Saeki Sayaka: Year 5, Group 3

Saeki Sayaka:
Year 5, Group 3

 

THIS MAY SOUND ARROGANT, but I knew early on that I was talented.

When I say “talented,” I mean that I can get results when I work really hard and that I can maintain those results, too. I think I understood the value of those two things much sooner than the other kids.

Thus, I didn’t mind that my after-school schedule was full of lessons. There were ikebana classes, calligraphy school, piano, cram school, and once I was a third year in elementary school, swimming lessons, too. I was considering taking on English speaking classes next. I pretty much took anything available to me. As a kid, I felt lucky that I was even allowed those choices.

Even a child could see that that my house was a respectable one. We had a lacquered gate, a side door for the help on the left side, and many tall trees in our garden. The surrounding walls were tall enough to prevent anyone from peering inside. Our house was bigger than the entirety of the light-green apartment complex across from us. In addition to my parents and I, my grandparents on my father’s side and their two cats lived there. It was quite a lot of space for so few people.

Growing up in that house, I knew I had no choice but to be talented. No one actually said as much, but I knew instinctively that it was true. As long as I kept moving with purpose and produced good results, my parents never seemed upset. What parents wouldn’t be happy to have an exceptional kid?

Today, as always, I made it home and started preparing for my lessons as soon as I put down my backpack. Since both my parents were at work, the house was quiet. My grandparents had stayed home that day, so the housekeeper wasn’t around, either. Just walking home from ­elementary school always left me parched, so I went to the kitchen and drank a cup of water. The sound of chirping cicadas filtered through the ventilation system.

I grabbed the bag with all my swimming gear and left the house. I had swim class once a week on Wednesdays. Although this wasn’t on purpose, it was easy to remember that I went into the water on Wednesday, since they both started with a W.

Instead of heading straight to my lesson, though, I took a small detour, walking around the house to take a look at the garden.

Our cats could usually be found in the passage that connected to my grandparents’ side of the house. Sure enough, they were both there: one tortoiseshell, one black and white piebald. It hadn’t been long since they came to live with us, but they had made themselves at home right away, so they didn’t budge as I approached them. When the cats were in a good mood, they would allow people to touch them, but who knew how it would go today?

I bent down and pet the black and white cat. It looked up grouchily and bolted after only a few seconds. The tortoiseshell cat followed suit, and they both hid in the shade.

“Oh, well.”

I watched them go and then headed to class.

As I walked through the neighborhood, I could still hear the cicadas chirping. When I listened carefully, I could hear different nuances in the sounds on my right and on my left. Wondering if the types of cicadas living on each side were different, I looked around. The ­unchanging scenery of the neighborhood shimmered in my eyes.

For some reason, perhaps because of the summer heat, there was a constant buzzing in my ears.

I emerged onto a main street and made it across two crosswalks. From there, it was about a ten-minute walk in a straight line to my destination, a small swimming school downtown. It was a long and narrow building, and kind of strange at that: the reception desk was on the second floor, while the pool the school used was one floor underground. I had no idea what was on the first floor or even how one could get to it.

The building was connected to a big paid parking lot on the side; the staff members often warned me to be careful of cars going in and out. There were two buses lined up in front of the school now. I watched the people and wheelchairs emerging from the buses out of the corner of my eye while I headed to the stairs.

“Oh! Saeki-san.”

Hearing someone call my name, I turned around. It was another girl in my class. She must have come right over without going home, since she still had her school backpack on.

She went to a different school, so we weren’t really close—not that I played with the kids from my own school much, either.

The girl skipped a step on the stairs to catch up to me. “Hello,” I greeted her coolly. I didn’t really like this girl.

“Don’t you go to school, Saeki-san?”

“What?”

What a bizarre question. I stared at her as we went through the automatic door into the building. The employee at the reception desk greeted me with a smile, and I showed her my card in response.

The other girl held hers out at the same time, so the receptionist took both cards and handed us each a locker key for the changing room. I saw the number flash by and secretly felt relieved that the girl was at a locker far away from mine.

The air conditioning was on full blast inside, cooling my neck. The wall to the left of the reception desk was glass, so you could see the pool in the basement below. There were calm ripples on the pool reflecting the slightly dim lights.

“What was that about earlier?” I asked on the way to the changing room.

“Well, ’cause your skin is so pale.”

It hadn’t been long since the girl started coming to swimming lessons in July, but she was already tan. I suppose my skin didn’t have much color compared to hers.

“I thought maybe you just never went outside,” she added.

Her jet-black, neck-length hair, which seemed as if it were designed to complement her skin, swayed gently. We weren’t even in the pool yet, but somehow it already looked sort of damp. I looked at it as I answered bluntly, “Of course I go outside.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Plus, you’re super serious all the time.”

Her random opinions were all over the place, as was her ever-changing expression. This girl was a little shorter than me and sunburned right up to the hairline on her forehead. If her hair were any shorter, people would probably mistake her for a skinny little boy.

“You’re the most dedicated one in swim class, too, Saeki-san.”

I was getting fed up with her and her strange comments. It always irritated me when people I didn’t get along with acted like they knew me really well.

There was another reason I was sick of her, too.

“Maybe I am. And you’re the least serious.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

She didn’t seem to care when I pointed out her shortcomings. I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone more shameless.

We passed the vending machines and went into the changing room, which had lockers stacked two high along the walls. The sink area had three faucets, which one of the staff members was cleaning with a towel. I opened the locker that matched the number on my key and put my bag inside. The girl did the same with her school backpack, shoving it in unceremoniously. She turned towards me, and our eyes met.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

I took off my clothes to change into the official swimsuit that the swimming school required us to wear. This time, though, I felt like I was being watched. When I looked over, that girl was staring at me with her hand still stuck in her locker.

“What?”

Now, I was the one asking her that. I didn’t like the way she was ogling me.

“Nothing really.”

She turned her face away immediately, and started taking out her swimsuit and swim cap. What was that all about? It wasn’t like I wanted to be friends with her, but she always started talking to me whenever she saw me.

I went to the pool ahead of her, opening a door in the back that was different from where we’d entered. I passed under the weak green light that indicated the emergency exit, heading down the stairs. With each step, the air grew more and more humid. Just as my nose caught the smell of chlorine, the pool came into view.

When my feet went into the disinfectant at the entrance, the cold sent shivers up my spine.

There were a lot of other kids from my class by the pool already starting to stretch. I said hello to them and the instructor. The instructor was taller than my father, with dark skin and a cheerful orange shirt. He really was upbeat, too, which made his lessons easy to follow.

After I washed off at the showers and put on my swim cap, I started stretching like the other kids. With nobody in it yet, the pool was so calm that it almost felt like you could walk across its faintly glowing surface.

The pool was twenty-five meters long and had six lanes. I had once calculated how many people would need to stand side by side to cover the whole pool.

As I was stretching my legs, the other girl finally came in, late as usual. She said hello to all the other kids too, then came over to me for some reason. Even though she was wearing the same swimsuit as me, her suntanned arms and legs made it look entirely different on her. Her tan was so even, it was almost like she was getting burned on purpose. There were just a few areas at the edges of her swimsuit where her skin was somewhat lighter.

“It’s nice being in an inside pool where you can’t get sunburned, huh?”

