Chapter 1. That Year, I Was Twenty

The 1980s were drawing to a close, and a new decade was beginning.

The world was gradually changing, and I, too, was about to make a new start amid those changes.

That year, I entered university.

I was twenty, a freshman.

Having left behind the familiar confines of high school, I found everything about university new and unfamiliar.

It was different from high school, where I went to school at a set time and attended classes in assigned classrooms.

The lecture halls were unfamiliar. So were the people walking across campus.

Even the sight of students gathering in small groups to talk after class was different from the school life I had known.

That spring, a breeze swept across the campus.

Yellow forsythias began to bloom on branches that had stood bare through the winter.

Yellow spread throughout the campus.

I liked the sight.

Was it because I felt that a new era was beginning?

Or was it the excitement of turning twenty and starting a new chapter of my life?

At the time, I thought that a different kind of life was waiting for me.

But university life was not all excitement.

I had graduated from an all-boys high school.

Until then, the people around me had all been boys.

So, after entering university, I found it harder than I had expected to talk naturally with my female classmates.

Whenever I had a reason to speak to one of them, I would think about it one more time than necessary. And once I actually started talking, I often struggled to find the right words.

I attended a college of engineering.

There were not many women in engineering.

Still, Department of Information Engineering I studied in had a fair number of female students compared with other engineering departments.

Even that was a new sight for me.

Then one day, our department held a sports festival.

Among the events was a three-legged race in which a man and a woman competed as a team.

I was paired with one of my female classmates.

But when we stood at the starting line, I suddenly found myself in an awkward situation.

To run with our legs tied together, I had to place one arm around her shoulder.

Yet even the simple act of putting my hand on her shoulder made me feel self-conscious.

I have to put my hand there…

I told myself that several times, but my hand simply would not move.

Looking back now, it seems like such a trivial thing.

She was a classmate from my department, and it was just one event at a sports festival.

But at the time, even placing my hand on a female classmate’s shoulder was difficult for me.

In the end, I hesitantly put my hand on her shoulder, and the race began.

Looking back, I cannot help but smile.

I was so inexperienced back then.

I was twenty, and even talking to a girl was difficult for me.

Little by little, I began to adjust to university life.

I spent time with my classmates after lectures, and the faces of people whose names had once been unfamiliar gradually became familiar to me.

Talking with my female classmates also became a little easier than it had been at first.

There were still moments when I felt out of place, but things no longer seemed as difficult as they had in the beginning.

I attended lectures, ate with friends, and laughed and talked with them.

Looking back, those days were nothing out of the ordinary.

But as those ordinary days accumulated, university life gradually began to feel like a part of my own life.

And so, my first semester went by.