Here's my shot at a Free! story. I'm excited to start on this project (And have not abandoned Flash of Ruby) and can't wait to see where this goes!

(Cover photo credits go to KBN on Pixiv)

Enjoy~

~o~

Chapter 1:

Don't resist. Use every part of your being and embrace the water as a part of yourself.

That was one of the things Haru loved most about water; the unification of it all. Even at a young age Haru knew how to become one with the water around him and allow it to carry him. After all, it wasn't as if he didn't have all the time in the world to spend in the ocean; it was his home.

Not a metaphorical home either. It was his literal home, one that he couldn't even leave; fins really didn't do him any good on land or anything.

With all of this time to practice his swimming he perfected his style, he was always a good swimmer but he just got faster and faster and eventually none of his friends could keep up with him anymore. At a mere 10 years old with no real competition among his mermaid friends he was forced to look elsewhere for a challenge, and the nearby pods of dolphins were always eager to play with him and race with him for hours. Haru liked swimming with his friends plenty, he just happened to like swimming with the dolphins more. They were much faster and grew tired less easily- and they never went easy on him. The older mermaids would go easy on Haru while the ones his own age grew bored of constant defeat, but the dolphins made a perfect competitor for Haru.

So about every day around noon when the younger mermaids were being watched over he would take this as his free time and swim to the surface to race with the dolphins. He wasn't exactly allowed to go all the way up to the surface but he was getting older now and Sasabe-san would turn a blind eye to him racing the dolphins, as long as he came back before the sun set.

On this particular day the dolphins raced Haru closer to shore than usual, they were close enough that Haru could just see the shoreline and could hear the faint buzz from the city. He'd never been so close to land before, it was absolutely forbidden and "dangerous." After a few laps of swimming the dolphin pod started to swim away and lost interest in racing, leaving the curious Haru alone with the mysterious shore. He checked around to see if there were any other mermaids who would catch him, but even he knew that nobody would try to come out this far. He'd only ever heard rumors about humans, the merfolk told him what they looked like and how they lived but Haru never really understood the whole "legs" thing.

He found himself drawn closer and closer to the shore. The water was shallow there, his tail was almost brushing the sand while his head was still above the water. The noise from the humans was much louder, he could see trees clearly and the outlines of what he thought were what they called "houses." It was when he was this close that he heard splashing, someone swimming in the ocean. He dipped under the water and peered around, finding a red blur swimming back and forth not too far away. He tried to be silent and go unnoticed, only peeking above the water as the figure swam back and forth and back and forth.

It was fast. He wanted to challenge it and see if he could win but what if it was a human? Would it really be that dangerous? It wasn't too much bigger than himself and it didn't seem to be too dangerous or hungry so it wouldn't eat him. He waded closer to the swimming figure and watched a while longer until the creature stopped swimming. Haru's heart was pounding, he knew he should leave before he gets noticed. Sasabe was going to kill him if he found out he went this close to shore. He tried to dive down but wasn't used to the water being so shallow and he scraped up his arms on the shells of the ocean floor. He resurfaced, wincing in pain and picked the little shards of shells out of his arms and watched a little stream of blood come from the scrape. He was about to swim away again but it was too late, he was already noticed.

"Oi! Where'd you come from?" Haru didn't glance back, he started to swim out but the creature started to chase after him.

"Hey wait a minute! Where are you going? You shouldn't go out that far here, it's dangerous!" Haru could sense the creature getting closer and closer so he peeked behind him to meet a pair of shining ruby eyes and a row of sharp pointy teeth.

"Ah I'm sorry please don't hurt me!" The creature stopped.

"Hurt you? Why would I hurt you?" Haru stopped as well, a good distance from him and glanced back warily.

"I…don't know. Are you a shark? I've never seen one in person but Makoto tells me they have a lot of sharp teeth and are really dangerous and I don't want to be eaten." He was responded to with laughter from the other.

"Of course I'm not a shark, I just have sharp teeth." Haru stared closely at the other creature and saw how he was swimming, when he bobbed under the water he could see two long things splashing beneath him instead of a tail. He felt his heart stop.

Legs.

He knew he should swim away and never come back to the shore, surely Sasabe would know he was with a human. He suddenly wished that he actually were a shark.

However…he couldn't bring himself to swim away. The human seemed smaller than all of the ones that everyone talked about, he actually seemed just about his age. And he was such a fast swimmer. He certainly didn't seem dangerous.

"So what's your name?" The human boy asked, sharp teeth in a grin. Haru stared at him for a moment, he couldn't speak but he couldn't flee. He was completely frozen.

"Your name? You know, mine's Rin. You are?" The boy explained. The boy seemed friendly enough, and Haru really wanted to swim with him…maybe the younger humans weren't so dangerous.

"I'm…Haru."

"Well it's nice to meet you Haru! I've never seen you around here. I live real close and swim out here a lot. I'm going to be a professional swimmer one day so I practice a lot." Haru narrowed his eyes in confusion at the term. Professional swimmer…like a job? Humans swam as a job? To Haru that seemed like professional breathing. Couldn't he just swim all of the time? He was really fast though, at least he was faster than Makoto or Nagisa.

"Wanna race?" Haru asked, excited to see the flicker in Rin's eyes at the question.

"Totally!" Rin pointed out at the one cliff and then to the other that were a good distance apart. "Let's race from that cliff to the other and back. Just so you know I'm not gonna go easy on you Haru." Haru laughed at that.

"Good."

And the two boys raced each other back and forth and back and forth again when they tied and then once more because Rin said it only counted for "Best 2 out of 3" but when they both had the same amount of wins they had to break the tie. They were both left panting and a little sore from swimming back and forth so many times and winnerless. Haru had finally met his match. He made sure to keep a good distance from Rin though, who hadn't noticed his tail in the water. Haru told himself that if he could have flipped his tail up a little more when he swam then he definitely would have won.

"You're pretty fast Haru." Rin laughed, bearing those pointy shark teeth. "And how can you hold your breath for such a long time? Man I didn't think you were gonna come back up." Haru blinked in confusion. Could humans not breathe underwater? He guessed that made sense but he didn't want Rin to get suspicious so he just shrugged.

"You're fast too. None of my friends are that fast." Haru noticed the beginnings of orange tinting the sky and looked out nervously towards the ocean. "I…I have to go though. It's getting kind of late."

Rin looked disappointed.

"Really? Will you come back tomorrow? This was really fun, even though you are kind of weird." Haru smiled a little and glanced nervously at the ocean.

"Only if you keep it a secret. Don't tell anyone that I was here, deal?" Rin looked a little confused but smiled anyway and held his thumbs up.

"Deal! See you tomorrow Haru!"

Rin turned around to swim back to the shore, but when he turned back to look for Haru, he was gone.

~o~

Aaaa I'm really excited to write this guys, it's so different from my other stories and I'm so ready.

Right now it's looking like it's going to have at least 10 chapters, let me know what you guys think so far or if there's anything you'd really like to see in this definitely let me know ;D

Thank you for reading! See you next time,

-Chayin