A/N: Well here we are at chapter ten! This is farthest into a fic I've ever managed to write, so this is a big deal to me and I'm so grateful for all the support I've gotten so far. Thank you to everyone who's been following from early on, or from more recently; thank you to everyone who leaves comments (an extra thank you if you do so anonymously since I don't get the opportunity to reply directly), and thank you to everyone who simply reads, and follows, and favorites, and just enjoys the story! On this note, I'd like to thank the guest reviewers from last chapter: FanLol, and both Guests! One of you asked what Rin meant by his hair comment to Haru last chapter - it wasn't really anything specific; he was just trying to tease Haru and keep the mood lifted, since you'll see in this chapter that he was being a bit more observant than he let on.

This is also the chapter that when I was watching ES, episodes 11 and 12 were like a double-whammy of 'holy shit, but I've been planning that for my fic?!' Not detail-for-detail, but very similar themes. (Or, well, actually there was a pretty word-for-word match with what Rin told Haru in Australia and I FLIPPED OUT when that happened. See if you can spot it? I think the free! team should hire me for a season 3.) Anyway, here you go!

Chapter Ten: Inspiration (Spring - part 3)

The first chip in the polish appears on Wednesday morning, which is four days later, which is impressive, Haruka thinks.

He notices it in the mirror while he's washing his face. There's a large sliver missing from his right index nail; the line is so clean it's like it's been sheared off, and he wonders what he could have done to have taken off so much. He can think of very little he's done that's really involved his hands, but maybe this is how nail polish works. Maybe bit by bit more will simply fall away, and he'll look down and find more patches of his real nails. Maybe he'll find flakes of cotton candy pink around the house, at the edges of rooms or at the borderlines between carpet and hardwood, or maybe they'll disappear into dust, tiny enough to be invisible and then one day vacuumed up for good.

After breakfast he takes the train into town, and then after swimming he takes it even farther. The sun hits the side of his face, all heat, the morning chill in the air cut away by the windowpane. There's a feeling of near-sleep in the compartment. Heads lolling on necks, shared lethargy that just makes every passenger more tired than they were getting on – and he watches them get on for a couple stops, closed-off looks to their faces, autopilot, and then he gets tired of seeing this. He stares out the window and watches buildings pass in an out-of-focus blur.

He jumps when his phone buzzes in his pocket, and his vision snaps back into place with dizzying quickness. He expects Rin because there's really no one else it would be, so he isn't surprised to find that he's right, though the message itself is unexpected.

are you busy right now?

Rin doesn't really ask anymore, he just talks. Haruka wonders what's going on, but is distracted by the name of his station being announced over the intercom. He shoulders his swimming bag, shifts to the edge of his seat, tucks his phone into his pocket. The train races through a crossing; he gets a quick glimpse of blinking red lights out the opposite window.

Then the wheels slow and the train slides into the station: platform and benches and overhangs, people waiting cross-armed and impatient or pushing themselves wearily off of posts. The trees are thick behind the platform, but over the tops Haruka can see the expanse of a vast grassy field and the smudges of people moving across it. Way off behind this rise the multi-story businesses, in layers like a staircase but far enough away that they look toy-sized – a cityscape that already gives off a busy feeling, and Haruka's determined to keep it in the distance.

The train stops, and he stands. Most of his compartment does as well, and he joins their silent shuffle toward the door. Once he's on the platform he takes his phone back out and sends: No.

can i call you?

The reply comes before Haruka can even take a step, like Rin had been waiting with it already typed out. Haruka knits his brows; if only Rin could see the expression.

How? he sends, because he's pretty sure Rin would assume that his phone plan doesn't cover international calls – he doesn't even know his own phone plan, but he would be surprised if it dealt with anything fancier than texting.

He starts his way toward the platform's exit, has to sidestep a woman in business clothes running to catch the train before it leaves. She doesn't even appear to notice him, and her scarf whips out and gets him across the face – not painful, but disorienting all the same. And then his phone buzzes again, and he lifts it expecting to read Rin's newest reply, only to find the screen lit with an incoming call. His heart gives a startled thump, and he connects the line and brings the phone to his ear.

"Rin?"

"Hi," Rin says, voice fuzzy, like the connection isn't too strong. He carries on quickly: "Don't worry, this isn't a long-distance call. It's through the app, so it just uses data. Um, I don't know how much data you have, though…"

"I don't know either," Haruka says.

"Oh, um, I can just hang up if you want."

"No," Haruka says, so quickly he almost trips over the word. He feels another jolt in his chest, and another and another – lots of small, rapid-fire ones, and then he realizes that's just his heart racing like he's pulled himself out of the pool after a close meet. "It's okay. It's fine. Why did you call me?"

