A loud screeeech rang through the outside summer air. Beyond the rusted iron gate, a staircase rose up before us. The stairs had once been light blue, but most of their paint had since peeled away. We vaulted the steps two at a time, and at the top we found clear blue sky, lounging white clouds, and a spread of green forest. The same beautiful scenery was re-created in the still water of a twenty-five-meter pool before Yusuke and me.
Yusuke tossed the mop he’d been holding to the side and said, “Whaddaya think? Shall we ditch the cleaning?”
“Don’t you know? Pool cleaning duty comes with a special perk. Since the swim team already cleans the pool every day, there’s really nothing for us to do!” I replied.
“Sounds about right.”
Yusuke and I grinned from ear to ear: We had the entire pool to ourselves. We stripped off our gym clothes and pulled tight the waist cords on our school-issued (and decidedly unfashionable) athletic trunks. With goggles strapped to our heads and shoes tossed aside, we started our dash to the pool—only to stop short.
“Ow!”
“Geez! My feet are gonna burn off!”
The concrete poolside had been subject to its own bath of scorching sun all morning long. It would have been easier to walk our bare feet across hot coals.
“Oh man… Let’s just jump in alrea— Huh?”
Yusuke cut himself off. I looked up and found him staring over my shoulder.
“Nazuna?” he said.
I followed his gaze to the other side of the pool.
“Oh…”
There, twenty-five meters away, sitting atop the starting blocks and wearing her athletic one-piece swimsuit, was Nazuna.
My eyes were unconsciously drawn to her faintly swelling chest. They continued downward, along the gentle curves that connected her rounded hips to her thighs and firm calves. Nazuna’s feet dangled in the pool. She slowly dragged them back and forth through the water, creating ripples that distorted her reflected self.
“Um…was she on pool duty today?”
“Pretty sure it’s just the two of us.”
“Oh, is she on the swim team, then…? Do they have practice today?”
“No idea.”
“Hey, I gotta go to the bathroom.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Dunno. Saw Nazuna, and now I gotta take a dump.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Yusuke started waddling away with his arms and legs held stiff.
“You’re so weird.”
It was an old quirk of Yusuke’s. Ever since we were in kindergarten, any time something unexpected confronted him, he’d suddenly need to go.
One time, we were in the middle of a soccer game. He’d been fouled and was lined up to make his penalty kick. The ref’s whistle sounded, and Yusuke just shot off the field toward the restrooms.
I shifted my gaze from Yusuke’s awkward waddle back to Nazuna…
Huh? What in the world is she doing?
Now she was lying faceup, as if the poolside were her bed. The rays of the hot summer sun beat down on her. I was alone at the pool with Nazuna. A cacophony of morning cicadas served only to underscore the awkward quiet between us.
Is she waiting for something? What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?
It felt ridiculous to just stand there waiting for Yusuke to get back. And Nazuna had to have noticed I was there. It would be decidedly uncool for me to just hang around uncomfortably on my side of the pool…
Mentally arming myself with that slew of excuses, I moved closer to Nazuna. When I was about six feet away, I could see her expression. She was lying with her eyes closed and her mouth fixed into a faint smile, which made her somehow feel further away than she actually was. I sensed I shouldn’t get any closer to her and stopped walking.
“…Um… Out sunbathing today?”
My words came out much quieter than expected, but Nazuna seemed to hear them. She shook her head slightly from one side to the other.
I forced an awkward cough and then asked, “Um, got practice today?”
“…Nope.”
“Um… Just going for a swim?”
“Not swimming.”
“Uhh… Why are you here, then?”
“Guess.”
“…I have no idea.”
Nazuna’s eyes stayed closed throughout the exchange.
“Why, oh why, could I be here?”
“…”
It felt like we were in the middle of some kind of avant-garde comedy sketch. I’m a straightforward guy: setup and payoff. I didn’t think I could go on like that, so I just stopped responding. How was I supposed to know why she was there? Without the faintest idea what kind of response she was fishing for, all I could do was shut up and listen to the background music, compliments of the Moshimo Cicada Chamber Choir.
A dragonfly bobbed languidly before my eyes. It briefly touched down on the surface of the pool two or three times, then doubled back and began circling just above Nazuna. Finally, it perched…right on one of the shoulder straps of Nazuna’s swimsuit.
Nazuna didn’t so much as flinch. It was impossible to tell whether she was aware of the dragonfly or not.
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“It landed on you.”
“What did?”
“A white-tailed dragonfly.”
“…Grab it.”
“Huh?”
“Catch it.”
Nazuna continued to speak to me with her eyes closed. Her tone was hard to place. It might have been the cute pleading of a smitten girl, or it could have been the listless teasing of someone well aware they had the upper hand…
Dragonfly catching wasn’t anything new to me. But the dragonfly’s location was…problematic. I hesitantly drew nearer, and soon my vision was entirely filled with Nazuna’s supine figure. The fact took me more by surprise than it ought to have.
When we did swimming in PE, girls and boys were always split into separate classes. This was the first time I’d ever seen a girl in a swimsuit up close. The whole situation seemed kind of suggestive…
Whoa, there! Keep your mind on the task at hand! And man, would the cicadas just shut up already?!
I turned my head to one side, trying to angle it away from Nazuna as I leaned in and reached toward her collarbone. My valiant attempt to look away predictably faltered when I realized my eyes were now pointed directly at her breast. My hand started to quaver.
The dragonfly! Focus on the dragonfly!
I repeated my newfound mantra and continued to stretch out my hand. My thumb and index finger were a quarter inch apart, closing in on the dragonfly’s wing…
The dragonfly sprang into the air.
“Oh…”
I followed the insect’s course high up into the sky. Nazuna sat up.
“You’re pretty bad at that.”
She looked at my dumbfounded face as I stared up at the dragonfly, and she laughed at me.
“Am not!”
I glanced down at her face but received an eyeful of cleavage, too. Embarrassed, I turned away. It was probably the first time I’d talked face-to-face with Nazuna since we started junior high.
There was a small, round object lying at Nazuna’s feet. It looked like some kind of stone…or ball…or maybe an orb.
It was perfectly round—too round to have been formed by nature—and its surface was etched with a mysterious, ineffable pattern.
“Hey… What’s that?”
“Huh? Oh, this…? I found it in the ocean earlier today.”
Nazuna scooped up the mysterious orb and handed it to me.
So this is what I saw her fishing out of the ocean before school…
It was about the size of a tennis ball, and though it had looked fairly large while in Nazuna’s hand, it seemed a bit smaller in mine. Its weight seemed both too heavy and yet too light for something of its size and build. The texture was unlike anything I’d held before.
“Is it a rock? …Or made of some kind of glass?”
“I don’t know. I picked it up because I thought it looked pretty.”
“It’s really weird…”
I held the orb up in the sunlight. The strange hues covering its surface grew more intense. I didn’t disagree with Nazuna. It was quite pretty.