— — — — — —
"Speed up!"
The moment he saw Minami's team closing in, Oikawa immediately shouted the order.
The four of them accelerated again, charging forward like madmen as they rushed toward Hayato's group.
At this point, there were less than fifteen meters left to the finish line.
Hayato's Red Team was locked in a desperate clash with Hachiman Hikigaya's Black Team.
The problem was, the gap in raw strength between the two teams was simply too huge.
Aside from Hachiman himself, the Black Team only had two unnamed boys and Saika Totsuka.
Against the impact of Hayato's group, they had no way to fight head-on. All they could do was desperately dodge and weave.
Still, judging from how battered they already looked, they probably wouldn't be able to keep avoiding them much longer before Hayato's Red Team eliminated them completely.
Right then—
"Hachiman, over here!" Oikawa suddenly shouted.
Hachiman turned his head.
The instant he saw the Blue Team charging over, he immediately understood Oikawa's intention. "Got it!"
"..."
Hayato frowned.
"Slow down a little," he told Tobe and the others. "Something feels off. Don't lose at the last second because we got careless."
"What's there to be scared of?" Tobe shot back confidently, battle spirit blazing in his eyes. "Our team's the strongest here. There's no way we lose!"
He practically looked ready to ram straight into Hachiman's team and wipe them out immediately.
"I said slow down." Hayato's voice turned cold.
He carried enough authority among them that Tobe froze for a second before obediently easing up. But that brief hesitation cost them the best possible timing.
Instead of retreating, Hachiman's team suddenly pushed forward and closed in from the other side.
Black Team and Blue Team formed a pincer attack around Red Team.
The three groups collided so tightly together that they could hear each other breathing.
"You really think this is enough to eliminate our Team?" Hayato said, his expression unusually serious. "Don't be naive."
Then he quickly ordered Tobe and the others, "Take out Blue Team first. Their group is mostly girls. They'll be easier to eliminate."
At a moment like this, nobody cared about holding back anymore.
It was kill or be killed.
"Got it!" Tobe grinned at Oikawa. "Oikawa, maybe you're good at studying, but when it comes to sports, you're way out of your league!"
"Charge!" At Hayato command, the Red Team slammed violently toward Blue Team.
But at that exact moment—
"Stop!"
At Yukino's sharp command, Blue Team halted once again.
And directly in Red Team's line of sight appeared Minami's Green Team.
The two teams crashed together like colliding planets.
Green Team was eliminated almost instantly.
And Hachiman naturally didn't let such a golden opportunity slip away. He immediately directed his teammates to smash into Red Team from the side.
A second later, Red Team's inflatable raft hit the ground.
The remaining eight people on the field all let out long breaths of relief.
"Nice teamwork."
Hachiman pushed up his glasses, a victorious smile appearing on his face.
"Now it's Black Team versus Blue Team. We've got four guys on our side. Advantage is ours."
"Advantage is yours?" Oikawa muttered quietly.
Before Hachiman could even react, the Blue Team suddenly burst forward at full speed toward the finish line.
Their pace was more than thirty percent faster than Black Team's.
Oikawa almost wanted to laugh.
Did Hachiman seriously think all those club meetings every day had just been pointless chatting?
They had already figured out the most efficient way to carry the inflatable raft while running.
This round? Oikawa could only say one thing to Hachiman, "You really shouldn't have skipped the Service Club for so many days."
With no more interference ahead of them, the four members of Blue Team quickly carried the raft across the finish line.
Victory decided!
"We're the champions!!!"
Oikawa shouted excitedly at the top of his lungs.
Yui and the others were no different.
"We won! We actually won!"
"Exactly as expected."
"I'm taking the trophy home so my little brother and sister can see it!"
Even Yukino and Kawasaki, who normally kept their distance from everyone, completely dropped their guard and hugged each other tightly.
Oikawa had originally wanted to celebrate properly with his teammates too.
Unfortunately, before he could get close, the icy stares from Yukino and Kawasaki instantly stopped him in his tracks.
Oikawa sighed helplessly.
He'd only wanted to celebrate the joy of victory with pure and innocent intentions.
Why did nobody ever understand him?
...
..
The setting sun painted the sky crimson.
Inside the Service Club room, Oikawa and the others gathered together once more. A massive cake sat in the center of the table.
Written across it were the words: Congratulations on the Successful Sports Festival!
Beside it were drinks, snacks, and piles of sweets.
