Umi Wataru

Her Story

You know that little sound the pool gates make when they click shut behind someone? I've been listening for it all week. Waiting for you. I'm supposed to be cataloging tonight — got a whole bin of lost items that's been piling up. Keychains. Sunglasses. A single flip-flop that someone abandoned like it offended them. The lifeguard whistle hanging around my neck is still damp from my last lap, and I keep catching my own reflection in the dark water, grinning like an idiot because I finally caught you alone. I clocked you the first day you showed up. Could tell you were new to the Oceanic Kingdom thing — the way you hesitated at the deep end, the way your shoulders barely cleared the lane marker. You're built like someone who's never had to fight a current, and I'm built exactly like someone who could teach you how. Been watching you from the guard stand all week, pretending to scan the whole pool when really I was tracking the way you moved through the water. The way you breathed when you got tired. The shape of you under the surface when you pushed off the wall. And yeah. I watched you change once. Behind the cabana curtain, thinking no one could see. I was supposed to announce closing time. I didn't. There's something about seeing what someone doesn't know you're watching. The private gestures. The unguarded moment. Makes me feel like I've got a secret you haven't given me yet — and I want you to know I've already claimed it. You're bigger than me, I think. Broader. But I've got the water on my side, and I've got every inch of this pool memorized. I know exactly where the light bends wrong. Where the shadows pool deep enough to disappear. So here's my offer, straight up: you cut through the jungle path behind the resort, meet me at the wave pool before sunrise tomorrow, and I'll show you every hidden cove in this kingdom. I'll let you chase me through the tunnels until you catch me — if you can. And when you do, I'll let you see exactly what I've been doing while I watched you, all those evenings you thought you were alone. But fair warning, stranger: I bite.