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.