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When you look at me sometimes, I feel like a bleeding fish being eyed down by a shark.
I close my eyes for a moment, let myself fall into the sounds of the stands echoing with too-loud cheers. So clear, up here. Distinguishable in the air. Unmuffled. Unbearable, almost. I breathe. I can do that, here. But the air is too light around my body. Unwelcoming. Cold. The water slaps against the tiles a foot below me. I stand lightly on the starting block, toes curled into the rough, wet plastic. I open my eyes, but I don’t look at you. I watch Rei slice through the water, past fifty meters. He’ll be here soon. I pull my goggles over my eyes, pushing on them to enforce the seal. Your grin is all pointed teeth and cold, flat eyes. I don’t recognise you anymore.
“You call that butterfly?” you scoff, and even your voice slices through the crowded air like it's angry at something. You’re watching Rei, then. His form is perfect. There is nothing for you to criticise, but you try anyway. “You can do better than that, Haru. Look. He’s barely lifting out of the water.”
When you look at me sometimes…
I get ready for the exchange, crouching over the edge of the block. You do the same, to my right. Twenty meters.
“I heard you let him join after he failed at becoming a track star.” Your grin catches the corner of my eye. I keep watching Rei’s approach, breathing steadily. “You can do better than would-be pole vaulters, Haru,” you say.
Ten meters.
… I feel as though my death is only a formality.
Five.
You kick off. I don’t look at you. I don’t watch the powerful arc of your body as it slices through air and water alike. Vicious and brutal. Beautiful, in a way. Fierce.
Rei’s hands hit the wall with a wet slap and I follow you, a step behind. While I see you beating the wild thing that is the water into submission, forcing it to allow you, I feel welcomed by its harsh caress. I let it hold me. I do not fight the water. I know I would lose. I allow it. I slip through its grasp and leave its anguish behind me before it knows I’ve escaped it.
The water is severe and untamable. I slice my fingers into it, carve a path for my body to slide through unharmed. It closes behind me in a roiling scar, perhaps furious at my escape. I can almost see you from here, below the surface. You’ve already breached, proof of your passage in the discontented swirls masking you from my view.
The water will catch you if you keep swimming like that, Rin.
I kick to the surface, and I am free. Hands slicing a path, arms carving it out for my body to follow through, legs hurrying me on before the water can close over my head and swallow me once more. I’m following your merciless path, but I was never meant to follow you. I know I need to close the gap before the turn or I won’t stand a chance. It’s not about winning, though. It’s never been about winning.
Sometimes, when I look at you…
I hasten my strokes as much as I dare. When I turn my head into the window created by my raised arm to gasp a breath, preparing to delve back into the water, I catch sight of you. Every breath I take, you are closer to me. I can catch you. I know I can. Do you know how close I am? How alive I am, moments before you kill me?
...I see something vicious and hard and inhospitable.
You stretch yourself for the turn, the way you always do. You see me turn my head from the corner of your eye. I know because you breathe too early. I’ve caught you. I tuck down and kick away. Not strong enough. I never will be, to match you. You’re in front again, by a distance, but your first breath is sloppy. I know because I’m catching you, quickly. You’d never let me.
From then on, I know you won’t allow me to take it from you. I have to fight the same way you fight every time you touch the water. I have to fight for you. To catch you. I thought winning was what you wanted. I need to beat you. But it’s never been about winning.
Sometimes, when I look at you…
I need to best you. I need to make you better. I need to provoke you with my passage and leave you thrashing and churning the same way I leave the water when I slip past, unnoticed until the last. I need to pass you, and enrage you. I need to win against you, because if I don’t, you… We. If you win, we will never swim like this again. Never like it matters, like there’s something each of us needs. Never like it’s a battle between the two of us, the third party the water which holds us and fights us and keeps us from closing. I need to win, so it can mean something.
Each time you breathe, turning you head through the window created by your arm, raised to pierce back into the waves and force yourself onward, you see me closing with you. I can hear only the fury of the water against my ears, but I imagine your gasped breaths are laced with desperation. It matters, now. It means something.
I don’t know when I pull in front, but my hand slaps against the cold wet, tile almost as an afterthought. Habit. I know I’ve won. Not because Rei and Nigasa and Makoto are exclaiming their joy for me, and not because my first instinct is to look at the leaderboard; it’s not. It’s not your team’s groans, because there are none. They’re as impressed with you as mine are with me. It’s your silence which gives it away.
Sometimes, when I look at you…
I peel off my goggles and cap, shake the wet hair from where it always falls in my eyes.
“Rin,” I say, looking at your pained scowl, wondering if I was right.
It’s loud. I don’t know if you heard me.
You slap the water with the hand clenched around you goggles and cap and it splashes up, dripping into your soaked hair. Your teeth are bared in anger and I’m scared, for a moment. Scared that this isn’t what we - that this isn’t what you needed. You growl something too low for me to hear and heave yourself out of the pool, ignoring the silver-haired boy who rushed forwards to offer you a hand.
I think you said shit, but I can’t be sure. Makoto and Nagisa are making a lot of noise. I look at them. My team. Nagisa is embracing Rei, who’s trying not to look too proud. Failing, though. And Makoto… Makoto smiles at me, and there’s so much happiness in him when he reaches out a hand to hoist me up onto land that I feel my own smile grow in answer. But Rin…
Sometimes, when I look at you…
I cast my eyes around for you, see you striding off, your team chattering excitedly at your back. You don’t see me looking. You rarely do.
Sometimes, when I look at you, I see the spirit of the water, untamed in every line of your body.
“Maybe that’s why it never catches you,” I murmur, watching your receding back.
Makoto gives me a curious glance and Nagisa asks me to repeat myself. I shake my head and turn away from you. We will race again, sometime. We’ll race until you beat me. This I know.
This I hope.