Chapter Text
On March 6th, 1991, two very important things happened in Yuna Hollander's life: Stéphane Richer got his sixth hat trick as a Montréal Voyageur, and Yuna learned that she would be having a son. Yuna was ecstatic about the first and deeply relieved about the second.
Part of that relief was just being able to see her baby. At twenty-one weeks pregnant, it was the first time that she was able to clearly see her child in her womb. Her baby had been too small, too quiet, to be seen at the usual ten-week mark. When they finally managed to catch him at week eleven, he looked like a blurry little grape.
Yuna would like to say that all of her relief came from being told that her baby was there, and real, and okay. But it was only when the doctor told her that she would be having a boy that she thought, oh thank fucking god.
It wasn't a thought that she felt guilty about. She knew better than anyone that she would not be able to raise a daughter. Daughters required a certain… kindness, perhaps. It was difficult to name, but it was definitely needed.
It was something that Yuna was raised without. Something that her mother simply didn’t possess, something that Yuna grew up craving her whole life. What Yuna's mother gave instead was nothing that Yuna would want to give to her child.
Thankfully, Yuna was having a son, and her father had lavished her with things that Yuna would be happy to hand down. A sensitive soul. A sense of humour. An uncanny intelligence. An everburning passion and drive to excel. And most importantly, hockey.
It was through hockey, through the Voyageurs, that Yuna became close with her father. At first, her father only watched the games to keep up his coworker's conversations. Then he realized that having his daughter translate the broadcast from French to Japanese was an excellent way to have her practice the language. By the time Montréal got to the Stanley Cup semi-finals, Yuna wasn't coherent in any language at all, switching between translating and shouting at the TV so rapidly that she almost choked on her own spit.
She couldn't be more excited to raise a little boy just like her father.
//
Three days later after the Admirals win the cup, Yuna Hollander finds herself at Costco, looking at linen skirts.
They're dreadful things. Wrinkly and long and drab. Yuna hasn't ever worn Costco clothing in her whole life. Had her mother known about Costco in their childhood, had her mother decided that the membership was worth the cost, then Yuna would've exclusively worn clothes from Costco. Instead, she grew up wearing hand-me-downs from neighbours and too-big items from charity bins.
She didn't have to. They could have afforded nice clothing with a professor's salary. They could've spared money for nicer things. A new backpack at the start of the school year. Bright red nail polish like what all the other girls wore. Braces before the age of twenty. Frivolties, her mother had said. Useless things.
Yuna wears nice things now. She has a Chanel handbag in the baby seat of her shopping cart with the newest model of iPhone tucked inside. She wears premium brand capris and blouses on hot days like this, not the threadbare summer-wear she grew up with. She drives a Lexus. Her son is a multi-million dollar athlete with multi-million dollar brand deals.
No. Her daughter, she corrects, stomach twisting with guilt
Today, Yuna is wearing a nice linen top. Not because she likes it. She hates linen, personally. It's a painstaking fabric to maintain, and it's only good for scorching days like this. But Shane likes it. It's a good sensory thing for… for her. Something that doesn't make her shoulders all tense and her mouth all stiff. Yuna has had to learn and relearn what the good fabrics were many times over the years.
Shane likes linen. Shane is terrible at maintaining it, but she likes it.
Shane liked this linen dress that Yuna used to wear in the summers. It was white and plain and wholly unremarkable, but Yuna has a distinct memory about it. She was getting ready to go to some summer work-thing with David, something that required a bit of dressing up, but not too much. So, she wore that dress and a simple beige cardigan. She did a bit more makeup than she usually would, pink on her cheeks and shimmer on her eyes and her lips a nice deep berry colour.
Shane had sat and watched in mesmerized silence. "Mom," he eventually murmured, startling her so badly she almost streaked lipstick across her cheek. He always sat so quietly, and Yuna would always forget that he was there. "You're really pretty, did you know that?"
