After Hiiragi-san finally snapped out of her daze, we resumed the standing long jump measurements. Seeing as I’d just set such an absurd record right before her, she looked a little demoralized as she stepped up... I felt kind of bad about it.
After taking several deep breaths to calm her nerves, Hiiragi-san raised her right hand to signal she was ready. I responded by making a circle with my arms over my head.
"Please, let it be a somewhat normal record..." I muttered under my breath.
I watched as she crouched, swinging her arms to find the right timing. A few seconds later, Hiiragi-san launched herself with incredible force.
"Whoa, incredible..."
Watching her soar through the air, I couldn't help but marvel at the sight. I realized that this was probably how I had looked to them. Her height and hang time were impressive, but what really struck me was the sheer speed at which she flew from the starting line toward me. It felt like watching someone on a zip line hurtling toward the finish line from right in front of you.
Ending her brief flight, Hiiragi-san landed just past the 50-meter mark where I was waiting.
"...How was it, Kokonoe-kun? How far did I go?"
"Uh, right about 52 meters."
"Fifty-two..."
It was better than my record, but still well beyond the 50-meter milestone. Hiiragi-san stared back at Yuji at the starting line with a look I couldn't quite describe. Yeah, even if it was your own body doing it, results like these were enough to make anyone recoil.
After staring at the distance she’d covered in silence for a moment, Hiiragi-san let out a soft murmur.
"...Explorers really are something else."
"...Yeah, they are."
Looking at her profile as she wore that distant, hollow expression, that was the only response I could manage.
Once the standing long jump was over, the three of us stood in a circle, eyeing one another with complicated expressions.
"65 meters..."
"59 meters, huh..."
"52 meters..."
Once the measuring was done, it turned out we had all cleared the 50-meter mark by a wide margin. I didn't know what kind of numbers other explorers were putting up, but these were clearly off the charts.
We all clutched our heads, realizing that these were records we could absolutely never reveal to the public.
"...Let's move on to the next one."
"Yeah."
"Right."
If we kept dwelling on it, we were going to end up with chronic stress-induced headaches. We shifted gears and moved on to the vertical jump.
The method was simple: jump straight up while holding a tape measure. It was a pretty haphazard way of doing things, so the data wouldn't be perfectly accurate, but it would give us a general idea.
"Alright, first..."
"I'll go."
"Okay, Yuji, you’re up."
And so, Yuji started us off.
I pinned the end of the tape measure to the ground while Yuji held the body of the device. I secured the end with a peg, but since I was worried it might rip out from the force, I stepped on it with my foot as reinforcement. With that, we were ready. All that was left was for Yuji to leap.
"Ready when you are, Yuji. Go for it."
"Got it. Here... I go!"
The moment I gave the signal, Yuji leaned forward slightly and bent his knees.
Then, he launched.
"Hup!"
"Ohh."
The tape measure whirred as it unspooled with terrifying speed to match Yuji’s ascent. Watching that white line of the tape shooting toward the heavens, for a split second, Yuji looked like a rocket taking off.
I could have guessed it from the standing long jump, but man, he really went up there.
"Whew. How was it? Did you catch the measurement?"
"Wait a sec... yeah, I got it. It looks like it worked."
"I see. What's the damage?"
"Uh, about 15 meters?"
Yuji’s vertical jump was approximately 15 meters. Since one floor of a building is roughly three meters, he had essentially jumped to the height of a fifth-story window....Yeah, let's just move on without thinking too hard about it. After hearing the result, Yuji let out a small sigh and started winding the tape back in.
Once it was retracted, he handed the tape to the next person, Hiiragi-san.
"Can I go?"
"Yeah, you're good, Hiiragi-san."
"Then, here goes....Hup!"
Hiiragi-san took the same slight forward lean and knee bend as Yuji.
Then, with a sharp exhale, she leaped. She soared nearly as high as Yuji had, the tape line trailing behind her with a sharp hiss.
"So? How was that?"
"Give me a second... hmm, looks like 13 meters."
