mixed-gender and consisted of the whole school, and it was the climax of the sports festival, so quite a few points were attributed to it. That was probably so you had the “opportunity” to turn your situation around. Conversely, if you didn’t win at the relay, you might readily lose in the end. This year’s Team Three was pretty unsatisfactory with the short-distance race. It’d be hard for us to win the relay…

“Sakuya-sama, good work!”

“Sakuya-chan, you were amazing!”

“Thank you.”

Everyone went up to me and gave me towels and drinks. I was absolutely fine, but… wouldn’t this be recorded too?

If… If someone who knew nothing about the situation saw this, what would they think? Wouldn’t they see a brat who worked other students to the bone like she was in charge of them; someone sitting arrogantly in their seat while others brought towels and drinks? Wasn’t that too worrying?

“You were running effortlessly. If you are there, Sakuya-chan, victory at the relay will be secured.”

“I do not know about that… the relay is a team race, so… one person cannot do anything.”

I interrupted Satsuki-chan and mumbled something. Had it been that obvious that I’d been running pretty leisurely¹ the word used here, 流れる, can mean both leisurely and effortlessly in the context of running, so Sakuya misunderstood what she meant? I was trying to fake running the hardest that I could, though…

In the first place, my turn this morning had already ended, so why not kill time by cheering on everyone else?