“That doesn’t seem to stop you.”

“You got me there.”

She laughed as she went over to take a shower. Why did she insist on going out of her way to talk to me every chance she got? Maybe she was under the false impression that we were friends?

After she washed off, she didn’t really stretch, just looked at the water from the side of the pool. That was just the kind of girl she was.

It was a weekday, so there were only six kids, including me. Obviously, there would be a lot more kids on the weekends. Watching out of the corner of my eye as the other kids lined up, I pinched my own arm. My skin really was the lightest out of everyone there. I wondered if it was because I never played outside during lunch breaks.

The instructors split up their lessons based on the class we were in. I was in intermediate. If you did well at your current level, you’d be promoted to the next one. Apparently, most kids didn’t get into the higher classes until they started junior high.

Still, I never did like the way the word intermediate sounded. If I was going to do something, I wanted to be at the top. But I just couldn’t age faster, no matter what I did. I couldn’t catch up, but I also couldn’t wait.

I thought of the cats at home and my grandparents.

As the instructor addressed the gathered students, I heard water splashing in the distance. I glanced over. Of course, it was that girl again. She never followed instructions—she just swam or wandered around whenever she wanted. The adults tried to get her to focus at first, but soon gave up and left her to her own devices. We had more than enough lanes, so it wasn’t a problem. In theory, at least.

She never took anything seriously. She didn’t even try to become a better swimmer, just played around to her heart’s content. Why was she even taking swimming lessons?

I couldn’t bring myself to like her. She rubbed me the wrong way. She was a nuisance, always messing around while I tried to focus. She was so cheerful and oblivious to everything around her that it seemed like there wasn’t a single thought in her brain. She did seem be having fun, but I couldn’t imagine acting that way myself.

Our swim classes were usually about an hour long. We warmed up by walking a little in the water and then moved on to practicing technique. I didn’t know the ­instructor’s background, but he was a pretty good teacher. When I followed his instructions, it felt like the water didn’t resist me quite so much. I guess we were learning to shed any unnecessary movements.

The other kids seemed to move more elegantly under his instruction, too. Since swimming took my whole body, my improvement was easier to see than in my other classes.

After about forty minutes of this, we each took a lane and timed ourselves swimming the length of the pool as fast as we could. The instructors always told us which stroke to use when that time came, and today it was the breaststroke. There were six kids and six lanes, so we could all swim at the same time. Even the girl who always messed around and never listened to instructions participated.

I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but we ended up in neighboring lanes. After all the exertion, my ears felt warm even submerged in water. The other girl didn’t look tired at all, though, and flashed me an innocent, toothy smile. I wondered if there was even a point to finding out how she swam. She’d just been playing around so far, after all.

Maybe she was smiling because she thought we were friends, but it just made me want to win even more.

To be honest, I didn’t think I was particularly good at sports. But I still took these lessons seriously, so ­being slower than someone who wasn’t even trying would make me downright miserable.

I was going to give it my absolute best.

The instructor got a stopwatch and whistle ready and gave us the signal to start. He tended to blow the whistle pretty abruptly, so it was difficult to react right on time. I dove into the water, which dulled my hearing as I kicked off the pool wall. I straightened out my body, streamlining myself as I moved forward, imagining that I was pushing my way through.

In the water, all I could see was blue. The sole patch of white was the name of the gym painted on the floor of the pool. I followed it with my eyes as I used the momentum from my kick to get as far ahead as I could. Then I started to swim the breaststroke.

When I brought up my head, the first thing I saw was a shadow rushing past me, speedy as a passing fish.

The girl in the next lane got farther and farther ahead of me in the blink of an eye. I was shocked for a second, but then I looked at the way she was swimming and simply felt infuriated. A bubbly puff of breath escaped my mouth. That girl was pushing her way through the water by swimming a front crawl. She was fast, but all I could think was what is she even doing?

The foam left a wake behind her quickly fluttering legs. The rest of us just pushed through the water as though we were following her. This wasn’t even about losing anymore—it wasn’t even a match.

I was slower than the girl who did whatever she wanted, but I swam faster than the other kids. When the girl came back up to the water’s surface, she threw her head back and held it up high, looking pleased. A long sigh of satisfaction left her lips.

She looked the happiest out of all six of us. Sure, it was probably fun doing whatever you wanted without actually learning, but that wasn’t going to help her in the long run. She was fast, but she was going nowhere.

I had to believe that, I think, or I would’ve started doubting myself.

We walked around in the water for a while and then finished with stretches. After all that swimming, I was surprised at how heavy my limbs felt when I got out of the water. It was like there was an invisible hand on my shoulder trying to pull me back. In that moment, I thought I understood why fish don’t come on land. Being in the water was easy.

Maybe that’s why she’s like that, I thought, and turned around. Even though our time was up, she was floating in the pool all by herself—just staring up at the dim lights as if she had even forgotten how to kick. I wondered what she was thinking. We were so different, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

“Looks like you were the fastest today, Saeki.”

It felt pretty good when our instructor said that, but something bothered me a little. “Just today?” Had he said it that way on purpose? “But I was fastest last time, too.”

“Oh, right. That’s true.”

For some reason, the instructor glanced at the pool, looking a little troubled. Following his gaze toward the gentle waves rippling across the water, I could see only one thing disturbing the surface.

But there was no way anyone could win swimming breaststroke against a front crawl. It bothered me a little, but ultimately, she didn’t count.

Today, at least, I was the fastest. That was all I wanted to hear.

Once I decided to do something, I had to be the best at it. That was how I approached all of my many classes.

I had never really experienced someone overtaking me before.

 

Summer had started, and it was getting hot, but I still stayed in the classroom during lunch breaks. Most of my time after school was occupied with lessons, so I used the break to study.

My friends had already stopped inviting me to do things. I didn’t particularly mind. Playing with friends was fun, but improving myself was fun in its own way, too. If they were both the same amount of fun, it was obvious which one I would choose.

Today, I was writing the same kanji characters over and over again in my notebook. “佐伯沙弥香.”

They were the kanji for my name: Saeki Sayaka. We hadn’t learned any of those kanji in elementary school, so I had to practice them myself. It would be childish to keep writing it in hiragana, and even though I was a kid, I didn’t want to feel like I was lagging behind.

Once I learned the stroke order, it turned out the kanji weren’t that hard. It was like tracing symbols, so it still didn’t really feel like my name yet. The one that was easiest to remember was 伯. The hardest part was ­balancing the top and bottom of the 香. If I didn’t pay attention, one would get too big. I decided that next time I went to calligraphy lessons, I would practice writing my name with a brush, too.

I wondered what my name meant. Now that I knew the shapes, I wanted to know their meanings, so I looked them up.

Learning one thing lead to learning the next thing. I repeated that cycle over and over, every day. There was always something new to learn.

I had piano lessons after school today. Since these were private lessons I took at home, it was just me. Learning piano meant I could read the sheet music for music class at school, so these lessons were probably the most practical, to be honest. I’m not sure I could say that my ikebana classes were all that relevant in school.

Still, they might be useful someday. Maybe after I ­became a junior high school student, then a high schooler, and then an adult. I was doing everything I could to prepare now, so I’d have no regrets in the future.

