That year, I was twenty

The eighties were drawing to a close, and a new decade was beginning.

The world was changing little by little, and I, too, was stepping into a new world.

That year, I entered university.

I was twenty, a university freshman.

For the first time, I had left behind the confines of high school and encountered a university where everything felt unfamiliar.

It was different from high school, where I had gone to class at set times and attended lessons in assigned classrooms.

The lecture halls were unfamiliar, and so were the people moving about the campus.

Even the sight of students gathering in small groups to talk after class was different from the school life I had known.

That spring, a breeze swept across the campus.

Yellow forsythias began to bloom on branches that had drawn in on themselves through the long winter.

Yellow spread across the campus.

I liked the sight.

Was it because I felt that a new era was beginning?

Or was it the excitement of having just turned twenty and starting a new chapter of my life?

At the time, I thought that a life different from anything I had known so far lay ahead of me.

But university life was not all excitement.

I had graduated from an all-boys high school.

Until then, the people around me had been boys.

So, after entering university, I found it harder than I had expected to interact with my female classmates.

Even having a natural conversation with a girl was unfamiliar to me.

Whenever I needed to speak to one, I would think twice before approaching her. And once I actually started talking, I often struggled to find the right words.

I attended a college of engineering.

There were not many women in engineering.

Still, the Department of Information Engineering, where I studied, had a fair number of female students compared with other engineering departments.

Even that was a new sight for me.

Then, one day, our department held a sports day.

Among the various events was a three-legged race in which a male and a female student teamed up.

I was paired with one of my female classmates.

But when we stood at the starting line, I found myself in an awkward situation.

To tie our legs together and run, I had to place my hand on her shoulder.

Yet even that simple gesture made me feel self-conscious.

I have to put my hand there…

I thought it over in my head again and again, but my hand would hardly move.

Looking back now, it was such a trivial thing.

We were classmates in the same department, and it was just one event at a sports day.

But back then, even placing my hand on a female classmate’s shoulder was difficult for me.

In the end, I hesitantly placed my hand on her shoulder, and the race began.

Looking back, it makes me smile.

I was so inexperienced then.

I was twenty, and even talking to a girl was difficult for me.

Little by little, I began to adjust to university life.

I spent time with my classmates after lectures, and the faces of friends whose names had once been unfamiliar gradually became familiar to me.

Talking with my female classmates also became a little easier than it had been at first.

There were still moments when I felt out of place, but things no longer seemed as difficult as they once had.

I attended lectures, ate with friends, and laughed and chatted with them.

Looking back, those days were nothing out of the ordinary.

But as those ordinary days accumulated, university life gradually began to find its place in my own life.

And so, my first semester was passing by.