Work Text:
For Maelle, born in France and now in her second senior season in figure skating ladies’ singles, the dominant theme of the year remained the same: relentless appearances at every Grand Prix and Challenger event she could enter, harvesting placements and personal bests with almost mechanical hunger.
With her second-year PCS(Program Component Score) and GOE(Grade of Execution) no longer suppressed by the skepticism that shadows a skater’s debut senior season, she had to break into the European Championships or the World Championships and secure a placement worthy of her current performance. Otherwise, her chances of ever standing on a world podium would only grow slimmer—diminished by age, by politics, by the constant emergence of prodigious juniors snapping at her heels.
So she packed her prime—sixteen, sharp and luminous—until it left no empty space. Three training sessions a day. Two on-ice and one off-ice, or the reverse. Six and a half days training a week. Other athletes might groan after four hours; but she calibrated herself instead against the training intensity of the Russian girls. More than once, she had been chased off the rink by staff impatient to close with ice shovels.
Beyond daily practices and online school course, her calendar was crammed with every meaningful competition she could wedge into it across the globe. Her skating program, technical content maxed out, step sequences packed tight with intricacy and no margin for error, choreography and performance drilled to the marrow at the club, each gesture filed and polished under harsh fluorescent lights long past midnight.
To ensure that this technically driven skater could deliver her programs with a stable mind, the coaching team accompanied her all the way to the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas on a twenty-hour flight: head coach Gustave; jump coach and choreographer Sciel; even team doctor Lune.
They paid out of their own pocket to upgrade Maelle to business class, so she could lie flat at ten thousand meters’ height and sleep properly for recovery. The three of them wedged themselves into economy, knees pressing the seatbacks ahead, playing cards for five hours. When Lune and Sciel finally nodded off, foreheads tilted toward one another, Gustave remained awake beneath the faint cabin reading light, studying competition footage and dissecting rival layouts deep into the night.
Unlike many figure skaters and their coaching teams, Gustave was not merely a coach to Maelle. He was her foster guardian and elder brother as well. They are family, more than anything else—not just instructors praying she might bring France a medal.
Maelle could not possibly fail such unconditional devotion.
The result of her two years of long-term training in Russia was finally revealed to the public: her triple Axel jump—3A—landed clean in international competition for the first time.
Among senior women, those capable of completing such jump could be counted on two hands. Its doubled base value and potential GOE meant her technical score could surge four to six points clear of her rivals.
Her small frame launched into the air, tracing a high, spinning crazily fast, decisive arc, and came down on a steady edge with only the faintest tremor. In that instant, it was as if a spark had leapt into a forest and ignited—an act of intimidation of violent aesthetics. All the pre-competition doubts and whispered anxieties dissolved completely in that flame.
The arena erupted. Cheers and gasps collided with the staccato burst of camera shutters and the sizzling roar of media frenzy. By tomorrow, her name and photograph would dominate headlines.
Steps. Spins. The second solo jump. The high-difficulty combination jump.
All immaculate.
She shattered her season’s best and, with near-flawless execution, claimed first place in the short program.
Which meant something else entirely: she is now the rarest thing in French women’s skating in five years—perhaps ten.
A genius.
What her audience did not know, was that the free skate layout she intended to submit bore a radical change from the one she had used at NHK Trophy in Japan, where her 3A had ended in a fall. Aggressively, she had inserted two triple Axels into the program. The decision spoke of an extraordinarily high success rate in training. If she could clutch the 3A firmly in her grasp, she would become a genuine contender for the world’s podium.
Yet what she did not know was, the headline appearing tomorrow later—following “France’s Prodigy Rose and Her 3A”—would read very differently:
“But the red firecracker on the ice—mental fortitude may be her greatest weakness.”
The hexagon she had been filling in, edge by edge, growing ever more complete with each battle, was about to be twisted out of shape by an invisible, irresistible, and uninvited hand.
Disaster.
That was the pale word she and her coaching team used, privately, to describe her free skate.
