I'm Glad I Got to Be Your Girlfriend

A few days before my high school entrance ceremony, on a quiet afternoon,

I stopped by the neighborhood park on my way home from rehab, just like always.

“Up we go…”

Not many people bothered to pay their respects at the little Inari shrine just inside the entrance, and unfortunately the restroom across from it was the first thing you noticed. The park itself had only a token scattering of playground equipment, so the fenced-in tennis practice wall was probably the one unusual thing about it.

A badly weathered practice wall.

Nothing anyone would call pretty.

Still, it was because that wall existed that I first found my way to hard-court tennis. Whenever we came to the park, I used to drag along a bag with a junior racket and a ball inside.

Dad would toss the ball.

I would hit it at the wall.

“Shiori, aim above that line.”

The white stripe painted at net height.

“Okay!”

I loved chasing that rewarding feeling at impact.

I hit ball after ball after ball at that spot. It frustrated me when I couldn’t do it right, and before long I was swinging my racket until the sun went down.

“Want to start going to a tennis school?” Dad asked when I was in second grade.

“Yeah!”

That was how I started taking lessons and entering tournaments. I used to get stomachaches from nerves before matches, and in long rallies I sometimes forgot the score, but in the summer of my second year of middle school I reached the last sixteen at the All-Kyushu Juniors. The next year, I made the semifinals.

For the first time, I felt sure I was getting somewhere.

(My tennis life is only beginning—)

My high school was decided. Once I got there, I was going to live and breathe even more tennis than before.

“Huh…?”

The thing I saw as that stupid little sound escaped me wasn’t my leg.

More precisely, it wasn’t shaped like the right leg I knew.

“N-no…”

A large motorcycle had plowed into me while I was running along the sidewalk near my tennis school. The sticky, splintering crunch that came up through the ground had sounded wrong in a way I would never forget.

The next thing I knew, I was staring up at a gray sky.

A cold drop landed on my cheek. I tried to sit up, and pain tore through me without mercy. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked.

My knee was twisted out of shape.

The bone in my shin was exposed.

In the rain that had begun to fall just after New Year’s, I lost consciousness.

＊

“…Dad.”

After I was taken to the hospital, I came to in a haze on the bed after my first operation.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing…”

I still remember how white Dad’s face was when he said it.

“I…”

Becoming fully conscious scared me. Even so, clinging to the smallest hope, I looked down.

What I saw was my right leg, wrapped in layer after layer of bandages like a white parcel.

“What… is this…?”

Somewhere inside me, I thought I heard a mocking voice answer, You know what it is.

The anterior cruciate ligament had been badly damaged, and both my tibia and fibula had suffered open fractures. I was fortunate enough to avoid infection. The doctors told me a return was possible—but then, like pronouncing a death sentence, they told me I would need rehabilitation first.

(It’s over.)

I couldn’t be on court during the most important period of my development. That meant dropping out of the race with the girls I had been competing against.

Something I had treasured inside myself broke in that moment.

And being told that a large scar would remain was another shock.

I decided I would never play tennis again.

＊

“If it’s Chikusei Academy, you can get in.”

Dad said that while I was still in the hospital, after we had scrapped my plans to attend a powerhouse tennis school and I had stopped trying to think about anything at all.

Chikusei was three stations toward Fukuoka from the one nearest our home.

When I asked why I could get in, Dad told me my maternal grandfather was the chairman of the school. I had heard almost nothing about Mom’s side of the family since I was little. Even as a child, I had sensed there was a reason and never dug too deeply.

“The truth is…”

For the first time, Dad told me what had happened.

He had gone to ask permission to marry Mom, but Grandfather had stubbornly refused. In the end, Mom and Dad had gotten together almost as if they were eloping. Apart from when I was born and when Mom died, apparently they had hardly been in contact.

The difference in family background.

That was why Grandfather had opposed them.

That alone was enough for me to picture a severe old man.

“That was just the kind of time it was.”

Dad said it before I could say anything else. Then he swallowed his pride and went all the way to Kitakyushu to ask Grandfather for help.

