Epilogue - You Should Be Able to Extend Your Reach Anywhere[edit]
1. Present: 19.1km; 0.9km Remaining[edit]
I firmly tied my laces together. The pain in my right leg had begun to lessen as well. I had finished everything I had needed to do in the span of the Hoshigaya Cup. The finish line wasn’t very far off anymore, but I didn’t feel like running. I walked haphazardly towards the shrine’s empty approach. The road continued straight forward in a gentle decline.
I passed beneath the back approach’s massive tori and entered the shrine grounds. It was a straight path to the end, so I assumed that Ōhinata wouldn’t get lost. Even though I still continued to worry, I stopped myself from turning around to verify it. I lightly closed my eyes and opened them again, and I suddenly noticed a familiar mountain bike parked by the side of the road. Looking around, I saw Satoshi leaning on a nearby lantern, arms crossed.
Before I could even open my mouth, he called out to me.
“Hey. How should I put this… the walls have ears, you know?[1] The General Committee vice-president heard that a pair of students left the course and decided to come here hunting them down himself.”
So someone saw us, huh? Not only that, but to think they even politely notified the committee.
“Pretty impressive of you to guess this spot.”
“Of course, considering the alleyway that we were told the pair walked down was the exact path I told you about myself, Hōtarō.”
Was that so? I couldn’t really remember it all too well. I didn’t recall searching for the street myself, so that was probably the case.
“Are things going to get annoying then?”
Hearing this, Satoshi shrugged.
“I came here to take care of it myself, didn’t I?”
“As long as you aren’t a police officer.”
“Then I’ll be revenue officer. Or did you want me to properly reprimand you, perhaps?”
He said this without sounding amused, and then asked me another question without waiting for my answer.
“So how did it go?”
After retracing my memories and hearing various stories over a 20 kilometer distance, how did it go? This was my conclusion.
“She’s not going to join.”
“I see.”
Satoshi looked like he had expected it, but he let out a small sigh regardless.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said.
He then sized me up from behind.
“It looks like you know the reason why she won’t join at least.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If you didn’t, Hōtarō, there wouldn’t be any reason for you to talk with her in person. If it’s alright, would you mind sharing it with me?”
I couldn’t nod, however. I couldn’t tell him Ōhinata’s reason, nor could I tell him the truth behind why she had denounced Chitanda and feared her to the point of avoiding her. Even if it was Satoshi Fukube, I felt conflicted. Possibly noticing my hesitation, Satoshi started to walk ahead of me.
“I won’t force it out of you. At any rate, let’s just walk. If you don’t hurry up and pass the finish line, I’ll never be able to leave.”
I stood next to Satoshi as he pushed his mountain bike and walked along the stone-paved road just like we had done shortly after starting from the Kamiyama High School grounds.
Just like he had promised, Satoshi didn’t push the issue. That was probably why I couldn’t remain silent about the whole thing without letting at least one small thing spill from my mouth.
“The problem didn’t have anything to do with us.”
The thing that Ōhinata feared was from her past, and her friend currently went to a different school. The problem concerning Ōhinata’s “friend” was something entirely unrelated to Kamiyama High School.
“I had a feeling…” said Satoshi. “I had a feeling that that was the case. I’m much more forgiving than you are, but even if we overlooked everything during this Hoshigaya Cup, I doubt things would be able to go back to the way they were. If this is unrelated to school, there’s nothing we can do about it after all.”
Thinking back on it, Satoshi had told me something right after the race had started. Make sure I don’t take it all on myself. After all, I’m not responsible for anything.
“How did you know?”
He relaxed his shoulders while still dexterously holding onto the mountain bike’s handlebar.
“No real reason. I was just thinking that nothing really happens to anyone on campus right after they enter school. Additionally, we kept seeing Ōhinata off-campus as well.”
He then looked forward and continued.
“Above all, we’re students. We can’t extend our reach beyond the school. There was nothing we could’ve done from the start, Hōtarō.”
Was that really the case?
In reality, what Satoshi was saying was true. When we were in middle school, Kaburaya was everything we could see. Now that we were in high school, we couldn’t do anything beyond Kamiyama High.
But was that really, truly the case? If we were to lead our high school lives without a hitch, we would complete our second year and eventually go beyond Kamiyama