She loved the way he said things. So earnest. So concerned. He really, really wanted her to know that she was pretty. "It's always nice to hear it, Shane." She smiled at him and let her still-wet lipstick transfer to his scrunched up cheek. He made a grossed out sound and scrubbed it off. She laughed at him, then she and David went out for the event.
"Excuse me?" Yuna jolts. A young mother with two screaming kids is smiling at her, strained but polite. "Can I get to– or are you going to–"
"Right," Yuna rasps. How long has she been standing there? How long has she been on the verge of tears? How long will this knot in her ribcage last? Will it ever go away? "Sorry, I'll just–"
She blindly grabs two skirts. One black and one white. Then, she all but runs away.
//
Yukimura Yuna moved to Canada in December of 1974, a few days after her fifth birthday and halfway through the 58th season of major league hockey.
Her father said that this was a very good time to move to Canada. It was well after the war, the internment, the forced migration west, and all the subsequent fighting required for Japanese-Canadians to secure their rights. The Yukimuras were able to coast on in and settle in what was already built. It wasn't during a major period of Japanese immigration to Canada, so they weren't able to be blamed for the country’s most recent problem.
Her mother thought that there was no good time to move to Canada. She thought that they should not have moved to Canada at all.
Yuna had just turned five, and she honestly couldn't tell the difference between Sapporo and Montréal. The two cities looked the same when buried underneath three feet of snow. When her parents tried to say that she was no longer Japanese, but now Japanese-Canadian, all Yuna could think was that she was just as cold either way.
The other kids did their best to make the differences more apparent. They mocked her halting English and her non-existent French. They put their fingers to the corners of their eyes and pulled them until slanted and jeered at her. They called her cruel words that they’d heard from their parents.
There wasn't a lot that Yuna could do about it except get better at shouting things back in English and French and walk away faster from their taunts. She grit her teeth and tried her hardest not to be homesick for the taunting of children who looked and spoke like her.
One day, after the freeze had deepened and the calendar rolled over into the new year, they shoved Yuna face-first into the snow.
Yuna had spent last winter in Sapporo, Hokkaido, where she had been pushed into plenty of snowbanks by plenty of children. She knew exactly what to do: reach down, grab a chunk of ice, and slam it into the closest kid's mouth.
Yuna was a Yukimura, a name written with the characters for snow and village. Even after moving across the world, from Japan to Canada, from Sapporo to Montréal, that hadn't changed.
She ended up suiting Canada just fine.
//
David was the one who chose the name Shane. A biblical name, even though he hadn't gone to church since his childhood. It meant a gift from god, but David didn't choose it for its meaning. He chose it because he loved Jane Eyre and had always wanted to name his daughter in tribute. He just picked the closest sounding name male name when they learned they would be having a boy.
It was ridiculous and simple and so wonderfully David that it made Yuna laugh. She liked the name as well, so they settled on it at twenty-one weeks and didn't have any other doubts.
Yuna chose Shane's middle name, but she didn't have any ideas until the day that he was born. She knew that she wanted to pick a Japanese name, so that he might still feel a connection to his heritage. She knew that by hiding that name in between Shane and Hollander, she would be able to protect him.
The choice made her vulnerable to her mother's ire—it wasn't bad enough that her daughter got pregnant before graduating college by her white boyfriend who was five years older than her. Yuna had to give him a white name too.
She came to the hospital with all her spite and derision. When Yuna told her the name she’d hidden between Shane and Hollander, her mother scoffed. It felt like being slapped across the face.
"That's a woman's name," her mother said in Japanese. Her mother's English was passable, but it was only in Japanese that she could sound so disdainful. Yuna flushed with shame and anger in her hospital bed. "You didn't even know that?"
"It doesn't matter," Yuna retorted hotly, her Japanese creaking and clumsy as it left her lips. David put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, his presence keeping Yuna steady even if he couldn't understand what Yuna was being made to endure. "It's a name I love. It's the name I chose, and it fits.”
Besides, Yuna Hollander thought quietly, after her mother had left. After she brushed off David's questions, after she refused to inform him of her mistake. It's not like anyone in this country would know that it's a woman's name.