I closed my notebook once I was done practicing the kanji for my name and heard the cicadas start crying as though on cue. They sounded a lot more distant here at school than they did in the garden at home. When I listened more closely, the noise of kids playing on the school grounds drowned out the cicadas. The kids in the classroom were being loud, too. I was the only quiet one.

I didn’t think I would achieve greatness just by studying a lot. I did think I might at least get a step or two ahead of the other kids.

Amid all that noise, I muttered my own name. I could still only mentally picture it in hiragana.

 

I was a little late leaving school that day, so I had to start running on the way home.

I felt that summer day like rain on my skin, as though I were leaving a trail of sweat behind me. As I ran, my breath going ragged, the ground seemed much harder than usual.

When I put my shoes on in the entryway to leave for swim class, the house cats came over to brush their heads against my legs, which was unusual for them. I couldn’t just leave, so I petted them until I completely lost track of time. They were so cute, and it was so satisfying—right until I had to start running again. By the time I started sweating, the satisfaction was half-gone.

My shirt stuck uncomfortably to my back when I got to the swimming class building. Partway up the stairs, I stopped in my tracks. That girl was in front of the ­entrance to reception, wearing her backpack as usual. She was fiddling with the umbrellas in the two umbrella stands to the right of the doorway, taking them out and putting them back in.

“Oh, hey, Saeki-san.”

She had a green umbrella in her hand as she looked up at me. I turned around, checked the weather, and tilted my head at her in confusion.

“What are you doing?”

“I was just thinking how there are sooo many umbrellas here, even though it’s so sunny out.”

“Right…”

It was true. There were almost ten of them in the stand, all different kinds and colors, and I wasn’t sure whether they had been forgotten by kids or left out by the school as spares. Putting the umbrella back, the girl walked over to me.

“You’re sweating a lot today. Did you run because you thought you’d be late?” she guessed, looking at my forehead.

“Yes, that’s what happened.”

“Huh. Wow.”

She brought her face abruptly close to mine, then pulled back and looked me up and down. I looked back at her uncomfortably and was about to question her when she said, “I was just thinking I’ve never seen you run before, Saeki-san, so I can’t really picture it.”

“Okay?”

“Plus, you kind of act like a rich girl.”

She wasn’t exactly wrong, but hearing someone else say it to my face still annoyed me a bit. Maybe it bothered me when other people judged me based on how I was born or raised instead of by the things I’d earned myself.

She lined up next to me like it was completely natural. I narrowed my eyes until I was practically glaring at her. “Do you need something?”

“No. I just thought we could go in together.”

She pointed straight ahead while the automatic door opened. The cold air felt almost like a slap in the face as it blew over us.

As always, we traded our cards for keys at the reception desk. The girl compared our numbers and smiled. “Looks like our lockers are next to each other.”

Instead of agreeing, I just looked away. The pool below us seemed farther away than usual through the window.

“Oh, you don’t look happy,” the girl said.

“It’s nothing,” I answered, but she still looked anxious.

We started walking together without another word, and by the time we got to the lockers in the changing room, she seemed cheerful again.

“Y’know, I’ve always kinda wondered if that was the case.”

“What?”

“Do you not like me?”

Once again, she was asking me a difficult question right to my face as though it were the easiest thing in the world. I’d always thought that you were supposed to read the room and just tiptoe around things like this, but maybe that wasn’t necessary at all?

“Do you want me to answer honestly?”

She smiled wryly. “When you put it that way, you’ve pretty much already told me the answer.”

“I guess I have.” That was why I phrased it that way in the first place.

“Wow. I’m kinda shocked.” The girl put her forehead against her locker, looking obviously depressed. But she was always joking around like that, so I didn’t quite believe it was real. I wondered if she knew that, though.

Paying her no mind, I opened my locker, took my swimsuit and swim cap out of my bag, and pulled out my goggles.

“What do you not like about me?” the girl asked.

She wasn’t changing out of her clothes. Her eyes looked harder and sharper than usual as she asked the question, so she was clearly being serious for once. It was only then that I felt inclined to keep talking to her.

“What’s the point in asking me that?”

“Well, if it’s something I can fix, I figured I might try to fix it.”

She grinned sheepishly. Which was exactly the problem.

“It’s how you’re never serious.”

“Ohh, so that’s it.” The girl stopped smiling.

“It’s a real nuisance, you know? Everyone around you is trying to do things the right way, but you’re just messing around.”

I was being blunt now. She shrank back at first, as if wounded by my verbal attack, but then seemed to relax, her eyes wandering.

“So that’s how it is,” she said casually.

“It is.”

“Hm… Well, I guess it’s not like I care what’s going on around me.”

If she really didn’t care, why would it bother her that I didn’t like her?

“Okay,” she said briskly and closed her locker.

I didn’t know what was okay, but okay, I might as well change and go ahead of her, then.

Before I left the changing room, I turned around. She was quietly taking off her clothes, her mouth shut tight.

I headed towards the pool, showered as usual, and then stretched. Though I acted aloof, I did turn my eyes towards the entrance of the changing room every once in a while. I was a little worried about the girl. Just a tiny bit.

She joined us soon. After she showered, she started stretching, which was different for her. So different, in fact, that everyone started to freak out, including me. But she just kept stretching her legs as if it was perfectly normal for her.

After that, the six of us got together when the instructor called us to form a line… Wait, six of us? Our five pairs of eyes all slid to the right.

Against all odds, the girl was actually following instructions. Everyone looked stunned, including the instructor. I was suspicious, but she simply stood there with a straight face.

That day, the girl followed instructions like everyone else. She didn’t complain, didn’t rock the boat, and kept to herself, just like me. We all assumed it was a short-lived whim, but she never once wandered off.

I was the only one who knew why she might have had a change of heart. I could almost see our conversation in the changing room connected to this point by a string. Was she doing this because I said I didn’t like how she wasn’t serious?

But why? I thought, genuinely confused by the extreme change. I wondered if she really had thought we were friends until now.

Even when I dove down into the water, she floated through my head like bubbles.

When I rose to the surface of the water and turned, there she was, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And whenever our eyes met, she didn’t say anything, just kept moving as though nothing had happened. If she could do all of that, she should have done it from the start. I wondered what she was thinking, so much so that I ended up being the one looking at her instead of her at me.

She kept her cool all the way to the usual competition at the end of the class. I was convinced she would probably swim using the same stroke as me today. In that case, I really couldn’t lose against her on the one day she started taking things seriously.

Though I did my best to make sure it didn’t show, the truth was that I felt really competitive. But at the same time, I was really anxious, too.

Following the whistle, the girl and I kicked off the wall at the same time and sank into the water. Today’s stroke was the front crawl. Our start was a precise reenactment of the previous day, as if outlining the very future of the match.

This time, when we swam the same stroke and went forward the same way, she slowly overtook me. When I tried to make up the distance by fluttering my legs in a panic, she just gained even more. No matter how much I struggled, churning through the water and pushing my shoulders forward, I couldn’t catch up. In the end, I just watched the backs of her feet vanish into the distance.

What was so different about us? I started to doubt my own swimming abilities as I completed the twenty-five meters. When I blew out a spray of bubbles as I broke the surface, she was already there, watching as if she had been waiting for me.

