“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.