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Phichit, like in their dorm days, brings him fruit instead of flowers. So Yuuri smells the jackfruit before his friend enters the ward.
The smile he musters up must have been pathetic enough to warrant an extra strength hug from Phichit, accompanied by extra strength squeezing before verbal greetings are even exchanged. Yuuri taps Phichit on the shoulder for him to let go.
Yuuri cups Phichit’s face and rubs his thumbs across the furrow between his eyebrows. ‘I’m ok, really, it’s much better this time around.’
The effort is in vain as Phichit’s brows remain knotted, ‘You must be sick of hearing it from everyone by now, but you really are pushing yourself too hard, Yuu-chan.’
Yuuri drops his head in a sad smile. ‘Aren’t we all pushing ourselves? That’s kind of the entire point.’
Phichit sits by the vacated side on his bed, careful not to jostle Yuuri’s elevated limb. ‘Yes, but Yuu-chan, two procedures in one month, it’s too soon by any standards…I’m worried about you.’ He adds with earnesty.
Phichit is wearing a purple jacket that sets his caramel skin aglow despite the terrible lighting of the wards, the radiance shines light spots which Yuuri must shake his head to dispel: ‘Remember way back when we were still training together under Ciao-ciao in Detroit, when I was trying just as hard but getting no results? That was comparable to twelve knee surgeries in a row. Phichy, this is much more preferable than the directionlessness I had felt back then.’
Phichit is the one to smooth out Yuuri’s eyebrows this time. ‘You’ve always been so stubborn, Yuu-chan, and don’t say such self-deprecating things, you’ve been successful for a long time since then, before Vic-’
Phichit stops in the middle of his sentence, having noticed Yuuri’s sharp change in mood. ‘Everything ok with the two of you?’ He looks down at Yuuri’s hand, which is conveniently hidden beneath the hospital sheet.
Yuuri takes his hand out slowly, there is a pale circle where the ring used to sit that contrasts with the rest of the colour of his skin, a ghostly presence of loss.
‘It was gone by the time I woke up from the anaesthetics,’ Yuuri explains as Phichit takes his hand within his own. ‘The doctors assured me that they were not the ones who removed it.’
Phichit looks devastated, all the more affected by Yuuri’s sorrow than Yuuri himself, ‘I’m sure he-‘’ Phichit wipes at his eyes but it doesn’t stop the brimming of tears, ‘I’m sure he’s just getting it cleaned, or-or getting it resized, be-because you’ve gotten so thin after these procedures, I-’
Yuuri pats Phichit’s head as the other leans against him. ‘Phichy, you don’t need to comfort me from the truth, I’ve known-’ He hiccups, the effort of holding back his own tears ineffectual, ‘it’s been coming for a long time by now. Vitya’s been unhappy about me continuing the season even before all the surgeries.’
Phichit nods into his shoulder, ‘I’m sorry to hear, Yuuri.’
Yuuri closes his eyes and lets his tears roll down hot against his chin and into Phichit’s thick dark curls which smell like pineapples. The fragrance of them mingling with the basket of tropical fruits like a summer cocktail, reminding Yuuri of the sweltering sun in Thailand where him and Victor spent their honeymoon with Phichit as their host. For a while the pain blossoming behind his ribs is too tender for words to squeeze around.
But eventually, he regulates his breathing and forces himself to speak. ‘It’s my fault,’ He hacks out, hoarse and broken, ‘He gave me so many chances and I never took them, and I could see it in his eyes, when he-before I went into the OR, and I knew I’d driven him away with going through with this for the last time-I knew, before he even said anything-’
‘It’s not your fault!’ Phichit grabs his face and practically yells, ‘Yuuri, look at me, he knew that it was your choice and he should have respected that and supported you instead of leaving like this! You should never feel like…’
Phichit’s face exerts too much sincerity that Yuuri has to close his eyes, because he didn’t deserve it—the sympathy, the understanding, the tolerance, because he’s been gifted with too much of the same from Victor. Like a black hole, he’s sucked out all of Victor’s patience and love. Yuuri knows, that Phichit—even though he takes on Yuuri’s pain as his own, and is hurting the same way Yuuri is hurting—is wrong, like he himself.