“I’ll try to take things seriously from now on.” The water droplets divided her face as she looked at me.

I looked back at her, not wiping the water from my face either. I could feel a faint warmth deep in my cheeks, and a feeling that was almost like shame. I always thought that as long as I was serious, there was no way I’d lose. But now I had. Where should I go from here?

“So if I do that, y’know, um… Will you be my friend?” For once, her voice went quiet, like she was letting a little bit of weakness show.

Why did she want to be friends with me so badly? We only saw each other for an hour once a week, and it didn’t seem like we had anything in common. But if she wasn’t going to just mess around anymore, then I supposed there really wasn’t any reason for me to dislike her.

Still, for some reason, I felt resistant to the idea. Somewhere deep down inside, like the sediment at the bottom of a river.

“Sure.”

I pushed that hesitation aside and agreed. In response, the once-a-week friend I had accepted gave a relieved-­looking smile.

It was a soft smile, like the surface of water undisturbed by people.

 

Sunday was the only day I didn’t have any lessons. That just meant there were none available that day at the moment, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I added something new in the future. After I finished my homework, I heard a mewling sound in the hall, so I left my room.

The tortoiseshell cat was roaming around the hallway. I was drawn right in by its swaying tail despite myself, but the oversensitive cat whirled around as soon as I tried to get near it. “Hello,” I greeted, making a beckoning gesture with both hands. It looked up at me but then abruptly turned away again.

I followed it. I knew I would probably get in trouble for running in the halls, but I was maybe a little overexcited from the feeling of release after finishing my homework. The cat swerved out of the hallway and slipped through a gap into the garden. We didn’t have a lot of open spaces in the house, but the cats knew a lot of shortcuts.

When I put my shoes on and went outside to follow after it, I found the cat right away. Or so I’d thought.

“Huh?”

On second glance, I realized it was actually the other cat, the piebald. This one, too, ran quickly through the garden, as if it had traded places with the tortoiseshell at some point. I didn’t mind. When I chased after anything that moved, I felt almost like I had become a cat, too.

As I dashed after it through the trees, I spotted my grandmother, who was looking over the garden by herself. She bent over when she noticed the cat and opened her arms, inviting the piebald cat to her. In response, it strolled over and settled comfortably into her arms. My grandmother stood back up, still holding the cat, and her gaze fell on me.

My grandmother looked tall to me, although it might have been because she always stood so perfectly straight. Her eyes were sharp, like she was careful not to show anyone her weaknesses.

“Looks like she’s taken a liking to you,” she remarked.

“But it ran away from me.”

“I was talking to the cat.”

Old as she was, my grandmother’s voice was loud and easy to hear.

She was right, though. Until they came to live with us, I hadn’t really been interested in cats. Now that I had seen them up close and been around them, though, I felt differently. When I reached out my hand, the cat turned away, even though it had been playing with me moments ago. Cats were fickle creatures, it seemed.

“Don’t you have lessons?”

“No, not today.”

“My, that’s unusual,” my grandmother said. The cat stared at me from its position in her arms. I stood there for a while, looking back at the cat.

Even in the shade, it wasn’t cool outside by any standard. The cicadas’ cries slid from the trees like falling raindrops. Though they were really loud, and my grandmother’s hearing hadn’t gone yet, she didn’t seem to ­notice it at all. The greenish-yellow light from the branches reflected in my grandmother’s eyes.

“Aren’t you going to go out to play with your friends?”

“No, I was too busy working on homework to make plans.”

“You’re too well-behaved, dear.” My grandmother’s mouth softened a bit. Seen in profile, it added more wrinkles to her face. “No wonder they go around bragging about their beloved daughter.”

“Who does?”

“Your mother and father.”

When she said mother she raised the cat’s left foot, and when she said father she raised its right. The cat mewed unhappily at being used as a prop for the conversation.

“I’ve never heard them say that.”

“Well, it’d be embarrassing to say it directly to you, wouldn’t it?”

My grandmother sounded detached. I was about to disagree but then thought about how it would feel to hear someone say that about you. Then I also thought about how it might feel to say that to someone directly. If I told one of the kids in my class, “You’re the best friend anyone could ever have,” I’m sure it would cause a great deal of embarrassment for everyone involved.

“I guess you might be right.”

“You pick up on things quickly.” My grandmother muttered something softly, but the cicadas drowned it out with cries as loud as a waterfall, so it never reached me. “But the faster you pick things up, the more cowardly you’ll become.”

I couldn’t tell exactly who she was addressing.

My grandparents looked after me on weekdays, just like they took care of the cats. My grandfather was soft, and my grandmother was sharp, or at least that was the image I had in my childlike brain. But my grandmother’s sharpness was never directed at those around her. It was like she needed to become smaller and more angular in order to protect herself. And to me, she was the very image of what an adult should be.

“You’re not going to play with your friends?”

“You already asked me that.”

“Even if you don’t go to them, you could bring them over here… You don’t bring your friends over much, after all. That raises some questions. Don’t you think so?” she added to the cat.

The cat stared out between the trees, uninterested in adding to the conversation. Its eyes might have been following the cicadas that sometimes batted their wings in the garden. Does the cat have friends, too?

It wasn’t as though I didn’t have any. My grandmother was probably worried that not playing with friends wasn’t very childlike of me. But that just meant I would become an adult faster, which didn’t seem like a bad thing.

“I’m busy with lessons after class.”

Besides, even if I wasn’t very close to anyone at school, I had friends when I went to my lessons. The most recent friend I had made rose up with a splash from the pool in my mind, much to my annoyance.

“I know I’m the one who suggested them, but…are lessons really that fun for you?”

My grandmother gave me an uncertain look. I thought a little and then said, “Yeah. When I learn to do a lot of things, things get easier to understand, and I feel like I’ve grown up.”

“Hmm. Mm-hmm.” My grandmother took in a calm breath. Then she nodded and gave me some offhand praise. “Well, that’s certainly very impressive. I’m the type who didn’t really stick to anything, you see.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, there you are.” My grandfather had found us. Like my grandmother, he was also holding a cat in his arms as he came over. “Such a naughty little guy. I feel like I got in a whole year’s worth of running chasing after this one.”

He was out of breath. The tortoiseshell cat he held looked indifferent until it saw me and then seemed to grin.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I couldn’t help myself…”

When my grandmother spoke coldly to him, my grandfather laughed. They were the only two people who actually took care of the cats. The maid looked after the house and the people but said that cats weren’t in her job description. Still, I did see her preparing the cats’ meals sometimes. That probably wasn’t part of her job, either.

My grandfather took the white hat he wore off of his head and put it on mine. “You should wear a hat when you go outside.”

Touching the hat lightly, I looked up at my grandfather. He looked down at me with round eyes, as did the cat. “Even if you only go out for a little bit. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the yard or the streets—the sunlight outside is always the same.”

“Yes, sir…” I mumbled. At times like this, I tended to try to sound polite. Maybe I was trying to seem older to them by acting humble.

“So, what were you talking about?” my grandfather asked, like he was trying to get us to let him join in. My grandmother and I looked at each other and smiled slightly.

“Just about how great our granddaughter is,” she responded.