Only after watching the replay—again and again—did she begin to understand where the nickname had come from.
A firecracker.
She had melted down.
But an ordinary meltdown would never have earned her that name. A bang snap explodes once. Fireworks bloom only for a few seconds and die.
Maelle knew exactly what image skating fans must have had in mind when they coined it: that kind of long string of Chinese style firecrackers, linked end to end.
Seven jumps, three falls, one pop.
In that four short minutes, her placement slid from first to last, dropping with every thudding fall onto her butt.
More than ten years of training. The painstaking devotion of her coaches...
All of them, collapsed entirely within those four minutes of absolute darkness.
When the music ended, the commentators fell silent. Her coaches went pale, hearts seizing. And Maelle herself entered a state beyond shock—a complete system crash, as if her brain had simply powered down.
She bowed with a blank face. She could barely skate; she had to bite her lip to keep moving, shame burning hotter than the arena lights. Only after she dragged her heavy, numb body off the ice did the pain from her hips and tailbone arrive in full, followed by tears.
Cameras swarmed in the vacuum of her collapse.
They captured her hiding in her coach’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Black streaks of mascara clung to her cheeks. She pressed her hands over her ears, refusing to hear the score announcement, too afraid to look at the numbers that flashed across the screen.
It should have been perfect.
The opening element—her pride, the 3A+2T—one of the most difficult combinations attempted among the women’s single, landed cleanly, again, to a roar of applause.
Even if she had fallen once or twice afterward, as long as she stayed on her feet for the second 3A, her technical base value alone could have carried her to first or second place. Contrary to the public’s stereotype of French ladies as artistic but conservative, she was an aggressive jumper. Risk and reward, calculated together. She had run countless simulations in her mind, prepared contingencies for foreseeable mistakes. She could handle expected errors.
The turning point came when, mid-skate, she noticed that figure at rinkside.
It was not distraction in the careless sense.
It was just impossible to ignore.
Rouge.
Ardent, provocative, sensual, a smile concealing a blade.
She would never forget that face, perpetually edged with impatience. Nor that gaze—sharp enough to flay skin, to separate flesh from vein with surgical precision.
Clea Dessendre.
Her biological sister.
Whom she had not seen in six years.
The rest of her day dissolved into endless crying and despair.
She shoved past her coaches, hailed a cab, and fled the arena. She would see no one. Read nothing. Hear nothing. She could not process another word entering her ears or handle every echo inside her skull.
When her coaches called, she hung up and texted that she only wanted to be alone for a while. When Instagram notifications began to flood in, she deleted the app—this must have been the fifteenth time she had uninstalled it. Not long after, even her stepsister Emma called from overseas. By then, Maelle had finally swallowed back the mucus and tears, and instead of answering, she removed the SIM card from her phone altogether.
She had nowhere to go. Nowhere she could go. Las Vegas was a city built for adults and their sins.
She returned to the hotel, changed out of her costume, and splashed her face with ice-cold water. At first, she stuffed the vivid, glittering dress straight into her suitcase. A moment later, rubbing her swollen eyes and nose, she came back and hung it properly.
Sciel and her students made it together. Every rhinestone and sequin had been glued on by hand.
She had already disappointed everyone who loved her. Already run away like a coward.
She could not keep hurting them.
She plunged into the wooded area beside the resort club next to the hotel and ran two manic laps, her heart rate spiking to 170. Only then did she collapse onto a park bench beside a trash can, shoulders slumped, head bowed.
Trembling, she reinserted the SIM card and checked her messages.
Gustave had sent a reservation confirmation for dinner—buffet inside the casino. He had saved her a seat. Lune had already compiled a list of dishes at this world-famous luxury buffet that she could safely eat. Sciel had sent a private message asking whether she wanted to go back to the rink alone and work on jumps.
