Chapter 102: Kim Yoo-Sung's Summer Vacation
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 102: Kim Yoo-Sung's Summer Vacation
Monday, July 24, 2017.
Normally, I would have left the house early in the morning, but today, I could sit at the table and eat at a leisurely pace.
That was because the long-awaited summer vacation had finally begun.
The morning of the first day of summer vacation was quiet, as if the breathless rush of my second year's first semester had been a lie.
Other than the beach trip I'd planned with the members of Forest School's Group D for early August, I didn't have any other plans yet.
If this year was like the last, it would probably be a lazy, uneventful break, but that wasn't so bad in its own way.
After all, I'd spent the entire semester living as if I were constantly being chased by my schedule.
"Thanks for the meal."
As I said that and stood up from the table with my empty bowl, my mother, Lee Mi-ja, asked.
"Hey, you're not planning on just holing up at home and working out all vacation, are you?"
"...Just a little."
"Well, that's a relief. Go out and have some fun. I'll give you an allowance if you need it."
"Okay."
Listening to her nagging—which wasn't really nagging—I escaped to my room.
"Hoo."
Just looking at the workout equipment filling my room made me feel at ease.
Lately, I hadn't had enough time to work out because of one thing or another, but it seemed like I could take my time and enjoy it today.
First, I sat on the bench and did some dumbbell curls.
I warmed up with three sets of ten reps at 50kg, then immediately moved on to my main workout: three sets of ten at 60kg.
Normally, muscle growth slows down once you reach a certain limit.
But Kim Yoo-Sung's body grew endlessly, as if such common sense didn't apply.
It was as if I were on anabolic steroids.
I used to think this was just a buff for being the muscle-bound gag character in a rom-com, but now, thanks to Fuma-senpai, I knew the cause was my Extreme Yang Body.
From a lifter's perspective, it wouldn't be strange to call it a literal god-given talent.
"Hoo, hook, hook, hook."
After the dumbbell curls, I followed up with dumbbell flys, dumbbell presses, and side lateral raises, finishing my morning workout, which took about an hour.
Personally, I like to mix dumbbells and barbells evenly in my workouts.
A barbell can stimulate muscles that dumbbells can't, and dumbbells can stimulate muscles that barbells can't.
I opened the window to air out the stuffy room, but the murderous midsummer heat made little difference whether the window was open or not.
And my room only had a fan.
"..."
It's hot. Insanely hot.
My body already runs hot, but this heat was truly inhuman.
I immediately closed the window I'd just opened and headed to the bathroom to wash off the sweat.
*
Plop—
"Haaaah~"
After a cold shower, turning on the living room air conditioner and sinking into the sofa was pure heaven.
Add a slice of watermelon, which was just coming into season, and a glass of barley tea from the fridge, and it was game over.
I stared blankly at the ceiling for a moment before turning on the TV and taking a bite of watermelon.
The cool juice that filled my mouth brought to mind a quintessential summer scene.
Just then, the final episode of The Blue ~Youth Academy Apocalypse~, which had recently finished airing, was on as a rerun.
[Teacher! I like you!]
The character played by Minato—who had become insanely busy after the drama's huge success—was confessing to her homeroom teacher, Agito, on screen.
A romance between a teacher and a student? I thought that was a bit risky, but seeing her holding a diploma, it seemed she confessed at her graduation ceremony.
Agito had said he couldn't answer right away and needed time to think, but the drama ended with him accepting Minato's confession three months later, after her birthday had passed and she was officially an adult.
I guess that was the author's idea of a happy ending.
I'd only caught the last thirty minutes or so, but it was pretty interesting, so I made a mental note to watch the whole thing later and checked a text that had just come in.
[Senpai, what are you doing?]
Speak of the devil. It was Minato, who I hadn't seen at all lately.
It seemed she was keeping up with her attendance, but since we were in different grades, we rarely ran into each other.
[Nothing scheduled.]
[That's great. Would you like to go to the festival with me on Saturday?]
[Festival?]
I paused my texting and glanced at the calendar in the living room.
Come to think of it, it was about time for the Natsumatsuri to be held.
[I'm free, but are you sure you can make it? You're a celebrity, you must be busy.]
[I've already cleared my schedule for that evening, so it's fine. It's not like I work 365 days a year, you know.]
[If you say so...]
As we texted back and forth, I realized something was off.
[But are we close enough to go to a festival together?]
Considering we've only met a few times, isn't this moving a little fast?
[Is it strange for a senior and a junior to go to a festival together?]