Because deep down, Yuuri knows that he does, indeed, deserve it.
Victor had moved out before Yuuri was released from the hospital, so he comes home to a half-emptied apartment, at once full and absent of everyday nuances. Victor’s kombucha bottles removed, leaving behind a circle of emptiness next to Yuuri’s sake in the fridge.
He keeps it together as he rearranges his belongings in an attempt to mask the acute absence, a tarp over the obvious leaks of life that Victor has left behind. Victor had been excessively thorough in removing the careful traces of shared life, and made feeble attempts of consolation by replacing all their framed photos with press shots of Yuuri on the podium and post-competition interviews. Yuuri keeps it together as he examines the bookshelf, cataloguing which books Victor had taken and which ones he had left behind. To his expectation: the collection of Shakespeare is gone, as well as paperbacks of American horror novels, Victor has left behind the Nabokov volumes Yuuri had bought for him, the spines still as unbroken and the pages unread as if the books were in still wrapped in plastic. Not to his expectations: Victor had taken the last six volumes of a manga series Yuuri had subscribed to via mail order, and left behind their box of letters and postcards from family and friends.
Yuuri begins to open one of the envelopes before deciding that it’s not going to help him with this exercise of restraint he’s currently maintaining, and puts the box back where it sat before, wiping the dust from the shelf with his sleeve and moving on.
He keeps it together in the bathroom at the sight of their matching ceramic toothbrush holders, now singularly occupied by only Yuuri’s toothbrush. It gleams, stinging his eyes as Yuuri opens the vanity to put it away. The cupboards are now much more vacant, being devoid of Victor’s many array of bottles of skin care which he used to force upon Yuuri, regardless of Yuuri’s willingness—to the point where some times, Yuuri would wake up with a paper masque on his face which Victor had put on him in his sleep. Victor had been thoughtful enough to fill up the toilet paper roll holder, and had left behind a jar of lip balm. Yuuri takes it out from the now sparse shelf, twists it open and smells the faint rose of the gel, which smells like the taste of Victor’s lips.
A singular teardrop falls upon the black lacquered lid which Yuuri wipes with the back of his hand, but more follow. Yuuri decided that the exercise of holding back is futile and slumps down on the closed lid of the toilet seat, sobbing as he encloses the lip balm jar within his grip and lets himself remember.
Victor had used the same brand of lip balm since before their marriage, during those early days of courtship when he taught Yuuri to skate to his own short program about love and eros. He had glided his fingers across Yuuri’s lips before one of the competitions, looking at him from the side of the rink in one of his signature tailored suits, like he had continued doing for the following seven years, his pale eyes following every turn and glide of Yuuri’s skates.
Until Victor had come along, Yuuri had skated alone. It had never felt like he was skating for the coach who was training him, never felt like his routines and performances were part of a whole, the execution of a combined creation, like it had been with Victor. And now, as he looked into the buttery sheen of the lip balm, Yuuri cannot remember what it had felt like to be solitary on the ice, what it was like before Victor’s very real and comforting presence outside the rink. And just like the discolouration on his ring finger, nothing can mask the absence of his spiritual other half, no amount of rearranging can disguise the incompleteness of the space, and no amount of restraint can help Yuuri find what it is like to be whole by himself.
Shivering amidst the pristine tiles and clutching the one lip balm Victor had either neglected to take with him or had left for Yuuri as a reminder to continue the regimen of skin-care, Yuuri bites his lips, until they bleed.
Every part of the apartment is a cruel reminder of their life together, Yuri scrapes his finger through the soft gel, every part. And he cannot afford to come home from gruelling practice to the live torture of reminiscence.
Leaving the lip balm on the counter, Yuuri stands to find his phone.