He's standing in the middle of the station, vaguely remembers he had a destination. The stairs are between a route display board and a vending machine, and he heads this way.

"Oh, well. Um."

"What?" Haruka says. He takes a right at the bottom of the stairs, starts along a pathway that is in the shade. Through the tree trunks he can see some college-age kids kicking around a soccer ball, their shouts indistinct.

"I was just – I just wanted to see how you are," Rin says.

Haruka listens, hears nothing else – maybe just Rin breathing quietly, or maybe it's the background buzz from the connection. He imagines Rin leaning against his desk, one hand holding the phone in place, the other crossed nervously in front of himself, something fidgety going on with his feet probably.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…" Rin exhales, and the speaker is overwhelmed for a moment, transmits a wash of static noise. "I mean I wanted to ask if you're doing okay. You looked really tired. When I saw you."

A hot-cold feeling travels down Haruka's face. A talk. Please not a talk. "Oh. Um –"

"Sorry I'm saying this now," Rin says, and he's speaking in a rush again. "I know I saw you over the weekend but I've been busy and I just didn't know if this would be a good idea or when I could call or, yeah, sorry. I'm making excuses. Sorry."

"It's okay," Haruka says. He's stopped walking again, feels kind of like he wants to hide behind a tree, not that it would do him any good. "It's okay."

"So – um – shit – I mean, is everything okay?"

More than hide, Haruka wants to throw his phone into a tree. But Rin sounds nervous and sincere, so instead Haruka makes his way over to a bench, takes a seat and drops his bag to the ground.

"Everything's okay," he says.

"Why are you running again?"

Haruka tips his head back, shuts his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose, not because he's annoyed but because this has already drained so much out of him. There is something about Rin caring so much that feels very, very heavy, almost too heavy, something he isn't strong enough to hold up.

"To give myself something to do."

"You don't have anything to do?"

"My job starts in five days. The training. It's been a long month."

"Oh."

Rin goes quiet. Haruka wants to let it last – just have Rin at his ear but not pushing anything into it – but awkwardness lurks at the edges of everything. He wants to sigh, but doesn't want to have Rin worry about what it means.

"Did I really look that tired?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"You looked tired too."

Rin laughs, and the speaker almost fails again. "I'm taking five classes."

Haruka's eyes pop open. "Why?"

"Dunno," Rin says. "Wanna challenge myself, I guess. There's lots of cool classes to take, and I don't really mind all the studying. Um…" There's a heavy pause, and Haruka waits, sunlight glinting into his eyes through the spaces in the tree branches. "Um, actually, I'm trying to graduate in three years."

Haruka blinks up at the trees in surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah," Rin says.

"Isn't that… Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of going overseas for the swimming?"

"Not really," Rin says. "Three years is a long time. This way…I guess I'm kind of giving myself incentive to get better faster. Get the most out of it while I can, you know?"

Haruka agrees: three years is a long time. It hasn't even been one and already talking to Rin feels like learning how to talk all over again. "Can you handle all of that?" he asks. "All those classes and swimming?"

"So far so good," Rin says. "Have some faith in me."

He's teasing, but Haruka feels something heavy in his stomach. Dawning realization, or dawning acceptance of what he's known. It's like they live in different worlds. Rin is always reaching, always doing, always moving ahead. Away.

"Rin."

"Hm?"

Haruka hesitates. The urge to clamp his mouth shut and not say anything is strong, and the dread at what will happen if he does talk swirls in the pit of his stomach – and that's the heavy thing, the festering thing, all the dark things he's gathered close while Rin's been out making his world brighter.

"Do you think I'm wasting myself?"

The silence is stifling. Haruka scrunches up his toes, resists the impulse to start tapping his heels against the ground.

"What?" Rin says quietly.

He could just let it drop. Say never mind and leave no room for argument, but then the pit would get heavier and who knows when the next time he'll acknowledge it will be. Somewhere along the line it's become so important to know what Rin thinks of him, and the thought of being looked down upon makes his skin crawl.

"You think I'm such a great swimmer. You said I could be better than anyone on your team. Do you think I'm wasting myself?"

Rin lets out a breath, kind of like a spilled laugh, unsettled. "Haru…"

"I'm serious," Haruka says sharply. He shuts his mouth; his teeth click together. The pathway is quiet, though; nobody has walked by yet and nobody is around. "I'm serious."

"If this is because of what I said over break –"

"You've said things a lot of times." Stop cutting him off, he berates himself. But the line is static, and dread steals in. "You do, don't you?"