“What? But that’s what you always talk about.” Grandpa sighed contentedly. As he swung the lower half of the cat’s body from side to side, it seemed to grimace at the heat.

I’m not sure I could’ve been any more embarrassed by how openly they were talking about me.

All I could do was look down and feel just a little bit proud.

 

Monday was ikebana. Tuesday was calligraphy. Then Wednesday was swimming.

When I went into the building that day, the girl was pressed to the window, looking down at the pool. Her jet-black hair swayed like seaweed behind her. I was thinking about ignoring her, but she immediately turned around.

“Oh, it’s my bestie Saeki-san!”

“Do you really need to say it like that?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the receptionist lady chuckling. I felt a little embarrassed. “Don’t say that so loud.”

“But you might not be able to hear if I say it too quiet!”

It’s not like I want to hear it. She seemed happy as she came up to me, grinning without a care in the world. “I’m just excited, that’s all.”

“Don’t you have other friends?”

“Uh, I do at school, yeah. But, I dunno, I’m happy that I get to be friends with you, Saeki-san.”

“Right…”

I remembered the conversation I had with my grandmother a few days ago. It really was embarrassing when someone said something like that to you outright—I had no idea how to respond. Unlike a grown-up, she had no tact at all.

As we passed by the vending machine, she turned around towards it. That drew my attention too, so I looked back to hear the machine droning and glittering, as always.

“Maybe later, I guess. More importantly, it seems like you’d have a ton of friends, Saeki-san.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re cute.”

She said it shamelessly, and I nearly turned away on sheer instinct. It felt as though all the air that had been in my lungs was rushing to my head. Trying to let it go without making a big deal about it, I slowly breathed out all that air.

“I’m actually quite bad at making friends.”

It’s easy to call someone a friend, but that doesn’t mean you value all of your friends equally. Some people might have really close friends, but they probably have just as many friends who don’t amount to much more than acquaintances.

All of my friends probably fell in the latter camp.

“Really?” she mumbled and then broke out into a smile, as if she’d just thought of something. “You should just fix the bad parts of you, then.”

“I don’t mind those parts of me, even if they’re bad.”

I was learning things that friends couldn’t teach me through books and grown-ups. That was much more valuable to me. I didn’t have enough time for both.

“Hmm?” She tilted her head like she didn’t understand at all. “Everything you say sounds so smart.”

“Sure.” I wanted to become a person who said smart things, so that was fine.

“You probably get really good grades on tests, right?”

She changed the subject almost immediately. No, wait, I guess we were still talking about me. She appeared to want to get to know me, but I didn’t understand why. Was it because we were friends? That seemed like putting the cart before the horse.

“I guess I do all right?”

I didn’t know whether saying “yes, always” would have been acceptable, so I just answered vaguely. Even when I opened the door to the changing room and went inside, the girl just would not shut her mouth. The lighting inside the changing room seemed bright to my eyes, making me squint.

“I really admire smart people, ’cause I’m pretty dumb.”

Talk about an unspeakably bad self-introduction. I opened my locker. Hers was four places over, putting a strange distance between us.

…Maybe I should say something back? I hesitated as I got my swimsuit ready. Finally, I decided I should probably at least try, so I opened my mouth.

“If you try your best, your test scores will work themselves out.”

“You think so?” The girl wrinkled her nose. Then, she suddenly looked up. “Wait, I wonder if I just need to be more serious about that, too?”

“Maybe,” I agreed, feeling more than a little worried about her future.

I finished changing ahead of the girl, who chattered the entire time. She stopped getting ready and stared straight at me. When my eyes met with hers, she got flustered and turned back to her locker. I felt a sense of déjà vu.

I wonder what that was about…

There was something mysterious about the way she sometimes looked at me, I thought as I headed towards the pool.

“Hey, wait up.”

“What’s the point of waiting for you when the pool is right over there?”

“Yeah, I guess so, but still.”

It seemed like she was fighting with her shirt, which had gotten stuck to her back with sweat. I didn’t have a reason to wait around for her, so I started going ahead.

“Waaaait, bestiiiiiie!”

Now I really had zero desire to wait for her.

When I got out to the pool, the humidity enveloped my skin all at once. Even with the air conditioning on, the mugginess always got worse by the pool. I walked to the side of the pool and looked up at the big windowpane overhead.

My eyes fell on the spot where the girl had been pressed up against it not long before. I wonder what she was looking at from up there. The only thing swimming in the empty pool was a bunch of ripples.

The girl came over right as I was showering off and kept hopping around as she got ready. I know this is weird for me to say, but she seemed really childish, or at least weirdly energetic. I guess she must have been in a good mood.

While I was putting on my swim cap and watching her, one of the instructors came over to me and addressed me quietly, with a curious glance toward the girl. “Saeki, did you say something to her?” He was probably referring to how she was actually listening to directions now.

“No, not really…” It was a white lie. I really hadn’t expected my words to have that much impact. “I thought maybe you gave her a warning, Sensei,” I added, even though I hadn’t really. I did think that would have made more sense.

The instructor answered with an honest, “No, it wasn’t me.”

I was a little taken aback. “But it’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah…it’s just that I can’t really teach her at an intermediate level.”

“Huh?”

“Because her form is already so perfect.” The instructor scratched his head as though he were at a loss. Then he took a look at me and smiled. “Ah, but I definitely like it when kids listen to directions, of course.”

“Uh-huh…” He was trying to smooth things over for me. I guess that made him a good grown-up.

Her form is perfect. Those were nice words that I’d heard many times at my lessons but never during swimming class. That probably had less to do with whether I was well suited to swimming, and more with the fact that there was someone else who was better than me all along.

During our swim instruction, I tried to follow the girl with my eyes. Whenever she started swimming, I sank underwater and watched her through my goggles. It probably looked a little suspicious, I suppose. I also watched her when we swam next to each other and when we passed each other. She would disappear ahead of me, always followed by bubbles.

But even after watching her the whole time, I couldn’t figure out what it was about her form that was so perfect. It was just that her arms and legs moved nimbly. Like she had no trouble cutting through the water, her shoulders just naturally rotating to propel her forward. Maybe it was the way she never faltered.

Since I was watching her, our eyes met a lot. That meant she must have been looking at me, too. Whenever our eyes locked, she would smile at me and wave her hand, and I had no idea how to respond.

“………”

Shoulder-deep in the water, I brought my left arm close to me as though I were cradling it. I could feel the distance between us—and it was growing. How much hard work on my part would it take to surpass her talent?

I had so many other lessons. The time I could spend on this was limited. I wasn’t sure if I could overtake her at all, and even if I did hypothetically surpass her, there was a chance I would just be behind another person. If I had to just repeat that forever…

Maybe there was no security to be found in first place after all.

 

“Saeki-san, do you want something to drink?”

Right as I left the changing room, the girl came up beside me, like she had rushed to follow me.

“Wait. Your shirt…”

The bottom of her shirt was rolled up, exposing the right side of her stomach. Clearly, she’d been in a rush. Sighing, I reached over and tugged the shirt back into place. She pushed her wet hair off her neck.

“Well? C’mon.” She spun around and made her way in front of me, then pointed at the vending machine in the hall.

“A drink?” I repeated.

“Which do you want?” Ignoring my question, she jumped right ahead to the next one.

