i will forever be a Summer Camp defender btw. for every interaction that's "meh" or kind of OOC, there's one that is So Objectively True And Real It's Canon To Me And Overwrites All Bad DR Storytelling Decisions, like Chiaki gently gaslighting Maki into loving her friends:
Hina finds Mikan sitting on the beach, making sand castles, and crouches in front of her. “Let’s go swimming! The ocean’s freezing, but it’s so cool!”
That’s not really a question, of course, and the pun is entirely unintentional, but it’s familiar, and it’s nice, and there’s something warm about being noticed and invited, and Mikan wants to join her, but she can’t. She flushes a bright red and averts her eyes, focusing on the sand castle in front of her instead. “I-I-I….”
She doesn’t want to admit it.
Not to Hina.
“I think I’d rather…I want to stay here.” Mikan glances up and just as quickly glances away. The sun is behind Hina’s face, and it’s so bright. She can’t look directly at her; even if she was better at making eye contact, she couldn’t. Does Hina know that? “I…I don’t like the cold.”
That’s not entirely untrue.
It’s not entirely true either.
“O-oh,” Hina says, lips pursing to one side in a bemused expression. She seems to consider Mikan’s words for a few minutes. “Well, it warms up really quick when you’re there! It’s not at all like playing in the snow!”
“I…I like playing in the snow.” Mikan presses her lips together. “I…I can b-b-bundle up.” She licks her lips. “And, um. My…my bandages!” Her gaze drops to the gauze wrapped around her arm, the rest wrapped around her leg. “Water won’t be good for them!”
Hina’s head tilts to the side. “But you’re in a swimsuit.”
“Um…y-y-yes!” Mikan bites her lower lip. “The sand gets stuck if I…if I don’t, s-s-so….”
“Oh. Okay!” Hina smiles. “We’ll just have to go swimming some other time! There’s a big pool, and it’s heated, so—”
“N-n-no.” Mikan cuts her off. And then hates herself for cutting her off. Because Hina’s going to be mad at her. Everyone gets mad when they get cut off. Her gaze flicks away. “S-s-sorry! I…I d-d-didn’t mean to….” Then she shakes her head. “I…I don’t like swimming.”
Hina’s eyes widen in shock. “Don’t like…. But everyone likes swimming!” Her arms cross. “Or no one’s ever told me they don’t before.” Her brow furrows, and she tries to meet Mikan’s eyes. “You’re sure you don’t like swimming?”
Mikan shivers and shakes her head. “I-I-I’ve never…. I can’t—”
“Oh! That makes sense!” Hina slams her fist into her open palm. “You don’t know how. You’d like it if you did!” She grins. “I’ll have to teach you! And this program’s the best for that! It’s not like you can actually die, so—”
“I still don’t want to…to almost d-d-die—”
“—I’ll teach you! Does tomorrow sound good?”
Mikan still can’t look Hina directly in the face. The sun’s still right behind her, and it’s hard to see. So she looks away, and she nods gently. “O…Okay.”
~
“So you move your arms like this.” Hina puts her hands in front of her, palms out and their backs together, and then pushes her arms away from each other like someone with much more dramatic energy (the Ultimate Fashionista, maybe) throwing open two doors to dramatically announce her own entrance. “It pushes the water out of the way.”
“B-b-but,” Mikan stutters out, trying to mimic the motion and floundering, “but the water…the rest of the water gets in…comes back.”
Hina nods seriously. “But if you float on your stomach and kick with your feet, then you’ll move through the water.”
“How do…how do I float?”
It sounds like a stupid question. It probably is a stupid question. But Mikan has always felt like when she gets in the water she’ll sink like a rock, and she’s not quite strong enough to keep herself up – or to bring herself back up – if she starts to sink.
This is not to say anything about the fact that Mikan isn’t in her swimsuit or that Hina has asked her to meet in the lounge just to practice arm movements and kicks and all of that on top of couch cushions or that they haven’t actually even started to do that yet.
(This is not to say anything about the fact that Mikan doesn’t want to be in her swimsuit without her bandages, which defeats the purpose of swimming entirely, because she doesn’t want people to see her without her bandages. Most people don’t know how she became the Ultimate Nurse, and she’s trying to keep it that way, as much as she can. She doesn’t go to the bath until she’s certain that everyone is asleep, and sometimes she uses some of the mostly dry bathing techniques she learned as a nurse. She isn’t scared of water – she’s scared of swimming and of drowning – but she….
She doesn’t want to be seen.
She doesn’t want to see the reaction.)
“You…you know a lot of medical stuff, right, Tsumiki-san?” Hina smiles at her, soft and encouraging all at once. “The human body is, like, fifty percent water, or something like that!”
“S-s-sixty percent—”
“Yeah! That’s even more!” Hina’s face brightens. “So, because your body is so much water, you have a tendency to float!” Her head tilts to one side. “You float better when you’re holding your breath, though. Because it’s the oxygen, too. I think. That’s why, if you start letting all of your breath out, you’re more likely to sink. And why when people die, they sink. I think.” She taps her chin with one finger. “But that’s okay! I won’t let you sink!”
“I-I-I still don’t know that I…that I want to….” Mikan’s voice grows higher and tighter until she feels like she’s shrieking, even as her words come out in nothing more than mouse-like squeaks. She presses her lips together. “I-I-I’m s-s-sorry….”
Hina places a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll practice in the shallow end! You can’t drown there. Then, when you know what you’re doing, we can start practicing swimming just to the ladder in the deep end. And then—”
“I really don’t want to go swimming,” Mikan pushes out all at once. Her fingers fidget together. “I-I-It’s not that I…that I’m scared—” That’s a lie. “—i-i-it’s just that I…that I…I don’t want to.” She presses her lips together and steps back from Hina. “I’m s-s-sorry.”
“At…at all?” Hina asks, and her eyes grow so large and round that Mikan’s glad she’s not good at meeting eyes in the first place. “You don’t want to…at all? Not even a little kiddie pool?”
Mikan hunches her shoulders, growing smaller. “Maybe a…maybe a kiddie…a kiddie pool.” She could…she could get waterproof bandages for that, maybe. Or push the idea until Hina forgets. Or….
“Or we could…we could do something…something else?”
Hina nods. “Something else. Like the hot springs!”
Mikan tries to smile. It fits, after all, doesn’t it?
