Translucent Waters (Nanase Haruka Love Story) (Free! Iwatobi Swimming Club)

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Choice Is Yours

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Choice Is Yours

 

Mizushima Kasumi’s Point of View

 

            Two years has passed since my brother’s wedding. He was living happily with Asami, who was now his wife. The last time I saw Nanase was during summer break, and that was when he had his Summer Olympics on the big stage. Of course, being the genius he always was, he broke a few world records, and adorned Japan with gold medals in honor of her name. I, on the other hand, stayed at Masaru-nii and Asami’s house and managed to finish my studies as a general surgeon.

It was now early November, and it was crisp and chilly outside as the rustic, dry, and browned leaves flew to wherever the wind guided them.

I sighed. Two weeks earlier, I graduated from my local university with high honors and a 4.0 GPA. My brother and Asami attended my graduation, and though I wanted Nanase to be there as well, he couldn’t due to his own personal reasons.

            No matter how you looked at it, Nanase and I were drifting apart more and more by the second. It had been four months since I last saw him, two months since his last call, and three weeks since the last text. I texted him everyday a ‘good morning,’ but he never replied. The app implied that he did, but he didn’t reply, and that was what bothered me the most. He had the nerve to read the message to read the text, but not the nerve to reply?

            I walked to a sanitized and detergent-and-sterilized-smelling compound—the surgery wing of the local hospital I worked at. I took off my coat and set it in the closet in the doctor’s lounge.

            “Good morning, Mizushima-san,” my fellow doctor, Fukui Hiroki, smiled at me. “How was your weekend?”

            “It was pretty great,” I responded, smiling in return. “Very relaxing . . . How was yours?”

            “Very good,” he replied as he adjusted his the center of his glasses, pulling them up higher. “There’s a surgery concerning a small, harmless tumor on a young woman’s head.”

            “Oh, okay,” I answered as I put on my white lab coat. “When will the procedure start?”

            My co-worker handed me the list of the patient’s medical history on the clipboard, “In about an hour. Pretty much when she checks in.”

            “Oh, alright,” I replied mechanically as my hands immediately flipped through the papers attached onto the clipboard.

            “So, um,” Fukui-san said as his cheeks reddened. “I was wondering if you would like to go out for dinner sometime this week. Tonight, maybe?”

            I instantaneously stopped whatever I was previously doing. Fukui-san was a nice man, but I still with Nanase . . . technically.