Chapter IX:

Swimming for the Sake of Swimming

Water is a mirror. How many times must one look into it's depths and see themselves as they truly are, rather than who they want to be?

The blinking blue line on Ellie's Word document continued to disappear and then abruptly reappear unhindered on her screen as she stared at the words she had written the night before.

Ellie vaguely remembered typing the cryptic words, only small slivers of recognition following as she scanned the letters. It was hardly a sort a phrase that she usually wrote freely but the hidden sentiment in the statement hit Ellie as hard as a speeding car. She wondered what she had been thinking in that moment of half conscious daze, leaving the page mysteriously blank afterwards. 'Rather than who they want to be...'

Rubbing her tired eyes, Ellie yawned and closed her laptop with a dull thud. Five o'clock in the morning was far too early for Ellie to be having philosophical thoughts, let alone having any thoughts at all. Today was the day of prefecturals. That was all she thought she needed to know.

The Samezuka cafeteria was almost exactly the same as Sakura's, which ever so slightly disturbed Ellie as she walked into the large open eating space with her laptop in hand and a deadly glare to match her foul mood. The members of the swim team that were usually friendly to her backed away at the sight of her threatening gaze and soon, whispers echoed from person to person as she went by. Luckily, Ellie's mind was firmly fixated on more important matters aside from other people's opinions that morning, like coffee, food and getting to the task of finding some insignificant corner of the room, in which she could simply crawl into and die.

Ellie hated early mornings. And by the term, 'early mornings', she basically meant that any day in which she had to wake up earlier than six o'clock for her morning runs was bound to be a bad day. Anything beyond that six o'clock time limit was the infamous danger zone and almost all of Ellie's friends back home knew never to make any sudden movemnets around her during that time.

Ellie's parents would often refuse to speak to her on early carnival mornings when she was a child, waiting until the clock hit that vital number six and her mood seemed to significantly improved Ellie had always appreciated that, since she hardly ever enjoyed talking to people whilst tired, but she had the profoundly distinct feeling that she wasn't going to get the same treatment from Rin and Sosuke, no matter how many warnings Carla provided them.

Without a word, Carla, who had been haphazardly running around the cafeteria getting food for both herself and Ellie whilst chatting to almost everyone on the team, sat herself down on the other side of the table that Ellie had managed to find fifteen minutes earlier at the back of the room. The blonde handed Ellie the coffee she had asked for and then began ranting about her cultural Religion essay over her breakfast, causing Ellie's head to break out into a severe migraine.

Ellie said nothing in contribution to the one-sided conversation, simply gulping down her usual morning dose of caffeine in as a large a quantity as she can handle in one mouth full. Looking down at her phone's digilitalized clock, she saw that the time had indeed passed into the six o'clock safe zone and she aburptly perked up, feeling almost infinitely better about the day.

Alongside Ellie's improved mood came her desire for a proper conversation. "What do you have today?" she asked, her voice sounding as dry as sandpaper.

Carla shrugged, skewering a piece watermelon with her fork. "Two-hundred individual medley. Two hundred back. And the four hundred with you. Why?"

"Just wondering," Ellie said, tapping her fingers against the lid of her laptop. "You need your shoulder strapped today?"

"It should be fine. Besides, I have strapping tape with me if anything goes wrong. You know what to do."

"And you say I rely on you too much, Carlie-bear." Ellie flashed Carla a cheeky grin, a rarity for Ellie at that early in the morning.

Carla rolled her eyes. "Wow. Ellie develops a sense of humour and common decency this morning. It's a fucking miracle."

Ellie rolled her eyes and resumed to drinking her coffee whilst Carla continued to shovel down her breakfast, presumably without even tasting the food that was in her mouth. Carnival mornings were always hard on everyone, no matter how cheerful or optimistic you usually were in a day. It was always a struggle to get moving and eating but nothing was worse than the ultimate struggle to dive into the usually freezing pool for warm-up every single carnival.

A sharp kick to the face whilst being swum over at State Age had quickly taught a young ten-year-old Ellie that warm-up was often a hard battle to stay ahead of the person behind you. More often than not, Ellie would come out of the pool with a few scratches down her legs and maybe even a developing bruise along arm or shoulder. It was a constant agonising experience that Ellie preferred not to think until she reached the pool faculties.

