I've only recently heard of Free! and started watching the anime yesterday. Before I watched the anime, though, I found pictures online of the characters which was the reason that I was interested. To tell the truth, I think that I fell in love with Makoto at first sight, which is pretty rare for me. :3 Just something about him at first glance seemed to tickle my fancy... and now that I've watched the anime and read some translations of the novel, I think I like him even more. :)

Hidden Fear

Water isn't something that merely sits there and lets you swim through her as you please; water is something alive, strong, and powerful. Water is something that can give life as easily as it takes it away.

Makoto understands this. Since he was a young child, he has always understood.

The world within water is vast. It's something that appears to be small on the outside, and yet enormous on the inside. Water always seems to be crystal clear and inviting. It seems to hide no secrets.

But Makoto knows the truth. Makoto knows that the water is a fickle mistress, almost as fickle as her cousin Luck. She may find favor with you one moment and then you may fall out of her grace the next. Water can be difficult to please while at the same time easy to tame.

Makoto knows this because he can feel it every time he is in the water. He feels the power sliding underneath the clear surface; waiting, watching, hungry. It's always lurking behind him in the water, whether he was standing or swimming. That's why he always swam as if he were running away.

Makoto has to admit that there are times when he feels jealous of his best friend, Haruka. The slender dark-haired boy just seems to accept water as his longtime lover. Water seemed to adore Haruka as well. The way that it embraced him within its depths was like a mother and her child. Perhaps Haruka was her child – cursed to be born human instead of sea creature, doomed to a life on land. The water constantly called to Haruka like a siren's song, only the song contained the soft lapping of waves on the shore.

Nagisa often likens Haruka to a dolphin. Makoto sometimes thinks that Haruka is more like a cloud. Like how a cloud seemed to float aimlessly in the sky, Haruka drifts through the water without a goal or meaning, simply enjoying the feel of the liquid holding him.

Makoto cannot duplicate those feelings no matter how hard he tries. As a high school student, now Captain of the swim team, he does not fear water as much as he had in the past. He and the water had come to a sort of tentative understanding. She would not harm him and he would not disgrace her. While his form is not as beautiful as Haruka's, it is enough to please her and allow him to stay floating. He cannot deny that he is secretly relieved at this arrangement, no matter how insane it might seem.

But there are times when he feels the fear again, the same as the time as when Haruka had fallen into the river and almost drowned when they were children. Everything alive within him – his heartbeat, his thoughts, his soul – would suddenly stop as if they had been frozen, chilled by the liquid that was his fear.

He was not afraid of Haruka drowning, at least not exactly. He did not think that the water would allow her favorite admirer to drown. When Haruka had fallen into the river, his first thought was that the water had finally come to claim him. That was his fear.

It was when Haruka would dive down under the water and refuse to surface for long periods of time. It was when his best friend would refuse to emerge from the clear liquid and seemed ready to give himself over. It was the fear that the water would become as enamored with Haruka as he was with her, that she would pull him into her embrace and not let go until Haruka had disappeared, until he himself had become what surrounded him and drift away, never to be seen again…

"Makoto, what are you thinking about?"

"Hm?"

He offers his best friend his usual smile and a laugh. He does not mention his fear. Because this is yet something else that he knows.

He knows that Haruka, while willing to give up competitive swimming, would be unwilling to give up the water. If there was a choice between water and Makoto himself, he knew what choice Haruka would make.

Makoto inwardly sighed. He wasn't ready to be thrown away. At least not yet.

As he watches Haruka stare longingly at the ocean, his stoic face unchanging but easy to read, he allows a tiny bit of jealousy to mix with his fear.

It's not really supposed to be shounen-ai, in all truth, because it's difficult to discern the difference between bromance and shounen-ai in all sports manga. These guys have really strong relationships with each other, especially the whole Makoto-Haruka-Rin triangle thing. Makoto probably isn't the jealous type, because he knows that Haruka is Haruka. But considering that Makoto has yet to give up swimming because of his fear, I think that Haruka doing something without him would make Makoto feel lonely.