Super Cub Volume 1 Chapter 49 - Ride for Two

This chapter has that infamous two-person motorcycle riding scene that Kadokawa released a statement about lol

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After being allowed to join the school trip, Koguma settled into a room at the ryokan along with the other students who had arrived by bus roughly at the same time as she arrived on her Cub.

For a public high school’s school event, it was a high-class ryokan. In the Japanese-style room that smelled of high-quality wood, Koguma sat down on the tatami.

She could still feel the vibrations in her body after riding so far from home that she used up most of the gas in her Cub. The skin on her buttocks also felt a little sore from the chafing.

In the room were Koguma, Reiko, and two other classmates she had never spoken to before. The other two seemed to be a pair who was always together, and they were playing on their phones without talking to Koguma or Reiko much.

As Reiko made tea, she stretched out her legs on the tatami and snacked on the teacakes placed on the table. Looking at the two close friends, Koguma looked at her Cub companion, Reiko, with whom she never felt particularly close, but with whom she felt she shared something more important.

Reiko looked back at Koguma, holding the small teapot in her hand. She understood what she wanted to say. She wanted to know what happened on the Cub tour from Hokuto to Kamakura. Koguma looked away from Reiko, and then spoke while thrusting her hand into her travel bag. 

“Let’s go to the baths.”

Reiko also opened her own bag and took out a towel and a change of clothes.

“Let’s go!”

She had a few things to talk to her about.

After taking a bath at the ryokan to recover from the long-distance travel, they enjoyed a long-awaited meal. Reiko was rolling with laughter when Koguma told her the story about how she helped a boy in Gotemba who had a flat tire on his Cub and how she had turned down an invitation to ride around with him.

After the sumptuous dinner, Koguma and Reiko returned to their room and continued to talk even after they laid out the futons. They were talking so happily that their roommates approached them. They didn’t ride scooters, but they seemed interested.

As motorcyclists, Koguma and Reiko told them about that jewel-like time and all the necessary hassle it took to obtain it. The other two seemed both interested and uninterested.

She slept soundly on the futon that was much higher quality than the one she had at home, enveloped in the fatigue from travel and the happiness of having a full stomach, until the next morning. Today was a free activity day, part of the schedule for the field trip, and they were going to visit nearby temples, shrines, and famous places according to the schedule they had planned and submitted to the teacher. 

Koguma and Reiko had an exemplary schedule to ride the Enoden to visit the great statue of Buddha at Hase and other famous places in Kamakura. When their teacher reconfirmed their schedule, Koguma and Reiko stole a glance at each other’s composed faces and bit back their laughter.

Once they walked out of the ryokan, they walked halfway around the building and entered the grounds from the back. The bicycle parking lot for employees. Koguma’s Cub was parked there.

The teacher told her to leave the Cub at the ryokan during the school trip. However, she wasn’t given any specific penalty, and even if she was unlucky enough to be found out, she would be treated as absent from the school trip at most.

One might think that this was similar to a boy sneaking into a girl’s room in the middle of the night, knowing that the teacher would find out and kick him out of the trip, but this was surely more troublesome than a man’s desire for a woman or a woman’s desire for a man.

Reiko pulled a skateboard helmet from her travel bag, and Koguma wondered where she got it from. Koguma had already talked to the people at the ryokan so that there wouldn’t be a big fuss over her Cub being stolen.

Reiko took out the Cub’s in-vehicle tools and removed the cargo box from the back of the Cub, which was held in place by only four screws. She opened the box and took out Koguma’s helmet, then tossed it to her. Koguma caught it and put it on her head, and then put on the pair of yellow leather gloves that came flying at her. 

Koguma started the engine of the Cub and Reiko climbed onto the back. After a short warm-up, the Cub with two people riding on it set off.

It was Reiko who suggested that they go somewhere with the Cub on the free activity day. Koguma said that the clutch would be worn out with the heavy load, but Reiko said she could order the clutch disc alone for just 2,000 yen. “I’ll put it together for you,” she said. There was then no reason to refuse. From the start, Koguma had no intention of refusing.

It was illegal for someone who only had a motorcycle license for less than a year to ride with a passenger. Koguma recalled what she had learned at driving school, but decided to shelve the issue as it wasn’t high-priority enough to solve.

Koguma’s current life, which was brought about by the Cub, would not be shaken by a traffic ticket, and the relationship between her and her Cub would not be changed by a blue ticket¹, which would be written for her one day as she kept riding. 

She was realizing that there was something more important to talk about than such trivial matters.

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1 A blue ticket is given out for moderate traffic offenses like not stopping at a red light, speeding, and illegal parking.^↩

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