After being fashionably late for breakfast, Rin, eyes bright even in the early stages of the morning, politely waded his way through the large crowd of excited first-years that had congregated around him and sat himself down beside Ellie in her solitary corner. Sosuke, who had followed Rin through the bustling crowd, sat down beside Carla on the other side of the table, with various amounts of food divided between the pair. Rin eyed Ellie judgingly, a small but teasing smile lighting up his face

"Aren't you eating anything?" he asked, his eyes momentarily flicking toward Ellie's laptop where food was presumably meant to be. "From the looks of it, you'll be exhausted before you even reach pool, Khaleesi. Might want reconsider."

"Oh please," Ellie snapped. "I have perfected this into a fine art."

Rin raised an eyebrow, poking her in the elbow with a chopstick. "Come on, Ellie. You need something other than coffee to make it through the morning."

"Do you even know me? Coffee is almost always what I need. Fuck food. I like caffeine."

"You're ridiculous."

"As are you, Sharkie, but I just don't point it out often. It'd just be rude to do so. Also, why were you late, Mr I'm-Captain-But-I-Honestly-Couldn't-Be-Bothered-To-Be-Punctutual?"

"That's an incredibly long last name."

Ellie groaned and softly punched him in the arm, before persisting with her questioning. "Very funny. Now answer the question."

Rin's expression suddenly turned dark as she waited for his answer. He took his time concocting an answer, his eyes actively avoiding her own. "I was at...Uh, I just slept in is all. Nothing to worry about."

The hesitation to fully explain his lateness caused a spark of curiosity in Ellie. He was usually so open to answering any questions Ellie asked him and wasn't exactly prone to keeping many secrets from her. Well, at very least, not secrets that mattered.

But the sloppy finish to Rin's sentence basically igniting neon signs that shone above his head with the words 'Hiding Something'. Even though his cover-up was suspicious and ever so slightly hurtful, Ellie let the slip-up go. Rin was entitled to his own privacy. It wasn't as if he was her property.

Ellie sighed and finished off the last of her coffee before picking up her laptop and shoving it into her swim bag. "Well, you might want to put on an alarm next time," she said. "Because we're leaving. In, like, five minutes."

"What?!"

"Mmhm. You were actually incredibly late, believe it or not. Might wanna work on that."

The chaotic rush Rin and Sosuke made through breakfast after Ellie's comment was almost worth filming by her own standards and both Carla and Ellie contented themselves by standing back and watching the boys as they panicked both inwardly and outwardly. In the end though, the four of them made it out onto the pavement in front of the school with only seconds to spare.

The organisation of the swim team was quickly turned to a controlled kind chaos, with Rin quickly losing his temper due to the rising level of noise from his fellow team members. Ellie was the main source of calm between them, although it was more a sort of a deadly calm than anything else, and she herded the team onto the bus with a few quick words and veiled threats to get them moving.

The only outburst Ellie let herself experience was when the over-energetic ass that was Momotarou complained extensively about missing out on the seat he had wanted to claim. Ellie, fully fed-up with his effortless skills at complaining, slapped him hard over the top of the head and pushed him into the seat beside his roommate, Nitori. The start of the trip to the tournament had been a full-scale nightmare but once Ellie and the others were on the bus, things finally started to move forward again.

Ellie sat beside Rin on the bus with her hair flipped forward into the walkway aisle, Carla's fingers threading themselves through her hair as she created Ellie's usual upside down braid bun. Braiding, unfortunately, took up space that the two of them did not have whilst seated beside each other. As a solution, Carla managed to convince Rin to swap seats with her in the opposite aisle and then, ordered Ellie to flip her hair forward into the walkway. None of them complained, considering Carla had the look of death on her side.

All the while, Ellie kept thinking about those words that she had hazily typed into her laptop the night before. 'Rather than who they want to be...' The words had both meaning and the again, no meaning at all at exactly the same time. What exactly was she hoping to achieve by writing those words down? What exactly had she been thinking?

Ellie questioned whether or not it was to do with her inability to decide what she was going to do outside of swimming. She wanted to go to university, she knew that much, but she had almost no idea what she wanted to study. She had no clue what profession she would be most likely to chose and no clue what it was that she truly wanted. Swimming was the only thing that ever came to mind and in turn, Ellie supposed that it was blocking her from wanting anything else out of life.

