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What if Gou had known about Sousuke’s shoulder from the beginning?
Gou, with all her years’ worth of watching from the outside as her brother succumbed to his demons. With all her years’ worth of knowing lies or half-truths for what they were. When she looked Sousuke in the eyes when they met again, years after middle school, what if she saw some of that same pain her brother had carried behind the glacier blue of his eyes? Let’s tell a story where she didn’t need to see the blackened bruise during his last race - instead she saw the tender way he moved, she saw what raged behind his eyes, and was not fooled.
Sousuke Yamazaki would still crumble from the pain, in hallways or locker rooms, or just anywhere where others couldn’t see him, but this time, Gou Matsuoka would be with him, with an ice pack and a gentle smile.
Let’s tell a story where Sousuke didn’t have to bear all of his pain alone.
They knew each other from childhood. Him; five years old, with knobbly knees and a fierce smile, always by her brother’s side no matter what. Her; four. A wispy, wide eyed little thing with hair as red as sunrise. She made him drink pretend-tea with her on Sundays (to Rin’s eternal amusement), and called him ‘Sousuke-nii’ until he was twelve (to Rin’s silent envy). Sousuke drank not-tea between stuffed bears and rabbits in Gou’s cerulean blue bedroom, and snuck her treats from his family’s grocery store in return.
Their relationship was one of siblings; or something even closer? When Rin left for Australia, Sousuke found Gou in her brother's empty bedroom, empty-eyed and heavy. He curled up beside her and told her stories until the tears in her eyes were from laughter, not sadness.
Gou was still a wispy thing when he left for school in Tokyo at fifteen – at least she was to him. Still tiny and wide-eyed, but with a smile like the sun. Sousuke, on the other had was no longer knobble-kneed, he was broad-shouldered and talented and with big dreams and a bright future.
But his hopefulness wouldn’t last in either story.
Theirs is a story about a boy who wanted success so badly; he ended up pushing those he cared about away. And it's the story about a girl who was pushed away again and again, until one day, she had enough. Such a story, it would always be.
But let's change the way it's told.
The ideal story would have them keep in touch during those two years they spent apart.
Gou would call him when she missed him, or when she felt lonely in that big house without her brother; he would answer her calls with relief because it meant he would not have to face the pitying glances of his classmates in dormitory hallways. He would spend two years on the phone, and if that was the case, maybe he would have told her about his shoulder.
But that wasn’t the case. Sousuke, in the same way Rin had, left everything that mattered behind, and disappeared for years. Gou, meanwhile, didn’t wallow in it. She shook the sadness off of her shoulders, and invited her best friend from school for teaparties instead (the tea was switched from pretend- to real years before).
Gou wasn’t alone, really. She still had her mother who worked double shifts at the hospital most nights, but who always left a tray of brownies on the kitchen counter if she’d be very late getting home. She had her best friend to curl up with, hot tea and bad jokes flowing, until the tremble in her fingers and the burning in her throat went away. Yet she would be lonely for those years in either story. For years she stumbled alone up the hill where her father was buried, with no one to catch her when she tripped. For years, her brother was little more than unanswered phone calls, or a name that her trembling fingers wrote at the top of a letter.
When she saw Sousuke again after two years, she pouted her lips and scrunched her brows and wondered why he had never called.
But Sousuke had carried the weight of those years alone as well. All the pain of injury and broken dreams; throughout physical therapy and relapses and losing more and more and more competitions. His parents wouldn’t know for years, Sousuke Yamazaki just wasn’t the type to confess that the reason he shattered the dinner plates was because his shoulder just wouldn’t work right.
When he came back, she had grown. She was still small to him; he would never stop seeing her as that tiny thing whose schoolyard bullies he had scared away for years. Still the little girl who had believed in fairies and the bogeyman and made him watch the Little Mermaid with her on early Saturday mornings. But there was fierceness to her now. A fierce protectiveness, a fierce loyality.
Fierceness often came in small packages, after all.
It was something they shared. Their best quality or their worst. Loving another so desperately they’d do anything for them - like nothing else mattered but their happiness.
It was what made them similar, and it was what made them different. Gou told him about the relay one night. About her brother and Haru and the team and how she hadn’t seen him smile in years like he’d done that day. Sousuke didn’t doubt her. He’d seen it himself. But when Gou had cried with happiness, Sousuke had trembled with fury.
"She sounded lonely," Sousuke had told her brother that after he met Gou again in a swimming hall hallway. Her wide eyes had reminded him so much of everything he'd left behind – everything he'd once told himself he didn’t need.
Rin had shrugged his shoulders and told him he was too busy with his swimming to visit her. He’d have gotten mad if he hadn’t used the very same excuse for years.
“He seemed lost,” she'd tell Chigusa over tea, somewhere else in the city. She had seen the set in his shoulders and the storms behind his eyes, and thought of her brother.
Gou spent a childhood watching bold boys with big dreams; she spent her adolescence watching her brother pull away from her – withdraw into himself. I don’t think she would let Sousuke do the same when he finally came back to her.
