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The sun was shining bright in the sky, there was no wind, and Sho woke up as energetic as ever. As he made his way to the starting line, he smirked while eyeing all his opponents. He had all the best conditions in his favor, there was no way he could mess this up. Everything was falling into place and he was ready to win that race and get that trophy.
This was the last race of the season. Nothing could come in between him and the prize, or better, nothing should come in between. As he approached his booth, the sight of Aiba Masaki made his blood boil in his veins already.
Not only was Aiba the only one who could defeat him in this race, but the dude also had to be the hottest guy to have ever crossed paths with him. If Aiba hadn’t been his direct rival, he would have already asked him out.
Also, if Aiba hadn’t decided to hate Sho’s guts since their first encounter, he could have really had him in his bed by now. Sho was aware that he could have come off as standoffish and assertive at the time, but this had to be his season after all.
He had been racing in national tournaments for three years by now, and he hadn’t got one first place yet, due to the two veterans Okada and Nagase, who took turns in stealing first and second place from him. And right when they finally retired and he didn’t have anyone to stand in between him and the victory, this newcomer had to come around and become the bane of his existence.
Sho still remembered the way Aiba had approached him after placing first, with his annoying bright smile and his annoying cheerful attitude. He dared to congratulate him, saying how much of an honor it was to race against Sho, and that he hoped to have more chances to do that.
“Because, Sakurai-kun, you have always been so promising, and now that Okada-san and Nagase-san have retired, you’re the one to beat.”
How could he say that right to his face, when Sho had come in second place exactly because Aiba had crossed the line before him? Why was he there, acting as if he hadn’t done that? Was he really that humble? Or was he declaring that defeating Sho would be his goal for the whole season?
Well, if Aiba wanted to make Sho’s life difficult, he was surely achieving his goal.
“Hey, I saw your semi-final, nice lap time,” Aiba said as soon as Sho was in his booth.
“It was the best one for this course after all,” he replied.
“Do you aim to be even faster now in the finals round?”
“Not really. As long as you see my back as you cross the line in second place, it’s enough for me.”
Aiba stood up, ready for the race and with his board in his arms. He smiled at Sho, “We shall see.”
After that, the guy walked away to be on standby, while Sho finished prepping, and then off he was, to the last race of this season, to the last first place he needed to get.
There were six gates lined up at the beginning of the course, and of course Aiba’s had to be next to his. It was obvious that everyone was anticipating their battle, but Sho wasn’t aiming for one this time. He would try to keep him behind the whole time and then create as big a lead he could, so there wouldn’t even be the need for a photo finish.
He looked ahead of him, then looked at the sky, at the snow, and then at his opponent. Aiba did the same. They smirked to each other and then pulled down their snow goggles, before returning their gazes to the course.
Let’s crush him.
Or at least, that was what he wanted to do.
At every section and at every turn, when he glanced at his surroundings, he always got a glimpse of Aiba. The guy was glued to him, there seemed to be no way to shake him, and that was driving Sho nuts. Especially when, after a jump, they landed in a way that they were now facing each other, as they went down the last slope.
Even though they couldn’t see each other’s eyes due to their goggles, Sho could vividly feel the determination in Aiba, and his hatred towards Sho. By now, their rivalry was way deeper than just winning a race; they needed to prove to be better than the other, to be the strongest one.
He didn’t know what it was for Aiba, but for him, it was very much a matter of pride. The fact that one of the things he hated the most was to lose also added up to that.
The finish line was just 20 meters away. People were cheering, the judges were closely watching, everyone was ready to applaud the winner of the last race of the season… And Sho and Aiba were perfectly lining up as they approached the end of the course.
As much as he hated the idea of a photo finish result, he just had to accept it. Screw that, as long as he won he didn’t care at this point.
Give me this freaking win! he yelled in his mind.
The roaring sound of the snow against his board got replaced by the enthusiastic, excited applause of the public. Everyone was yelling that “It was amazing!”, that “I’d never seen such a close result!”, that “This will probably be remembered!”. He didn’t care about any of that. Not at all.
