The Heat of the Day Has Gone
(1) Life had Gone Wrong
It was at dusk, an early autumn dusk, and the heat of the day had gone. There were few people on the street, perhaps since it was the dinner time, and the city had lived through once again the traffic jam which plagued modern urban life everyday. A wind, neither as hot as one in the summer nor as cold as one in the winter, came from the space between the two lofty buildings, locating on each side of the street.
Matsumoto(松本稔), standing on the threshold of the hospital, looked up to the window of the office in which he had just had a tedious conversation with the doctor, slightly sighed, and then headed to the restaurant where he had booked a position earlier this morning.
Did he foresee the news that the doctor would reveal to him several hours later when he booked his dinner? Surely, yes. Several people, including his mother and his coach, had vouched with their heads that he would be all right, that the survey would turn out to be nothing, you, you will be on the field a few months later, worry not about this, every player gets injured sometime, as you know it very well. And now, with a bad sense of humour, he imagined the scene that he tells them the diagnosis of the doctor, and laughs that he wants their heads. No one will be laughing then, of course.
The doctor tried hard to explain to him his injury with every possible detail among which Matsumoto understood none. Yet she was a responsible doctor, admitted Matsumoto. Assuming that the basketball career must be as important as life itself to her patient, she made some effort to comfort, which seen from his view, was only useless boredom to delay his planned dinner.
He knew the result from the beginning, from the moment when he was terribly hit by the PG from Edo University. He always knew the result, and was prepared to welcome it, and now it came. He had foreseen that his career would be cut short tragically several years ago, Yes, several years ago, the sunny day at the beginning of his second year in Sannoh（山王）. The day he first met Sawakita（沢北荣治）. The Day that life had gone wrong.
There is no doubt that Matsumoto was a brilliant basketball player; in middle school, or even earlier in elementary school, his talent in this sport was never underestimated. But the thing is, if he is a brilliant player, Sawakita is Brilliance itself. Watching him playing basketball, it was like he walks in the beauty of brilliance yet he himself is unaware of it. In his mind, basketball is the one, not excellence, not glory, even not his enemy, he does not have an enemy, all he does is to enhance himself in his own design. And he always succeeds. After spending plenty of time on the bench, Matsumoto was still considered a great basketball player, otherwise he would not be admitted by his University. He knew his excellence and everyone acknowledged that. But that was Not the case. Life Had Gone Wrong.
It was not the fault of Sawakita, Matsumoto admitted. In their personal relationship, Sawakita never said anything bad to him. Indeed, he did not say anything to him, and this made Matsumoto felt all the worse.
Matsumoto once tried to describe to his best friend his complex feelings toward Sawakita and himself. His best friend laughed, and said that he must be in love with Sawakita. After that, Matsumoto had no best friend any more. He could not believe that these days human feelings have developed into such a horrible barren land that only extremes such as love or hatred could be understood while all the subtleties within the spectrum are simply lost.
He did not love Sawakita, just like he did not hate Sawakita. All he knew was that the existence of Sawakita, not Sawakita, made a difference to his life, a bad difference, so to speak. Before he met Sawakita, life was something to make, and after that, life was something that was made. Before that he wanted to play basketball, and after that basketball was impossible to him. It was only possible to man like Sawakita, and he was not like him. To make it worse, even after he had realized all of this, he had to go on playing basketball; life is a like a machine that once set up could not be easily broken down. For this reason, or for no reason at all, he continued his career for more than 5 years, and now he is a senior with failed basketball career and no practical skills.
Really, from that moment, life had gone wrong.