Prologue : Regrets of Youth

Translated by Valentin
Edited by Valentin

ーーIt was a gray youth.

That would be the only word I would use to describe my three years of high school.

And I still regret it.

Maybe if I had done this back then, things would have been different.

Such convenient fantasies always cross my mind.

When I was in junior high school, I was what you would call a negative person.

I was in the homecoming club and didn’t have any friends, let alone a girlfriend, so I was always alone.

I was jealous. I was jealous of the boys in the middle of the class who were laughing heartily. After school, the boys were flirting in the classroom with a girl I secretly felt was cute.

So, when I became a high school student, I resolved to change my life.

I, too, was resolved to have a rainbow-colored youth and tried to make my high school debut.

But it failed miserably.

I’d rather be in a better situation when I was in middle school. Whereas in middle school I just didn’t have any friends, I was blatantly isolated in high school. They all had more than a little bad feelings about me.

I know. It’s entirely my fault. It was going great at first. No, it seemed to be working. So I got a little carried away. As a result, everything came crashing down.

“Hey, Natsuki. I’m sorry, but I’m unable to cover for you any longer. If anything, I’m more pissed off at you.”

I can still vividly recall the pivotal moment when I was confronted with it.

I was a fool. Just like that.

After that, I stood there for a while.

However, I learned that regaining lost trust is much more difficult than gaining it.

My rainbow-colored youth ended up to be a pipe dream, and my high school days concluded in gray.

I’ve been holding that regret for a long time.

I’m sure I’ll keep dragging this out till the day I die.

It was the winter of my fourth year in college.

How many years do you suppose it’s been, I questioned inwardly.

In my mouth, I lit a cigarette. And I slowly exhaled the smoke.

I realized how much I’d grown.

In college, I looked back on my high school years and decided to play it safe. I was weary of trying to be a cheery guy and failing, and I got along well enough with a few friends to have the occasional drinking party. It’s difficult for me to say whether I’m having fun, but I wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a good position to be in.

I received my graduate credits without any incident, and my graduation research was progressing nicely.

I also went job hunting and received a job offer from an infrastructure company with a secure future.

I’ll probably just graduate, get a job, and live a normal life. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m sure that being able to live a normal life is a blessing.

The regrets of youth, however, will never go away.

Three years of my  high school were gray. After it had passed, I realized how important it was.

People say that you can change now. And I think they are right, too.

But changing now will not bring back what I’ve lost.

I will never get a rainbow-colored youth again if that’s what I want.

Yet, life goes on. Time marches on, pulling me away from my constant worrying about what’s behind me.

So I have to keep living.

ーーI smiled bitterly at that thought.

It’s not that I’m so consumed with the thought of dying.

It’s just a common sentiment.

It would be a common regret that my youth had not gone as beautifully as I had hoped.

Yeah, I know.

So, yes, I’m like, yeah. It’s simply a simple prayer to God.

If it were possible, I said, I would like the chance to redo that youth again.