"Don't look at me. This was bought using the leftover club budget you guys saved."
Shizuka Hiratsuka sat casually beside them without putting on any teacher airs at all. "To be honest, I'm surprised you even had money left over. In previous years, every last yen got spent. Sometimes we even had to file extra requests with the school for more funding."
Then she looked toward Oikawa. "Why don't you say a few words? If it weren't for you, there's no way this sports festival would've gone this smoothly. We've all seen how hard you worked."
"Everyone worked hard." Oikawa smiled lazily. "I don't really have anything to say. I'm hungry, so let's eat first."
Giving some dramatic emotional speech really didn't suit his style at all.
Everyone froze for a second.
Then somebody burst out laughing.
And immediately afterward, everyone else joined in.
Maybe ten years from now, twenty years from now, they would forget this sports festival. Forget the exhausting struggle. Forget how hard they fought for first place.
But nobody would ever forget— Inside the Service Club room, beneath that crimson sunset, every single one of them had laughed from the bottom of their hearts.
But then the room exploded into chaos.
"Yui, don't you dare smear cake on my face!"
"Oikawa, I'm gonna kill you! You actually put cake on me?!"
"W-Wait... I'm your senior, and also the student council president. You're not seriously planning to rebel against your superiors, right?!"
"Hahaha, Meguri, you're way too naive. These idiots don't care if you're the student council presi... wait, who was it?! Which suicidal maniac smeared cake on their homeroom teacher's face?!"
"It was Kawasaki!" someone whispered in an impossibly tiny voice.
"Not me! Oikawa, don't frame me!" Kawasaki immediately shook her head, then shot Zaimokuza a sharp glare that scared him stiff.
"Shizuka-sensei, I, Zaimokuza Yoshiteru, formally report that Oikawa was the culprit," Zaimokuza declared without a second thought.
"Damn it, Zaimokuza! You sold out your brothers that easily? Haven't all those novels taught you anything? You're supposed to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, idiot!"
Zaimokuza immediately slipped into character. "My apologies. In my world, only the sword walks beside me. Solitude is the ultimate truth of swordsmanship…"
Then a chunk of cake smacked right into his face.
The Service Club dissolved into complete mayhem.
It was loud, chaotic, and covered in cake from floor to ceiling.
Meanwhile, Oikawa shrank into the corner, trembling as Kawasaki slowly approached him.
"Can't you give me another chance? I want to be a good person. I swear I won't grope the wrong things again!"
"Oh, you wanna be a good person?" Kawasaki cracked her knuckles. "Go ask god if he'll give you that chance."
Oikawa decided to make one final desperate stand.
And at that moment, he confirmed a terrifying truth: Kawasaki genuinely had black-belt-level karate skills.
A miserable scream echoed through the room.
And just like that, the sports festival finally came to an end amidst the laughter and chaos of the Service Club, like the curtain falling at the end of a grand play.
It became the kind of memory worth replaying over and over again in your mind.
It had been exhausting. There had been arguments, frustration, and pain along the way.
But the ending made every hardship worth it.
The sports festival was over.
But Oikawa Tōru's life, and all of theirs, was only just beginning.
...
..
After returning home, Oikawa's excitement still hadn't faded. He sat in front of his computer for a long while before finally calming himself down enough to take out a sheet of paper and a pen.
Then, for the first time, he wrote back to the literature professor who had once helped him.
Before today, he had never known what to say.
But now, he wanted to share this happiness with that elderly man he had never met.
Dear Sir,
I hope this letter finds you well. Please forgive me for only replying now. Until today, I truly didn't know what I should write back to you.
I've reread the book you sent me several times. Recently, I was appointed executive committee chairman for our school sports festival. It was exhausting work, but in the end, it made me truly happy. And only then did I finally understand what was really written between those pages. Life really is the greatest teacher.
Lastly, I wish you good health. And I hope your Crow Bookstore continues to prosper, and that your granddaughter succeeds in her studies.
...
After sealing the letter in an envelope and dropping it into the mailbox outside, Oikawa returned to his computer.
He opened the document titled Clannad and continued typing the little bit of content he still had left to finish.
Writing down the words already in his head didn't take him very long.
But polishing them until they felt perfect kept him busy all the way until 12:30 at night.
After yawning, he carefully checked the entire manuscript again from beginning to end for typos.
That alone took another hour.
By two in the morning, he had finally finished everything and sent the document to Chris Yamada's email.
Then he collapsed onto his bed and immediately fell asleep.
