Chapter Text
It took a couple days before it really sunk in to Yuuri that he was in Russia for the foreseeable future. Then, as Misha helped him up after a fall in practice, it just struck him hard, and he hugged Misha. Misha hugged back, but he shouted to Viktor, “He started it!” Viktor just laughed and kept working on his skating.
When Yuuri took a break, Yakov approached him and handed him a letter. “This arrived for you yesterday, after you’d left for ballet. Do you know anyone in Thailand?”
“No…” Yuuri looked at the return address, but it was in Thai writing. He started to open the envelope.
Yakov caught his hand. “I hope it’s just normal fanmail. If it’s not, if there’s anything harassing or threatening, let me know.”
“I will, Coach.” Yakov let go and Yuuri got the letter out.
Dear Katsuki Yuuri,
I’m writing in English. I’m not very good yet. Please forgive mistakes.
My name is Phichit Chulanont, and I’m eleven years old. I am from Bangkok, Thailand. I want to be a figure skater, like you. It’s hard to find coaches here. There aren’t very many people interested in figure skating. Most of them are girls. Someday, I want to show everyone in Thailand how fun figure skating is.
I’m a fan of Viktor Nikiforov. When you started training with him, I watched your performance from your Nationals on YouTube. It was great. Now I’m a big fan of you, too. You’re a great skater and I want to be like you someday.
I also saw your performance to “Shall We Skate” at the Harghita Cup. Did you know the movie that’s from is about Thailand? It’s not very popular here, but I love it. I want to skate a program to “Shall We Skate” when I’m older.
I don’t know how much you care about social media. Some people say such mean things about you. I don’t know why. You don’t deserve any of it. I hope the people you skate with aren’t like them. I’m part of the Viktuuri Fan Club. I can’t find one that’s just for you. Do you have one? We try to tell the mean people to stop, but they don’t listen any more than the mean people at my school who call me a girl for skating.
Your poodle is cute. Do you like hamsters? I have two hamsters. Their names are Viktor and Yuuri.
Your fan (my teacher says I should put friend but fan makes more sense),
Phichit
Yakov had stayed to make sure Yuuri was okay. Yuuri was confused. “He’s a fan. He named a hamster after me.” He held up a drawing of two hamsters.
“Good to hear. Get used to fanmail. You might want to develop form letters to send back – fans love to get answers, but it’s hard to have time to write back to each one personally.”
“I don’t think I’m that popular… this one just liked my music.” Yuuri reread the letter. “I’m not even popular enough to have my own fan club.”
“Well, that’s a problem. We should fix that!” Yuuri jumped. He’d been so distracted by the letter that he hadn’t heard Viktor approaching. “You’ve never gotten fan mail before?”
“No. Just the Viktuuri fan club leaving messages on Facebook. Why would someone send me a letter? Internationally at that? That’s expensive!”
Viktor took the letter and read it. “Because they like you! You’re famous now, you’re going to get more of those. From lots of places, I bet. Would have thought Japan first, but this is amazing!”
Even though both Viktor and Lilia had agreed with Yakov’s advice about form responses, Yuuri decided to respond to Phichit’s letter properly. After all, it was the first one. Before he did, he looked at the Viktuuri Facebook page to see if he could find Phichit. Now the hamster mascot made sense.
While he was there, he saw a post from Viktor asking the Viktuuri Fan Club to help get a Yuuri Katsuki Fan Club started. Yuuri would have posted that he didn’t need his own fan club, but it was far too late. Work had already started.
Yuuri didn’t see any Phichits on the page, but there was a Thongchai Chulanont from Thailand who posted frequently and had a hamster as a profile picture. Yuuri send a friend request and closed Facebook before he could second-guess himself. He wasn’t sure of the time difference with Bangkok, but it was probably late there.
He was halfway through his response when he heard his door open. Viktor stood there with a smirk. “Are you sure you don’t understand fanmail, Yuuri?”
Yuuri groaned in frustration as he gestured to the paper in front of him. “I’m sure. I’m having trouble figuring out what to say to Phichit. I’ve covered ‘I hope to compete against you someday,’ and ‘Don’t listen to the mean people about me or you. They’re wrong,’ and ‘Thank you for supporting me,’ but I don’t know what else to say.”
“Maybe talk about The King and the Skater, or why you picked ‘Shall We Skate’? I don’t know, I’m terrible at correspondence, which is why I have a form letter.” Viktor came in closer, hands behind his back. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t understand fanmail?”
“Oh god. What is it, Viktor?”
Viktor pulled a piece of paper from behind his back. “Dear Viktor, blah blah introductions, I’m a figure skater too. A lot of people here skate because there’s not much else to do in our town, but only my friend and I have ever tried to go to competitions. I was thinking about giving up after my first competition, but then my friend made me watch your performance at the Junior World Championships. You inspired me. I’m not going to quit until I’ve had the chance to skate on the same ice as you.”
Yuuri reached out and grabbed the paper from Viktor. Sure enough, it was his handwriting, and his signature at the bottom in English and kanji. “I wrote this two years ago! Why do you still have it? Why do you remember having it?”
“Most of it, I end up throwing away, but any time someone says they skate competitively I hold onto it. I go through it every year to see if any of them have made it big.” Viktor took the paper back and smoothed out the wrinkles from Yuuri’s rough handling. “I didn’t remember having it, I just was curious and looked through and there it was.”
“I’d forgotten I ever sent that! How embarrassing.”
“Once I saw it, I remembered, because I took a little extra care with responding. You mentioned you’d just gotten a poodle like mine, so I sent you Makkachin’s autograph along with the form letter.”
“Um…” Yuuri pointed to a spot on the wall over the foot of his bed. “That one?”
“Probably!" Viktor went to look closer. "You brought it to Russia?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
Viktor turned away, not even bothering to hide his grin. “Probably.”
“I swear Vicchan loves that thing. Sometimes when I get home, I catch him lying on my bed looking at it.”
“Oh, that’s so cute!” Viktor flopped on the floor beside Vicchan and started petting him. "I should bring Makkachin over here more often. She's so much happier after coming over."
"You're here all the time anyway, so yeah, you should. It's good to know our dogs get along. It'll make things so much easier when we live together."