‘I don’t think it will work.’ Yakov Feltsman, eyes sunken, leans back on his rocking chair.
Yuuri shifts forward from where he’s sitting on the uncomfortable couch that sinks too deep no matter how much he adjusts. ‘If this is because you aren’t registered on any roster for the last competitive season, I already talked to the ISU and they reassured that it…’
‘That’s not what I mean.’ Yakov shakes his head, interrupting him. ‘I mean I don’t think it will work, for you.’
Yuuri’s eyebrows furrow. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean, Coach Feltsman.’
Yakov’s eyes open unevenly as he examines Yuuri perched upon the edge of the couch, ‘I’ve seen through four generations of skaters. I’ve seen that look dozens of times, on some of my best pupils as well. And yours is not even the most severe.
‘You’re forcing the issue, Yuuri Katsuki.’ he rolls the ‘r’s in his pronunciation of Yuuri’s name in a foreign yet familiar accent, the sound of which accompanies pangs of pain Yuuri cannot assuage. ‘You’re not ready to go back out there, despite what you might think right now.’
Yuuri wants to place his palms upon his knees and bow in order to plead with the old man, but he knows that due to the cultural differences the gesture will not connote the same significance of his sincerity, but still, he persists.
‘Please,’ Yuuri implores, ‘the upcoming competition is in less than a month, and I can’t find another coach in Russia as suitable for…’
Yakov just shakes his head and looks out of the window as if Yuuri’s face is too much for him look at. ‘You aren’t even listening to me, Yuuri Katsuki. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Vitya all those years ago: timing is everything, you can’t force things to happen, you must let the stars line up in their own time.’
‘I can’t afford the luxury of time.’ Yuuri recalls how stoic Victor had become when Yuuri had enquired after Victor’s own skating career not long after Victor had announced the intention to coach Yuuri, the blank faced determination that Yuuri later recognized as Victor reaching his last resort, the same expression Victor sported in the prep room beside Yuuri’s stretcher before Yuuri succumbed to the anaesthetics.
‘Then maybe the time is not yours.’
Yakov’s nose cuts shadow in the afternoon sun filtered through the vertical shutters outside the small cottage in where they are seated, the mellow light softens the lines on his face, until he looks like an ordinary old man sitting in a rocking chair, and not one of the fiercest figures in the cutthroat competitive scene of figure skating.
The phrase ‘used to be’ stuck itself to the image before Yuuri; almost twenty years ago Yakov launched his own coaching career when he discovered a prodigy in Victor Nikiforov; consolidated his reputation as an institution when his star pupil betrayed him and quit as a skater to head to Japan and be a coach himself to a then unsuccessful and over-aged Japanese skater instead—a blessing in disguise for Yakov, giving opportunity for him to concentrate on another prodigy, Yuri Plisetsky, who, at the age of fifteen, swept up three of the five titles during that competitive season debuting in the senior division; who then continued to dominate for the following four years, until abruptly announcing his retirement three months after, taking Yakov out of the competitive scene with him.
Whether this had to do with the accident that took the lives of a Kazakh male figure skater who was training alongside Yuri Plisetsky in St Petersburg and a Russian female skater who had been his fiancee at that time had been a subject of much speculation within the media, including the fact that the couple had rumoured to have left behind a child who after the tragedy may or may not be within Yuri Plisetsky’s care. The two legends, coach and prodigy, left the public eye. There were rumours that the old man had suffered heart complications which left him wheelchair bound, and the prodigy was now holed up being a surrogate parent to the orphan of his former colleagues and caretaker to his former coach, all this of course, was conjecture.
That had been more than two years ago. The figure-skating scene, much like the sport itself, moves at a velocity indecipherable by the naked eye. Its changes, much like the most difficult air-time routines, are completed within an instant. Yuuri finally found his moment in the spotlight after the age of Russian prodigies had passed—took his place on the podium at five events, including the Winter Olympics of last year, alongside competitors more than a decade younger than him. Now, on the wrong side of thirty and way past the average of retirement for figure-skaters, Yuuri has decided to continue, in spite of the severe injuries that had set him back for more than one whole season and the drastic procedures he undertook to get his body up to performance standard, a decision that brought more severe consequences than he had anticipated.