...
Inside a luxurious mansion—
At five in the morning, Elf Yamada tiptoed into Chris Yamada's room.
Quietly, she picked up his laptop. Then she stuck her tongue out at the deeply sleeping Chris before sneaking back out.
Only after returning to her own room did Elf finally relax.
Then she opened the laptop, trying very hard to maintain her usual tsundere attitude, "I'd like to see just how amazing this new book from 'Copycat-sensei' really is, for Chris to praise it this much."
['Please enter password!']
The moment the password prompt popped up, Elf froze.
"Chris's birthday?"
She entered it. Wrong password.
"His bank PIN?"
Wrong password again.
Elf nearly exploded, "What the heck is it?! Why did this idiot even put a password on his computer?!"
"…My birthday?"
She hesitated for a second before typing in her own birthday.
The next moment, the laptop unlocked.
A smug smile immediately appeared on her face. She flipped her hair proudly.
"Hmph. Something this easy could never stump a genius girl like me."
After getting in, Elf skillfully logged into Chris's email.
Then her eyes lit up.
"Wow, a document sent at two in the morning? Looks like my luck's pretty good today!"
"Hehehe~"
Excited, she opened the folder and dragged out the file titled Clannad.
"So the rumors online were true. It really is called Clannad. Let's see if it's actually the healing-type light novel everyone says it is."
Carrying the laptop with her, Elf climbed onto her bed and rested on two pillows propped beneath her chest, her pale little feet swinging lazily in the air as she opened the document.
At first, she read with a casual attitude. But before long, a warm smile slowly spread across her face.
Whenever she reached a particularly sweet scene, she couldn't help rolling around on the bed in delight, her mood turning unbearably soft and fluffy.
"Healing-type. This is definitely healing-type!"
Elf reached her conclusion confidently.
Tomoya Okazaki and Nagisa Furukawa were absolutely the kind of characters who saved each other.
If this suddenly turned into a tragedy halfway through, then in Elf's eyes, Copycat-sensei would drop to being nothing more than a second-rate author.
Take Your Lie in April, for example.
Once the second volume came out, you could clearly see all the setup and foreshadowing buried in the first volume.
But as a light novel author herself, Elf couldn't find any traces of foreshadowing in the first half of Clannad.
If Copycat-sensei was just creating tragedy for the sake of tragedy, throwing emotional knives around purely to make readers suffer— Then he wouldn't be the top-tier writer she admired so much anymore.
Therefore, Elf concluded that there was at least an eighty percent chance that Clannad was a healing story.
"Still… Copycat-sensei's writing really is incredible. And different..."
She sighed softly, "The story in the first volume of Clannad is actually pretty old-fashioned when you break it down. But somehow, it just makes you desperately want to keep reading."
A trace of melancholy appeared on her face.
"If only Infernal Dark Elf could reach this level someday…"
Just as Elf was drowning in self-pity, a cold voice suddenly drifted into her ears.
"The gap between you and him will shrink a lot once you stop missing your deadlines."
Hearing Chris's voice, Elf slowly turned her head around.
An awkward smile instantly appeared on her face.
"B-Brother… you're awake? Hehe~ Take a look at the time."
Chris's expression remained completely blank as he snatched the laptop back from her hands.
"I've told you countless times not to touch my computer."
His voice grew even colder, "Get dressed. You're coming with me. It's about time you started writing the next volume of Infernal Dark Elf. Today seems like a perfect day for working."
Chris didn't give her even the slightest chance to beg for mercy. After saying that, he turned and walked out of the room.
"What the hell…"
Elf pouted unhappily. "When it comes to Copycat-sensei, you're all smiles and practically willing to worship him. But when it's your own cute little sister, suddenly you're cold and heartless."
"Heh. Just wait. Someday I'm gonna become a million-selling author. Chris, when that happens, you'll regret this!!!"
As she imagined that future scene, a slightly unhinged smile slowly spread across her face.
Revenge.
When the time came, she would absolutely settle the score properly.
Still, for Elf, Copycat-sensei joining Full-Drive Bunko really was fantastic news.
Her biggest dream had always been defeating Dengeki Bunko.
And now that Copycat had left their rival publisher, the burden on that dream instantly became much lighter.
If Copycat had stayed at Dengeki, then honestly, her dream probably would've been impossible for her entire lifetime.
The suddenly emerging Copycat-sensei had become a nightmare shared by practically every writer of the same generation.
.
.
.