Resilience on the Morning Run
In my not-so-long life, one thing I've realized is that resilience is what's truly important for people. Sure, depressing and despairing moments come around more than once or twice. You just swallow the frustration and anger, and push forward one more time. Last night, using the map my mom prepared, I plotted out my morning jogging route. With the move and all, I had to take a few days off, but now it was time to get back to it. I grabbed my dedicated jogging shoes from the shoe rack, slipped them on, and tied the laces tight.
"I'm heading out."
Tokyo's spring doesn't come all that late. Even now, just past mid-March, the air was fairly cool, with breezes that were sometimes even warm. Still, it wasn't full-on spring yet—the days were short, and as I set out at dawn, the sky was a deep purple. Since this was a new route and I hadn't run in days, I needed to take it easy today. At the very least, I had to keep my eyes peeled so I wouldn't get lost. I often missed the smartphone GPS in moments like this, but what could I do? I'd been reincarnated into a '98 eroge, of all things. Shoving aside the pointless regret, I slowly left the housing complex behind.
From here, the path strayed a bit from the suburbs, and the road paving was pretty rough. A single slip could mean a nasty fall, so I tapped the dirt a few times with my foot to check its condition before starting up again at an easy pace.
"Ah. Right."
I'd forgotten, since ghosts and yokai don't show up in the city or suburbs, but as soon as I got a little farther out, the "not-of-this-world" presences started appearing. In an empty lot stacked with pipes was a sparrow brimming with faint spiritual energy; in the fields were an old man's ghost, spiritual energy clinging to a scarecrow, and a crow with power that was practically yokai-level. A sparrow yokai would be a yosuzume, and the scarecrow—maybe a fragment of the agricultural and scholarly god Kuebiko had attached itself? As expected of an urban fantasy battlefield featuring Japanese-style yokai, the quality of the spiritual veins here was exceptional. You think spiritualists wouldn't notice that? Of course not. Half-baked ones like them could only vaguely sense "an auspicious aura." Pushing through the earthy smell of water and fertilizer that grows on you despite yourself when living near farmland, I looped around once and climbed the hill designated as a park.
Just running flat is totally different from climbing or descending slopes—this kind of hill work makes your muscles scream. I had no plans to bulk up like a bodybuilder, but as someone who exercised, muscle soreness was like a badge of honor. Reaching the midway point up the hill, I found a properly landscaped knoll... well, it was small, but still a knoll.
"Hah!"
Was I out of shape from skipping a few days? As I did some light stretches to loosen my slightly stiff thighs, a woman's sharp kiai rang in my ears. If I didn't know this world was based on Aodaru, I'd have peeked out of curiosity about what a girl was doing out here exercising, but I had no such intentions now. After a quick sports massage and stretches, I checked my laces, tapped the ground with my toes, and got ready to go again.
"Oh? Someone new at this hour."
Damn it all. A quick sidelong glance revealed a girl with distinctive orange hair tied up in odango buns, unwinding the bandages from her hands as she waved at me. Who else could it be? Manatsu Aoba, heir to the advanced martial art Manatsu-ryu based on Chinese, and the middle-school heroine. She wasn't the psychic type right off the bat, so danger level was low. And she was strong herself, so she wasn't the kind who usually dragged trouble along. Probably. Maybe.
"Hey!"
"Hello."
"No need to be so formal. You look older than me anyway!"
"I'm fifteen, about to start high school..."
"I'm thirteen! I go to Mikagura Academy. You at Kaio?"
"Mm. Just moved here recently, yeah, Kaio High School."
"Figures. Your posture's spot-on. I know most folks who exercise around here, so a familiar face like yours being a stranger caught my eye!"
She seemed just as friendly and lively as I'd sensed while progressing the story. Man, an eroge with a thirteen-year-old character—those old-school devs were bold, churning out games without a single censorship mark. Respect to the ancestors.
"Right, I'm Manatsu Aoba! Looks like we'll be seeing each other a lot, so here's my intro."
"Tsukino Takuya."
"Haha, Tsukino-oniichan it is, then."
"Do what you want."
Noticing me tying my laces, she checked her own shoes and positioned herself diagonally behind my right side. She was planning to run alongside? A pacemaker was handy, sure, but when it was an outgoing eroge heroine... it gave me pause. Whatever. Just think of it like a running club. We crested the hill slowly, then jogged back down, and a slightly impressed voice came from beside me.
"As I thought. Great balance, form doesn't break at all. You can tell you've been consistent."
"I try to run every day, weather permitting."
"What's your big motivation?"
"Nah. If anything, staying healthy."
I couldn't exactly blurt out that I'd gotten hyped about becoming a spiritualist and was building stamina for the battles ahead—that'd sound ridiculous. In the broad sense, staying healthy meant avoiding injuries too, so it wasn't a total lie. Her murmur of "good health, huh" was the quietest tone I'd heard from her yet. And that's when I realized I'd made a slight slip-up. Aodaru was a nakige. Each heroine had her own tear-jerking backstory. Naturally, the girl running behind me now had hers too.
Manatsu-ryu had been passed down for ages, somewhat distorted over time, but its origins were techniques for slaying yokai. Perfect transmission required spiritual talent, so they'd brought in outside blood from spiritualists or even practiced inbreeding to produce fitting heirs. The karma came back as a generational curse mimicking a genetic disease. Manatsu-ryu declined. Spiritual techniques were lost to history, leaving only bare-handed combat, yet the curse lingered in the bloodline, dooming the family to short lives... That was the setup. Manatsu Aoba suffered from an illness caused by the curse, living in fear of sudden death, which fueled her tough-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside personality. The protagonist curing her curse and her finally smiling genuinely was the climax of Aoba route's happy ending.
Long story short: "health talk" wasn't the best topic.
"That was just at first. Now it's not like there's any special goal."
"Mm-hmm. Rigorous training becomes routine and loses its edge once it sinks in."
"Back in early elementary school, I'd huff and puff, stumbling along."
"Sports day kids are always like that!"
"In middle school, I'd enter every running event at sports day."
"Same here. Everyone'd look at me like 'you're in, right?'—no backing out."
Setting aside her backstory, she was just a kind, upbeat athletic girl—easy to talk to. I might have my otaku habits from my past life, but my biggest hobby was exercise. Shared interests made conversation flow. As we jogged along chatting about random stuff, the sun rose naturally, painting the eastern sky red.
"Whew, that was fun. Hardly anyone jogs at this hour."
"Think I'll do it daily."
"For real? See you tomorrow then!"
"Uh, yeah. Sure."
At the fork, she bounded off like a bouncing ball, vanishing from sight. I scratched my cheek lightly. This was an eroge world, sure, but people lived normal lives here—heroines included. The issue was their heavy personal baggage. If I didn't meddle in the deep stuff, maybe we could all just get along fine.
Feeling a pleasant ache from the solid workout after a break, I fished my keys from my pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.
"...What."
"No snacks?"
"What are you doing looking for snacks first thing in the morning."
"Woke up too early for nothing."
My sister Hiyori, fresh from a shower and towel-drying her hair vigorously, headed to her room. Was she seriously hunting for snacks? Starting the weekend like this meant she was doomed to gain weight. The bathroom door swung open, steam and heat billowing out from her recent shower, and I hopped in to start mine. Nothing beat heading out in that hazy morning state, sweating it out, then showering clean. Feeling way more at ease than yesterday, I stood under the quietly falling water.