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Koguma began to prepare for her trip in her apartment. She was fortunate that she hadn’t already taken any pain-relieving fever medicine that would have adversely affected her ability to ride.
Since it was a long-distance ride on a Cub, Koguma first grabbed the denim top and bottom she wore when she rode her Cub all around on weekends.
Denim that fitted to your body was easy to move around in, didn’t flap in the wind, and seemed to be as safe as leather when you fell. The best thing about denim was that if it got frayed or torn unexpectedly, it could be mended, patched, or replaced as many times as you want.
Then Koguma remembered that this wasn’t just an outing, but a ride with the purpose of chasing the school trip bus and joining it on the way.
A school trip by herself until she caught up with her classmates. As she recalled in the pamphlet, they were required to wear their school uniforms on the bus to and from school.
However, the navy blue blazer and skirt of the autumn school uniform were out of the question when riding a Cub on the main roads. Then the gym tracksuit hanging on the wall caught Koguma’s eye.
The unfashionable tracksuit was all navy blue, just like the blazer. It was also a uniform. During summer vacation, she wore the tracksuit to Koufu and back in the extreme summer heat.
I guess this will do, Koguma thought as she took the tracksuit in her hands, then walked to the bathroom, naked, and put it on her body in front of the mirror.
Even when she looked at herself in the mirror before her part-time job, she always felt a sense of discomfort with the way she looked. She didn’t really like it. It wasn’t that there was a specific element that made it unsuitable for riding a Cub long-distance, but her sense of aesthetics, or rather her vanity, that made her refuse to wear a tracksuit.
In her hometown of Yamanashi Prefecture, she had no qualms about wearing a tracksuit when riding around on her Cub, and actually thought it made nice riding clothes, but then she imagined herself riding a Cub in a tracksuit on unknown roads from here to Kamakura.
Wearing a navy blue tracksuit in Kanagawa, which was probably much more urban than the northern part of Yamanashi where she usually rode, would make her embarrassed all the way through her ride.
Besides, if she went out in a high school gym uniform on a weekday morning, she might be taken into protective custody or subjected to unneeded police questioning.
Wearing uniforms to school events was the rule. If you didn’t follow the rules, she would be questioning herself that she was going to ride to Kamakura and join the school trip. She wouldn’t be going on a trip, she was just going for a ride on her Cub with no purpose.
The distance between herself and the school bus widened as she just stood there hesitating in her apartment. Unsure of what to wear, Koguma decided to settle for a compromise.
She put on her underwear over her bare skin and then put on the denim top and bottoms. And then she put on the navy blue jersey over her denim jacket.
She joined the school trip a step late. Wearing her school tracksuit, she felt as though she was allowed to join the school trip out of pity while repeatedly apologizing for being late.
If she caught up to them on her Cub, she wanted to proudly show up in front of her teachers and classmates looking the way she did when she rode her Cub. Her appearance proving that she came all the way there with her own strength. Reiko would probably say that was more interesting.
As long as she wore the school jersey on top, even if she was wearing something a little more casual underneath, it was still a proper uniform. She was going to insist on that.
In fact, classmates who were less conscious of following school rules even in their usual school life often wore T-shirts instead of blouses under their blazers.
Koguma didn’t actually feel that she was in the same category as those people, but there was no point in pretending to be an honor student at this point. She put the track pants into the sports bag she had prepared last night for the trip.
After putting on a pair of thick white socks and slinging her waist bag with her wallet and phone over her shoulder, Koguma began the process of choosing and considering routes, another thing she hesitated over.
Thank you for the chapter!
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