Great, she thought, fastening bobby pins into the loose strands of her upside down braid turned bun that Carla had meticulously created. Just what I wanted before studying for trials. Indecisiveness.

Once off the crowded bus, all things seemed to run smoothly as the day began. Warm-up was thankfully not missed by the lateness of Samezuka's arrival and Ellie even managed to do a little coaching on the side. Rin, overcome with some notion of self-doubt, sought her out in the midst of the warm-up frenzy for the sheer matter of her opinion.

"You cannot be serious." Ellie fiddled with the bobby pins in her hair for fifth time that morning as she considered Rin's words, even though the notion seemed absolutely ridiculous. "Please tell me that you honestly do not think that you'll lose to Haru. Do not tell me you're having doubts. In fact, don't tell me any of this. I prefer good, positive thoughts on race day, thanks."

"Ellie, come on," Rin whined, placing his hands on her shoulders in an unfair advantage of contact. "Just tell me what I can improve on and what I'm doing wrong and then, I'll be out of your hair."

Shivering under his fingertips, Ellie thought up a quick response and sighed. "First of all, the hands, Rin. Don't use that kind of shit against me and then, I might consider helping you."

Rin grinned evilly, before taking one hand off her left shoulder and leaving the right placed on the relatively bare skin of her shoulder. Despite the fact that it wasn't the change in posture that Ellie had hoped for, it was enough for her to gain confidence to speak again. "Thank you," she said before continuing on. "Secondly, even if I told you what you were doing wrong with your stroke, there's hardly anything you could do to fix it today."

"I could try," Rin exclaimed, becoming strangely defensive of his own doubts. "Ellie, help me, for crying out loud."

"Rin, you've trained months for this. You're more than prepared. Build a bridge, get over this little speed-hump and move on your life. Is that enough of a confidence booster for you?"

Rin groaned, looking considerably frustrated with her response. "That's it," he said, shaking his head as a sly idea lit up in his eyes. "You're going in the pool, Khaleesi. I'm incredibly done with you."

"Wha-Hey!"

Before Ellie could even think of defending herself, Rin lifted her up over his shoulder in one swift movement and carried her over to the edge of the pool at the amusement of innocent bystanders. Ellie yelled obscene phrases and words, fighting against Rin's ridiculously steady grip on her hips. Her struggle was useless as it seemed and Ellie quickly found herself airborne for a split second and then submerged underneath lukewarm, chlorinated pool water after miraculously missing a collision with a first-year from another school team. The aftermath of that particular argument settler was understandably violent.

The events of the day began with breastroke, a stroke that both Carla and Ellie were tremendously hopeless at. Their other friend Aisha, Ellie's counterpart as House Captain, was the main breastroker in their friendship group back home.

Aisha often made the stroke look so much easier than it actually was, snapping her legs around quicker than anyone Ellie had ever seen, and she managed to win a few National records and medals before leaving swimming for good. Unfortunately, Aisha found that she wasn't cut out for competitive swimming after she fell extremely ill around the time that Carla and Ellie made it into the Youth Olympics. It set her career in swimming back at least four years and so, she moved on to more fruitful pursuits. One of the more fruitful of those pursuits being that of Law, which Aisha found strangely interesting.

Ellie sat toward the back of the grandstands with Carla sitting on one side of her and Rin on the other, who spoke quietly to the former captain of Samezuka who had turned up all of a sudden that morning. Ellie shared her music with Carla as usual and watched the events with interest as she tried to ignore her annoyingly wet hair.

Glancing at the heat number on the time board, Ellie lightly elbowed Rin, hoping to catch his attention. "Nitori's in this race, right?" she said, sitting up a little straighter. "He's been training pretty hard for this event, hasn't he?"

"Yeah, he has," Rin replied, looking down at the pool with veiled concern. "But I don't know how he'll go. Breastroke isn't a stroke that comes easily. Nagisa has been training with the stroke for years and I doubt he'll give up easily for the sake of his team."

"Mm, breastroke is the hardest of them all," Ellie remarked. "My coach once told me that you're either a natural breastroker or you're not cut out for the stroke at all. If you don't already have some aptitude for it, the stroke just won't work for you and you only end up fighting with your own form whilst trying to build up speed. As you can imagine, I gave up on it pretty early on. I'm definitely not a breastroker."

