After class ended and we said our goodbyes, I realized that the girl was still standing in place alone while everyone else went back to the changing room. Just as I was about to ask her what was wrong, she jumped into the deserted pool without hesitation.
SPLOOSH! She sent up a gigantic splash, like she had carved out a part of the water. The instructor came running back. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?!”
When the instructor yelled at her, the girl came up to the surface. She floated there on her back, right in the middle of the pool. There she stayed, unmoving, completely ignoring the instructor’s warning. Looking closer, I realized that she had taken off her swim cap and goggles at some point, leaving them to float elsewhere in the pool.
“Just when I thought she was behaving…” The instructor sighed.
But I knew what was happening. It was something that no one but me could know. The girl’s entire body had probably become so hot that she just couldn’t help it.
“………”
I wondered how hot she must feel.
I wondered if I would be able to tell even in the water.
“Saeki?”
The instructor’s voice stuck to the back of my head and then slipped off easily.
Though not as flashily as the girl had, I jumped off the edge of the pool and dove into the water, too. The loud sound of the water bubbling up surrounded my head. I thought of fixing my swim cap when it started slipping off, but then I remembered the girl’s cap and let the water take it. My goggles and cap came off just like hers, and all my hair was submerged in water, dragging me downward.
As I kicked off the pool wall and swam over to the center, my floating legs trembled. I moved them as though I was pushing away the water. The girl sank downward in a haze of bubbles, then changed direction and started swimming over to me. I swam toward her, too, so we met in the middle before we ran out of air.
We were still underwater when our eyes met. Even without our goggles, the otherwise empty pool was still enough that we could see each other’s faces clearly. Her eyes, which seemed to sparkle even underwater, captivated me. The bubbles quietly continued to rise up around us.
It was odd, but I didn’t feel anywhere near out of breath.
We stared at each other, not attempting to speak. I wondered whether the instructor was angry with us on the surface. Why did you come down here? the girl’s eyes seemed to ask me.
I came here to find out, I responded silently, letting out some bubbles. To find out how hot your palms are.
I took the girl’s hand. That seemed to surprise her; she breathed out a whole bunch of bubbles. Kicking her feet to stay in position, she looked at the hand I had taken into mine. The colors of our hands contrasted, so even my faltering eyesight could see their outlines clearly.
Her hands really were warm, just like she said. The heat radiating off her palms seemed to beat with a steady pulse, almost thrumming against the water. Her fingertips tensed tightly against mine. The girl looked from our connected hands to my face and back, in this world where not even breath could reach us.
Then, with a relaxed expression that wasn’t quite a smile, she took my other hand. With both our hands connected, our fingers intimately intertwined. I felt like my own hands might be getting hot, too.
The moment we shared was wondrous, like a perfectly spherical bubble that would pop at the slightest touch. It felt like a never-ending dream. But my need for air began to rise, as if to prove that it was just an illusion. I motioned with my eyes, asking if we could surface. Despite all the air she had lost before, the other girl still seemed fine. She shook her head slightly and brought her face close to mine.
What was she doing? I braced myself, but my hands were still in hers, so I couldn’t move to stop her.
The girl brought her face to the crook of my neck. I felt my skin breaking out into goosebumps, even though we were in the water. All at once, her lips were pressed against my skin. Then they moved ever so slightly, and I felt my head spinning like a whirlpool.
Something began to overflow from the space between her lips and my neck.
Bubbles rose in front of my eyes, along with a muddied burbling sound. Dizzied as I was, I finally realized what the girl was trying to do.
Air—she was trying to give me air.
So that we could be alone together, if only for a little longer.
Her bubbles brushed against my lips as they headed towards the surface.
I accepted them, as if breathing those bubbles into my own lungs.
In that moment, my heart cracked.
That was the only explanation I could think of for the sharp pain that ran through my chest. I could hear the sound clearly, as something seemed to break inside me.
Brushing off the girl’s hands, I rushed to the surface. As I broke out of the water, the only thing that filled my ears was the sound of my own unsteady breathing. I held my chest with my hand. My anxious fingers shook, checking whether my chest had broken open.
What just happened?
The pain in my heart sent fireworks rushing past my eyes, and beyond them, I caught a glimpse of something else. Or was it the opposite? Had my heart cracked trying to suppress whatever that something was?
The girl also came up in a fluster. A little shriek nearly escaped my throat.
“Saeki-sa—”
I avoided the hand she stretched towards me and escaped to the pool’s edge. Scrambling up and out of the pool, I slipped past the instructor, ignoring whatever he was trying to say, and ran up the stairs. I didn’t even dry off my drenched body or face as I pulled my bag out of the locker, just focused entirely on tearing off my swimsuit so I could change into my clothes. The gross feeling of the fabric sticking to my wet skin barely registered as I ran out of the changing room.
I realized partway through this process that my swim cap and goggles were still in the pool, but I didn’t even consider going back to get them. Instead, I threw the key down on the reception desk and didn’t even wait to get my card back before leaving the building behind me.
Just like that, I ran away. A fresh wave of fear shook my body when I thought I heard the sound of footsteps chasing after me, but I didn’t slow down.
The summer sunlight didn’t seem to reach me, as though the water were preventing it from getting to my skin. Something pitch-black was weighing down on me.
What had I seen? What was it that I had accepted—that made my breath leap until I couldn’t breathe at all—that had terrified me? What was that? What was that? My thoughts spun wildly.
The goosebumps wouldn’t go away, and my spine still trembled. A wintry chill that I couldn’t seem to shake off filled my body. The feeling of her lips on my neck still clung to my skin, in spite of the water droplets that dripped around it.
I was practically flying along the ground as I ran, my vision bouncing up and down dizzyingly. There was something else behind the bubbles that I had just inhaled. Something I was not yet allowed to know. My childish knowledge and limited experience could not begin to approach it. Only my deepest instincts suspected its identity.
The manifestation of that feeling, which I could only represent with crude triangles and squares, was simply terrifying to me. Gripped by fear, all I could do was run away.
The only thing I knew with certainty was that I must never see that girl again.
That evening, I made sure both my parents were present before I cleared my throat and spoke.
“I want to quit swimming. It’s just not right for me.”
This was the first time I had told them I wanted to quit anything. Nervous, I waited for their response.
My dad briefly mumbled, “Uh-huh,” and my mother simply said, “Really? I suppose these things do happen.” Not a single scolding or objection. They just accepted it right away.
I had given up on something for the first time, but they forgave me. Maybe my belief that I lived in a respectable house and needed to behave accordingly was all just in my head? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was drifting, as though I had thrown myself into the water and was just floating there.
I didn’t understand anything anymore.
After that, as I was walking through the hallway to my room, I accidentally touched my own hand. There was a warmth burning within it that was entirely separate from the summer heat. I left my hands pressed together, waiting until it disappeared.
As I tilted my face downward to look at them, something slipped from the surface of my drooping bangs. Like a droplet of water had fallen from my hair, even though it was no longer wet.
It crept along my skin, tracing its way down to the still-lingering sensation on my neck.
I don’t often think about the events of elementary school. Perhaps it’s been so long now that I simply forgot about it somewhere along the way.
But even if so much time has passed that I no longer remember much, it will never truly disappear.
The memories, the warmth—all of it.