Scramble Crossing

It was back in middle school.
I'm not sure what year it was.

That day, I had been restless since the morning.
It was a free paper, the kind that comes as a newspaper insert, dealing with local community topics.

It was an article my old man showed me.

When I opened the classroom door, Hori, who was always in the know, came over.

"Did you read Kinoko?"

"That thing, you saw it too?"

"I saw it! Let's go."

"Let's go after club activities are over."

What was in the article that day.

"First Scramble Crossing Born in Isehara City"

Isehara City, Kanagawa Prefecture. It is a commuter town that developed around Isehara Station on the Odakyu Line, which connects Hakone and Shinjuku. It's about an hour by express train from Shinjuku Station in the city center.

At one point, the town was in a panic because there was a possibility that a "Shonan City" might be born due to the Great Heisei Mergers. They wanted to be a member of Shonan City even if it killed them.

Of course, no such thing as Shonan City was ever born, and as a
remnant of that, even though it doesn't face the sea at all, the cars have legitimate "Shonan" license plates.

Self-deprecatingly, we use it at group dates, saying, "I'm from the Shonan of the mountains."

We use it for what it's worth.

"What's that? I don't know it. Haha, that's funny."

"Come visit, come visit. Let's climb the mountains together."

That's the standard routine.

Smooth talkers like Pop would say,

"You won't drown in the sea in Isehara, but you might drown in me."

"Oh, stop it, this guy is funny."

That's the standard routine.

As a middle schooler, I never dreamed I would become that kind of guy.

The fact that a scramble crossing was being built in Isehara was an event that felt like the world was turning upside down.

Even now, there is a scramble crossing in front of the station, but for some reason, it wasn't in front of the station, but in a corner of a residential area.

Despite that, the whole class was buzzing with the topic, wondering if we had finally joined the ranks of the big city.

Hori, who was in the know, was telling the whole class about how he had crossed the scramble crossing in Shibuya.

We had just entered puberty, and buying clothes in Tokyo was starting to become a kind of status symbol.

Stylish girls started bringing magazines to school, and they suddenly started to feel like distant beings.

I, for one, wasn't awakened at all, and was probably just wearing hand-me-downs from relatives or the blue gym uniform of our middle school.

I had only ever seen the Shibuya scramble crossing in videos.

Could something that amazing really be built in Isehara?

Something amazing had happened.

I have to go. I have to go, or I'll miss out.

Even as clueless as I was, I couldn't hide my excitement, having a premonition that something mystical would be born from the trendy term "scramble crossing."

That day, for some reason, club activities ended early.

Hori was in a different club, but it seems his ended early too.

Anyway, we headed to the site.

It's about 2 kilometers from the school to the site.
We headed there at a brisk pace.

On the way, I noticed something.
Upperclassmen I don't usually see and people who usually go home in a different direction are all walking in the same direction as fast as they can.

A grand march of blue gym uniforms.

"Kinoko, don't tell me everyone is heading there?"

"No way that's true."

An upperclassman on a bike passes by.

"Kinoko, I'm going ahead."

Are you serious? Is everyone really heading there?

The walking turned into a brisk pace before I knew it, and the brisk pace turned into a jog.

The site we arrived at was packed with people.

They weren't doing anything in particular. They weren't even just crossing.

They were crossing "diagonally" when the light was green.

"Let's cross too, Kinoko."

That was when it happened.

The upperclassman I had my first crush on was crossing with her boyfriend.

The shock of finding out she had a boyfriend was so great that I wanted to leave in an instant.

"It's not cool to cross when there are so many people. If you're going to cross, go ahead. I'm going home."

What are you talking about?

The story of the day I decided to start a rumor that "if a couple crosses it, they will break up."

When I got home, my old man came up to me.

"I crossed the intersection today."

The story of the day I was crushed by embarrassment.

When you come to Isehara, please cross diagonally while making a wish.