He raised his goggles at the same time as Aiba, and they exclaimed at the same time, “Who won?!”
Sho looked in the judges’ direction. They were analyzing the monitors and talking between themselves. In the meantime, Sho loosened his straps and withdrew from the board. As he picked it up, he watched as Aiba did the same while they scowled at each other, as if they were ready to jump on one another, and not in an affectionate way.
“They’re sure taking a lot of time,” he found himself commenting. Aiba didn’t hear him though, as he was waving at his family on the stands. Sho briefly glanced at them, and chuckled drily when he saw that Aiba’s mother even brought a banner to support him.
That must have been encouraging, huh. Maybe Aiba drew all his energy and willpower from that support. Unlike Sho, who drew it mainly from his own ambitions.
“Two kinds of people I guess.”
“You said something?” Aiba asked, turning towards him.
Sho shook his head, and since the judges were calling them over, he instead replied, “They’re calling for us. Let’s go.”
The two made their way to the judges’ station, and Sho furrowed his eyebrows when he saw their troubled faces. What was going on?
“What happened?” he asked as soon as he had the judges in front of him.
“There seems to be a tie here.”
“A tie?!” he exclaimed, upset. “It’s not possible, someone’s got to cross the line before the other.”
Aiba followed, “How about our times?”
“They perfectly line up as well.”
They were shown the monitors and they gaped at what they were seeing. Their boards were aligned on the finish line, and their times were displaying the exact same numbers.
“It can’t be,” he found himself mumbling.
“So, what do we do now?” Aiba asked.
“You could challenge for a tie-break, or accept the draw and agree to share first place.”
There were a few seconds of silence before they spoke at the same time.
“We share first place,” Aiba affirmed.
“We go for the tie-break,” Sho declared instead.
They looked at each other with both their eyes wide open. Sho quickly took Aiba by his arm and made some steps backwards, excusing themselves so that they could talk more privately.
“You’re fine with accepting a draw?!” he hissed as soon as they were at enough distance to not be heard by others.
“And you’re turning down a first place?!” Aiba retorted, as incredulous as him.
“What’s the meaning of a first place if it’s shared?”
“It means that we both earned it.”
“Oh, shut up,” he exclaimed, annoyed, “Just admit that you’re afraid to race once more against me because you know you’re going to lose.”
“Excuse me? I won against you many times and right now I just tied with you, do you think I’m not confident enough?”
“Then why don’t we race again?”
Aiba sighed, visibly done with Sho’s rumbling. “Because it’s stupid. Neither of us want to lose, and this is the best way to end the season. If we go for a tie-break there will be a winner and there will be a loser, do you wish us to have bad blood until the next season starts?”
There was clearly a point Aiba was missing here, and that was that Sho would probably hate to get on the podium on the same step as him much more. So, he inched forward, leaving almost no space between them, and pointed his finger at Aiba, touching his chest.
“Listen, I’m not going to have my name next to yours on a prize, alright? I’m not going to let your fear of losing and righteousness get in my way, got it?”
Aiba was fuming. He had his hands clenched in fists, he was taking deep breaths to calm down, and he looked very much ready to start a fight if it was needed. However, Sho took that silence as his rival giving up, so he turned and walked to the judges to report them their – well, his – decision.
“We’ll go for the tie-break,” he told them.
At the same moment, though, Aiba stepped in, “I don’t agree with that.”
“You do,” Sho insisted.
“No, I don’t.”
“Fine,” it was Sho’s turn to sigh. Since Aiba was so firm on not running another race, he thought up another solution, which of course would go to his own advantage. “Shall we settle this based on who did the best time on the course?”
“Well,” started the head judge, “the best time is the one you two did right now, in this final.”
This couldn’t be true. This was just a nightmare, right? It had to be. He even pinched himself to be true that that was the reality. He didn’t have any issue with having another race, but Aiba looked very firmly on not desiring to have a tie-break, and they couldn’t go ahead with something if both athletes didn’t agree with it.