"Haru!" Rin exclaims, so loudly that Haruka pulls the phone away from his ear. "Christ, this is your problem. You won't even let me figure out what to say before putting words into my mouth."

"But you've even said it before. That not doing more with my swimming is a waste. You think it. My parents think it. Everyone thinks it."

Rin lets out a long breath. "Haru, I'm not your parents. I'm not everyone, and I think you're wrong there anyway. Listen."

Haruka waits, and listens, and after a silence that feels long but probably isn't Rin keeps talking.

"I say things, okay?" Rin says. "I say stupid, insensitive things. I may wish things from you, but that's just me being, I dunno. Idealistic? Hopeful? A fan?" His laugh is strained. "That sounds so stupid, but you know I've always been crazy about your swimming. I've been since I was a kid. I've always admired it. I've…Haru, I've always admired you. I've always admired what you can do."

Haruka's eyes are on his shoes, scuffed with dirt. His head is full and loud, but he can't find anything to say. His just feels mistrust, but also a huge urge to trust implicitly in what Rin is saying.

"I can't help that I want more from you," Rin says. "But that's just instinctual. That's just me being me. But more than that, I just want you to be happy. I want you to do what's right for you. I just…get carried away with what I want for me more than with what I want for you sometimes. But what I want for you is more important."

Haruka licks his lips; his mouth is dry. "What does that mean?"

"I admire you. For just doing what you do, and doing it your way, and being okay with that. You've always seemed so sure of yourself, like you'd never let anything faze you, like you'd never let anyone get you to do something you don't want to. I've had to deal with it and it's annoying as shit, but I still admire it more than I've ever told you."

Haruka wants to laugh – in what? Scorn? Helplessness? How wonderful it would be to actually be all of those things, to be that self-assured. "You really think I'm like that?" he says.

"Haru, I'm serious. I'm serious!"

Rin's voice cracks, and Haruka finally hears the urgency there. He sits bolt upright, brings his other hand over the phone. His heart pounds into his windpipe, and he's imagining Rin in the gazebo with his head clutched in his hands.

"Okay. I believe you. Sorry."

Rin lets out a squeaky sound. Frustration or disbelief or the precursor to an I give up. Haruka thinks they'd all be warranted, but instead Rin says: "Jesus, Haru. I don't know how you don't get it yet, but I care about you. About you, okay? Just because I don't get you all the time doesn't mean I don't care. Shit. You don't even – you don't even know."

"I know you do," Haruka says.

"You don't know how much," Rin says, and Haruka shuts his mouth.

He doesn't know, except he thinks it's a lot, can feel in the way Rin speaks to him that it's a lot, and he cannot imagine why. And Rin probably knows this, which is worse. He just hopes Rin knows that the caring goes both ways.

"A long time ago," Haruka says, "back before we were friends again, and you told me I was going to swim for you, I didn't want to." He doesn't know where the words are coming from, but he doesn't second-guess them. "But I did at the same time. I wanted to swim for you so you would remember why you were swimming in the first place."

Silence, and then Rin says tentatively, "You did. You helped me remember."

"And you did too. Swimming with you helped me remember what I was swimming for. Who I was swimming for. So I wanted to keep swimming for you, because I was swimming for myself also."

"Okay," Rin says. "So what are you saying?"

"Scouting… I hated it. I hated that feeling. Nothing felt right. They were – they just wanted the numbers I could put on the score board. I felt like I had no value. I know you don't understand but that's what it felt like to me. I was swimming for nothing."

"Haru, I respect that. You're allowed to feel like that. You don't have to defend that to me."

"But that's not –" Haruka presses his palm to his forehead, feels all his thoughts jumbling together, making the words so hard to catch and put in order. "I didn't like swimming like that, but I didn't not like swimming. It was confusing. It's confusing."

"Okay."

"I don't know everything. I don't feel sure of everything."

"That's okay. That's normal."

Haruka swallows. His throat feels blocked; he's never found speaking so frightening. What is it about saying things that feels like you're opening yourself up? Making yourself vulnerable, not only to other people but to yourself, because sometimes you say words you didn't even know you had, and you hear things in them you didn't even know you felt. You could knock yourself over with your own words, he thinks, tear yourself apart with them.

"But. Um. Sometimes." His tongue is heavy, and Rin waits all too silently. "Sometimes I wish we could still swim together." He wonders if Rin will get it. If he can say I miss you in other words and Rin will understand. "I…I still want to swim for you."

"You don't have to swim with me to swim for me," Rin says quietly. "You don't even have to swim for me. If you swim that's enough."

Haruka presses his lips together, lets out a breath through his nose. "I want to swim with you."