“I’m fine… I don’t have money on me, anyway.”

As if she had anticipated this, the girl proudly stuck out her chest. Then she tapped the vending machine lightly, as if to say that I could just leave everything to her.

“It’s my treat.” For some reason, she looked pleased with herself, as though she was expecting me to be impressed. Her eyes sparkled brighter than the lights on the vending machine.

I accepted the challenge and used the school backpack she wore against her. “You’re not supposed to carry money around at school.”

“I’m not?” Her eyes went wide, like it was the first time she’d ever heard of such a thing. I had always assumed that it was a rule, and I thought I remembered someone telling me so, but maybe I was wrong. “C’mon, it’s fine,” she wheedled, giving me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

When she moved, a drop of water flew off her bangs and hit me in the face. I was getting vaguely annoyed. “No thanks.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t need you to treat me.”

I didn’t want to be in debt to this girl, or anyone else for that matter. Plus, if we started to do little things like this for each other, we might end up actually becoming close.

“Okay, um, then I’ll just buy a drink for myself, and you can have a little.”

The girl tugged on my sleeve to stop me from leaving. I didn’t know what to make of that, so I all I could do was stop. “A little?”

“Yeah, or a lot, if you want.”

That’s not the problem.

I looked at the girl. The look on her face was clingy, pleading… She was basically making puppy-dog eyes at me. I wished the cats treated me like this.

My grandmother’s voice echoed in the back of my mind… Right. Friends. Breathing out a sigh, I sat down on the bench next to the vending machine. Realizing that this was my way of answering her, the girl broke into a smile.

“Are you okay with carbonation?”

“Sure.”

The girl pushed a button. Glancing over, I saw that the button she had picked was under a red paper carton.

“Isn’t that apple juice, though?”

“Yup.”

“Then why did you ask about carbonation?”

“I was just curious.” The girl sat down next to me. She stuck the straw in and drank a little before handing it to me. “Here you go.”

“Thanks…” I hesitated. This was my first time doing something like this with someone outside of my family.

The red carton in my hand was cold, but it felt nice. The straw had vertical blue stripes. I glanced at the girl, who looked back at me oddly, so I put the straw to my lips. Immediately, the sweet, tart taste filled my mouth. I was definitely thirsty after getting out of the pool, so the excessive sweetness was a welcome surprise. Even so, I took care not to drink too much of it.

As I gave the paper carton back to her, a small thought came into my mind, so I decided to ask about it. “Have you been swimming a long time?”

“Huh?”

“Because it seems like you’re really good at it.”

Although it took you long enough to listen to directions.

She took the juice back and answered, “I’ve been coming here for about a year now. I just like being in the water.” Her eyes and mouth crinkled into a grin. There was a shine to her damp hair that looked nice with her tanned skin.

“Lately, I’ve been liking it even more.” She leaned against the back of the bench and looked up, taking a deep breath and releasing it.

“I see.”

“Want some more?”

I took the juice she offered, drank some, and gave it back. The cold sensation trickled down my throat, and as I took a breath, I felt myself calming down a little.

“Do you live nearby, Saeki-san?”

“It’s about a fifteen-minute walk.”

“Hey, that’s pretty close. I bet your house is big, too.”

I didn’t really understand how those things were ­related, but she wasn’t exactly wrong, either. I gave her a look that asked why she thought that.

“’Cause you just kinda seem like a rich girl.”

“Really…?” I wanted to ask what made her think that. But I remembered our front gate and that she was more or less correct. For one thing, as far as I could tell from conversations with my friends, it seemed like having a maid was unusual.

“Have you ever been to a family restaurant?”

“Are you making fun of me…?” I acted insulted, but the truth was that I really hadn’t. My family had never taken me, so that was that. I had seen them before, of course.

“Summer vacation is coming up. Got any plans?”

She wasn’t even drinking her juice anymore, just chatting away. Her expressions changed wildly from moment to moment.

“Homework and lessons.”

“But isn’t that what you always do?”

“Look, are you going to drink your juice or not?”

The girl looked down at the carton she was holding. She started to bring it up to her mouth but seemed to reconsider and pulled it away.

“You want some?”

“Just drink it,” I told her. She had bought it for herself, after all. But for some reason, her eyes wandered, as if she was nervous.

“Uh, right,” she answered vaguely. Her fingers fiddled with the carton, pushing it back and forth. “But once I finish drinking it…well, you know, right?”

“Know what?” I didn’t know what she was saying or what she was getting so hung up about.

The girl pouted unhappily. “Once I finish drinking it, you’ll probably go home.”

“Yes, of course I will.”

She brought her face closer to mine. The smell of ­chlorine hit my nose all at once.

“This is the only time I get to see you, so I wanted to talk about lots of stuff.”

I could clearly see her red tongue moving, a sharp contrast to her suntanned skin. She just wanted to talk to me. How long had it been since someone at school had come to me with such a request?

“Well, I…”

“Ahh, I wish I could go to the same school as you, Saeki-san.”

Before I could say anything, she drew back and stretched, releasing this lament. She wanted to be at the same school as me? I could easily imagine her coming up to me while I was studying and chatting endlessly. It was probably for the best that she couldn’t, I thought. But when her eyes met mine, she grinned, as if she didn’t realize how I felt about it at all. It was bright and friendly, sort of like the way my grandfather smiled.

But there was something more important than that, something I needed to ask her, no matter what.

“Listen, why do you like me so much?”

I hadn’t known this girl for long. And we hadn’t had a chance to get to know each other, so much so that this was the most we had ever talked to each other. The only sides of her I knew were how unserious she was and how she got uncomfortably close and acted like she knew me, and I honestly hated all of that about her. Or at least, I had until about two weeks ago.

Despite all that, she was clearly very fond of me. We seemed to have completely contradictory opinions of each other, so I couldn’t help being curious.

When I asked her that, she looked down at her hands, which were wet from the condensation on the carton.

“Well, all this time…”

“Huh?”

The girl looked at me. I wasn’t sure if she was aware of this, but her face and lips were screwed up tight, almost like she was in pain.

“Whenever I see you, my palms get all hot. It’s been like that since the first time I saw you. And my back feels hot, too. I start to feel sweaty, and I can’t seem to stop it. I don’t feel like that when I see anyone or anything else, only with you, Saeki-san. So I always thought there must be something special about you.”

The words spilled out all at once, as though she were exposing everything that had been pent up inside her. The part about feeling hot seemed to be true, because her cheeks were faintly red, like they were on fire.

She bent forward as if she was pleading for something. She was so close. My shoulders froze, like I’d been exposed to a strong headwind.

Those things the girl felt. I didn’t have any personal experience with them, but I felt like I knew what they were. But it was an impossible combination. I mean, the person next to me was a girl, and so was I.

“Um, so, why d’you think I feel like that?” The girl leaned so far forward that she nearly pitched over, looking to me for an answer. Don’t ask me, I thought.

“I’m not sure. I’m not the one who feels that way, so…I have no idea.” I turned my face away as I lied. I’m sure I wouldn’t have known what it was if I were in her place, either.

“Right.” The girl smiled meekly. “I thought you might know, since you’re so smart.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I might know a lot, but I still have lots and lots to learn.”