The judges’ faces looked troubled, as both Sho and Aiba refused to budge. In the end, the head judge suggested to let them discuss the matter until they found an agreement. They had until the end of the day to let them know their decision, and Sho was already sporting his fed-up, pissed off expression. Aiba wasn’t looking any happier either, but they could only deal with the situation.
They gave each other one last glare before greeting the judges and then storming off in different ways. Aiba went to his family, while Sho went right for the locker rooms, so he could get changed and return to the chalet that was prepared for hosting the athletes.
❄ ❄ ❄
Sho and Aiba had tried to reach a compromise, they really did, but it still ended up with them angrily staring at each other across the table, with their arms crossed and with no intention of reasoning with one another.
It had started with Sho trying to convince Aiba, then it had moved on to talking about Sho’s ego, then about Aiba’s victory based only on luck, and then they had somehow decided to settle things once and for all just the two of them. They had put on their snowboard attire and had met on a course that was made for a freeride.
The first to return at the chalet would win. Ninomiya, the staff member in charge of the lobby, would be the one waiting there for them, to proclaim the winner. If Sho won, then the tie-break would happen, otherwise, they would share first place.
They got on the gondola lift. Tension was all around them, creating an atmosphere that was even colder than the weather outside. Sho dared to steal a glance at Aiba. The guy was looking outside with a rather downcast expression.
He unconsciously wondered why Aiba was fine with accepting a draw. If not for ambition or his own satisfaction, Aiba should at least refuse a draw based on his hatred towards Sho. And yet, this guy would be fine with standing on the podium right next to his enemy.
It was weird.
“Why are you doing this?” he found himself asking.
Aiba, whose eyes had been sparkling thanks to the setting sun’s rays that entered through the window, looked at him with a confused expression. “What do you mean?”
“Going to the extent of doing another showdown just to decide what to do tomorrow.”
“Because you’re incredibly stubborn?”
“No, not that,” Sho shook his head, “Why are you so determined to have us share first place? You say that it’s not fear of losing, so what? Shouldn’t you hate the idea of a draw as well?”
Aiba rolled his eyes, “I thought I’d made myself clear when I explained that I don’t have an ego like yours. I don’t mind sharing the glory.”
“But with me? Shouldn’t you hate me?” he asked at last. There was no reason to beat around the bush after all.
There was a moment of silence coming from the other, and he wasn’t really sure of what he should make of it. Aiba was just staring at him and for an instant he wondered if he had to be scared for his own safety. He could be pretty insufferable after all, so Aiba may be considering throwing him out of the lift.
“W-What is it?”
Aiba let out a long sigh, before shifting his gaze back to the outside view. “Despite everything, I don’t hate you.”
Sho was rather surprised to hear that, but it kind of made sense in a way, given what kind of person Aiba was. It was still weird though. And he was actually very curious to know his rival’s reasons, but the lift arrived at its destination just at that moment, so he just cleared his throat and got off, followed by Aiba.
After all preparations were done, they stood side by side, watching the chalet that appeared like a small dot in the distance.
Sho pointed at it, “See you there.”
Aiba nodded feebly. He was very different from the usual energetic and determined self Sho used to see during competitions, but he thought nothing of it, and just focused on his goal.
“Alright, the first to enter the chalet’s lobby is the winner. Ready… Go!”
They both set on to move and threw themselves down the slope, and right from the start it was a head to head. It wasn’t until mid-way that Sho finally left Aiba behind him and went on the lead solo.
When he arrived in front of the chalet, he hurried to unfasten his boots and run inside. While he was doing it, he turned around so that he could enjoy Aiba’s expression as he realized he had lost, but there was no one going down the mountain.
Sho did take the lead, but he was sure that Aiba couldn’t have been that far behind.
“Where is he?” he asked himself, before a thought crossed his mind. “Don’t tell me he’s already inside—”
He quickly opened the door of the chalet and looked around. He saw Ninomiya in the lobby with his eyes on his phone. He approached the reception counter.