He wonders if it means he's losing his mind, that he's sure he can hear Rin slowly start to smile. Maybe it's just his mind supplying him with what he wants to happen, anything to alleviate the tight-grip feeling in his chest.

"I want to swim with you, too," Rin says, soft and warm and everything that Haruka finds scary about words. "When I come back for break," Rin says, "let's swim together. I'll race you."

"You'll beat me."

"I know," Rin says, and he laughs. "I've been improving my free."

"Okay," Haruka says. He feels numb, feels himself grinning. "Let's race."

"You're on," Rin says.

They fall quiet, and Haruka's smile starts to slip. An elderly man walks past, his cane clunking dully against the path. The sound breaks something, reminds Haruka that he's far from home with places to go.

"I should go," he says. "I have something to do."

"Okay. Yeah, same."

"Okay." Haruka hesitates, can't think of anything more fitting than: "Bye."

"Haru, wait!" Rin says quickly, and Haruka scrambles to bring the phone back to his ear. "Just…thanks for talking to me."

For a moment Haruka can't find words. Does Rin mean just now? Or in general? He clears his throat, ducks his head. "You too. Thanks."

He lets Rin hang up first, and then the line goes completely dead. He waits until the man is far ahead, and then he stands, shrugs his swim bag over his shoulder, and sets off once again. His heart is still racing.

The first training day is on Monday afternoon, and doesn't involve any actual training. It's an orientation, so what it does involve is more paperwork, and when Haruka arrives Kaji-san is at the front desk and points him down the hall and around the corner to room 5B, a small conference chamber with its doors open wide.

The room smells like recently-washed carpeting, and there are maybe twenty or so people, all young, milling around between rows of tables. Some are in casual clothes and some are in school uniforms; some talk amongst themselves, but most of them are trying to look busy examining their surroundings and avoiding eye contact, the way people in a room full of strangers do.

Then, over everyone's head, Haruka spots a very tall figure at the back of the room, standing against the windows. Hair pulled back into a ponytail, brooding expression and hunched shoulders. Nagano, or something. The breaststroke guy. He makes his way over just as a supervisor shuts the doors and calls for everyone's attention.

The other two from the trial are at the back wall too – backstroke guy, one shoulder drooping under the weight of a backpack that looks like it's about to split apart at the seams; and butterfly girl, hair tied into two short pigtails low on her head and jeans bleached and heavily torn at the knees. They both nod at Haruka, and backstroke guy smiles brightly. Breaststroke guy doesn't pay him any notice.

Roll-call reminds him of their names. Amano Reiji, breaststroke; Chiburi Sakura, butterfly; Shimamura Kota, backstroke. They form a list in his head, like categories, and he knows if he's going to be working with them he's going to have to be less detached.

"Ready for a long haul?" Chiburi mutters under her breath while the supervisor continues calling out names.

"Don't worry guys, I have snacks," Shimamura whispers back loudly, patting the front pocket of his backpack, which makes a crackling sound.

There are three groups in the room – swim lessons, basketball camp, and soccer camp – but before they're split up and sent off to watch their own orientations, they all take a seat to get the paperwork out of the way. Shimamura rockets into a chair beside Chiburi, and Haruka sits between him and Amano.

"Crap," Chiburi says, when the supervisor places a stack of paperwork in front of her. "I forgot a pen."

Shimamura whips his backpack onto the desk – it lands with an immense thunk inches from Haruka's hand. "Wanna borrow a pen, Chiburi-san?" he asks eagerly.

"Please don't call me that," Chiburi says.

"Chiburi…chan? No? Um, Sakura…san? Chan?"

"Definitely not that," Chiburi says, but she grins. "Use Zaki instead and I'll be happy to use your pen, though."

Haruka's head swivels around at that, and Chiburi frowns around Shimamura at him.

"What?"

"Did you ever swim at the Iwatobi Swim Club?" he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

"No. I've always swam in Fube. Why, you know another Zaki?"

You could say so, Haruka thinks, though he doesn't remember too much about her anymore. Just an air of kindness, buoyancy, like a sunny day, like the fluffy edges of summer clouds. And 'Zaki-chan' said in Makoto's voice, way back when they were kids and they sounded like they had swallowed helium balloons. Yazaki Aki and her white scarf.

He doesn't get to say anything, because the supervisor asks if they've all got their papers in front of them, and there is a general murmur of affirmation.

Amano nudges him. "Does he have another pen?" he asks Haruka in an undertone. He jerks his chin in Shimamura's direction.

Haruka turns and asks. Shimamura digs out another pen, which Haruka passes along.

"Nice nails," Amano tells him, eyes on the front of the room as he takes the pen.

