Chapter Text
Now
By the time Yuna comes back with a bowl of warmed soup, Ilya has emerged from the heap of bedding and is now sitting against the headboard wearing an extremely wrinkled t-shirt that has seen better days.
She frowns and almost makes a comment before consciously wills her mind to “let go”. This is something she’s been trying to work on, ever since Shane’s been living successfully as an adult (aka an MHL captain that led his team to three Cups), but especially since she (and David) found out Shane’s been hiding such a huge part of himself from them, never feeling quite safe or comfortable enough to share.
Taking a deep breath, Yuna hands the bowl and spoon to Ilya, who accepts tentatively with both hands.
He stares at the soup bowl as if he is lost and the dark liquid contains the answer to the universe. She almost tells him that it’s not 42 but maybe he should ask about 81, before realizing that she doesn’t know him.
Sure, she knows all of his hockey stats and he is seeing Shane (since the summer before their rookie year, argh, she is still not over that). But what does he do outside of hockey? Does he like reading? What about travel? What’s his favourite food? She knows his dad died, and it was a challenge when he was alive, and that his brother is no longer in the picture.
Does he have any family he’s close with? What about friends in Boston? With so much going on inside, did he ever let anyone close?
It dawns on her that he’s probably not used to someone (who is not Shane, who shares the same secret) coming into his home and seeing him in a vulnerable position. Maybe he can get to know me, she thinks, maybe he can be comfortable around me.
Yuna decides it will be best for her to supervise Ilya with the soup eating, seeing he may need a bit of a nudge, and pulls a chair from the other end of the room to sit down.
“Go ahead. I tested the temperature and it’s not too hot.”
Ilya lifts the spoon to his lips and gingerly takes a bite. Yuna holds her breath.
After a brief pause, he takes another spoonful, and then another. She finally lets her breath out.
The room is comfortably quiet with the occasional sound of the spoon hitting the bowl and soup being consumed. She can’t help but let a smile tug at her lips.
“Is very good. Thank you.” Ilya says quietly as he puts down the finished bowl. He seems so much younger, almost shy, than Yuna is used to seeing him, at games and interviews.
“Of course.” She squeezes his hand in what she hopes is a reassuring way.
“There are these dumplings in Russia we call pelmeni.” He pauses, tilts his head up slightly and looks past her toward the window at the far side of the room. “My mother used to put in borscht for me when I get sick. Is not usual way to eat pelmeni, but…”
In the stillness, she can hear her own breathing. She waits to give him time and space.
“But, I was active boy and she wanted me to have energy. And I didn’t like pelmeni in…” He searches for the right word, “How do you say something is soup but has nothing in it?”
“Broth?” She supplies.
“Yes, maybe broth. I didn’t like pelmeni in broth like my father or with sour cream like my brother. So she put it in borscht for me. But only when I was sick.” He dips his head abashedly, as if he is ashamed, and Yuna is instantly filled with the urge to show him a world with all the love in it.
He sits up slightly and adjusts the duvet.
“I’m not sick,” Ilya murmurs abruptly as he leans back on the headboard. “No, no, I’m not saying it right. I’m not sick like I have a cold. Well, maybe, but only a little. I’m sick like… I don’t feel happy sometimes.”
Yuna folds her hands in her lap to stop them from reaching out and schools her face into what she thinks of as a neutral, unbiased expression. He isn’t even looking at her but instead out the window into the far distance again.
“Team in Ottawa is shitty but everyone is nice. Coach is good. New teammates think I’m best player in league. I will teach team to win cup soon.” Yuna lets out a half strangled laugh. “Shane is only two hours away and no boarders to cross.”
“I am happy.” He emphasizes. “I see Shane more. Shane has 10-year plan for us.” Then he adds tentatively, “you have 2-year plan for me; contracts, brand deals. I am happy…” Yuna senses there’s a, but sometimes I’m not, left unsaid.
“But it’s hard to be in a new place and make new friends?” She prompts gently.