Sosuke, who had been sitting in the aisle in front of them, piped up with his own contribution to their conversation. "I do agree with you on that," he said. "Breastroke is a stroke that's meant to come on naturally. It's quite hard to force it on someone when their body isn't naturally built to it or accustom to it."

"It causes injuries too." Ellie pointed to Carla, using her as an example."I don't know how many times I've witnessed Carla near tear a weak ligament in her knee when playing netball. All because she used to specialise in breastroke before her physio told her to stop."

Rin nodded, the whistle signal sounding below as a sign to tell the swimmers to get onto their blocks. "I just hope he hasn't burnt himself out before the race," he remarked. "He was really pushing himself in warm-up this morning."

Ellie leaned forward and tried to get a better view of the pool. "Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?"

The orderly silence that appeared before every race cut their conversation short as the group leaned forward just slightly to watch the race that was about to unfold. Iwatobi's Nagisa had been placed in lane four, the notorious lane for the fastest in a heat, and Nitori had been placed right beside him in lane three.

Although Ellie hadn't seen much of Nagisa's breastroke, she knew from what Rin had told her that Nitori was going to have his work cut out for him to reach regionals. Considering the fact that he'd only just started to pick up the stroke this season, Ellie was almost certain that it would take a miracle for him to make it through prelims. The other swimmers were all much more experienced than him and Nagisa was definitely faster than him, judging off the various relays between the Samezuka and Iwatobi that Ellie had witnessed.

I just hope it doesn't break his confidence, Ellie thought as the 'take your marks' signal was called. Ellie knew all too well how fragile a swimmer's confidence could be. One small mistake could create a domino effect in an individual's system, causing them to doubt everything about their stroke and their form to the point of paranoia. It was something she was incredibly familiar with. In fact, it was the main reason she hated swimming to begin with.

Ellie almost felt strange speaking, even thinking, about swimming in such theoretical terms. She wasn't exactly a coach by any standards but she did know what she was talking about and Ellie supposed that it was natural for her to think that way, if not a little uncomfortable as well.

Ellie bit her lip and thought silently. Here we go. The starting signal went off, causing a wave of swimmers to dive into the water with a slower reaction time than Ellie had expected from them. Nagisa took the lead as expected, his near-perfected form making up for his lack of general speed as he established a steady lead of two body lengths toward the end of the first fifty metres. Nitori put up a good fight, pushing himself further and further ahead until he had almost caught up to first place.

Unfortunately, that sudden burst of energy had been used too early. Nagisa, who had been feigning the lengthening of his arms until the last twenty-five, pulled ahead once more, leaving Nitori and the rest of his competitors behind. Nitori continued to swim to his full capacity but he obviously had nothing left and simply couldn't achieve the finish that Ellie knew he could do.

Ellie could hardly blame him. Sudden exhaustion happened to almost every swimmer at least once in their swimming career and often it was due to a simple matter of accelerating at the wrong time. Ellie supposed it was because Nitori was naturally a long-distance swimmer and wasn't used to the continuous sprint of a hundred-metre race like everyone else. Every swimmer had their strengths. Sprints obviously weren't something he could deal with.

Ellie leaned back in her seat and sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Damn," she said. "I hope he doesn't take it too hard."

Rin frowned, nodding with agreement. "So do I."

"It's as we expected," Sosuke remarked, sounding a little blunt in his delivery. "He wasn't cut out for it."

"I don't think sprints are his thing," Ellie said knowingly. "He gave his all too early and was left with nothing toward the end. He really needs to work on that."

"Yes, yes, Coach Churchill," Carla muttered under her breath, passing Ellie her other earphone before grabbing her cap and goggles. "Well, I'm off to the I.M. Cheer for me, will you?"

"Oh, you know I won't."

Carla rolled her eyes and walked off with a smile, swivelling her hips as she went. The two-hundred individual medley was one of Carla's specialties. She was the sprinter between herself and Ellie, with more records in short distance events than Ellie's ever achieved. Unfortunately, long-distance events really weren't her thing. Those events were mostly left to Ellie.