“Has he arrived already?”
Ninomiya slowly looked up, “Who? Aiba-kun? No, he didn’t.”
“What? But I couldn’t spot him out there.”
“Maybe he fell?”
“Maybe he fell?!” Sho found himself shouting. It was so sudden that even Ninomiya was taken aback.
Sho’s feet moved before he could stop them and he was out of the chalet once again. Aiba couldn’t have been that far away, even if he had fallen and injured himself. He had to be close by somehow. Sho’s guess was that the guy might have hit a tree or something, so that would make it around the middle of the slope, when he actually lost him.
He was reasoning whether to go back all the way up and then go down again or climb back from where he was, when a green spot appeared in the distance. Sho widened his eyes and began running towards it.
“Aiba!” he shouted.
The green spot was certainly Aiba and his ski suit. The guy was sliding slowly, and that was enough for Sho to fuel his worries.
“Stop right there! I’m coming to get you!”
Aiba did stop, but was looking at Sho rather weirdly when he finally reached him. “What is it? You couldn’t wait to boast about your victory?”
Sho, who was panting since he climbed the slope at a high speed, began checking Aiba’s body for any injuries. He touched his arms, his legs, his ankles, and then finally his face. He raised Aiba’s goggles and held his cheeks.
“Are you alright?”
“I sure am, but you seem to have smacked your head somewhere.”
“What?”
“I mean, what the hell are you doing?”
Aiba eyed Sho’s extended hands and he retrieved them immediately, realizing only at that moment that he may have overdone it.
“Sorry.”
“It’s alright. It was just weird seeing you so worried about me.”
Sho cleared his throat, “If you had injured yourself you couldn’t have raced against me tomorrow after all.”
“Of course.” Aiba rolled his eyes, before he began to slide down again. He was still going slow though, as if he didn’t care about anything anymore.
To Sho, that was a bit odd, and extremely irritating, because now the thought of Aiba giving up mid-way formed in his mind.
“Aiba-kun,” he called the other once they were in front of the chalet.
“What now?”
“Did you let me win?”
“What if I did?”
“I would be very pissed off.”
Aiba stopped and turned around, laughing, “And when aren’t you?”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Oh, you know what that word means?”
Sho inched forward, “Just because I take competitions seriously it doesn’t mean—”
“And others don’t?! We all are here for the race, of course we take it seriously.”
“It’s different.”
“Why so?”
Sho hesitated to give his reply. Upon seeing that, Aiba shook his head with a wry smile on his face, before returning on his steps to enter the chalet. However, he was stopped by the next words Sho spoke.
“You don’t have to show your parents that the path you chose was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you with your parents today,” Sho started. “They were happy for you, right?”
Aiba nodded, while his hand left the doorknob of the chalet’s front door. He got closer to Sho once again.
He continued, “They’re always watching you racing. They’re always present, they’re always supporting you.”
“Sakurai-kun, what—”
“Have you ever seen my parents?”
Aiba was going to say something, but he stopped himself before saying anything. His eyes went to the ground for a bit before they returned to Sho. “I don’t think so.”
“Because they don’t approve—” Sho gestured at the mountain, “—of this. They never did. That’s why I swore to myself that I would get a first place, so I could show them that I was right in not choosing the path they had decided for me.”
Despite having supported Sho’s love for snowboarding, when it came down to choosing career paths, his parents had firmly opposed the idea of professional snowboarding. They didn’t need an athlete, they needed a diplomat who could take over from his father. However, Sho couldn’t just follow their plan since that wasn’t who he wanted to be, and so he chose to become a professional snowboarder, even if he had to do it alone.
And he did, but it still hurt whenever his parents wouldn’t attend his races, or wouldn’t congratulate him as much as he hoped.
“That’s also why you can’t stand me? Because I snatched the first place from you despite not really needing it, in your opinion?” Aiba asked.
“Well, there’s a part of me who hates losing, of course, but I did wonder what you were running for,” he admitted.