Haruka curls his fingers, hiding the jagged splotches of polish still left behind. He gives Amano a mistrustful look, but it goes unnoticed. "My friend made me do it."

"Girls like to do that," Amano says, and was that mean to sound understanding? It's hard to tell, and now he's writing his name onto the top of his form like he hadn't said anything at all.

An hour and a half later, the lights go back on in room 5B. The supervisor shuts off the TV and dismisses them, and everyone stretches their legs out before rising from their seats and drifting out the door. The center is quieter, the halls emptier; many of the office spaces Haruka passes by are dark.

"Hey, Nanase!"

The shout startles him. He turns around, sees Chiburi at the end of the hall by the bathrooms with Amano, who's holding Shimamura's backpack. "Wanna come eat with the three of us? There's a place a couple blocks away we're gonna check out."

She looks expectant, Amano looks impassive. Haruka's surprised by the invitation, and he hesitates for a moment before raising his voice loud enough to call back, "Sorry. I have plans already."

"That's fine," Chiburi says. She lifts a hand. "See you Thursday."

And he does, when their trainee group meets at the poolside for the first of four long days of lifeguard training. They're immediately sent into the water for a multi-stage physical test that is meant to weed out any weak links. By the time Haruka has retrieved a twenty pound weight from the bottom of the deep end and is swimming it to the edge of the pool, his limbs feel weak and rubbery. He still manages to hoist the weight and then himself out of the pool and complete the chest compressions on the dummy lying nearby, while the whistle shrieks to the pace he has to keep.

"Good job," Shimamura says, towel over his head and an exhausted smile on his face when Haruka flops onto the bleachers beside him. He holds out a water bottle, which Haruka takes gratefully.

The whistle blows, and they watch another trainee begin stage three from the shallow end. Chiburi is next in line, standing with her ankles in the water on the top step, and Amano is right behind her. So far, neither of them has had any trouble with the test. Performance-wise, Haruka ranks himself somewhere around the middle, just above Shimamura, who had almost failed to heave his weight out of the pool – it's harder than it looks with nothing but water beneath your feet.

In the end, everyone passes, which makes them a group of seven. Two burly guys and a tall, willowy girl round them out, and these three stick together like they've met before. Haruka thinks of them as the 'other group', and then realizes he's stuck himself with Chiburi, Amano, and Shimamura by default.

Nobody asks him to join them for dinner this time, but when they're dismissed they go in different directions anyway – Shimamura off through the parking lot towards the center of town, and Amano and Chiburi together toward the station. They end up on the east-bound platform and Haruka pretends not to notice them across the way; not that he has to try, because they are so wrapped up in their conversation – Amano leaning casually against a lamp post with his arms crossed while Chiburi gestures this way and that in front of him – that they don't notice him at all.

Each day, the sessions begin with laps and training exercises, and then go on to include CPR and first aid, and various lessons on saves that the trainees practice on each other. And there are hours and hours of instructional videos in room 5B, whose clean-carpet smell has become so familiar that Haruka doesn't notice it by the third video. Nobody really enjoys watching the videos, though everyone enjoys giving their bodies a rest. Shimamura arrives on the second day smelling of menthol and complaining about sore muscles, and tries to convince them all to take some of the paste from the tin he has stored in his backpack.

"You're just gonna have to wash it off before you get in the pool," Chiburi says, tapping the pen she borrowed several days ago against the desk. "Hey, what else you got in that backpack anyway?"

The longest sessions take place over the weekend, and the only time they're allowed to leave the rec center is the forty minute lunch break. Haruka and Shimamura lean against one railing outside the front doors and Amano and Chiburi lean against the opposite, and they talk when there aren't people passing through.

Haruka learns more about them over these lunches, like that Chiburi – "Seriously, just call me Zaki, please," she tells him when he flubs up – is a second-year at university; or would be, like him, except she dropped out after her first year, which didn't sit well with her parents.

"I mean, all I want is to swim," she says, with a moody lift of her shoulders. More to the story is implied – like: isn't she swimming now? and what about that schedule? – but she isn't forthcoming.

Shimamura is a university first-year, an honors student, and vice-president of his school's break dancing club.

"How the hell do you do all that and plan to do this too?" Chiburi says through a mouthful of rice, stabbing her chopsticks in his direction.

"I'm a man of many talents, Zaki-chan," Shimamura says. He winks, tries to twirl his chopsticks. They fall to the ground and roll down the steps.

Chiburi cringes. "I changed my mind. Just Zaki, please."

Haruka's already finished his lunch, so he gives his chopsticks to Shimamura, who beams at him. Shimamura does that a lot, beaming at him. Haruka remembers what he said when they first met, about wanting to swim with him, and hopes there isn't some kind of low-key hero worship going on, like what Rin had to deal with with Nitori once upon a time.