Yes. Let's tell their story differently; this time, Gou would notice that something was wrong. She had spent years of her childhood on bleachers watching the boy-who-was-not-quite-her-brother swim. Sousuke had experience being watched; media, coaches, his classmates looking up to him, but somehow Gou was the first person in years to actually see him.
In our story, Rin wouldn’t be the first Matsuoka to corner Sousuke in a hallway and demand answers. Gou would do the same thing months before him. Watching the way he gingerly rolled his shoulder, the way he stopped himself from using his left arm, she would set those fierce-as-fire eyes upon him, and asked him to tell her what was wrong.
“It’s nothing,” he would tell either Matsuoka when they asked, and neither would believe him.
Gou would react differently from Rin. She wouldn’t yell, or scream, or take his secret by force. In that empty hallway, she leaned against the wall by his side, and just watched him. There wasn’t a bruise on his shoulder yet, no mark that could tell her if she was wrong or right. There was just Sousuke, the storms behind his eyes, the loss she recognised in every stress of his spine.
She had always liked his shoulders. Maybe that's why she'd noticed so easily when something was wrong.
“You’re just like Onii-chan,” she told him with a smile that was more sadness than anything else, “I’ll listen if there is anything you ever want to talk about, Sousuke-kun”.
And let's say there was. On a day when his shoulder ached more than usual - or the weight of everything that he was about to lose felt just a bit too heavy - let's say he called her.
"Don't tell Rin," would be the first thing he'd say. And then everything would come pouring out. Gou wouldn't cry, or pity him. She would just listen.
And then she would roll up her sleeves, square her shoulders, and get to work. This was Gou Matsuoka after all. She would give up most anything just to feel needed. And Sousuke needed her now.
Over the next months, Gou spent most nights at the library; working on nutritional plans and training regimes most days. She was the manager of a swim team after all, she had duties to more people than herself. I like to think she would ask Sousuke for help sometimes, and that he would begrudgingly comply, even though helping to develop a well-rounded regimen for Nanase was really against everything that he stood for.
But there were other nights she would spend trawling the rows for medicinal literature, nimble fingers plucking down book after book on anatomy. “Tendonitis can be cured,” she would tell him, “you just need to take it easy for a while”.
And let's say she quietly stayed behind on nights after joint practices - nights when Sousuke's shoulder ached more than usual - nights after staring competitions with Nanase ("you're being too childish, Sousuke-kun") with an ice pack and a kind smile. (And let’s say Sousuke wore his shoulder brace more often, because of those bright red eyes that watched him with worry from the edge of the pool).
Let's say Gou became his rock. His support system. The gentleness that kept his bitterness at bay. Let's say she gave him room to be vulnerable.
But there would still be tension, there would always be with these kids. Sousuke would still corner Haru in a swimming hall corridor, all calm terror, and tell him to just stay out of Rin’s way. He and Rin would still fight; they wouldn’t have grown out of that. Even with Gou by his side, Sousuke would still struggle to see what Rin saw when he swam.
But there could be another layer to it. A furious plotline where Sousuke got low, so low that he tried to draw away - to push away everyone he cared about, but where Gou just wouldn't let him. Let’s see some traits of Gou from season one; the girl who called her brother again and again and again, but never got an answer. The girl who smiled like sunshine those few times when he gave her the time of day. The girl who saw the storms behind his eyes, breathed in, breathed out, and rolled up her sleeves to find a way to fix him.
Gou had been left behind again and again and again, father, brother, friend. If anyone asked, she'd shrug her shoulders. Sometimes people left, she knew that. Sometimes they didn't come back. And sometimes they came back, but not really (that was the worst one, she'd tell Chigusa one night).
She tried not to dwell on it, but it showed in the way her trembling fingers held on when he wouldn’t meet her eyes - when he wouldn’t tell her the truth; from, “Sousuke-kun, please, I just want to help you!”, to “don’t you dare push me away!”
I like the thought of Sousuke, always so used to seeing Rin cry, not knowing what to do when it’s Gou’s tears in front of him.
He'd startle, stutter, and hesitate to touch her. Gou never cried easily, but there she was, crying because of him.
This time, he had no funny stories to make her laugh her tears away. Mumbled apologies took their place.
And she would forgive him, of course. This was Gou, and Gou believed in second chances, and she believed in him. This was the girl who had devoted her existence to make her brother smile again, and she would understand when he told her he wanted to swim with Rin just one last time. Sousuke wasn’t the first person ready to give the world to stand by her brother’s side.
Gou had seen the storm behind his eyes and thought of her brother. In many ways, he was just like him.
Rin with his glass heart worn on his sleeve would react just the way Sousuke wanted to. Crying, screaming, cursing and denial. They both knew it so well, and that’s why he didn’t say anything, and neither did she. It wasn’t her place she told him one night. His secrets were his alone.