Backstroke was next, being one event before the two hundred individual medley. Makoto, the backstroker from Iwatboi, was naturally faster than the majority of the people in his heat, especially considering he was built like a freaking giant and had an extra reliance on his kick that gave him an extra edge. Ellie fully expected him to win his heat but who came second was a shock to them all.

"Jesus, Momo's catching up to him," Ellie muttered, watching the younger boy in the outside lane, his stroke being much smoother than Makoto's but unfortunately, nowhere near as fast. "If he keeps this up, he'll probably make it through prelims."

"Shouldn't being in an outside lane slow him down?" Sosuke questioned, watching with vague interest. "The waves from the other swimmers-"

"They're hardly doing anything to him," Rin exclaimed.

Ellie rolled her eyes, the inexperience of the boys showing through. "Outside lanes aren't necessarily bad. Usually the waves are broken up by the lane ropes. It's usually just the water jets on the side of the pool that you have to compete with, even though they usually don't have much effect unless they're incredibly powerful. The majority of the time, people in the outside lane get bogged down by the mental side of it."

"What mental side of it?"

Ellie shrugged. "It's obvious, isn't it? Being in an outside lane usually means that you had one of the slower times in the heat. That knowledge can rattle your confidence quite severely and so, you swim slower than usual. But it's not like no one's won a gold medal from an outside lane. I was in an outside lane for both my races at...at the Youth Olympics."

The words tasted like vinegar in her mouth, pure poison laced along every syllable. Ellie hadn't thought the example through enough, hadn't realised what she was saying until the very last minute. It was a simple mistake but a simple mistake that near made her want to tear her heart out of her chest. She wasn't even remotely close to giving away such information casually, as her emotions and beliefs refused to allow her to do so, but Ellie often found that it was in conversation that she let things slip. What a nightmare.

Ellie spent the next few minutes trying incredibly hard to forget the words that had come out of her mouth. Rin sensed her discomfort relatively early on, quickly ending the conversation and glaring at Mikoshiba when he tried to bring the subject up again a few minutes later. Ellie almost felt bad for stifling the flow of friendly conversation but for the sake of her sanity and her over-worked heart, Ellie supposed that the silence was necessary.

Carla entered her I.M almost immediately after the backstroke had finished, her bright Funkita one-piece visible for all with bright swirling colours of red, yellow and pink. Her race went well in the beginning, with her butterfly creating a lead bigger than any Ellie's seen before from Carla and her backstroke only seemed to extend that ridiculous gap between her and the other swimmers. Breastroke went as expected and she lost about a body length in a lead before she made it to the freestyle turn but that's when things started to get worrying.

To the untrained and inexperienced eye, Carla's turn would have looked no different from any other elite swimmer's turn; quick, precise and over in a split second. But to Ellie, it was a split second too long. Carla usually flipped into her breastroke turn, thanks to the new rules about tumble-turns in form strokes being introduced by the Americans, but instead, she simply performed a touch-and-go turn and even that particular turn took longer than it should have. Ellie didn't know what had happened but she could only hope that it was simple and fixable rather than some kind of permanent injury. Luckily, the injury, as it turns out, was hardly even an injury at all.

Carla sat in front of Ellie with one strap of her swim suit down, strapping tap stuck onto her skin as Ellie worked through the process of strapping her weak shoulder. It wasn't the first time she'd ever had to do so, considering strapping injuries and weak muscles was often something that had to be done during the netball season. "Should have strapped it this morning, you idiot."

Carla snorted loudly, fiddling with her phone as Ellie applied another piece of tape to her shoulder. "I'm fine Ellie. And I had no way of knowing that my shoulder would give in that race, God. You're worse than my mother."

"I'm just looking out for my accident prone friend. No need to snap at me."

"Oh please, I'm nowhere near as bad as Aisha. That girl could trip on a blade of grass and break her arm during the fall."

"Yeah, that's true," Ellie replied. "But you're the one with the weak shoulder muscles."

"Whatever, Little Miss Tidal Wave. I still have two-hundred back to go. You haven't even swam yet."

"And, that's why I want to get this done quickly so I can get down to marshalling on time."

"What have you got?"

"Individual medley and then the four hundred free two events afterward, which you need to be in. I'll probably just hang around the marshalling area rather than come back up here. I got the unlucky events that happen right before lunch, so I'm physically dead before I even eat my food."

