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.