The gym was louder than outside somehow, every sound bouncing off the wooden floor and multiplying. Sneakers squeaking. Instructors shouting across both sides. The thud of landings hitting the canvas mats in uneven rhythm. A volleyball net had been repurposed down the center of the gym, strung between two poles, dividing the space into boys on the left and girls on the right. It blocked nothing except a clean line of sight, which was probably the point.
I stood in line rubbing my calves, watching through the gaps anyway.
The girls' side was running their jumps in rotation. Most of them did the same thing: step up, hesitate, swing, land, step off looking relieved it was over.
Then Ichika stepped up to the line.
She took her time. Pulled her ponytail tighter. Adjusted her feet on the tape mark until they were exactly where she wanted them. There was nothing rushed about how she moved, no visible nervousness, no checking over her shoulder. Just someone whose body already knew the sequence and was waiting for permission to run it.
She swung her arms back. Bent her knees. Launched.
Clean. That was the only word for it. She cleared most of the mat, landed without stumbling, absorbed the impact evenly, and stepped off to the side like she was stepping off a curb. The instructor crouched down to measure. Whatever the number was, Ichika just nodded once, shook out her legs twice, and walked back to the line.
Up close, through the gaps in the net, I could see her shoulders were slightly tense after the landing. Just for a second. And when she turned away from the instructor, she pressed her lips together in a way that looked like she was doing quiet math in her head, recalculating something.
She probably just landed short of what she wanted.
Or maybe I was inventing things.
"Yamamoto! Stop staring, you're up!"
Kudo's elbow found my ribs before I could process either option. I stumbled forward.
The mat smelled like floor wax and old canvas. Up close, the measurement lines looked further apart than they had from the line. The guys ahead of me had been landing somewhere around two and a half meters without much visible effort. Casual athleticism that only existed to make the rest of us aware we were in the wrong body.
I set my feet on the tape.
I tried to remember what her arms had looked like. The angle. The swing.
I swung back, bent, pushed off.
For about half a second I was in the air and it felt like it might actually go well.
Then gravity gave its honest opinion.
I hit the mat too far forward, momentum pitching me nose-first into the canvas. My hands slapped down just in time. My knees dragged. The rough fabric caught and burned.
"Yamamoto: 1.75."
I pushed myself up, dusted my palms off against my shorts, and walked back to the line without looking at anyone. Not at the instructor. Not at Kudo. Definitely not at the net.
I spent the rest of the rotation staring at the back of Kudo's head.
The bell rang like a court ruling in my favor.
Both sides emptied at once into the narrow hallway back to the changing rooms, two classes worth of first-years merging into one hot, complaining crowd. I kept my head down and let the current carry me. My knees hurt. My palms had canvas texture pressed into them.
"Rough morning?"
I looked over.
Ichika had slowed her pace until she matched mine, letting the crowd split around us. Her ponytail had shifted slightly from the jump. She wasn't breathing hard, but her cheeks had some color that hadn't been there before PE started.
"My legs are going to stop working before fifth period," I said. "How are you not dead?"
"I run in the mornings sometimes." She said it simply, like it was nothing, then glanced down at her hand and flexed her fingers slowly. "The grip test was bad though. I think I pinched something."
She held it up, wiggling the fingers like she was testing whether they still worked.
Her eyes dropped to my palms. The canvas had left a red mark across both of them.
"That looked rough," she said.
"It's fine." I closed my hand. "Saved my face at least."
Her eyes went to my palms once more, then back to the hallway ahead.
"You just got up," she said.
"What?"
"After the jump. You just got up and walked back."
I didn't say anything.
"It was still 1.75," I said.
"Yeah." She didn't argue with that.
The crowd thinned out near the lockers. Ichika stopped at the entrance to the girls' changing room, turning to look at me. The loose strand of hair was still there, slightly out of place.
"See you after class, Kenji-kun."
She went in. The door swung shut.
I stood there with the crowd moving past me on both sides.
Kenji-kun.
Not Yamamoto. Not even just Kenji the way she sometimes said it when she wasn't thinking about it. Kenji-kun, with the small deliberate distance of someone adjusting how close they were standing without actually moving.
I don't know when that started.
My legs still hurt. I had 1.75 meters on a jump most people cleared at two. I had nearly tripped in front of half the year on a straight fifty-meter run.
She'd noticed the part where I didn't fall.
I started walking.