"13 meters, huh..."
Upon hearing her result, Hiiragi-san began winding the tape back in with a flat, stoic expression. It seemed she had reached a state of total resignation—or perhaps she had finally made peace with the fact that her results were just going to be "like that."
Then, I took the tape from her and got ready for my turn.
"Well, uh... good luck, Daiki."
"Yeah. Here I go... hup!"
Leaving the measuring duties to Yuji, I took a shallow breath to steady my mind.
I leaned forward, coiled my legs... and exploded upward. The tape line spewed out from the device, extending in a straight line toward the sky. My ascent lasted about a second, and for a brief moment, I hung suspended in the air. I glanced around. Since we were in the mountains, the view was mostly obscured by trees, but I was high enough that I could see just over the canopy to the landscape further down the slope.
"..."
Finding myself literally higher than the trees brought on a strange sense of detachment. I mean, considering the standing long jump results, this was the logical outcome.
After that moment of weightless floating, gravity reclaimed its hold and pulled me back to earth.
"...What was it, Daiki?"
"17 meters... roughly."
"17 meters..."
A bit higher than Yuji, about five or six stories up. Honestly, I was getting tired of being surprised.
As I listened to the result, I let out a small sigh of my own and began packing up the measuring tape.
I marked three lines on the ground at one-meter intervals to prepare for the repeated side steps.
"Alright, ready to go. I'll start, so someone keep track of the time and the count."
"It's probably better if both of us count. That way we won't mess up. The side-step test is surprisingly annoying to track."
"I agree. It's easy to miss a step or misread a movement when someone's moving that fast."
It was true; in a test like this, it was easy to miss a line or fail to cross one properly due to the frantic pace. Having two sets of eyes would minimize errors.
Thus, I had both Yuji and Hiiragi-san handle the recording.
"1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3... okay, I’m good."
I did a few practice reps to get the rhythm. Since it wasn't a motion I used often, I needed a warm-up to make sure my footwork didn't get tangled.
Once they got the signal, Yuji and Hiiragi-san held their phones up so I could see the timers and began the countdown.
"Alright, here we go. 3, 2, 1... Start!"
"!"
I exploded into motion at Yuji's signal. At first, I was careful to cross the lines cleanly, focusing on instant transitions. As I got into the rhythm, I began to ramp up the speed, making my movements more and more rapid.
However, with every forceful leap, a massive cloud of dust kicked up from the ground. Within seconds, my feet were completely obscured by a thick haze of soil.
"Stop! Stop the test, Daiki! We can't see your feet through the dust!"
Hearing Yuji call it off, I bled off my momentum and came to a halt.
"Oh, right. Yeah, there's no way to measure through this."
I looked down at the massive cloud of dust swirling around my ankles and agreed that there was no choice but to stop. The lines I had drawn had been completely erased, and the ground where I’d been kicking off was noticeably gouged out.
Actually, even without the dust, we probably should have stopped anyway.
"Let's scrap the side-step test. Doesn't look like we can do it here."
"Yeah, let's quit before we cause any conspicuous damage to the site."
"Agreed..."
And so, the repeated side steps were abruptly canceled. We might have been able to pull it off on concrete, but in hindsight, our leg strength was high enough to leap over ten meters vertically; expecting the dirt ground to hold up under that kind of rapid lateral pressure was a bit much.
It felt a little like closing the barn door after the horse had bolted, but it was the right call.
"That leaves only one test left..."
"The endurance run."
"The girls' 1000-meter and the boys' 1500-meter, right?"
For an average high schooler, the girls finish in a bit over five minutes, while the boys take about six and a half. If explorers were going to do this... well, based on the 50-meter dash, things were about to get interesting.
"Well, let's get set up."
"Yeah."
"Right."
Eager to move on from the side-step fiasco, we began preparing for the run.
Using the center of the plaza, we laid out a square course with 50-meter sides. "Laying it out" really just meant placing large stones as markers at the four corners.
Either way, we now had a 200-meter lap course.
"Alright, it's ready."