Amano is quiet, but time passes and he doesn't get any more talkative, so Haruka gets used to it. Chiburi and Shimamura start and maintain conversations; Haruka and Amano sometimes manage to keep them going, and sometimes end them on accident.

In all, Haruka likes these people, and he thinks they like him enough, and when he calls Chiburi "Chibu – ah – Zaki" she just raises her eyebrows as if to say, I like that you're trying, but try a little harder.

And then, when they're almost done with lunch on Sunday and Amano leans into Chiburi and asks, "Zaki-chan, are you going to eat your fried egg?" Haruka is as dumbfounded as Shimamura, who chokes on a carrot stick and says, through Haruka slapping him on the back and the tears streaming down his face, "What did you just call her?"

Amano's cheeks get pink, and Chiburi sighs and scoops her fried egg into his bento box, but she presses her lips together like she's trying to hold back a smile.

Shimamura looks crushed, and he turns to Haruka and says, "Nanase-chan, are you going to eat your fried egg?"

"I don't have – hey, don't call me chan."

Once the lights are brought back on in room 5B for the last time, and the television is turned off for good, Chiburi asks him again if he wants to join them for dinner. This time he doesn't hesitate, and as the four of them head through the parking lot together he wonders when they'll notice how much he likes to eat mackerel.

The next morning, on the train ride home after swimming with Hiro, he decides to take his phone out to see if Rin has texted him yet. And then he realizes Rin didn't text him yesterday. Or the day before that, or the day before that. Since lifeguard training began, he thinks.

With a sinking feeling, he remembers the instructor asking them to turn off their phones the first day. He'd stowed his in his swim bag, and had been too exhausted to remember it until now.

He expects texts – maybe not a lot, but some, maybe one per day. He's ready to give explanations – Sorry, I forgot about my phone. Sorry, I've been busy. Sorry, I'm not ignoring you. But instead there's nothing.

He stares uneasily at his phone, but is the unease because Rin's been so quiet, or is it because he wants to text Rin but thinks he'll sound stupid no matter what he says? It can't be that hard; Rin texts him all the time, about mundane things, about funny things, about anything.

But it is hard. Trying to find the right balance of relaxed, but worried, but not actually worried, just checking in, just casual, just friends. Just whatever they are. Just missing Rin, but not too obviously, and kind of on edge about missing him, because things are really serious between them in a way he doesn't have an explanation for, and everything's so in the air and so deceptively simple at the same time, and they text every day but it's Rin who texts him first, and when it's anything beyond talking through a keyboard Haruka feels like he's swallowed a second heart.

It takes the entire train ride, and several deletions and restarts, but he finally sends: Hi. Are you busy? and still feels like smacking his face against the window. He hides his phone deep in his swim bag, tries to force it out of his mind on the walk home. He drops the bag at the front door and doesn't go back to dig out his phone until after lunch. There's no reply, and wishes he hadn't looked.

But on his way up the stairs his phone buzzes, and Rin's answer is there, followed by a second, and then a third.

yeah sorry i had two exams last week and i have a paper due tomorrow ive been working on all weekend

its still sunday here

sorry

Haruka's thumbs hover over the keyboard. Now there is pressure to reply quickly, but he waits until he's in his room before sending back, It's okay, I was just wondering. He plugs his phone into the charger, waits.

how's training? Rin asks him.

Hard. We had four days of lifeguard training. I think the rest will be easier.

still tired then?

What about you?

haha yeah ok i am

Haruka sits on the edge of his bed, wondering what mundane thing he could talk about, though it turns out there's no need.

i do have to go though. gotta finish this tonight cause i have class all day tomorrow

That's okay. Good luck with your paper.

thanks, you too

with training

Haruka smiles, sets his phone on the headboard. He imagines a Rin that is tired and harried, books piled around him, eyes glassy with fatigue, but a Rin that is well, and that's all he wanted to find out.

He heads over to Makoto's later in the afternoon, with a bag full of paints that has been sitting in the hall for over a week. He hears a stampede when he rings the doorbell, and a very overwhelmed-looking Makoto opens the door.

"They've been waiting," is all Makoto can say, before Ren and Ran push him aside and grab for Haruka.

"We washed all the rocks, Haru-chan," Ren says. "We washed them over the weekend. They're in the bucket now, all dry."

"And we set up the backyard," Ran says. "We laid out all the newspapers and got out the brushes and water and everything."

They pull Haruka through the house, and leave him out back to open the paint bottles while they dash upstairs to change out of their school clothes. Makoto comes out with a book in his arms, settles down by the door.

