外洋 - Open Ocean - A Free! FanFic

Chapter 4 ~ The Swim Club

"First of all, it's Kou, not Gou, ok?" the feisty red head says.

"Got it" says Nagisa, "so Gou, does your brother study here too?!"

"KOU! No he's over at Samezuka academy. I've tried calling him and I've left him lots of messages but he won't return any of them" she pouts.

She finally notices me,

"Who's this?" She says in a odd tone I couldn't quite place.

"Oh I'm Sarah, the new transfer"

"You missed out the famous swimmer part of you." She shrugged and turned away from me rudely.

"What?!" Makoto asks confused.

"I'm a swimmer, not really famous." I scratched the back of my neck.

"That's how Rin recognised you!" Haru says.

"You saw my brother" Gou says.

"Yeah we did" Makoto replied.

We continued to talk about our encounter with Rin. All the whole while Haru was staring at me wide eyed.

After the conversation we went to Samezuka academy looking for Rin. But Haru saw the swimming pool and immediately stripped down to the swimming costume he was already wearing and jumped in. I did the same, as I knew this would happen and prepared accordingly. I was wearing my black swim skins, with a blue water pattern running down my torso onto my left leg.

Rin came in shortly after we had jumped in.

"What are you guys doing here?" He asked surprised at our presence.

"Looking for you" I called to him.

"Oh Sarah, I can call you that right?"

I nod gently at him.

"Haru let's finish what we started. Sarah, want to join?" Rin challenged.

"Is that a question?" I asked and laughed. "What stroke?"

"I only swim free" says you know who

"We know Haru" Makoto and Nagisa chanted.

"Free style it is, you rookies think you can beat a professional, hm?" I grin. Although my two main strokes were breast and back, I still have a mean front crawl stroke so I decide to use that (even though I can probably swim faster on backstroke). I'll finally get to see what Makoto and Nagisa were going on about with Haru's swimming.

"Makoto, call it" Haru says.

We walk up to the starting blocks.

"On your marks, GO!"

We all explode off the blocks simultaneously, I lag a bit behind to judge their speeds, seeing they were fast, I went all out.

Pull, pull, pull, breath. Repeating that in my head. I hear Makoto and Nagisa gasp loudly.

I'd pulled ahead, I kept on speeding up, going into my fast turn. Flip away far from the wall, the momentum keeping me moving as I turn push off on my back. I instruct myself like this each time I swim. 9 butterfly kicks, three pulls and a breath. 10 arm pulls and the end is there. Any swimmer should know exactly how many arm strokes they need to do to finish effectively.

As I touch I see them pull in a metre behind me. I did see the wonders of swimming with Haru though. He understood the water and make the people who swim with him feel at peace. Rin was too concentrated on winning that he did not see as I did.

"Tch, rookies" I grab the wall and grapple up. Sitting on the edge of the pool. I stare into it's depths. Beautiful. The serene blue of the water instantly calming me down after the race. The waves in the azure rippling back and forth, slowing down after the disturbance and ending at the same speed as it was before the race. I look at Haru and Rin staring up at me like I was a ghost.