When I lost consciousness at the scene of the accident, a thousand images passed my inner eye.
A boy, a little older than me, he smiled encouragingly at me, it triggered a warm feeling in me, I felt safe and secure.
A girl with big brown eyes who looked at me shyly, I had the feeling that I wanted to take her in my arms.
A whole group of boys in blue and white jerseys, a soccer team? , they waved to me happily as if we knew each other.
Two girls in school uniforms, one of them unusually pretty.
An older man with sunglasses who looked at me with a kind of loving severity, that also triggered a feeling of security in me.
A girl with short brown hair and flashing eyes who was terribly angry about something, she seemed to really scare you but I just wanted to laugh, I didn't know what was funny about it.
A boy with very short black hair, he talked about something and then laughed about it himself, I wanted to laugh again, but had the certain feeling that it had less to do with what the boy said.
The pictures passed me faster, a man and a woman quarreling, a little boy who sat in the grave, an older boy who quarreled with the man until he got a slap, a series of photos, always the same people : a black-haired boy with a red peaked cap and a girl with copper-colored hair.
A blue children's soccer ball.
And suddenly all the connections to the pictures came back.
The girl with the copper hair, that was me, the boy my best friend Genzo Wakabayashi.
The boy who quarreled with the man was my brother Natsu and the man was our father, the little boy was my younger brother Aki and the arguing couple were our parents, the silly boy Ryo Ishizaki, the angry girl Sanae Nakazawa, the man with the Sunglasses Tasuo Mikami, the two girls, my friends Anna Kusukawa and Aono Shishija, the soccer team of FC Nankats, the young girl my youngest friend Shiori Saeki.
And then the boy who cheered me up, Genzo Wakabayashi again.
When I think about it, he's practically always been my best friend. We met when I started kindergarten when I was three. Genzo was a year older than me and already a total football fan. He always had his blue children's soccer ball with him and played with it.
At home we always played soccer, my two older brothers Haru, the oldest, and Natsu, the second oldest, who had just started school at the time, liked to play soccer and our father always encouraged them to do so. Our mother never said anything that our father was so supportive of, but I think she thought he was exaggerating.
In good family tradition, I was also pretty crazy about the ball and always played with my brothers in the garden, of course I couldn't keep up with them yet, but I tried very hard and my brothers always honored that, they never spare praise when I did something well .So when someone played football I saw it as completely normal that I was allowed to play, only Genzo didn't see it as normal at that time to let someone play. To be precise, Genzo had only just started kindergarten, before that he had had private care that his parents had arranged. Until a friend of his mother's advised her to let Genzo grow up normally with other children of his age so that he could learn normal social behavior despite his social status.
So Genzo and I were the two newcomers, but we didn't get along because of that and when I wanted to play with the ball with him he roughly sent me away. I thought that was really stupid at the time and just took the ball away from him. Of course that meant war, he chased me all over the garden until he caught me and when I still didn't want to give him his ball back he spanked me. I have never taken such a beating again in my life. However, I think that Genzo was never spanked like that again, because as you can see from this that I steal other children’s soccer balls, I’m not exactly the quiet innocence of the country.
Of course we got caught and since we stubbornly didn't want to apologize to each other, we were punished and had to sit in the dining room for an entire hour and shouldn't move. Needless to say, we didn't make it, after a few minutes Genzo started kicking his ball against the wall. Until the ball rolled in front of my feet. I thought Genzo was just stupid at the time, he didn't want me to play, he had beaten me up and then I was punished because of him, I thought that he could only become more unsympathetic. I didn't want to have anything more to do with him and even decided to think his ball was stupid so I shot him back to hm, just away from me. Genzo looked at me puzzled and I just couldn't help saying: "I still think you're stupid."
He looked really funny out of the laundry. Well, I really can't blame him.
“I don't like you either.” He answered me and still shot me the ball again. So it went on for a while, until we couldn't remember what we could say to each other. So we played in silence until the supervisor came to get us. She must have been quite surprised to find us like this, not sitting nicely like we should but no longer arguing, rather playing peacefully. Anyway, Genzo and I became such friends, and in the next two years before Genzo started school, he became even more to me. My mother quickly realized that Genzo was alone most of the time because his parents worked and so she almost took my best friend into the family, at that time Genzo was practically more often with us than at home and almost became a brother to us.
Haru was a striker and Natsu was a fantastic defender, later he was called a genius on the pitch and deeply regretted that he hadn't aspired to a professional career.through the two of them Genzo discovered his talent as a goalkeeper and it was immediately clear to him which position he would play from now on. I myself was never so sure where I wanted to play but the whole thing was done and so soon.
Not a day went by without the four of us playing soccer together in the garden until my father came home. At first he just called me into the house with disapproval and sent me to my mother and my twin sister's kitchen, later he even forbade me to play football with the three boys. "It's not good for a girl!" only strictly speaking when I asked why. But I didn't really understand that and to this day I still find the argument not particularly convincing.
I didn't listen to him and at first my brothers also supported me in this, but when he noticed that his instructions were simply ignored, my father got really angry, when Genzo had left he even hit me and scolded my brothers because they were me let play along. Most of the time the whole thing ended in an argument between my parents, because my mother agreed that if I enjoyed it I should play.
The first big hurdle in my life was probably when Genzo started school and I was left alone in kindergarten. Of course there were other children with whom I got along well, but I wasn't as good friends with any of them as Genzo and I couldn't play soccer with any of them.
It was a particularly severe shock for me when my father told me that I and my sister should go to the Shirahara Girls High School. I had actually thought that we, like our brothers and Genzo, would go to the shutdown school, and I was looking forward to playing with Genzo in the school team, because that's what we had planned. But now nothing came of it, because when I noticed how my parents were only arguing about the school and I knew my father would not give in, I just claimed that it would be okay if I went to this school just so that they would quit because of me to argue.
I can't say that I was really happy at the Shirahara School, only girls were offered typical sports, such as ballet or floor exercises, rhythmic gymnastics and apparatus gymnastics, not all of which I really liked. Back then I decided on the musical path and joined the choir and learned to flute, I enjoyed that and my father was satisfied.
During this time, Genzo was practically never with us. In the past I always took him to us after kindergarten, but he only came by himself when he was invited, never by himself.
My brothers never bothered about it, they were both too busy with themselves, because they also played football and that on the school team. When I started school they both took part in the National Junior Championship together, Haru was eleven at the time, he was the captain of the team and Natsu was nine, for several years the youngest regular player in the championship.I was really proud of them, especially when they brought home the title. That was about the time I saw Genzo again. In fact, it was exactly during the championship. My entire family went to the final to cheer on the team, only I wasn't allowed to go because I had misbehaved, to be precise, I had my little brother, who was almost one year old, play with a soccer ball and was with the baby as far as he could romping around in the garden, with the ball, of course. My father was terribly angry with me for playing with a ball and my mother couldn't calm him down, so I was under house arrest. Only that I had a key, my mother would never have allowed me to be really locked in and could leave the house at any time if I only wanted to. And I wanted to, because my father had turned off the electricity and I couldn't even watch the final on TV. I was terribly angry with my father and must have walked across the whole of Nankatsu until I had calmed down a bit and noticed that I was standing right in front of the Wakabayashis' house. I hesitated. I hadn't been here often, Genzo had taken me once and twice and then never again. I think he noticed that I was intimidated by the wealth of his family. And now I was standing here alone and didn't know what to do.
Finally, overcoming my doubts, I rang the bell. A friendly female voice rang out and asked what I wanted. Even though she sounded very nice I was tempted to run away for a moment, but then I pulled myself together.