| Azami | I’ve run away from home twice in my life.
The first time, I was tagging along with my childhood friend, Shifuto. |
| Shifuto was raised in a household with no father.
He lived in my neighborhood, and we were both missing one of our parents, so we played with each other all the time. |
| We’re pretty much like siblings. |
| I think what set it off was something small. |
| I was hanging out with Shifuto, who was home alone after his mother headed out for her night job. An old movie began playing on the TV. |
| Apparently it was once really popular, but I don’t even remember the title. |
| But the one thing that really stuck with me was the image of a group of boys walking along an endless railroad track. |
| I don’t know why, but that really resonated with Shifuto.
“We should go on an adventure too,” he said. |
| In retrospect, he might have been frustrated at his mother, who was away from home all the time because of work. |
| But I couldn’t figure that out back then. |
| I just thought, what a pain, but decided to follow along with him. |
| We carried out our plan the next morning. We stuffed every single tool we could think of for adventure into our bags, and headed towards the discontinued railway tracks nearby. |
| It started off well. |
| The word “adventure” alone was enough to get us excited. We ate the onigiri and candy we brought along like it was a school trip, and kept on walking. |
| Our first setback was Shifuto discovering and chasing a snake. |
| He chased the wiggling snake around and fell down flat. |
| Blood ran from his grazed knees and palms, and Shifuto and I both made a huge fuss. |
| To top it off, we were supposed to be fully prepared—but there wasn’t a single band-aid inside our backpacks. |
| Neither of us had thought of bringing one. |
| There was nothing we could do, so we washed his wounds as best we could using our water bottles, and proceeded to hold a strategy meeting.
The subject of our meeting:do we continue our adventure, or do we turn back. |
| Heading home after getting all excited over a snake and falling down—I think Shifuto’s pride refused to allow it. |
| Shifuto insisted we keep going.
I had no reason to oppose him, so I agreed. |
| Our next setback came soon after that.
The tracks broke off. |
| They’d been abandoned long ago, so there was no way they’d keep going.
There was no path beaten beyond the end of the tracks; it was just overgrown with weeds. |
| A grown-up would have turned back. |
| But we were five years old. So we kept going, wielding the courage called stupidity as a weapon, through the waist-tall grass. |
| Of course, the leaves and twigs scratched our arms and legs all over. |
| But I think our eyes must have looked like those of brave warriors plowing their way through a jungle. |
| It was a chilly autumn day. |
| The sky, so sunny in the morning, grew cloudier and cloudier as we continued walking. |
| We should have turned back there.
Unfortunately, at five years old, we didn’t have that much wisdom yet. |
| That was our last setback. |
| Pitter, patter. It didn’t take long after the first raindrops landed on our faces for it to turn into a downpour. |
| To make matters even worse, we hadn’t stuffed a single raincoat or umbrella into our backpacks. |
| Even though we were supposed to have been fully prepared. |
| Thanks to that, we were drenched head to toe.
Every step I took with my waterlogged socks and shoes felt disgustingly wet. |
| My clothes stuck to my body, and the rain beat down endlessly on our faces. |
| My backpack was heavy with water, the surrounding grass clung to my body—basically, it couldn’t get any worse. |
| We didn’t need to hold a strategy meeting.
We trudged back down the way we’d come without a word. |
| I don’t really remember what happened after that.
We got yelled at and scolded ceaselessly, and the next day, I was dizzy with fever. |
| When my fever calmed down, I went to meet Shifuto. It turned out he was even worse off than I was, and he was in the hospital. |
| Now it’s a memory we laugh about. |
| |
| Azami | “...It’s been exactly ten years since then. Ten years later... right now, I’m running away from home again.” |
| “This time, I’m not tagging along with someone. It was my own decision.” |
| “When I think about it, what I did ten years ago was seriously uncool. But I was desperate then. I am now, too. No—I’m way more desperate now.” |
| “This isn’t an adventure of any sort, but, I ran away to protect something important to me. Something I can’t give up.” |
| “Ten years later, when I’m twenty-five years old, I’ll probably look back on myself and think ‘I was seriously uncool’ again.” |
| “But at fifteen, right now, I know that I’m serious.” |
| “That’s why I think I can acknowledge the stupid, uncool, five-year-old me as well.” |
| “Because I was desperately trying to prove myself—five-year-old me wanted to show what he could do.” |
| “I don’t know what fifteen-year-old me will discover from this escape. I haven’t found an answer yet. But I’ll find it, and prove it—” |
| “The reason for me to live as myself...” |
| .... |
| ...That’s all. |
| Izumi | (Amazing. He was composed start to finish...!) |
| (He tied his boyhood memory to his present self, and I got a good sense of Azami-kun as a person.) |
| Sakyo | ...Phew. |
| Izumi | (I wonder if Sakyo-san was secretly worried? He looks a little relieved...) |
| Yuzo | Guess we don’t have to wait for the results. |
| Sakyo | ...Make sure you count all the votes. |
| Izumi | (Sakyo-san probably knows how it’ll turn out too....) |
| (Even without considering the content of his performance, Azami-kun stood out because of his attitude on the stage; he was so bold.) |
| Sakyo | I thought he’d overreach and try to show us something more cool, but he was surprisingly honest. |
| Unlike the shallow bluff a certain somebody pulled. |
| Banri | I can hear you, old man. |
| Izumi | Banri-kun, it’s thanks to your guidance. |
| Banri | He did pretty good, huh. |
| Izumi | (Banri-kun looks happy too.) |
| (Azami-kun performed an honest one-man act that only he could perform; something only he could do as the youngest actor.) |
| (Watching it made me feel good—it was so refreshing... I’m sure the other audience members feel the same.) |