[Well... no.]
[Then there's no problem, right? Okay, it's decided.]
Before I could even argue, it was settled that I was going to the festival.
Half-resigned, I sent a text.
[Fine, have it your way.]
[Hehe, thanks for putting up with my pushiness, Senpai. It's not much, but as a thank you, I'll show you my special yukata that day.]
Ting!
Immediately, along with the notification sound, a photo came through. I opened it and saw a picture Minato seemed to have just taken in a waiting room, holding up a V-sign with her fingers.
[This is a bonus.]
Her charm, which I could feel even through the screen, made me smile without realizing it.
'Cute.'
*
After a late lunch of chicken breast sausage, a fried egg, and brown rice, I started binge-reading the rom-com manga I'd bought a ton of but had barely touched.
"Heh heh..."
A lot of people don't know this, but the history of rom-coms goes back a whopping forty years.
The first work to be called a rom-com came out in the 80s, and all the clichés we see in modern rom-coms were established in the 80s and 90s.
The original rom-coms felt a lot like the male version of a shojo manga, with love triangles or quadrangles, but that trend was changed in the late 90s by a harem rom-com that appeared like a comet in Shonen Magazine.
Thanks to that work's influence, harem rom-coms—where multiple heroines compete for a single protagonist—became wildly popular in the 2000s.
The 2000s were a chaotic era with a flood of legendary works across manga, PC games, and novels... but by the 2010s, the rom-com had become an outdated genre.
Since the stories were all basically the same, they had to compete solely on character personalities or unique settings.
Of course, there were still rare massive hits like Scramble Love, but compared to the golden age of rom-coms in the 80s and 90s, it was just a drop in the bucket.
I'm the type to finish what I start, but when it came to rom-coms, I honestly felt like coughing up blood sometimes. No matter how much you're supposed to turn your brain off for the genre, there were just so many developments that my common sense couldn't comprehend.
"That was fun today, too..."
Thankfully, there are more quality rom-coms these days. Back when I had less tolerance for things like NTR, there were times I seriously wanted to tear the author to shreds.
There's a reason I prefer Shonen Jump-style rom-coms.
At least they don't throw in ridiculous settings.
After about three hours of catching up on my manga backlog, I decided it was time to head to the gym and clock in.
*
The gym is generally most crowded during two periods: the new year and the summer season.
Some come to diet, others to get ready for swimsuit season.
And most of them don't even last a month before quietly disappearing, after which the gym gets quiet again.
In other words, if you can just make it through that first month, you're likely to stick around for a while.
Fuma-senpai and that guy Kazu, who registered at our gym pretty recently, were clocking in almost every day.
While on the treadmill for my cool-down, I asked something that had just occurred to me.
"By the way, Fuma-senpai, it's vacation. Aren't you going back to your hometown?"
Fuma-senpai, who was running on the treadmill next to me, answered.
"The fare is a waste of money."
"...Isn't it sad not to go for a reason like that?"
"My hometown is pretty far, so the transportation costs alone are almost 10,000 yen. With that money, I could buy thirty bowls of gyudon. And it's risky if I miss days of work."
Hearing her convert the value of money into bowls of gyudon somehow made it sound even sadder.
Kazu, who was on the treadmill on her other side, asked quizzically.
"Sis, don't you work a ton of part-time jobs? So where's all that money go?"
Fuma-senpai chuckled and replied.
"Don't underestimate Tokyo's murderous cost of living, Goto. Even working four hours a day, seven days a week, just paying rent, going to the public bathhouse, and buying the bare minimum of cosmetics and groceries is enough to empty my bank account. If my family didn't cover my tuition, I would've given up on my studies and gone back home by now."
Fuma-senpai's profile looked sad as she discussed Tokyo's cost of living with such a serious expression.
She's so pretty, so why does she give off such an air of poverty?
Finally, after finishing her thirty minutes and stepping off the belt, Fuma-senpai wiped her sweat with a towel and spoke.
"By the way, Kim Yoo-Sung. Are you free this summer?"
"When are you talking about?"
"Anytime is fine. I'm the one asking for a favor, after all."
"...A favor?"
Fuma-senpai nodded.
"About passing down Hayate, the technique I mentioned before. The village elders said they want to see you in person before making a decision. I was hoping you could spare two nights and three days."
"If that's all it is..."
I added a new event to the calendar in my head.
This morning, my schedule was completely empty, but in just twelve hours, it had filled up this much.
I guess you really never know what's just around the corner.