Yuuri thinks of the apartment he has left behind in Tokyo which he and Victor had listed as their address for more than six years despite barely living there due to the constant competitions which somehow still bears too many remnants of their shared life for Yuuri to withstand even staying one night in the unaccommodating space, and the hospital bed where Yuuri had literally been confined to for the past few months, and looks down at the band of scar-like paleness on his ring finger.
‘I know the timing is bad,’ He finds himself speaking despite a lack of response from the stone-still man in front of him. ‘I am aware that I’m definitely pushing the matter, but… what else can I do? Where else can I turn?’
The wind chime jingles outside of the front door, then opens to reveal two figures—one tall and one small. The small one launches itself towards Yakov with a piercing yell of ‘Dedushka!’ Shooting straight past Yuuri and hopping onto Yakov’s lap, hugging him tight.
But Yuuri does not see any of that, instead he surges to his feet only to find them nailed to the ground as he gapes at the figure silhouetted within the doorframe, an apparition materialising as the other approaches him.
Yuri Plisetsky, lithe yet angular as always, in a faded hoodie and his signature leggings, stalks towards Yuuri like a predator.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ The familiar grit within his voice taking Yuuri back in an instant, the relentless pressure bearing down upon him at the mere presence of the goliath in the sport, the territorial antagonism he’s always held Yuuri in for encroaching upon his scene.
‘He’s my guest, brat.’ Yakov said, ‘stop harassing him.’
Yuri Plisetsky frowns, ‘What could he possibly want from this shithole?’ He asks Yakov and without waiting for a response turns back to Yuuri, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Tokyo?’
Meanwhile the child, who is sitting in Yavok’s lap, plays with the old man’s hand and says. ‘Papa is cursing again.’
Yakov smiles as he rubs a hand through the child’s messy dark curls, ‘You’re setting a bad example for our Mirachka.’
Yuri looks between the two of them, the old man who’s currently fitting the small meaty palm of the child against his own and Yuuri staring at them, mouth agape in disbelief.
‘Hey, old man, can you take Mira for a second? If this,’ he gestures at Yuuri, ‘is indeed a guest as you’re claiming, the least you can do is make some tea for us.’
Yakov sighs, ‘Ordering an old man around to serve you, you really are an insolent brat.’ He grabs the cane leaning against his chair and pulls himself up, dislodging the child. ‘Come Mira, you can help me get the pretty cup you like.’
The child cheers and follows the uneven footsteps of the old man into the kitchen.
Yuuri watches the alienating scene unfolding, unable to comprehend the dissonance between the image of the domesticity before him and the fact that it is played out by Yakov Feltsman, the most revered figure in figure skating even today.
Meanwhile, Yuri plops down upon the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him and shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘So, what are you doing here?’
‘I’m looking for a coach.’ Yuuri explained, still somewhat distracted by what he had just seen.
‘What happened to your own coach?’
‘Victor…’ Yuuri’s head drops as a leaden weight condenses from uttering the name.
Yuri Plisetsky glares at him as he waits for Yuuri to continue. Yuuri covers his right hand with his left one and it causes the other to look down and notice the absence of his ring.
Yuri’s eyebrows furrow as he, not dissimilar to what Yuuri is doing right now, piecing together all the information with which he had been presented into a coherent picture.
He and Victor had made numerous attempts at contacting Yuri after his retirement, and aside from harshly worded refusals for the invitation they extended to Yuri for him to join them in Tokyo and requests for Victor and Yuuri to leave him alone, they have no further contacts, and no explanation as to why Yuri chose to retire.
Now, the very real presence of the dark haired child has finally unfurled the mystery surrounding Yuri’s and Yakov’s abrupt absence.