For one thing, I hadn’t realized that someone who seemed so close by was actually walking so far ahead of me. And the way she had bared her soul to me just now… I was starting to fear this girl more and more.

“Riiight,” she mumbled again, looking up. Neither of us touched what was left of the juice. The girl swept her wet hair aside, tucking it behind her ear.

“I like being in the water,” she said softly.

“You just told me that.”

The girl giggled. “Well, if I’m in the pool, I don’t feel as hot when I look at you.”

With that, she closed her eyes, almost as though she were about to sleep. It was like she had said all she needed to say and was satisfied now. How selfish she was. I felt equal amounts of resentment and embarrassment bubbling up within me.

“………”

Is she being serious? Could she really be that oblivious?

Either way, facing her directly was too much right now. I couldn’t move away, so I tilted my head down and looked away.

Now it felt as if the muscles in my neck were becoming hot, too.

A chill ran down my spine, filling my restless body with something like fear.

As I sat there, I could hear something joining the hum of the vending machine: a low murmur arising inside me because of the girl at my side. That something, which I couldn’t quite pick out, was like the sound of waves on a wide, sandy beach. The indistinct sound took on a shape that was neither a triangle nor a rectangle as it tried to tell me something.

But I couldn’t find the answer before it melted into the bubbling heat.

 

Just as I’d told the girl, I started off my summer vacation by doing homework.

Other than not going to school, my daily life didn’t change much. I saw the maid more frequently, since she came in during the afternoon on weekdays. She was good at cleaning the house. Apparently, she had also been cleaning my room while I wasn’t at home.

“If you decide you want to clean your room yourself instead, just let me know.” She smiled, clearly hoping she wouldn’t have to do as much work.

After finishing my homework, I filled my free time by studying other things. When I finished doing that, too, I grew bored and went to look for the cats. The tortoiseshell cat would usually run away, but the piebald cat had started to get used to me and would jump onto my lap from time to time. I pet its back, feeling like I was making definite progress.

What else are you supposed to do during summer break, I wonder? Whenever my mind wandered, I’d start thinking about silly things, and sometimes my thoughts would gravitate towards that girl.

She was a strange girl, I thought. That was basically my whole impression of her, other than the caution that wove itself into the back of my mind. If I kept looking right at her, it felt like I might see something entirely new. It was like I had seen into a part of myself I didn’t know, as if I had gone underwater and couldn’t go back. But I was probably just being paranoid.

I didn’t know whether I wanted those changes to happen or wanted to run away from them. I wondered just how hot the palms of the girl’s hands felt.

Then it was Wednesday. The one day I now couldn’t help being painfully aware of.

When I headed out, it didn’t feel like I was going to swim class so much as that I was going to see that girl. It wasn’t about whether I liked her or not—it was more that I was being drawn towards her, somehow.

The cicadas were chirping along the road as always, the sun was strong, and the clouds gathered overhead. Somehow, though, it felt like the sunlight was even whiter than usual. Everything seemed fuzzy around the edges. I couldn’t make things out, even when I rubbed my eyes.

“Don’t tell me…”

I touched the corner of my eye.

Had my eyesight gotten a bit worse? The image of the notes on my desk came to mind. Maybe I had abused my eyes so much that they now specialized in seeing things that were close to me at the cost of those that were farther away.

Because I had focused on making myself better, there were things about me that had gotten worse. It reminded me of the feeling of pushing my fingers down on both sides of a scale.

I arrived at the swimming class building. I bet she’s here. Even before I went inside, I had a foreboding sense that she would be in the lobby again. The accumulating heat seemed to coil around my hair, so I shook it off as I went up the stairs.

It wasn’t coincidence that I kept running into that girl at the entrance; she had been waiting for me there. Sure enough, she was pushing up against the window again. There was a chair right next to her, but she showed no interest in sitting in it. And, of course, she didn’t have her school backpack on today.

I stared at her waiting back for a moment.

“Hello.” I think this might have been the first time that I was the one to greet her.

“Oh, Saeki-san!” She turned around immediately.

The girl seemed genuinely thrilled as she came over to my side. As she waved innocently, I wondered if her palms were already hot. If her back had started to sweat. If she would eventually figure out what those feelings really were. And whether I wanted to know the full extent of them.

The girl stood next to me as though it were exactly where she belonged. The receptionist, I noticed, was watching us with amusement. I felt like she was wrongly assuming we were close. We weren’t. At the very least, I didn’t think we had the kind of friendship that warranted someone staring at us and smiling.

“It’s so great being on summer vacation.”

“Is it?” As we headed to the changing room, I tilted my head at her. She seemed to want me to agree.

“I mean, I don’t really like school, anyway. Do you like school, Saeki-san?”

“Umm…”

When she put it that way, I supposed I didn’t dislike it. I never had to worry about being bored. I certainly had no idea what to do with myself during summer vacation.

We went into the changing room and stopped in front of the lockers like always, and she looked at me like she always did. She was watching me while I changed my clothes. Her gaze seemed to carry a different meaning to me now, and the awareness made my movements stiff. I tried my best not to show it, facing forward as I continued changing.

I locked the locker and, right as I turned to head to the pool, the girl cut in front of me. Of course, she hadn’t changed yet. She was still just looking at me.

“I’ll be there in a sec.”

“Sure.”

I passed her by. This was normal—just normal. We weren’t best friends forever or anything silly like that. And yet, she clearly considered me special.

The lesson started, and unlike in the changing room, I was the one following after her in the pool. I’d begun to recognize the difference in her superior swimming form. She didn’t learn from other people but still forged ahead. I was starting to realize that some people were just like that.

It did bother me, of course. But the coolness of the water placated me, calming me down.

I followed the instructor’s directions, doing laps back and forth across the pool. I made sure to move my body carefully in line with what I had been taught. As I came and went, I checked next to me, but I didn’t see her. Maybe she had passed me without my noticing. When I finished my lap, I touched my hand to the wall and surfaced.

“Ah!”

When I brought my face out of the water, she was right next to me. Apparently, she had gone across the lanes at some point to enter mine. Her goggles were on her forehead, leaving her eyes exposed. They were slick with water, just like her skin.

“Wh-what is it?”

“You’re the one who was looking at me. I thought you needed something.”

I could feel the other kids’ eyes on us. Should we really keep talking like this?

“I was just admiring your swimming.”

I gave her a straightforward excuse, trying to get her to go back to her lane quickly. But she responded with an easygoing “Aww, shucks, really?” as if she was pleased to hear the compliment. It seemed like she really didn’t care about the other people around her. I suppose the only exception was me—because I made her feel hot.

“You’re good at swimming, too, Saeki-san.”

“…Thanks.”

“But I don’t think your arms are in the right position when you push through the water.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Try it like this…”

She reached over to grab my arm and show me how to position it. But then she stopped halfway and withdrew. The girl stared at her own hand. It was so sudden, it felt as though time had stopped all around us.

“Um, hello…?”

When I spoke to her quietly, she didn’t say anything but just splashed her way back into her own lane. She stopped looking at me after that, and I tried not to look in her direction, either. Instead, I focused on where my arms were when I paddled the water. It didn’t feel like I was going any faster.

