With his previous experience gaining the [Swing] skill, Shibukawa’s current plan was to trigger as many new skills as possible.
By making use of the Proficiency System, he could quickly improve his basic abilities.
And so, while watching his [Running] proficiency rise, he carefully paid attention to the changes in his body.
Only when his legs felt as heavy as lead, to the point that even lifting them became difficult, did he finally head home.
His mother still wasn’t back.
Completely exhausted, Shibukawa took a shower, then lay down on his bed and fell asleep.
Meanwhile.
At Yumi Bakery on the Kuwatacho shopping street, a fair-skinned, attractive woman with long flaxen hair pinned up was carefully washing the tools used for making bread.
Just then, the shop door opened.
A refined-looking woman with short brown hair walked in, a handbag over her shoulder.
“Still not finished, Yumi?”
“Oh, Yuki.”
Seeing who had arrived, the bakery’s owner, Shibukawa Yumi, said apologetically, “You come help me every day.
I really feel bad about making you do this.”
“What do you mean, ‘help’?”
The woman was Akutsu Yuki, who worked at the café next door.
She smiled.
“If it weren’t for you and your family, Yumi, Jin and I would’ve starved on the streets a long time ago.”
As it turned out, Akutsu Yuki was also a single mother.
She had once been a hot-tempered delinquent, and when she was young and naive, she had ended up having a child with her boyfriend before she really understood what she was getting herself into.
But before Akutsu was even born, that scumbag disappeared without a trace.
At the time, Yuki had fallen into despair.
That was when the Shibukawa family learned about her situation and gave her a great deal of help.
Later, after Shibukawa’s father died in a car accident, Yumi became a single mother as well.
Bound by their similar circumstances, the two eventually became as close as sisters.
Yumi also looked after Yuki in their day-to-day lives.
She often had Yuki take bread from the shop home with her.
Yuki didn’t want to accept it for nothing, so every day after work, she would come over and help clean up.
She set down her handbag, put on an apron with practiced ease, and got to work.
With Yuki helping, the cleanup went much faster.
Before long, the two had finished tidying up the bakery.
Yumi changed her clothes, then picked up an elegant gift bag from the table.
“Huh?
Yumi, what’s that?”
Yuki looked surprised, but then seemed to realize something.
A knowing smile spread across her face.
“Looks like another gift from one of your admirers, huh?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Yumi hurriedly shook her head.
Seeing the disbelief on her best friend’s face, she had no choice but to explain, “The sporting goods store nearby had a sale today, so I bought Shin some overgrips for his tennis rackets.”
“Oh, that’s what it is.”
Yuki gave an embarrassed smile.
She had almost gotten completely the wrong idea.
“That boy has always been introverted.”
Yumi sighed.
“I hope tennis can help change his personality.
I don’t ask for much.
I’d be happy if he were even half as outgoing as Jin.”
“Huh?
Him?
Outgoing?”
Yuki stared at her in disbelief.
She knew better than anyone what kind of personality her own brat had.
Still, Akutsu’s personality and natural physical gifts really had kept him from being pushed around much outside the home.
The problem was that once his excessively rebellious nature went too far, it could easily land Akutsu in trouble.
At that thought, Yuki’s gaze fell on the gift bag in Yumi’s hands.
‘Tennis, huh?
That might actually be a pretty good choice.’
Yuki wasn’t hoping her son would accomplish anything remarkable with it.
She simply wanted to find something for him to do.
The two chatted the entire way.
They talked about their jobs and their thoughts on their children’s futures.
Before long, they reached the apartment complex and each returned to their own home.
“Hm?”
But when Yumi habitually switched on the living room light, she couldn’t help freezing for a moment.
“This is…”
The dining table, which she had expected to find in a mess, had been tidied up completely, and the kitchen had been cleaned as well.
A sense of relief and satisfaction welled up inside Yumi.
Even the physical and mental exhaustion from a full day’s work seemed to ease considerably.
…
Ring, ring, ring!
The next day.
The alarm clock in Shibukawa’s room rang incessantly.
Yumi, in the room next door, was woken by it as well.
But to her surprise, after the alarm was switched off, Shibukawa’s door actually opened.
Normally, he would have stayed in bed for at least another half hour.
Even more surprising was that after washing up, Shibukawa started bustling around in the kitchen.
Just as she began to worry about what he was doing, the aroma of fried eggs drifted into her room.
‘What in the world has gotten into this boy…?’
She badly wanted to go out and take a look, but she was afraid of disturbing him.
If she startled Shibukawa, with how introverted he was, he might withdraw into himself even more.
But soon enough, less than ten minutes later, she heard a bang—the sound of him closing the door as he left.
“This boy…”
Yumi quietly slipped out of bed, cracked her door open slightly, and peeked outside.
The living room was silent.
There seemed to be a breakfast of eggs, milk, and bread laid out on the dining table.
Curious, she stepped out of her room and checked the kitchen as well.
The stovetop was spotless, and the frying pan and everything else had been returned to their original places.
If she hadn’t heard him moving around earlier, and if that still-warm breakfast hadn’t been sitting on the table, she might have wondered whether she had imagined the whole thing.
“Huh?
What’s this?”
Then, after returning to the living room, Yumi spotted a note on the table.
The racket overgrips she had left there yesterday were gone.
[Thank you.]
The moment she saw those words on the note, Yumi froze, tears nearly spilling from her eyes.
“Shin…
you’ve finally…
grown up!”
At that moment, the pain and despair she had endured after running away from home to be with her husband, only to lose him unexpectedly in a car accident, along with all the hardship of raising their child alone over the years, seemed to be washed away by those two simple words before her.
But then Yumi grew even more curious about what exactly had happened to Shibukawa.
‘Could it be tennis?’
Remembering that he had taken the overgrips she’d bought him, something stirred in her heart.
‘If it really is because of tennis…’
A thought suddenly surfaced in her mind.
‘I wonder if this boy could earn their approval.’
At that thought, the face of a middle-aged man covered in wrinkles surfaced in Yumi’s mind.
Thirteen years had already passed.
Yet her father’s face had never been as clear in her memory as it was at that moment.
Returning to her room, Yumi took an old, yellowed photograph from between the pages of a magazine that was clearly from decades ago.
The photograph showed a broad, powerfully built young man with flaxen hair.
He had a high-bridged nose, and his narrow eyes held a piercing gaze as sharp as a hawk’s.
Across the top of that magazine page was the striking headline:
[Kanto’s Strongest Men’s Singles Player — Kimijima Kohei!]
“I can’t believe thirty years have passed in the blink of an eye.”
Seeing the date printed on the magazine filled Yumi with emotion, but conflict also appeared in her eyes.
She thought of the dream her father had never managed to fulfill and knew just how much of himself he had poured into tennis.
But she was even more worried about how heavy a burden that dream might become for Shibukawa.
“Better not.”
Shaking her head, she put the photograph back between the pages and returned the magazine to its original place, as though she had never opened it at all.