Tension filled the room as the young swimmers all had a thoughtful look: Nagisa had his arms crossed, Rei was stoking his chin, and Haruka stood with an emotionless mask on his face as usual. On the other hand, the shopkeeper half-smiled nervously at the sudden seriousness on their faces.

"I GOT IT!" Nagisa suddenly burst out, arms waving in all sorts of directions.

All heads rotated and leaned towards Nagisa in anticipation for an answer.

Nagisa swung the backpack off his shoulders and started rummaging for the letters, and once they came to sight, a wide grin started to creep up to his face. "Remember this?"

Haruka and Rei raised their eyebrows in unison. "What about them?" Rei asked.

A loud, exaggerated sigh escaped the blonde haired swimmer's lips. "Don't you get it?" He swiftly grabbed hold of Rei's glasses and wore them, posing a dramatic stance after doing so. "You see, this is a mystery and we are like the detectives trying to solve a crime scene!"

"There's no crime," interrupted Haruka.

"Haru-chan, play along!" Nagisa whined back.

"There's no crime."

"HARU-CHAN!"

"Okay, let's not waste any time with useless chatter. Open them Nagisa!" Rei ordered in an irritated tone. He then grabbed his glasses back and huffed.

"Geez…" After Nagisa opened all the envelopes, he was surprised to discover that only one of the five envelopes contained a letter. The members then became suspicious as to why Makoto would have kept only one of them. Still, Nagisa scanned the letter as quickly as possible, before stopping suddenly and lifting his head to meet his friends' gazes.

"What is it?" asked Rei impatiently. Even though Rei seemed like the serious guy in the group, he secretly loved the thrill of mystery and adventure. But because of his high pride, he would reveal as little of his other persona as possible.

Nagisa swallowed hard. He folded the letter, inserted it back in its envelope and placed it in the backpack along with the other letters. "It's… blank."

Rei inhaled, then blinked for a few seconds; he looked up at the ceiling, and after another few seconds, exhaled, closing his eyes.

"Rei?"

Opening his eyes again, he roared, "THEN WHAT'S WITH THE TENSION NAGISA?!"

Haruka watched as an argument started to take place between Rei and Nagisa. Rei was moving his mouth is such a fast pace that Haruka only managed to catch the words 'Nagisa', 'seriously' and 'why'. On top of that, he was flinging his arms in the air, waving them. He moved them to the left. Then right. And finally back down. As to further irritate the blue-haired swimmer, Nagisa was mimicking Rei's actions. And somehow the shopkeeper got involved.

WOOSH.

An object started to vibrate in Haruka's pocket which immediately stopped the brawl that was happening. Haruka slipped his hand in one of his tracksuit pocket and took out his phone. A small, yellow envelope flashed repeatedly on the screen, indicating that he had a message.

"Haha! Haru-chan's message tone is the sea waves!"

"What is it Haruka? Is it Makoto?" questioned Rei.

Ignoring the other, Haruka read the message:

"Meet me at—"

"—lemme see!" Nagisa exclaimed, peering from above.

"No," Haruka quickly responded. He paused for a moment, and then continued. "It's Gou. We left her at the park."

"Crap!" Nagisa checked his watch. "We've been here for ten minutes now!"

"We should be going." Rei turned to the shopkeeper and thanked him for his help, as well as apologising for the disturbance.

After the swimmers left, the shopkeeper heaved a long sigh.

"Are they gone?" whispered a voice.

"Yes."


On a swing sat the Iwatobi Swim Club's coach, Gou. She was dressed in her casual attire: a thick, long-sleeved shirt under a black, thermal, woolly coat she always wore on cold days, dark blue jeans and warm boots that felt comfortable around her feet. Her hands unconsciously grasped both of the metal chains that held the swing, and, after feeling its icy coldness, had it elicit a wince from her shaking lips.

From the distance were three blurry, moving objects. Gou noticed this, and because of the fog which surrounded the park, she had to lean in to realise that it was Rei, Haruka, Nagisa, and…

As she only saw three figures in the distance, Gou rubbed her sleepy eyes, thinking that her eyes missed another figure due to her tiredness. There were four members in the swimming club, right? Gou narrowed her eyes and attempted to count the figures what was now becoming clearer as they neared the park. Once she found out that her eyes were, in fact, not deceiving her, she had jolted from her seat and ran towards the swimmers.

"We… ugh… Mako… yeah…" panted Nagisa. Before going to meet Gou, he had quickly rushed home to wear a shirt and hoodie over his naked torso. He definitely did not want to get sick and miss out on the action.

"Where's Makoto?" Gou asked worriedly.

"Makoto is missing. We've searched his house and he's not there. Also, his family is away." Rei replied, panting, too, as he spoke. "We assume that he's going to find—"

"—his tracksuit," interjected Haruka. His face almost looked serious. His eyes wandered to meet Rei's, and to the megane it seemed to look rather like a glare than a normal glance. Haruka turned back to Gou and added, "Makoto left it at school. I saw it yesterday. We should just leave him to find it."

Rei swallowed the lump of unsaid words in his throat. Why Haruka?

"Okay, because you guys were late I'm going to make you do 5 laps around the park." Gou blew her whistle. "Go!"

Rei and Nagisa jogged ahead, side by side, and following behind in a slow pace was Haruka.

When they reached a substantial distance from their coach, Nagisa turned around and asked, "Hey, Haru-chan, about what happened… huh? Haru-chan?"

Rei came to a halt at the sound of Nagisa's voice, tuned around and saw that Haruka was now missing. He gritted his teeth. Damnit, Haruka, what are you up to?


Behind a tree, Haruka was reading the message he had received earlier:

"Meet me at the boat rentals… again. Don't bring Rei or Nagisa or Gou.

Makoto"