Yuuri gestures, ‘The kid…’
‘Mira.’ Yuri supplies. ‘My daughter.’
The word ‘daughter’ dangles there, between them, at odds with all of Yuuri’s memory of the other Yuri, whom he can only associate with fierce rivalry, eruptions of violence, and times when he has literally spat in Yuuri’s face. The recollections freeze Yuuri in place, who can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that Yuri Plisetsky now has a daughter.
‘How—’
He starts to ask but Yuri interrupts him. ‘So, why did you come and find Yakov? Do you want him to be your coach?’
Yuuri nods. ‘For this season, at least.’
The other purses his lips. ‘Why him? Why not a coach in Japan? Or your old coach in America?’
Yuuri shakes his head, ‘I—’
At that moment Yuri’s daughter, Mira bursts in. ‘Papa, papa, we made tea!’ She said, as she raised a mug over her head, sloshing the liquid inside.
‘Be careful Mira!’ Yakov calls after her, as Yuri bends down and takes the cup from her, before holding her close to him for one second and kissing the top of her head. ‘Spasibo, little one.’
Yuuri has never heard Yuri’s voice take this rounded timbre, like his edges have been sanded down. He whispers something to his daughter who then looks at Yakov and grins, ‘Dedushka, I want to show you my new addition to my army of rock soldiers! In the garden.’
Yakov spares a glance at Yuuri Katsuki, as Yuri Plisetsky straightens and takes a sip of the tea in the mug. Before nodding and following the child out into the small courtyard through the kitchen.
The two Yuris watch the child urging the old man towards the fence in the courtyard through the window, the energetic bundle practically bouncing around the old man.
‘He’s not in any shape to be your coach, you know.’ Yuri says, ‘Might have made all these other excuses, but look at the shape he’s in.’
Yuuri glances at Yuri Plisetsky. ‘Have, have you been living here all these years?’
Yuri nods once. ‘My grandfather left this place to me, it’s small but big enough for the three of us.’
Yuuri walks around to the small round dining table, sitting down on one of the mismatched dining chairs, realising he may have made some incorrect assumptions.
Yuri stands to join him. ‘You still look at me like you do all those years ago, you know that? Katsudon?’
Yuuri feels a lurch in his chest at the familiar nickname.
‘Like I’m still that short-sighted insolent child, who didn’t know anything else aside from winning competitions, and being the best.’ Yuri says, as he perches upon the window-sill, and gestures at the other mug of steaming tea which Yakov has left on the dining table. ‘You probably still think of me as the boy who kicked down the toilet stall door for you to stop crying, right?’
Yuuri can only nod.
Yuri leans against the window pane. He carves a trim figure against the sunlight. Retirement has not made Yuri lose his shape in any way and even though he has grass-stains and a muddy handprint on his hoodie and a colourful hair-tie on his wrist matching that of the ribbon in Mira’s curls, he still looks ready to leap onto the ice—strumming with potential energy: a drawn bow, or a tense string on a violin, ready to be fretted.
But Yuri Plisetsky’s eyes no longer reflect the stage lights of the stadium, instead, it’s his daughter he’s looking at with a slight smile on his face. And Yuuri remembers Yakov’s words, ‘You must allow things to happen on their own time’ and the ice beneath him cracks just one more inch.
‘You are happy.’ Yuuri voices his observation aloud.
Yuri Plisetsky looks at him. ‘Of course I am.’
‘You-you’ve moved on.’
‘Of course I have.’ Yuri Plisetsky is almost rolling his eyes.
‘But, don’t-don’t you miss it sometimes? The ice? The training? Us?’
Yuri scoffs, ‘Do you?’
Yuuri sighs, and nods, resigned. ‘I miss training with you, in St Petersburg, a lot.’ He admits.
The blond narrows his eyes, but allows Yuuri to continue.