Her mother hated her too much to scorn her. Her husband would be none the wiser. Even if her son one day came to understand, his classmates would not. It would still be hidden in the middle, cushioned by names that wouldn't sound out of place during roll call. He would still be safe.
Yuna swallowed the lump in her throat and suddenly remembered that her mother was the one to choose her name, using the characters for bind and love.
Was it her fault for failing to live up to the fate bestowed upon her? Or was it a name chosen without thought, without intention? Was it a name that Yuna was never meant for, an impossible expectation that she was always meant to fail?
Just before the questions could choke her out, Shane squirmed silently in her arms, his soft cheek pressing into her collarbone. His little pink face was all wrinkled together. He was so quiet, but Yuna could have sworn she heard him grumble.
The lump in her throat dissolved into a breathless laugh. She pressed her lips to his soft forehead, promising, I'll make sure you blossom. I'll help you bloom.
//
Yukimura Yuna's father was a hilariously awkward man. He was peculiar, single-minded, and unparalleled in his intelligence, often to the point of being incomprehensible. He often struggled to grasp the nuances of Yuna's humour, even when she was making jokes in his native tongue. He was kind-hearted and sensitive and had the tendency to freeze up whenever anyone started crying in front of him. If he tried to offer any words of comfort, he almost always made things worse.
言わぬが花. Iwanu-ga-hana. The closest English equivalent is either "silence is golden" or "some things are better left unsaid", though neither saying captures the right nuance.
When translated literally, iwanu-ga-hana means "not speaking is the flower." Silence is not something valuable like gold or simply better off as the English sayings suggest, but beautiful. Elegant, so long as it remained unspoken.
Yuna's mother left very little unsaid. She always had some kind of fight to pick. For many, many years, most of those fights were with Yuna's father.
Her mother often cried when they argued. Her tears were the only ones for which Yuna's father had an immediate response, and it was always rage. It only ever made things uglier. Yuna would hide in her room, her hands over her ears, and wait for the storm to blow over. She didn't like the way her father's voice would tear apart with his fury. She hated the way that her mother would sob, "We were happy in Japan."
That's not true, Yuna would think. In Japan, she never would've learned about the Voyageurs. But her mother could not hear her thoughts from her bedroom. So, Yuna held her tongue and listened to her mother wail, "We were happy. I miss my sister. I miss my home."
As a girl, Yuna wondered why her mother could not find someone else to say this to. There were plenty of other Japanese-Canadians in Montréal. Hundreds, if not thousands. There was the Nisei, the second-generation diaspora, who would surely understand her mother's yearning for her homeland. There were also plenty of Issei, first generations who undoubtedly felt the same way that her mother did. Older, sure, but Yuna didn't think that age would matter much when it came to leaving home.
Yuna didn't think about how she herself was technically Issei as well. Sure, she might've been born in Japan, but she wasn't made to leave home. She didn't have to settle anywhere else. Canada was her home.
Yuna's mother hated the Nisei and their ingrained westernization. She hated the Issei even more for so willingly assimilating. For casting aside their culture for a country that they had to fight to stay in. What Yuna's mother wanted was a friend just like herself. Bitter, angry, and resentful. A woman who did not know English or French and would never care to learn. A woman who was enduring, not settling, a woman with plans to pack it all up and move back to the place she called home.
She had no one.
Yuna had her father, and her father had her; they whooped and cheered in the living room when the Voyageurs scored and hurled insults at the TV when they were scored on.
Yuna's mother would sit in beautiful, icy silence and go to bed before the game was ever done. Most of the time, Yuna didn’t notice when she left.
//
Shane Satsuki Hollander was born on May 10th, 1991, the day before Boston lost game six of the Prince of Wales conference finals to Pittsburg, missing their chance to contend for the cup.
Had she known that her son's birth would usher in the downfall of her rival team, Yuna Hollander might have given her son a middle name with the characters for gift or blessing. Thankfully, David's choice of name took care of that.