Ilya nods slowly, “Da.”
“My parents moved from Japan to Nova Scotia in the 60s, when there were no Japanese people in all of Nova Scotia outside of Halifax. They never talked about it to me much, but I think it was very hard for them. We had to drive hours to buy rice.”
That seems to surprise him, staring at her with wide eyes, so she continues, “Yes, it’s probably hard for you to imagine because you’ve only lived in big cities, but I’m from a small town in Nova Scotia.”
“Like Crosby?”
She laughs out loud because how very predictable, and tells him as much. But she can’t blame him because even Canadians outside of the maritime provinces don’t know shit about Nova Scotia. “Not quite, but close enough. This was way before Crosby was born; we had McPhee and less padding.”
She isn’t sure whether he remembers or even knows the player but files for later that perhaps they can watch some old Voyeurers vs Citadels games together. Argh, how she wishes there are still two teams in the MHL from Eastern Canada.
“My father came here for school and stayed for work. I was born and raised here. And we both loved hockey. But it was very hard for my mother. She was a stay-at-home mom, and my town didn’t have many opportunities for jobs and even fewer for learning English. She was here for my father, and then later for me. I think she was very lonely and often sad.”
Ilya nods again, solemnly, and murmurs, “for my mama also. Has… has Shane ever said anything?”
Yuna shakes her head. She knows about the foundation and their plan to name it after his mother, who died when he was young.
“My mama was sad for a long time. She tried so hard for me. She sing for me, she make food for me. She dance in the most beautiful dress. But it was too hard at the end…” He mumbles, eyes shiny and lips quivering, “she would have loved Shane, like I love him.”
Yuna can’t keep it in any longer, leans forward pulling Ilya into her arms, and Ilya responds by folding himself into her embrace. Her arms can barely wrap around his back due to his size and the awkward angle they are in, but that doesn’t matter a single bit at the moment, not when he is warm and human and she has so much love to give. It’s ok, she says, you’ll be ok.
They stay like this for what feels like forever, with only their chests moving with each breath. Yuna only lets go when her back starts to strain.
They sit in companionable silence for a while longer, Yuna’s hand never leaving his.
Eventually, he looks up at her, “Your mama – Is she… are they…?” He seems to be having a difficult time choosing the right words, but she understands him nonetheless.
“They moved back to Japan after I was in university. It was…very hard for a long time, I think,” She feels her throat tighten and has to pause to swallow. “I will introduce you to them over Skype next time you and Shane come over.”
“I like that very much.”
Yuna smiles and clears her throat after a while, “My mom used to make me okayu when I was sick. It’s a Japanese rice porridge you eat with pickles; great for when you just want something simple and comforting. I still make it for Shane sometimes. Maybe I can bring some over tomorrow.”
Ilya makes a choked sound but he’s got a tug at his lips and nodding, so Yuna knows everything is going to be alright. Most of the time. Eventually.
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Then
The summers were sunny and crisp, and the water was perpetually too cold to swim in for long. The winters were dark and long. But boy oh boy was there Hockey.
Yuna’s father learned about this decidedly Canadian sport while at Dalhousie and went to see his first game with some classmates. It was love at first sight. The speed, the force, the passion, the cold air; there’s nothing like it in Japan, her father used to say, it feels so freeing to watch, I can just let everything go. Yuna didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t watching hockey with her father. At home, mostly, but also at the local rink. And on one memorable occasion when she was in grade eight, the whole family took a trip to Montreal to watch the Voyageurs play the Guardians. (The Voyageurs won, of course.)
Before starting school, Yuna was mostly raised by her mother at home, whose English was limited. Her parents were both worried (terrified!) that Yuna would have a hard time learning English and only ever spoke (or tried to, on her mom’s part) English to her at home. She watched a lot of TV and played with the neighbourhood kids. She repeated lines from TV shows and movies on her own, trying to figure whether she had an accent - she did, because much of the television programming was American.