"Last one. Let's finish this up so we can get out of here."
"Yes, let's get it over with before anyone shows up."
We decided to dive straight in. First up was Hiiragi-san, as she had the shorter distance. She had to run 1000 meters, which meant five laps around our makeshift track.
If she could maintain anything close to her 50-meter dash pace... she’d be done in less than a minute.
"Ready, Hiiragi-san?"
"Yes, I'm ready."
"Alright. Ready... Start!"
I hit the timer on my phone at the signal. Hiiragi-san took off with a burst of acceleration. Her initial speed wasn't much different from her sprint earlier.
However...
"Ah, I figured as much."
"Yeah, it's just too narrow."
The tight dimensions of the course were a major bottleneck. Every time Hiiragi-san accelerated and gained real momentum, she immediately had to decelerate to make the sharp turn at the corner. This wasn't an endurance run; it was a glorified 50-meter shuttle run.
If the straightaways were longer, or if we were on a proper track, she could have maintained her top speed. On this course, the time was going to be much slower than we'd predicted.
"At this scale, it's just a constant cycle of accelerating and braking."
"The fact that it's a square is making it even worse. If it were a circle... we'd probably just fly off from the centrifugal force."
"We could probably handle it if we dug our feet into the ground to turn, but we definitely shouldn't be doing that here."
"Yeah, definitely not."
Essentially, a plaza of this size was simply too small for us to run at full tilt.
As we watched Hiiragi-san struggle through the turns, Yuji and I both grimaced.
"Should we just jump our way around the course?"
"Given our standing long jump, we probably could, but that wouldn't really be an endurance run, would it?"
"True."
Yuji and I debated ways to navigate the course faster, but we concluded it was impossible in this space. Like Hiiragi-san, we’d just have to manage our speed as best we could.
Was this even measuring endurance at this point?
"Oh, that's her final lap."
"Even with all that, it hasn't even been a minute yet."
"Yeah. But..."
I glanced down at the timer and saw it had already passed the one-minute mark. I’d originally thought she could break sixty seconds, but the constant braking and starting required by the tiny course made that impossible.
Hiiragi-san crossed the finish line with a look of pure frustration.
"Good job, Hiiragi-san."
"Thanks... Though honestly, I'm not even tired after that distance. So, what was the time?"
"1 minute and 7 seconds. Unfortunately, you didn't break a minute."
"I see..."
She looked genuinely disappointed at the "slow" result.
I handed the phone to her and walked over to the starting line with Yuji.
"Alright, Hiiragi-san, we're counting on you to time us."
"Okay. Good luck, you two. It’s harder than it looks out there."
"Haha, we saw. We know what we're in for."
"Right then. Ready? Ready... Start!"
At the signal, Yuji and I took off. The boys' distance was 1500 meters, which meant we had to complete seven and a half laps.
I focused on Yuji beside me as I repeatedly accelerated and braked through the turns. As the laps added up, a small gap began to form between us. My level was higher than Yuji's, but on a course like this, the key was minimizing speed loss during the transitions. In terms of pure body control, Yuji had me beat.
"Tch!"
Feeling the pressure of Yuji’s lead, I tried to push my acceleration harder to close the gap, but it backfired. The more I forced the speed, the more momentum I had to kill at every corner, causing me to fall even further behind.
In the end, I crossed the finish line about a full pace behind him.
"Agh, I lost!"
"Tough luck, Daiki. You pushed too hard on the straightaways; that’s what cost you."
Yuji looked quite pleased with himself, while I turned away with a groan of frustration.
"Good job, you two. That was a close one."
"Haha, yeah. So, Hiiragi-san, what were the times?"
Trying to hide my irritation at losing, I acted casual and asked for the results.
"Hirose-kun was 1 minute 23 seconds. Kokonoe-kun was 1 minute 23 seconds and a bit."
So it really was slower than I’d expected... though it was still plenty fast, I suppose.
Regardless, that was finally the last of the tests. Man... nothing but headache-inducing records all the way down.
Physical fitness test, all items complete.