"Are you studying?" Haruka asks.

"Just a little," Makoto says with a smile. "I'll paint too, don't worry."

The twins come running back out, smocks tied over frayed old clothes that already have stains on them.

"These are supposed to last a long time, right?" Ren asks, newspaper crackling as he sits down to inspect the paints.

"That's what the clerk at the store told me," Haruka says.

"Hmm," Ran says. She sits beside her brother, pulls the orange paint bottle toward her and takes a brush out of the pile. "Okay, I hope so."

They take rocks out of the bucket and paint them one by one, and set them at the end of the patio to dry. It's peaceful – just the crinkling of the newspaper and of Makoto flipping through his textbook, the sound of birds, the occasional drone of a plane going by overhead. Ren fidgets a lot as he works, ends up on his stomach, on his side, sitting completely turned around with is back to them. Ran sits still, and by his fifth rock Haruka notices her watching him.

"What?" he says.

"How do you get it to look so nice?" she says, looking at his rock in admiration. Her own is blank, and her paintbrush dries on top of the newspaper.

"It depends on the brush," Haruka says. "And how you mix the colors. And other things, probably." He never starts out with an idea in mind, just dips brushes into colors and figures out along the way. This one has ended up with swirls of blue and white – clouds against a gray sky.

"It's so pretty," Ran sighs.

"You should paint some more," Haruka says. "Ren and I can't do all of them."

Ran looks unhappily down at her rock. "But I'm so bad at it."

"You're not bad. I still have the two you gave to me. They're on my kitchen counter."

"Yeah, but you're just being nice."

"No I'm not."

"Yeah you are."

"No I'm not."

"Yeah, you –"

"No I'm not."

"Haru-chan! God, stop it!" Ran laughs, then huffs. "Okay, fine. Give me something to draw."

"A boat."

"A boat? Haru-chan, are you serious?"

"Here's mine," Makoto cuts in, shuffling forward to place his rock between Haruka and Ran. There's a yellow flower, and an orange circle that is maybe the sun, and some purple stars, with blue painted messily between.

"Wow," Ran says. "That's so amateur."

"Well then," Makoto says cheerfully, "show me that you can do better."

That gets Ran painting, and when Ren leans over to see what Makoto painted, the twins snicker together. Makoto just shrugs at Haruka, gets to his feet and stretches his arms over his head.

"How's studying?" Haruka asks him.

"Tedious and necessary?" Makoto says. "How's training?"

"The same. I like it, though. I like being busy."

"Who are you, and what have you done with Nanase Haruka?" Makoto says, grinning wide.

Haruka snorts. "I don't know."

"Want to run?"

They leave the twins, who are now immersed in trying to out-paint each other, and Makoto's textbook, which Haruka notices is open to a page that looks like it's filled less with type than with colorful images.

"Oh yeah," Haruka says, when they're heading out the front door. "There's a girl called Zaki at work."

"No way, she's not – ?!"

"No, she's not. Her name's Chiburi Sakura. I'm bad at calling her Zaki. It feels kind of weird."

"How are you doing with Gou-chan?"

They leave the yard; Haruka shuts the gate after them. "That's different. But I haven't talked to her since then, so I don't know. I'll probably mess it up. Do you still have any polish left?"

"No. I had a happy face on this finger for the longest time." Makoto holds up a pinky. "But it's gone now." He starts laughing, a jumpy sound as they head down the stairs. "Nagisa was trying to keep his from chipping off, so he wore band-aids over all his fingernails for two days and told anyone who asked that he'd burned all his fingers trying to take a tray of pizza out of the oven. Everyone believed him! The polish didn't last, though."

After their run, they stop by the store with Mrs. Tachibana's grocery list and some money she gave them before they left. Makoto carries home the huge sack of rice, and Haruka carries the bags full of everything else. He side-eyes Makoto's efforts to keep the sack from falling out of his arms.

"You could have gotten a smaller one."

"But we had enough money for this one, and we go through it so fast," Makoto says, already sounding regretful, and going bow-legged as he hoists the bag back up.

Haruka waits until Makoto's finally gotten a secure hold on the rice, which takes a little while, maybe three minutes of walking along the oceanfront and staring at the colors on the water and wondering if he wants to say anything at all. He decides he does, or that he might as well just to get it off his mind, so when he doesn't hear the sounds of struggle anymore he looks back over.

"Makoto. What aren't you telling me?"

Makoto meets his eyes, and the confusion there quickly disappears.

"I've been found out, huh?" Makoto says. He looks away, seems to be looking for words. They walk a bit farther, and then he says, "It's not that I've been hiding anything. I just wanted to wait until things were set in stone before I said anything, just in case. But I guess things are pretty set now…so I guess I can tell you."