Maybe I should call it lucky, but apparently he never had to meet Grandfather face-to-face. Grandma was the one who contacted him afterward with nothing more than, “The paperwork is complete.”

At Dad’s urging, I called my grandparents’ house, nervous as anything.

Grandfather said gruffly, “You’re different,” but the words still meant that he accepted me as his granddaughter. Grandma told me gently, “Come visit us sometimes.”

That warmed my chest a little.

But it couldn’t put out what was boiling underneath.

The more time passed, the more my hatred for the man who hit me grew.

I couldn’t forgive him for crushing all the work I had put in.

I hated him for forcing an experience on me that I had never needed.

I wanted him to regret forever that he had stolen the road I was supposed to walk.

And my thoughts always arrived at the same place.

I wish he’d die.

That black feeling clung wetly to the inside of my chest.

The man who hit me was young and newly married. He had been dating his wife since high school, and when he heard she had gone into labor, he had sped off on his motorcycle.

I honestly couldn’t have cared less.

He got away with something like a sprain. After his wife delivered safely, he tried again and again to visit my hospital room, bringing her and their newborn daughter with him.

Of course I never saw him.

Dad, though—after yelling at him the first time—eventually called out from the hallway in a voice that almost sounded encouraging.

“You’re a father now. So get yourself together and act like one.”

If I’m being truthful, I wanted Dad to stay hard on him all the way through.

But I had been raised by that same kindness. I couldn’t reject it outright.

Anger with nowhere to go.

My stagnant feelings kept smoldering inside my chest while time moved on without me.

＊

“Phew…”

I leaned my crutches against the bench and stretched under sunlight that didn’t match the cold air.

Sparrows chirped.

An engine sounded somewhere far away.

It would have been a pleasant afternoon if not for the irritating noise I had been hearing for a while—and the relic sitting in my pocket.

“What a racket.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

The noise was coming from the practice wall I had noticed as soon as I entered the park.

On weekday afternoons, some office worker who looked like he was skipping work would often be in there smacking balls around to burn off stress. By evening, kids usually turned it into a dodgeball court.

(He really is hitting.)

The sound had been so unnaturally exact that I couldn’t help wanting to see for myself.

At least at this wall, I was supposed to have been the best.

Even I had never kept such an even rhythm here. The wall was barely better than nothing: uneven all over, with pebbles and dust scattered underfoot. Keeping a rally going at all was work.

To maintain that sound, you needed pinpoint control, stable pace, and almost absolute repeatability in your swing.

(That’s incredible…)

Before I knew it, I was watching as though something had pulled me in.

A boy had rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. He had probably gotten hot and taken off his hoodie; something like one was stuffed through the rusty wire fence. He kept hitting.

Was he younger than me?

His back looked slender.

And his skin was so translucent and pale that there was no point comparing it to mine, even after nearly two months indoors had bleached me white.

(He’s way too good.)

The boy looked as though he were doing shadow swings.

He held his stance without moving and repeated the motion of a forehand stroke in a smooth, steady rhythm.

(What even is that…?)

For a while I could only stare, unable to make sense of what I was seeing.

(A sponsored player…?)

What caught at me was the stencil on his strings.

You saw those often on sponsored players’ rackets. The double line low on the black string bed was Babolat’s mark.

Maybe a tennis shop had painted it for him. Some places would do that free when they restrung your racket. But he was that good. Sponsorship didn’t seem impossible.

(Sponsored…)

I had always used Yonex. I remembered a company rep telling me, “Make varsity in high school and we’ll talk sponsorship,” and ground my back teeth together.

But looking closer, I realized the racket he was using wasn’t the newest model.

It had to be a slightly older one.

(If he were sponsored, he’d be using the new model, wouldn’t he? So why that one? Did they drop him?)

Bad results.

Or bad behavior.

“Hm?”

As I watched and speculated, he planted the racket head on the ground like a cane and crouched down.

The ball he had failed to hit escaped under the bottom of the fence and rolled toward me.

(What’s wrong with him…?)

I kept the ball in sight, but unease ran through me. I groped for my crutches and started to rise.

Then the boy slowly stood. He stayed still for a while with one hand on his hip. Eventually he seemed to settle, looked around, saw me, and called out.