School, at least the English learning part, turned out to be fine. She could understand all of the teachers and most of the other students (except some of the kids in the French class) and be understood by everyone. School was easy and learning was fun for Yuna. The only hiccup was lunch. She had naively agreed for her mom to pack what they usually ate at home for lunch at school. She didn’t realize that rice and fish didn’t keep well, wasn’t good cold, smelled funny, and was so, so very foreign. She held her head high and ate her lunch despite pointed looks and giggles, but requested sandwiches with lunch meat and cheese plus milk from the second week of school onward. None of this mattered because she was as Canadian as any of schoolmates, perhaps even more, because she loved hockey more than most of them.
The local rink where Yuna grew up stood by the edge of the town, just beyond the only supermarket. The building was rundown and a quarter of everything in it had been broken for years.
Yuna spent countless hours at the rink as a kid. First to learn skating, which she took to like a fish to water. But they separated the boys and the girls. The boys learned skating for hockey, while the girls had to learn figure skating. She was fast, really fast, all sharp turns, skating circles around the hockey boys her age. But they told her she couldn’t play with the boys and there weren’t enough girls who wanted to play hockey. It’s too expensive to play, her father added, and for boys, they could make something of it, like play for the MHL, but there’s no such thing for girls.
They wouldn't let her have more ice time at the rink, so in the winter, she went to play on the lake. It was really just a large pond that was shallow enough to freeze over most of the winter and deep enough for an even surface without rocks or plant debris, and the local residents kept it clear of every snowfall for the neighbourhood kids. Once a year, some careless kid would fall through the ice, but that never deterred Yuna.
Her father got her skates and sticks and pucks so she can shoot pucks in between two boots on the frozen lake. Occasionally, neighbourhood boys let her play pond hockey with them, but that eventually stopped as she got older because she was smaller, slower, lacked any formal training (and also a girl,as they repeatedly told her). She channeled all of her energy into everything else in her life, desperate to escape her small town, desperate to go somewhere, be someone – Just as Canadian as the rest of you! – but she kept hockey safe in her heart and took it everywhere with her.
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Now
Yuna comes back with a plate of cut fresh persimmon slices. These were impossible to get in Nova Scotia when she was growing up and she’s only ever had dried ones as a kid, brought back by her dad when he travelled to Montreal for work. Her mom often talked about the crisp sweetness of fuyu persimmons that she had in Japan in the fall, and how hachiya persimmons turned jam-like when overripened until the winter.
“I thought we could share some after-meal dessert,” she says as she sets the plate down on the floor in front of the couch. They decide that showering can wait another day as long as she doesn’t have to spend more time with him in the enclosed bedroom, hence moving to the living room. She misses sitting on the floor sometimes, as long as there are enough cushions.
“Is not dessert,” Ilya eyes the fruit dubiously, scrunching up his nose. “Is this where Shane gets his weird food words from? Always saying green sludge is food, is delicious.”
She can’t help but bark out a laugh. “Have you ever had persimmons? They are one of my favorites, and you can only get them this time of the year. These are slightly tart, which is wonderful after a meal. Go ahead, try one!”
Yuan watches Ilya touch the pale golden-orange slices with great trepidation and carefully puts one in his mouth.
“Oh. Oh!” He chews happily. “I have them in Russia I’m sure! We eat in cake… and, I don’t know English word, but like sauce. We say хурма.”
“khur-MA,” She sounds out the word tentatively.
Ilya beams at her and pops another piece in his mouth. She returns the smile and lets the sensation of warm contentment settle around her as they share a plate of fruit slices together.
Her world has really changed a lot since she was a little girl. She can buy daikon and paneer at Sobeys or Loblaws, from the regular sections and not the “ethnic” aisle no less. The local fruitmart by their house has at least two varieties of persimmons and more types of mangoes, when they are in season, than she knows the names of. And hopefully, the world will continue to change for the better, one day at a time.