May 10th started with rain, just like every other day that month. Yuna experienced her first contraction with a crack of lightning in the early hours of morning, the storm bearing down upon them as they fought through the dark and the downpour to get to the hospital. It was dawn when Yuna entered active labour, but the stormclouds obscuring the emerging sun made it impossible to tell.
It was mid-morning when Shane finally came into the world, quieter than a mouse. Yuna's screams of exertion echoed out into the room as he was delivered, a room that was braced for a baby's wailing, a room that was silent save for the beeping of monitors and the slowing patter of raindrops against the window.
David's face turned ashen, his hand tightening around hers. Yuna started to sob, exhausted and devastated and terrified. She felt sick when the attending physician turned to her, his front stained with her blood and her baby cradled in his arms—he looked so small, so still—only for the man to exclaim, "He's breathing! He's alert! He's okay!"
It was early in the afternoon when she and David realized that the storm had finally broken. Outside their hospital window, the sky had blossomed open into a brilliant shade of blue. By the time they were sent home, the puddles had started to dry and evaporate. The world would be ready to welcome summer. The flowers would start to bud, and later go on to bloom.
In her arms, Shane's little mouth squeaked with a yawn. David laughed breathlessly over Yuna's shoulder, whispering, "He's as pink as the peonies I was going to plant in the backyard."
Shane's little eyes opened like petals unfurling on a flower, slow and quiet and beautiful and sweet. Yuna's breath quivered. She whispered the name into the wispy curls of her baby's hair, not wanting to shatter the silence. "Satsuki."
It could mean 'May' if written a certain way, but Yuna specifically chose the characters for blossom and month.
//
David was the one who first brought up the possibility of Shane being gay. Back in 2015, when Shane became one of the youngest captains in MLH history to win a cup but still hadn't mentioned any sort of girlfriend.
Yuna Hollander disagreed, almost immediately. She knew her son, she knew how dedicated he was to the game. He and Yuna were practically the same person, after all. Yuna might have had more regular relationships in her youth than Shane ever did, but she also ended plenty of those relationships for her personal goals.
Besides, just because Shane was uninterested in the pretty blondes that most hockey players wound up marrying, that didn't mean he was gay. Shane was nothing like the little gay boys that she knew of. The ones who were obsessed with their mothers’ clothes, makeup, and shoes. The ones who were effeminate and didn't fit in with the rest of the boys, who didn't get along with their fathers, who got along with girls better than they did boys. Shane would practically run screaming from girls. David and Shane were as close as father and son could be.
Sure, Shane didn't get along with the boys on his team, and sure, Shane had always been sensitive, but that didn't mean he was gay. He was just… awkward. Shy. Quiet, at least around strangers. He certainly wasn't quiet at home.
The quietest that Yuna ever saw him was in 2001. When Shane was ten and just starting to stand out as an upcoming star. When the scouts started paying attention to her quiet little boy, and Yuna first started overhearing them say things like, keep an eye on that Asian kid, he might seem quiet but he's something else.
Yuna told herself that what they were saying was good. Yes, her son was quiet, but that let his skills speak for himself. Yes, her son was shy, but that only made him seem braver on the ice. Yes, her son did not really speak to his teammates or his coach, but no words were needed to know that he was a star in the making.
Even when those teammates stopped passing to him, and Shane would stand there silently with tears welling in his eyes, and the coach would shrug and say that Shane needed to stand up for himself—that didn't change Yuna's mind.
Because when she and David sat Shane down and asked him if he wanted to try a different sport, Shane shot up from his chair and screamed at them.
Her son was quiet, yes. Quiet and shy and sensitive, but that didn't make him gay. Being gay was a separate thing, a perfectly fine thing, but it wasn't the product of Shane being quiet. Being quiet made Shane– vulnerable. It made him mature, honourable, and commendable. It made him a good captain, a good role model. It made him stand out from the other boys and their useless chirping, their senseless fighting, their useless showboating that never made up for their lack of skill. It made Shane better.
And if Shane needed someone to be loud for him, well, what else were mothers for?