“Hey, you over there! Could you get that ball?”

A clear voice.

One sentence was enough to drag me back into everything ugly inside me.

I would never stand there again.

On top of that came irritation at having worried about him at all, and the negative feelings inside my chest grew thick and overgrown.

“Sure. If you want it that badly…”

I leaned my weight into the crutches, pushed myself up hard, and hopped toward the ball on my left leg.

I tightened both hands around the crutches.

Turned my back to him.

Then swung one of them at the ball with everything I had.

“Ow!”

The ugly impact of metal against ground sent numbness through my wrist.

In front of me, the ball rolled weakly until it hit the edge of the sandbox and came back.

“Pathetic…”

More than the physical tingling, what spread through my body—hot and cold at the same time—was disgust at myself for being unable even to lash out properly.

I tucked the crutches under my arms without bothering to protect my aching wrist and fled the park.

＊

(Moving day, I guess.)

Two trucks were parked in front of my apartment building.

The lobby doors had been propped open, and workers in matching uniforms called out crisp greetings as they passed. I had no choice but to bow back. When I stepped into the elevator after them, I noticed a paper taped to the wall: NOTICE OF MOVE-IN.

It hadn’t been there when I left. The message was a standard polite greeting.

“Mom, I’m home.”

I spoke only to the photograph of Mom displayed by the entryway.

There were pictures of her on the TV stand in the living room and on Dad’s bedside table too, but this one was my favorite. When I was little, sitting on Dad’s lap while we looked through an album, I had fallen in love with it instantly.

Under a blue sky, Mom stood with long hair, looking up at sunflowers.

She was beautiful.

The white dress suited her perfectly, and something firm and dignified lived inside all that delicacy.

(I want to become a woman like that.)

That was why I had chosen this picture for the entryway.

(Admiration, huh…)

Mom had died when I was three.

The way Dad told it, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering whether giving birth to me had shortened her life. My memories were vague, but she had always seemed to be in a hospital. A woman in a knitted cap pulled low, smiling gently, remembered together with the smell of the ward.

If she had lived, I was sure she would have listened to the things that were hard to tell Dad, wrapping them up somehow just by listening.

But if Mom would have lived longer without having me, then I wouldn’t exist.

Whenever I thought about that, life stopped feeling like something that could be described only as precious, and I ran out of words.

Especially now.

I felt guilty for cursing the man who hit me with I wish he’d die, and more and more often I couldn’t look straight at the picture of the mother I loved.

“Welcome home.”

Dad leaned out of the bright living room and called to me in the dark entryway.

“What’re you doing here?”

He was forty-seven that year. If he bothered to clean himself up, he was probably a handsome man, but he usually left his unruly hair—with more and more white in it lately—messy, and considered stubble perfectly acceptable.

“The office at Chikusei called and said there was something missing from the paperwork. Came back to stamp it with my registered seal.”

He was still wearing the tennis windbreaker he used as work clothes, dragging the soles of his slippers as he came closer.

“Sorry for causing trouble.”

I lowered my head and touched my semi-short hair, which I had once been told had the same texture as Mom’s.

“What’re you talking about? Forget that. How’s rehab?”

“They said I might not need the crutches much longer.”

“Yeah? All that work paid off.”

“Mm… Oh. I’ll make the spicy takana omelet tonight.”

“Oh, now that I’m looking forward to.”

“Why do you look happier about that than about me?”

“Idiot. Of course I’m not—well, maybe just a tiny bit.”

“Dad!”

I made a sour face. Dad burst into easy laughter, said, “I’m kidding,” and put on his shoes.

“See you later,” I called to his broad back, squinting at the light spilling in through the open door.

Of course healing was a good thing.

It would make everyday life easier.

But I had no idea where I was supposed to make this leg, with its permanent scar, carry me next.

Anger.

Frustration.

Resignation.

Those feelings came in waves until I wanted to escape the sensation of drowning in them.

Worst of all, I felt as though I were being crushed by how little room I had left inside myself—so little that even Dad’s unconditional kindness had begun to feel like stress.

“Ungrateful…”

As the entryway went dark again, I whispered the word without strength.