She could picture it clearly: if they kept waiting and this “little ladies’ single” never showed up, Sciel would probably storm into the neighboring casino and win back their meal money—and maybe their travel expenses too. Lune would follow, just in case Sciel got carried away and couldn’t pull herself back. Gustave would linger stubbornly near the buffet area, keeping a glass of apple juice he’d poured for her in case she game.
“…”
The thought made her sigh again, more heavily than before.
Even now, when she closed her eyes, she could still see that glaring red figure by the rink boards.
Clea.
She still dressed as sloppily as ever. Still loved her suspenders. Buttoning half her shirt was apparently her definition of respecting the opposite gender.
Her red hair had darkened with age, the color, shaded like roasted chestnut skin. She had not re-dyed it; it was no longer as flamboyant as before, but it remained unmistakable. The calluses on her hands were thicker now. Her gaze colder.
They had not spoken in years.
Why had she suddenly—
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Maelle jolted violently.
But the exhaustion weighing on her spirit dragged at her body; she did not leap to her feet and flee at once.
Right on cue.
Maelle lifted her head and looked toward the tall, lean figure not far away, her eyes burning with open hostility.
Under the park’s low amber lamps, Clea’s pale blue eyes deepened into something almost black beneath the shadow of her hair and the dim light.
Clea was dressed as she always was: suspenders over a long skirt and white shirt, a stiff-textured wool jacket thrown over it. The elder sister stood with her arms folded firmly across her chest, the corner of her mouth tilted in a teasing half-smile as she studied her younger sister’s swollen, tear-blown eyes with evident amusement.
Maelle clearly had no idea what to say to the sister she had not seen in six years. So she obeyed the instinct that rose first—sharp, defensive, sarcastic.
“Why are you wearing fake four-stripe Adidas? Did you go bankrupt?”
“…” Clea blinked, momentarily stunned. Then her smile shifted from appraisal to open ridicule. “It’s Thom Browne, not Adidas. Bought it here. Want one?”
“…How much one of it cost?”
“Forgot. A few thousand dollars, probably.”
The red-haired girl’s cheeks puffed up with instant indignation. “No.”
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, little sister. Not wearing American brands would at least show some taste. Though honestly, you don’t own a single decent outfit.”
“I don’t get to just take off sponsor gear whenever I feel like it.”
Right. I forgot. My little sister is self-supporting and broke.
Clea’s mocking expression lingered as her gaze traveled over Maelle’s outfit—nothing but a logo, Le Coq Sportif, or the French rooster, it’s spreading nickname. The jacket bore visible signs of being altered by hand; clearly not custom. Which meant she held no exclusive contract with the brand. Too many freckles one her face shut down the door for L’Oréal Paris or Lancôme. Food companies? Perhaps when she became a national icon.
The seasoned, razor-minded art-world heiress could easily imagine her little sister, after more than a decade on the ice, still financially strained—especially after those two years training in Russia, likely draining her foster family’s savings. Even so, she had never once reached out to her wealthy biological family. If she had, a single phone call would have placed Cartier or Balenciaga gowns and jewels onto her gala performances overnight.
In truth, Clea had little interest in imagining matters devoid of artistic output. She opened Instagram instead. Of the two accounts she followed—Maelle’s private account and her fan-operating information station—it was plain enough: beyond Le Coq Sportif tracksuits and competition costumes, there was nothing else she would wear.
That gaze—so distinctly from an old-money bourgeois world—stabbed deeply into Maelle, who no longer even shared the surname with her.
“Did you come to laugh at me?”
“I came to see whether your ass cracked open.”
The words made her ears ring, like the instant she’d slammed into the ice, the impact rattling her lumbar spine and cerebrospinal fluid. She adjusted her posture with near-military speed, as if issuing a hard command from brain to nerve: stop crying, and run.
But the movement was anticipated. Clea stepped forward and seized her in one swift motion.
“Where are you running?”
“I don’t want to see you.”
“So why?” Clea asked, expression unchanged.
“No reason.”
“I won’t ask twice.”
Her grip tightened around Maelle’s wrist.
At last Maelle glared up at her with naked hatred.