After class ended and we said our goodbyes, I realized that the girl was still standing in place alone while everyone else went back to the changing room. Just as I was about to ask her what was wrong, she jumped into the deserted pool without hesitation.

SPLOOSH! She sent up a gigantic splash, like she had carved out a part of the water. The instructor came running back. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?!”

When the instructor yelled at her, the girl came up to the surface. She floated there on her back, right in the middle of the pool. There she stayed, unmoving, completely ignoring the instructor’s warning. Looking closer, I realized that she had taken off her swim cap and goggles at some point, leaving them to float elsewhere in the pool.

“Just when I thought she was behaving…” The instructor sighed.

But I knew what was happening. It was something that no one but me could know. The girl’s entire body had probably become so hot that she just couldn’t help it.

“………”

I wondered how hot she must feel.

I wondered if I would be able to tell even in the water.

“Saeki?”

The instructor’s voice stuck to the back of my head and then slipped off easily.

Though not as flashily as the girl had, I jumped off the edge of the pool and dove into the water, too. The loud sound of the water bubbling up surrounded my head. I thought of fixing my swim cap when it started slipping off, but then I remembered the girl’s cap and let the water take it. My goggles and cap came off just like hers, and all my hair was submerged in water, dragging me downward.

As I kicked off the pool wall and swam over to the center, my floating legs trembled. I moved them as though I was pushing away the water. The girl sank downward in a haze of bubbles, then changed direction and started swimming over to me. I swam toward her, too, so we met in the middle before we ran out of air.

We were still underwater when our eyes met. Even without our goggles, the otherwise empty pool was still enough that we could see each other’s faces clearly. Her eyes, which seemed to sparkle even underwater, captivated me. The bubbles quietly continued to rise up around us.

It was odd, but I didn’t feel anywhere near out of breath.

We stared at each other, not attempting to speak. I wondered whether the instructor was angry with us on the surface. Why did you come down here? the girl’s eyes seemed to ask me.

I came here to find out, I responded silently, letting out some bubbles. To find out how hot your palms are.

I took the girl’s hand. That seemed to surprise her; she breathed out a whole bunch of bubbles. Kicking her feet to stay in position, she looked at the hand I had taken into mine. The colors of our hands contrasted, so even my faltering eyesight could see their outlines clearly.

Her hands really were warm, just like she said. The heat radiating off her palms seemed to beat with a steady pulse, almost thrumming against the water. Her fingertips tensed tightly against mine. The girl looked from our connected hands to my face and back, in this world where not even breath could reach us.

Then, with a relaxed expression that wasn’t quite a smile, she took my other hand. With both our hands connected, our fingers intimately intertwined. I felt like my own hands might be getting hot, too.

The moment we shared was wondrous, like a perfectly spherical bubble that would pop at the slightest touch. It felt like a never-ending dream. But my need for air began to rise, as if to prove that it was just an illusion. I motioned with my eyes, asking if we could surface. Despite all the air she had lost before, the other girl still seemed fine. She shook her head slightly and brought her face close to mine.

What was she doing? I braced myself, but my hands were still in hers, so I couldn’t move to stop her.

The girl brought her face to the crook of my neck. I felt my skin breaking out into goosebumps, even though we were in the water. All at once, her lips were pressed against my skin. Then they moved ever so slightly, and I felt my head spinning like a whirlpool.

Something began to overflow from the space between her lips and my neck.

Bubbles rose in front of my eyes, along with a muddied burbling sound. Dizzied as I was, I finally realized what the girl was trying to do.

Air—she was trying to give me air.

So that we could be alone together, if only for a little longer.

Her bubbles brushed against my lips as they headed towards the surface.

I accepted them, as if breathing those bubbles into my own lungs.

 

In that moment, my heart cracked.

 

That was the only explanation I could think of for the sharp pain that ran through my chest. I could hear the sound clearly, as something seemed to break inside me.

Brushing off the girl’s hands, I rushed to the surface. As I broke out of the water, the only thing that filled my ears was the sound of my own unsteady breathing. I held my chest with my hand. My anxious fingers shook, checking whether my chest had broken open.

What just happened?

The pain in my heart sent fireworks rushing past my eyes, and beyond them, I caught a glimpse of something else. Or was it the opposite? Had my heart cracked trying to suppress whatever that something was?

The girl also came up in a fluster. A little shriek nearly escaped my throat.

“Saeki-sa—”

I avoided the hand she stretched towards me and escaped to the pool’s edge. Scrambling up and out of the pool, I slipped past the instructor, ignoring whatever he was trying to say, and ran up the stairs. I didn’t even dry off my drenched body or face as I pulled my bag out of the locker, just focused entirely on tearing off my swimsuit so I could change into my clothes. The gross feeling of the fabric sticking to my wet skin barely registered as I ran out of the changing room.

I realized partway through this process that my swim cap and goggles were still in the pool, but I didn’t even consider going back to get them. Instead, I threw the key down on the reception desk and didn’t even wait to get my card back before leaving the building behind me.

Just like that, I ran away. A fresh wave of fear shook my body when I thought I heard the sound of footsteps chasing after me, but I didn’t slow down.

The summer sunlight didn’t seem to reach me, as though the water were preventing it from getting to my skin. Something pitch-black was weighing down on me.

What had I seen? What was it that I had accepted—that made my breath leap until I couldn’t breathe at all—that had terrified me? What was that? What was that? My thoughts spun wildly.

The goosebumps wouldn’t go away, and my spine still trembled. A wintry chill that I couldn’t seem to shake off filled my body. The feeling of her lips on my neck still clung to my skin, in spite of the water droplets that dripped around it.

I was practically flying along the ground as I ran, my vision bouncing up and down dizzyingly. There was something else behind the bubbles that I had just inhaled. Something I was not yet allowed to know. My childish knowledge and limited experience could not begin to approach it. Only my deepest instincts suspected its identity.

The manifestation of that feeling, which I could only represent with crude triangles and squares, was simply terrifying to me. Gripped by fear, all I could do was run away.

The only thing I knew with certainty was that I must never see that girl again.

 

That evening, I made sure both my parents were present before I cleared my throat and spoke.

“I want to quit swimming. It’s just not right for me.”

This was the first time I had told them I wanted to quit anything. Nervous, I waited for their response.

My dad briefly mumbled, “Uh-huh,” and my mother simply said, “Really? I suppose these things do happen.” Not a single scolding or objection. They just accepted it right away.

I had given up on something for the first time, but they forgave me. Maybe my belief that I lived in a respectable house and needed to behave accordingly was all just in my head? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was drifting, as though I had thrown myself into the water and was just floating there.

I didn’t understand anything anymore.

After that, as I was walking through the hallway to my room, I accidentally touched my own hand. There was a warmth burning within it that was entirely separate from the summer heat. I left my hands pressed together, waiting until it disappeared.

As I tilted my face downward to look at them, something slipped from the surface of my drooping bangs. Like a droplet of water had fallen from my hair, even though it was no longer wet.

It crept along my skin, tracing its way down to the still-lingering sensation on my neck.

 

I don’t often think about the events of elementary school. Perhaps it’s been so long now that I simply forgot about it somewhere along the way.

But even if so much time has passed that I no longer remember much, it will never truly disappear.

The memories, the warmth—all of it.