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Let’s talk about how Nitori is fifteen years old when Rin Matsuoka returns to Japan, contempt and anger pulsing in every muscle, permeating each stride he walks, very stroke he swims. Let’s talk about how Nitori follows his every move with admiration shining in his eyes, how at night, he traces the lines of his much smaller muscles and dreams about growing, about filling the room like Rin does. Let’s talk about how he stretches his spine to try and match his modest height to his idol. How he just wants to measure up. Let’s talk about Rin Matsuoka is everything Nitori ever wanted to be.
Rin is a natural. Born with swimming in his genes, in his bones. Rin is a boy who grows up chasing the footsteps of someone else. Rin is the one with the talent, the strength, or so Nitori thought.
His story is one of growth. Let’s talk about Nitori Aiicirou for a bit.
There is talent you are born with, and then there is the talent acquired through hard work. Nitori was never born the talented one, he was a boy who tasted defeat again and again. Yet he always found joy in the happiness with which Rin swam.
He had been ten; tasting defeat and disappointment on his tongue and feeling his limbs shake with exhaustion. Maybe he had wanted to give up then, after that relay. But then he saw Matsuoka Rin, passion so great it burned itself into his psyche for years to come.
Nitori never had the body of a swimmer. His build was too slight, his shoulders too narrow, his arms too short.
Even so, he swam.
And he would keep swimming. Because he loved it. And because there was someone he so badly wanted to be like.
I wonder if there were times when he would resign to the truth that he would never be Rin – I hope he eventually stopped trying.
Nitori spends his two first years of high school chasing a role that is not cast for him. He is not made to be the best, or the strongest, or the smartest, or the boldest – yet, he is never useless.
Nitori inhabits kindness, and support, and unwavering devotion. Nitori watches as Rin bends and breaks, as he turns away and spits poison from cracked lips, as he turns his back on what he loves, and vowes to never return. He stands his ground and lets the older’s venom wash over him. He does not waver in his devotion. Never does he stop believing in the other’s prowess.
Such is the determination of Nitori Aiichirou.
Nitori swims, and laughs, and tries to match his steps to Rin’s. He eventually becomes an equal, and he gains the admiration of an underclassman.
Even so, he is surpassed, again and again.
He is the boy who cries over shadows that grow too large for him to match. Nitori has never been talented, and despite himself, he grows to despise the ones who are. (He grows to despise himself for it as well.)
Pride is a fickle thing. Pride is fickle and jealousy is pitiful.
Leadership is never about being the best. Nitori swallows bitterness and disappointment, he plasters on smiles to cheer on those whose places he himself wishes to hold. They earned their keep, after all. He smiles and tells them good luck, and swims laps in the pool for hours on end in order to improve himself.
Let’s talk about how bold boys with big dreams tattoo themselves on the inside of his ribs. Nitori watches and he wants so badly to be where they are. Swimming and swimming and losing and losing. He watches himself be surpassed by younger swimmers, cursing their talent, or his own lack of it.
But talent is not something you are born with, it is something you earn. At sixteen, Nitori watched from the tribunes as Rei Ryuugazaki swam his way to nationals together with the Iwatobi Swim Club relay team. He watched, and he remembered how the boy, useless in water that’s chest deep, had been rescued from the Samezuka pool a little under two years ago. He watched and he felt ashamed that he ever believed anything different.
He went back to Samezuka with determination blazing in his veins. And he swam. And he continued swimming until the ache in his muscles woke him up at night, and his skin turned dry from chlorine.
Maybe, eventually, his hard work becomes his absolution. Maybe he pays back for every stab of jealousy that curls in his veins as he watches Momotarou excel again and again. Maybe he pays back for the bitterness that lies cold in his chest each time he enters their shared room after washing the chlorine from his hair and is greeted with Nitori-Senpai! Nitori-Senpai! I caught a new stag beetle! Look! I’m gonna call him Pyunsuke! And I’ll give him to Gou-San! Do you think Gou-San will like him? Do you, Nitori-Senpai?
Momo is one year younger, and had the focus of a five year old. He wears otter t-shirts and crushes on pretty girls and catches stag beetles and reads comic books, and he surpasses Nitori in half a year. Nitori doesn’t welcome the bitterness that curls in his chest when the relay list is revealed. Momo was the brother of a former captain, after all. He takes his disappointment elsewhere and weeps alone.
That’s when Sousuke Yamazaki finds him.
Nitori almost jumped out of his skin when that brusque voice had urged him to move. Sousuke spares his tears half a glance when he passes him by, all angst and mystique and heaviness burdening broad shoulders.
Nitori doesn’t know what urges him to speak; the older boy has always terrified him. But he does.
“I have been surpassed by an underclassman.” Nitori says, the tears misting the corners of his baby blues. He looks like a child, he knows. He never really had any true physique to speak of. The tears don’t help the impression at all.
Ahead of him, Sousuke Yamazaki stops walking. When he looks at him, the older’s blue eyes betray emotions that Nitori won't understand until months later.
“Don’t quell your own potential before you even try,” he says.
One year later, Nitori is called forth by Rin as the new captain of the Samezuka swim team.
But before that, Nitori was the boy who woke up at dawn, and worked until midnight. He swam under flourecent lights flickering in migraine-inducing rythms. He always went to bed exhausted. He always woke up exhausted as well, catching moments of sleep in the back row of algebra or in the library during study sessions. His GPA suffers, his muscles ache and he chucks his math book away after yet another failed test.
Nitori was always quick to weep, his face flushed red with despair and frustration and just a little anger. Yet, he keeps swimming. His calves ache as he exits the pool at midnight, but he will be back early tomorrow.
Two more laps, he thinks. Two more and two more and another two until moonlight glisten through the windows. Two more and two more and two more, and then Sousuke is there.
He knows defeat too, but that, Nitori doesn’t know yet.
He learns how to extend himself, how to kick, how to glide through the water so it offers the least resistance. Just like Sousuke tempers his determination with wisdom, and Rin encourages it in his own quiet way. The both watch from the edge of the pool as Nitori swims laps. Over and over again.
Let’s talk about how Nitori did not excel all on his own, nor did he feel the need to. Nitori is not Rin, he accepts help where it was offered with thankfulness spilling from his tongue.
Not all boys are meant to be bold. Not all are born to shine brightly. Some are meant to blossom quietly, and shine in their own time. Flowers grow more slowly in shadow, but they reach towards the sun all the same.
Nitori grows slowly and silently, with hard work, and with help. He becomes a leader without even knowing it.
In his last year, Nitori walks down the halls of Samezuka in his own pace. He doesn’t need to match his strides with people whose legs are longer, or whose path is different. He walks on his own.
Seijuuro taught his team to be strong. Rin taught them to swim with their hearts. I hope as a captain, Nitori sees how his underclassmen look at him in admiration, how the wish to improve burns within their chests. I hope he sees how they match their strides to his, I hope he looks at his team and tastes the same devotion that he too gave to his captain, his idol. I hope he teaches them to swim with determination, and to keep swimming with determination because some flowers grow more slowly than others.
Nitori watched, he dreamt, and he grew.
Nitori knew the taste of defeat on his tongue, and the feeling of uselessness in his bones, I hope he grows up to offer smiles and support and guidance, and mend broken egos.
When they told Nitori’s story, they gave him the end he dreamt about. The end he deserved. This is the story of Nitori Aiichirou
End.