Sports Day
In the first days of May, when the weather had finally started to turn properly warm, I was eating ice cream straight out of the fridge.
Häagen-Dazs — the kind I couldn't even bring myself to look at back when I was a man, scraping by on part-time work. I thought I finally understood why it cost so much. The texture was impossibly smooth, and that alone was enough. I spooned it up while casting about for something to do with the day.
On days I didn't have school, there was never much to occupy me. I'd been watching a movie again and gotten bored enough to wander outside. The tub went back in the fridge. May meant Children's Day, didn't it? And since I was a child myself, I had every reason to enjoy it.
One look outside told me everyone else was hard at work, same as always. Being the only one loafing around pricked at my conscience, little jab after little jab. Come to think of it, there was something I'd meant to give Bora today. I ducked into my room and pulled out a single school newsletter. The message was simple.
A sports day will be held in the near future.
Parents and guardians are requested to attend.
I didn't have parents, which meant I'd have to drag along Bora, or Haru, or Maru. I took off at a scamper for the office and thrust the paper at them. At once Bora, Haru, and Maru clustered around it, all three wearing grave expressions.
"This is... who should go?"
Haru read the notice aloud as she spoke. In their hearts, all three of them wanted to go, but showing up as a crowd would only make them self-conscious in front of everyone else, so they settled on sending just one.
"Shall I go?"
Maru raised her hand. When there was an event or a meet like this, wasn't it only proper that the newest hire took it? She was working herself to the bone to keep her professional life spotless. And a sports day with me sounded like fun. I was such a troublemaker that keeping an eye on me was part of it too — a child who might cause an accident at any moment.
"No, I'll go. It feels like it's been ages since I got to play with Hana."
Even after Bora said so, the others kept insisting they should be the one, and the little meeting dragged on. Bored, I drifted off to peek at the other office staff at work. Somehow they seemed to hammer their keyboards harder the moment I stood behind them — but surely this office didn't harbor the kind of shameless adult who only worked hard because someone was watching.
And so the person attending my sports day was decided: Bora. Honestly, any of them would have been fine. They were all good people. All three of them coming would have been best, of course.
"Waaaaah!"
The place was buried under the roar, boiling over with cheering heat to rival any soccer stadium. Byeolbit Elementary's sports day had begun. After a brief round of greetings from notable figures to mark the occasion, the meet got underway in earnest.
The school was so flush with money that celebrities had even shown up to perform. The kind of spectacle you'd expect at a university festival was unfolding at an elementary school sports day.
"Do I really have to wear this?"
I held up the ridiculous class T-shirt as I said it. No matter how I looked at it, the thing was a thousand times worse than my dinosaur pajamas. My name was printed across the back, and the front bore a caricature that seized on every feature of my face. I did not look this funny.
The green hair and green eyes did stand out, I'll grant that. Hair and irises in a color like this didn't occur naturally. Maybe I was the only person in the whole world with this hair and these eyes.
"You gotta wear it! If you don't, Hana isn't even in our class!"
Jiyu and Yumi were already in their class shirts, so refusing wasn't an option. I heaved a sigh and pulled it on. The moment I did, the two of them lit up as if they might leap into the air, seized me, and hauled me out onto the field. All sorts of events were already underway.
"They say dodgeball's starting soon, Hana!"
"They do?"
There weren't many events I was actually in. The relay — the highlight, the very flower of a sports day — I'd raised my hand for with complete confidence, only to enter the little fair trial that picked the fastest runners and get crushed without a prayer. I ran at full speed, but this wretched body refused to produce any real pace, and in the end the other kids stole my spot. It was only natural that the ones who could actually run went first.
"Hana sticks out so much, she's gonna be the first one out!"
"Yeah, yeah!"
They were underestimating me far too much. In my prime, they used to call this body the dodgeball ace. Today they would be granted the honor of witnessing my magnificent performance with their own eyes...
"Ack!"
And then the very first kid to throw the ball hit me. I stood there with a blank look on my face. Me, who always survived until the very last round — out the second it started? A voice arrived to wake me to that cruel reality.
"Hana, you're out! Off the court!"
The teacher refereeing the match delivered the line like a killing blow. Eliminated beyond any hope of appeal, I puffed my cheeks full of air and trudged off the court.
"See? I knew Hana would be the first one out!"
"Told you, told you!"
Just as Jiyu and Yumi had said, I really had been the first one eliminated, so I had nothing to say for myself. Still, being out wasn't the end. If I stood on the other team's side and caught a ball my own side threw, I'd get another chance to attack. A blessing in disguise, maybe.
This was my chance to brand my merciless offense into the opposing team's skulls. A ball I threw at full power could never be caught, and it couldn't be dodged either. I was standing outside their line with a smug little grin when I had no choice but to realize one enormous fact.
Our team was genuinely terrible at dodgeball. Far from the ball ever reaching me, they were swept away like autumn leaves under the other side's assault. By the time I was in any position to catch something, only one or two of us were left. My motivation drained right out of me.
Throwing the ball once and having the game end on the spot left me strangely hollow. If I'd known, I would have signed up for something else. I'd deliberately stayed out of soccer and the other events because they meant moving around so much, but looking at the state of this dodgeball match, I probably would have had better odds in another sport.
Thoroughly deflated, I hauled Jiyu and Yumi off to where the picnic mats were spread — the spot where the parents had gathered. The field itself was kept so neat that finding Bora wasn't hard at all.
"Bora!!!"
I spotted her on a mat, arranging lunch boxes, and scurried over. Jiyu and Yumi came trotting after me. Bora smiled and welcomed me and my friends.
"Hi, kids."
"Hello!!!"
"You're so pretty, just like Hana's big sister!"
Bora was down on the paperwork as my older sister. In a sense, the first researcher I'd ever met was Bora, so calling her my sister wasn't much of a stretch. The first hunter I'd met, of course, had been a furry brute...
Yesterday Bora and I had packed the sports-day lunches together, so I swallowed the drool threatening to spill and sat down on the mat. Jiyu and Yumi plastered themselves to either side of me. I turned my sparkling eyes on Bora.
"Bora, Bora! I wanna eat the lunch box!"
She laughed and drew the boxes from her bag one by one, stacking them neatly. I'd told her my friends would be eating too, so she'd brought two three-tiered lunch boxes. I'd helped make them, so I knew exactly how good they were — good enough that you could have sold them at a convenience store.
The moment the lids came off, the three of us couldn't help but cheer. Fried bites, gimbap, and all kinds of delicious meat: exactly the right food for kids who'd worked up an appetite playing dodgeball with everything they had. I took up my chopsticks and set about picking my way through it in earnest.
Jiyu and Yumi ate with me. Both of them had parents who would have packed them lunches, but they'd asked me to take care of the food, and so we were sharing. Food always tastes better the more people you split it with. Off to one side, the field burned with blazing passion as the matches raged on, and I sat with my gently warm lunch and watched.
It was an elementary school sports day, so there was plenty of clumsiness on display. Kids do play sports from the time they're little, but set beside middle and high schoolers, these were children who simply hadn't lived as many days yet. In skill and in body alike, they came up short.
Even so, it was fun to watch. A contest with a winner in it is always entertaining, no matter when you see it. I munched my way through the lunch box and gave the events my full attention.