Haruka waits, and Makoto glances back at him. And now he does look guilty, or maybe just apologetic, and Haruka feels suddenly too tired to try to arm himself, or to even bother regretting asking in the first place.

"Well, I'm gonna be leaving," Makoto says, with a pasted on smile that Haruka knows is meant to act as a balm but just feels traitorous.

"What do you mean?" Haruka asks. His footsteps are heavier, a dull thunk, thunk he feels echoing through him.

Makoto looks away again. "I'm going abroad in the fall. For a few months, to study. That's why I've been working so hard. You have to have top marks to qualify, because the school doesn't have the money to send lots of people."

It's not as bad as Haruka had expected; it's better than he had dared to hope in those few seconds where leaving meant anything in the world. A few months isn't three years, isn't like teeth being pulled. But Makoto not being just next door is still a definite something being uprooted; he already feels a vague, nervous discomfort.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"England," Makoto says, with a little up-hitch in his voice, a blip of enthusiasm that was either unconscious or that he'd been trying to hold back. "I never really expected to want to go there, but somehow…well, this ended up happening."

Haruka remembers the book on the patio, with pictures more than words. "You've been studying English."

Makoto shrugs, looks a little embarrassed. "I figured I should try to get a bit better before I go, so I can enjoy the experience more. Um, I really am sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I just didn't want to jinx it, I think."

"You're really excited," Haruka observes, watching the smile bloom on Makoto's face, the way it vanishes the tiredness in his eyes. And so now Makoto's world is expanding too, he thinks. He feels like he's on an island by comparison, stranded somewhere so small.

"I really am." Makoto says. He squints up at the houses in the hills above them. "I don't know how to say this so it doesn't sound bad, but sometimes I'm kind of tired of being here? It's so nice, and so the same. I'm used to everything; there's nothing new. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was being too safe, waiting around here for some bright light to come along and show me the way, instead of just going somewhere. Maybe I should've left Iwatobi sooner."

"And me?"

Makoto gives him pained look. "I don't mean leaving you, and you know that."

"No. I mean, do you think I'm being too safe?"

"I don't know, Haru. You're the only one that can really know. Of course I wonder. Especially these past couple months, seeing you so unhappy again. But I believe in you. I believe you know how to make the right decisions, or what you felt were right for you at the time."

"But what if they aren't right anymore?"

"Then do something about it."

"But I can't just go back a few steps and redo things."

"No, you can't!" Makoto says, and there's frustration there that Haruka has never heard before. Makoto gives him a hard look, insistent and apologetic all at once. "But you can keep going forward. That's all I can tell you. What's done is done."

Haruka looks away; he knows Makoto's right. And he doesn't want to go back anywhere. There are things he'd rather not relive. They start up the stairs in a heavier silence than any they've shared in recent memory.

"Haru… I don't think you have to know what you're doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going somewhere I can barely speak the language. Who ever knows what they're doing? I don't think it's ever that clear-cut."

"Change…is scary," Haruka says. His voice shrinks at the end, holds tight to his throat like it doesn't want to leave. He forces a cough, feels his face go red.

"Yeah," Makoto says. Haruka can feel him staring, so he looks over. Makoto smiles at him, says brightly, "And exciting?"

Haruka thinks about training, about friends he's making slowly, thinks ahead to a summer of work and obligations and people depending on him, some semblance of adulthood taking form. "Maybe."

But exciting doesn't feel like the right word. There's an entire world of changes opening up in front of him, and he's just toeing the line. Because if he wants to step over it, then he'll have to let change be everything, all that happens to him. Things won't be the same anymore. Things already are beyond anything he'd imagined while he was back in high school, and it's the process of not knowing what things are changing into that scares him. Because there's no guarantee that things will be better than they are now.

There's no guarantee that he and Rin will get somewhere better, and it's already hard enough to find his footing when he's just dealing with himself alone.

"When are you leaving?" he asks.

"Not until the end of summer," Makoto says. He hoists the sack up against his shoulder so he can open the front gate, and they make their way through to the house. "I still have to keep my grades up. Enroll for my classes abroad. Figure out where I'm going to live. See if I can get any more scholarships. Um, if I need help with anything, or just want an opinion on anything, is it okay if I ask you?"

"Of course you can."

Makoto smiles. "Thanks."

Haruka follows him inside, into organized clutter and the noise of the twins bouncing around the kitchen, up to Makoto's room where books and papers lie everywhere, and then later to the crowded dinner table where he feels more than anywhere else that he's part of a family. He tries not to think about what it will be like when the space Makoto occupies is empty.