//
Yukimura Yuna fell in love for the first time when she went to her first hockey game in February of '75.
It was a small, boring affair, a match between two minor league teams playing incredibly mediocre hockey. What sent Yuna's heart aflutter was the rush of cold rink air against her face; the smooth sound of skates against the ice; the shouts of the players and the fans as the puck passed from stick to stick, exploding into cheering and booing when the puck hit the back of the net.
Yukimura Yuna's second love began in the same place as her first: a rink.
She met David Hollander as a coworker in December of '89, just a few days after she turned nineteen. They started dating in the new year and had been dating for five months when Montréal lost the Stanley Cup finals to fucking Calgary. David laughed himself sick at the way Yuna swore and sobbed and made a huge fucking mess of herself. During their wedding, when she became Yuna Hollander, David said that at that moment he knew she was the woman he needed to marry.
In October of '94, Yuna and David Hollander took Shane to his first hockey game. A pre-season game, because they tended to be less intense, and Shane was an easily overwhelmed child. They bundled him up in a Voyageurs' jersey, covered his sensitive ears with matching earmuffs, and picked seats right next to the stairs in case they needed to make a quick escape.
Their first three years of parenthood were spent in constant, frantic worry. Shane did not babble the way other children did. He had to have his bedtime routine performed the exact same way, every single night, or else he'd be inconsolable. He couldn't endure events like birthday parties, or shopping trips, or anything that was even a little bit noisy. David didn't want to take him to the game, but Yuna insisted that they should at least try.
"Just the one," she kept repeating. David hemmed and hawed and Yuna would plead, "He has to like something. Maybe he'll like hockey. He likes the games on TV."
They almost didn't end up going, because Shane thought that they would watch the game at home like they always did and wailed when he realized that they were doing something else. They only got to the rink a few minutes before the puck dropped, and Shane was sniffling and whining and chewing on the collar of Yuna's coat the whole time.
The moment that they stepped into the rink, his tears slowed. His eyes widened. He released his mouth from Yuna's coat. And a few minutes into the game, when a fight broke out and the crowd erupted into cacophony and the ref blew his piercing whistle so loud that Yuna and David flinched in advance–
Shane giggled. Bright and bubbly and delighted like they had never heard him before.
David was the first one to speak. "Well!" he had to shout in Yuna's ear, over the din of the arena and through her weepy shock. "I guess he's taking after his mother, then!"
It's probably the only match that Yuna's ever seen for which she can't remember the score.
//
In June of 2017, the New York Admirals break a twenty-eight year dry streak and win the Stanley Cup. That night, Yuna Hollander does not sleep.
David doesn't either. They lie in silence, with baited breath, listening for something from down the hall. More heart-wrenching sobs. Hysterical laughter. An admission to a joke, or a prank. The strangled gasp of their child's dying breaths.
David whispers, "It feels like my heart is beating a mile an hour."
Yuna blurts, "Do you think it's because I stopped speaking Japanese at home?"
It was a mutual decision. Shane wasn't speaking in any language, and they thought that maybe he was confused whenever he had to switch from Japanese with his mother to English at school. He had already been skating at that point. They thought that if he didn't start speaking soon, they should take him to a psychologist.
Shortly after, Shane skipped his first words and said his first sentence: "Are we gonna go skate today?"
He said it so softly that Yuna almost hadn't even heard him. Then, she gasped so loud that he flinched away, hands clapping over his ears. She eventually managed to coax him into accepting her apology, his second sentence shyly giggled out as she kissed his face, over and over and over, "It's okay, Mom. I forgive you."
Yuna might have drowned in that soft, dappled memory and its deep, dense grief were it not for David's voice piercing through the darkness. "What?" he hisses, the bed creaks as he sits up. Yuna can't look at him. She tries to turn away from his hands as they brush the tears from her face. "Yuna– oh, honey–"
He reaches for her, but Yuna rolls onto her side, facing away. After a moment, David sighs and lies back down. Yuna stares into the cold darkness of the room and blinks away her tears until dawn.