Maybe, throughout the first half of the season, the audience wouldn't know what Gou knew. Maybe it would be hinted through autonomy books on her desk, or though tiny. concerned glances at Sousuke during competitions.
We could still have the mystery – the shocking reveal. Still Kisumi’s tumultuous introduction (and Haru’s quietly obvious jealousy). Kisumi still slung a carefree arm around Haru and ask about Sousuke’s shoulder unconcerned about what he was revealing.
We could still have Makoto and Haru quietly, concernedly, search for the truth – except this time, they wouldn’t be the only Iwatobi’s to share the secret. Let’s have Makoto ask Gou about it, and let’s have her startle and spill her tea and stutter through a lie.
Of course Makoto wouldn’t believe her. He knew how to read people even better than she did; a lifetime with Haru had taught him that. So let’s say he approached her about it later; “Kisumi told me about Yamazaki-kun’s shoulder – c’mon Gou-chan, I know you know about it” and her, eyes widening in shock, mouth opening to protest. Months of keeping it a secret; she had four planned excuses on her tongue, two furious threats, one desperate plea. Somehow, that was the only thing that made it off the tip of her tongue. “Makoto-senpai, please, please don’t tell Onii-chan.”
Maybe this version could show us a bit more of her relationship with her team; beyond swimming or terrible cooking, or beyond just being their link to her brother.
Gou would tire from keeping secrets. Fall asleep during practices or in her room at night with nutritional manuals and anatomy books scattered on the desk in front of her. Let’s have Makoto or Haru cover for her when she did. Let her sleep off her exhaustion in the club room and greet her with a gentle smile when she woke (from Makoto, at least). Gou would lean on her teammates during difficult times – meanwhile, Sousuke would push his away.
Or at least to some extent. He would still coach Nitori during late hours (Gou was ecstatic about it, until he offered to coach her as well) and open up more to all of them. But his shoulder grew worse and worse and worse – and to hide it, he grew more detached.
Regression. That’s what it was. Because so much was at stake, he spent a year in a self-destructive spiral that even Gou, with all her wide eyes and clever fingers and warm words, wouldn’t be able to stop.
Sousuke would crumble in that locker room in either story, but in ours, someone would find him.
Coaxing him out of the now ice cold showers; Gou would press an ice pack to the more-swollen-than-ever bruise on his shoulder. Everyone had their breaking point. Hers was the ragged, shuddering breaths her almost-but-not-quite brother drew as she hovered over the damage.
“You need to stop this,” she tried. “Sousuke-kun, this is serious, if you keep this up you might not recover at all“.
Sousuke, somewhere in between delirium and lucidity, shook his head no., “I need just a little more time,” his teeth clenched against the pain. “Just a few more days until the relay”.
He had always loved her brother a little too much. Gou watched the pale, trembling boy in front of her, and thought about the way Rin crumbled the year before.
She couldn’t do anything back then.
“Sousuke-kun, you need help!”
Then his hands gripped hers in a way far different from when they were children. There was a kind of desperation to the act that hurt far more than the sheer force, and his eyes were stormier than she had seen them. The ice pack fells to the ground with a silent thud.
“Damn it, Gou! This doesn’t concern you!”
His voice echoed though the locker room, she would have recoiled if it wasn’t for the hands on her shoulders. But he caught the surprise in her eyes – the frightened way she looked at him - and was placated somewhat. His grip weakened, he drew back, not meeting her eyes.
“Just stay out of it”.
Gou didn’t move away even when his hands left her. She thought about Disney movies on early mornings, about pretend tea on Sundays and cups of hot chocolate on cold winter nights.
"I will not watch you destroy yourself," she said, trembling. He still wouldn’t look at her, somehow that hurt more than anything.
"Then leave."
So she did.
And so it ended how it had to end. When Rin finally saw Sousuke's shoulder bruised and broken and unmoving, it would be the first time in either story. He still cried, wide eyes the same gleaming red as those that had looked at him with such disappointment the day before.
And Sousuke still swam, they still lost, yet he still found the light he was looking for.
Gou was still watching from the sidelines – watching them, him, from the bleachers, hands clutching the banister until her knuckles turned white.
Maybe she screamed his name with all the others? Or maybe her voice was lodged in her throat with her heart, when the rays of sun caught the bright purple bruising of his shoulder?
In the end little changed.
But something did.
She found him after; after the relay, after Rin was finished crying (at least for the time being), after the coaches were done yelling, and the paramedics were done fussing.
Rin was gone – somewhere with Haru, or Nitori and Momo. Sousuke looked different. A ‘different’ that was not caused by the shoulder brace. There was something more; an ease. In his shoulders. In his expression. Gou watched him and saw the boy she grew up with and could breathe again.
Gou took his hand with her own, and traced every dry callous on there. There were 'I'm sorry's' on his tongue, and in his eyes, but there was something in his smile that made her feel ten years old again, with his hand clutched in hers like a lifeline.
He asked her "you know I love you, right?"
And she knew.
People sometimes left, but sometimes they came back, too.