"As if you'd die, Tornado. There's hardly much a couple of long distance events would do to you." Carla turned her head to the side and flashed Ellie a grin, before turning back to watch the pool down below the grandstands. "Your boyfriend's swimming now, just so you should know."

Ellie rolled her eyes, pressing on with the task in front of her. Ellie didn't want to think about her races. She hadn't swam in a carnival since Nationals and she originally hadn't planned to swim again until the next Australian summer, with her first intentions of moving to Japan being purely for the sake of getting away from swimming. But low and behold, Ellie had managed to find herself in a competition yet again. The familiar buzz of adrenaline mixed with nerves sloshed inside her stomach to create a cocktail of emotions that made Ellie's head spin with anxiety.

There was no way that Ellie would ever forget what it felt like to swim at a carnival. From the smell of the chlorine that filled her nose when she entered the facility to the smooth and fast feeling of her body slipping through the water during warm-up. The sound of coaches infuriating whistles during the breastroke races. The steadiness of the block underneath her feet. The feeling of a carnival was always hard to forget but every swimmer loved it, including Ellie, even if she failed to admit it to herself.

Although she couldn't bare to watch Rin's race from up in the grandstands, Ellie did allow herself to watch the last few seconds of it whilst down in the marshalling area. His butterfly was as fluid and smooth as ever, with his arms flicking over the top of the water with ease and his kick pushing him even further forward. Ellie did spot one point of his stroke that could use improvement: his breathing position. Coming too far out of the water and breathing to the front rather than turning his head to side like most new-age butterflyers were his one and only fault.

Trust me to be the one who finds that, Ellie thought before heading out to her own race. She immediately cursed herself for thinking about Rin, knowing full well that she should be focusing on her own race rather than another person's form.

Individual medleys were always tricky business and none of the ones that Ellie had ever competed in had ever turned out to be easy. They were often unpredictable and the race would usually boil down to simply how she was feeling on the day. And all Ellie seemed to be feeling that day was a mixture of anxiety and nausea by the time she reached the diving blocks.

Ellie tried her best to ignore the feeling of multiple eyes on her as she stretched out her arms in front of the blocks. She was in lane four, as expected, and she was in the fastest heat of the event, with the quickest time by far. Ellie knew that made her target. And it wasn't hard to notice that the other swimmers knew that too.

Breathe, Ellie thought to herself as the whistle blew. Just breathe and get it over with.

And she did. She made it through the race with flair. The rhythm Ellie had set for herself throughout the race had worked effectively enough for her to reach the end without even breaking a sweat. By the time she'd reached her last hundred metres, she was almost half a pool length in front of everyone else. Her time was one second off it's usual best but that didn't bother Ellie so much. If anything, the race had lifted her spirits.

That unfamiliar happiness at having done well in a race swelled up inside her chest as she pulled herself out of the pool and wandered back over to the marshalling area, hardly even panting from her last race. It was strange to feel such happiness, especially when it came from the triumph of swimming and swimming alone. Ellie almost found it suspicious. How could she feel pleased after swimming? After how long did her body just simply give up and let her feel that way again?

Ellie didn't question it. She simply smiled and continued to swim unhindered, hoping that the feeling would last just long enough for her to do well in the remainder of her events the next day. Not for the sake of herself but for the sake of her team.

After all, they deserved praise more than Ellie ever would.

A.N: Yes. I realise that that was a weird ending. But meh.

I may or may not be a Kisumi fangirl already. Just like the rest of the fandom...

So, not much of a response from last chapter. I'm assuming that was for a reason but I don't know what that is unfortunately. And I'm sure you all know why... Oh well, moving on.

Thank you to Anon and Saturnspaz for reviewing. Thank you to everyone else for favouriting and following. Might I just add, that I cannot improve on my writing if you guys don't tell me what I'm doing write and what I'm doing wrong. Just saying...(I can feel the judgement coming toward me.)

Saturnspaz: Ellie's flaws are revealed and developed throughout the story (at least that's what I think). Her main flaw is, yes, her inability to accept swimming the same way anymore but there are others there. Her selfishness in terms of putting her own problems ahead of everyone else. Expecting her best friend to give up everything for her. Being a poo in the morning. That kind of stuff. People will interpret her the way that they want to but that's how I see her at least.

Until next time (in which I will be sobbing with happiness because Kisumi)...:)