‘When we all lived together with Victor in his giant studio, you on the couch and not letting me sleep anywhere else except with Makkachin on the rug. I wish that time could have frozen within those months when we were all working together, trying to perfect our form, accomplish incredible things with our body.
‘But then, you left, and then more of the skaters from my generation left, until, until there’s only me. Whenever I step out onto the rink, I’m competing with children, limber and malleable, whom I can only use my years of experience to trounce. It, it feels like a different sport.
‘I always thought, that he stayed because he wanted me to continue.’ Yuuri sighs, ‘But that had always been a lie, I, I wanted to stay more than he did. I wanted to continue, more than I…’ He covers his face with his hands.
‘I thought that he was what I wanted all along, ever since I saw him with roses in his hair, when I was a child, I always thought, that if I had him, it’d be everything, but…’
‘But you never thought that along the way of chasing him you found something for yourself.’ Yuri Plisetsky finishes for him.
Yuuri snaps his head up to stare at the other Yuri.
Yuri Plisetsky pulls himself up, with all the vigor and strength of the best ice skater of the past decade.
‘Stop crying over something you ultimately have no regrets for.’ His eyes are pale and his lips even paler, and Yuuri realises with startlement that he’s talking to someone who’s lost more, suffered longer, yet, somehow, is not just comping, but thriving in the new circumstances—stronger than Yuuri will ever be.
‘You can’t be afraid of the choices you make, Yuuri.’ It was the first time Yuri Plisetsky said his name since their meeting, Yuuri feels a shiver deep within him at the sound.
Yuuri swallows, in his mind, he sees the ice fields, the mirror smooth surface waiting for the scores of his skates, he sees the slight condensing air setting upon the expanse of unmarred surface and imagines himself cutting through the stillness, time and space malleable as he gathers speed and crouches, preparing for a spin, or a jump, he sees the trajectory of his future spinning and spinning in midair like a perfectly executed quad, too fast for even himself to comprehend, the eventually of the fall which would flatten his body against the dark ice, would be a form of perfection.
Mira, the child, presses her small hands and her face against the window, squishing her rosy cheeks and the fleshy pads of her fingers to the glass until they become misshapen and discoloured.
Yuri Plisetsky laughs and taps her face through the glass. And Yuuri stands, realising he no longer had space in this domesticity.
The sound of the front door creaking seems to distract the child from the game she’s playing with her father, at the same time, the old man enters the house and notices that their guest has left.
‘What did he say?’ Yakov Feltsman asks his current caretaker who also used to be his protege.
Yuri Plisetsky shrugs, before going back to playing with his daughter.
In front of him the ice is edgeless like the ocean, and standing against the barrier feels like standing on a beach, facing the sea: like Thailand, with the smell of coconuts; or his home Hasetsu, with the familiar sound of waves crashing against century old barges made of rocks; or Victor’s home in St. Petersburg, with small slices of sharp wind scraping against his cheek. Yuuri touches his lips, the faint scent of roses reminds him of Victor, and when he raises his hands, the sunlight filters through the spaces between his fingers.
He could almost feel his presence beside him, semi translucent, silvery hair laces with the golden sunlight, ethereal.
Yuuri has no words for him, whether it’s ‘I know it’s the right thing for me to do, the surgeries,’ or ‘on the ice is the only place I feel alive’ or ‘I miss you so much and it’s so painful’ because they’ve all been said before, and though the manifestation feels so real to him, Yuuri knows that Victor is somewhere else, on a diverged path, away from the ice, obscured from him.
But then a gust of wind catches the ends of his hair and blows the strands in his face, and the gentle caress strums a slight quivering in Yuuri’s heart, tugs upon the hurt and in his mind, Yuuri remembers the way Victor would give him a smile, before his routine, sunlight casting chrome upon his soft lips, as he forms a soundless word.
‘Go.’
So Yuuri turns away from the absence carved by the wind, away from the vacancy by his side, and looks straight on towards the vast and boundless ocean of white.
And skates, on new legs, towards the light.