For once, they were talking without shouting at each other or arguing. It was rather surreal but Sho didn’t mind it a bit. It was nice for once to lower his guard.
“You want to know what I was running for?” Aiba chuckled. He crossed his arms and then stared right into Sho’s eyes. “I was running for you.”
“W—What? For me?”
“I used to do snowboarding just for fun when I was much younger, but one day I got to watch one of your first races, and I was so impressed that I decided to go pro myself. I decided to follow my passion just like you did.”
Sho’s brain started to connect the dots.
“That’s why you said that you don’t hate me despite everything?”
Aiba gave him an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, you’re still someone I admire.”
“And when you told me that you were honored to race against me during our first encounter…”
“I was being honest. I was buzzing about it, and when I won, I thought that I was finally worthy to stand by your side,” Aiba told him. The smile on his face vanished after that, though. “But then you started giving me the cold shoulder, so I figured I might as well win as much as possible until you finally noticed me.”
Sho was completely taken aback. Among all the reasons why Aiba didn’t hate him, Sho never thought that ‘admiring him’ would be one of them. Moreover, it would have never crossed his mind that, for all this time, Aiba had been looking for his approval.
“But why did you always pick up fights with me then?”
Aiba’s eyes widened, “Excuse me? You always picked up fights with me. Whatever you threw my way, I just sent it back to you. I wasn’t certainly going to succumb to you just because I like you.”
“Still—”
Sho’s words died in his throat as they both stared at each other, speechless. Neither of them could believe what had just come out of Aiba’s mouth. Sho’s face was dumbfounded, while Aiba was clearly panicking; he even swallowed loudly in nervousness.
“What did you just say?”
“Nothing,” Aiba replied, pretending to act normally. “I said nothing.”
“No, you said that you like me.”
“That must have been your mind playing tricks,” Aiba denied. “I could never say something like that.”
“But you did.”
“A—And what if I did?”
Aiba switched his stance very quickly, and that amused Sho quite a bit. He decided to take a leap of faith, at that point.
“You should have told me sooner. I would have asked you out.”
Aiba was left speechless once again when he heard those words, and Sho found himself chuckling at that view. He was sure that the red cheeks on the guy’s face weren’t due the cold, or at least, not just that.
“You… what? Don’t you hate me?” Aiba asked, confused and lost.
“I do, I guess—I mean, not technically? I might hate you but I also want to kiss you very badly. Does that make sense?”
To his surprise, Aiba burst out laughing, nodding in understanding. “It does, I’m in the same situation after all.”
The previous tense atmosphere was now relaxed, and for the first time the two of them could be around each other without anger running inside them. To their disappointment, though, they were interrupted, just when they were about to seemingly bury the hatchet.
“Guys, are you coming in or will you keep on flirting outside? I have a shift to end.”
They turned towards the door and saw Ninomiya peeking his head outside.
“We’re not flirting!” Sho hurried to clarify.
“Yeah, whatever, so? What are you doing? The winner’s still Sakurai-kun by the way.”
“We’re coming in, Ninomiya-kun,” Aiba said, “Thank you for your service.”
After that, Aiba stole a quick glance at Sho before he went outside, and he followed suit. However, when they climbed the stairs of the chalet to reach their bedroom, Sho stopped Aiba by grabbing his hand.
Aiba was rather surprised but didn’t shove him, nor did he seem to dislike that touch.
“About tomorrow, I’ll accept the draw,” Sho declared.
“What? But your parents—”
“It’s fine,” he reassured him, “But you have to give me something in return.”
Aiba tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at him, “Is this some kind of scheming? What do you want?”
“You’ll go on a date with me.”
“Just that?” Sho nodded and Aiba was now smirking, “Fine by me, but you’ll have a lot of apologizing to do for the hell you put me through this year.”
Sho held Aiba’s hand tightly, caressing the back of it with his thumb, “I’ll be sure to make up for everything.”
When Aiba smiled and approached Sho to land a quick peck on his lips, Sho felt that he had just ended the season in the best way possible.