“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.