“Because seeing you makes me unhappy. Don’t you know that?”
The moment the words left her mouth, the red-haired girl’s tears broke loose again, harder than before. Her body trembled like a sieve.
“Why are you always so self-willed? Don’t you have my contact? You couldn’t call first? You just had to show up at the rink?”
“My legs aren’t controlled by your head. I go where I want.”
“I melted down! It’s your fault! I’m going to carry the label ‘steady first collapse at the end’ for years! They’re already calling me Firecracker!”
Facing her sister’s tear-choked shouting, the grown woman reacted with simply rolled her eyes, still gripping the athlete like someone holding a feral cat by the scruff to keep it from bolting.
“You figure skating people really are dramatic.”
“Don’t say ‘you figure skating people’! You art-world people are all insane! Now I give it back to you!”
“Yes, yes. Insane. Call it whatever you like.”
“You’re sick! So what—did you come on purpose to make my program fall apart?”
“Use your brain. Why would I want to watch my own sister embarrass herself? She’s not someone else’s sister.”
“But you knew if you showed up I’d lose control! Don’t you know I’ve always been criticized for being mentally unstable in competition?”
“Is that so? I wouldn’t know. I don’t read sports news. Aren’t you the stubborn type with nerves of steel—reckless enough to go against everyone and bet everything anyway?”
Maelle’s body spasmed as if she had returned to that electrolyte-collapse state, unable to stand.
Her tears had long since run dry, yet her eyes reddened at an alarming speed, as though one more provocation would rupture the capillaries and replace tears with blood.
Even anger could not hold its ground on her aggrieved face. At some point, all emotion washed away like a splash of water dissolving a patch of sand, leaving only damp traces behind—an indefinable sorrow.
“You’re just like Maman…” the girl choked, swallowing with difficulty, as if forcing down shards of glass. “...You’re still blaming me.”
Clea watched as the little girl before her lost all strength and slowly lowered her head, no longer lifting it—as though an iron collar had been fastened around her neck, too heavy to bear.
“I don’t bother holding a grudge over the carelessness of an eight-year-old brat.”
The red-haired woman’s tone finally softened, though it remained cold at the edges. She let go Maelle’s wrist, her gaze drifting into the dim woods. The atmosphere here hardly felt like America. It felt more like the Dessendre Manor they hadn’t returned to in years—the place where the Dessendres mourned and remembered. Any conversation held here seemed destined to be stained with the chill of late autumn.
“But because of your mistake, I don’t have a brother. And you either. That’s simply the truth, Alicia.”
“…”
Only the wind made any effort to break the silence.
“I’ve never get to know why you chose this career path.”
Clea rested one hand on the steering wheel, the other hanging out the rolled-down window. She looked far more exhausted than she had a few hours ago.
That was thanks to her own idea—or rather, insistence—on dragging her sister out to “have some fun.” You know, the kind of thing a normal older sister would do. But the concert plan and the famous Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show were both rejected by the spring-headed little creature. So Clea let Maelle choose.
Maelle’s choice made the artist grind her teeth in fury.
She had been hauled into the forbidden zone—a gym.
Merde. So this was her little sister, whose definition of “fun” is this, not a cutie who wants some Ferris wheels and cotton candy.
In that gym, Clea watched Maelle run the treadmill to the point it practically started smoking, then drop onto a yoga mat for core training, and finally grab a resistance band to practice jump drills beside a squat rack.
Meanwhile, Clea herself nearly died on the treadmill after ten minutes of walking in this foreign land. Not long after, she retreated to a lounge area to draw on her iPad, starving quietly until her stomach began cramping.
She couldn’t wait any longer. So she found Maelle eating nuts with Greek yogurt and announced they were going to a steakhouse for dinner.
Maelle immediately objected, reminding her she still had the post-competition gala tomorrow and couldn’t indulge. So Clea rolled her eyes and reluctantly agreed to eat Vietnam pho instead—the kind Maelle wanted.
The sisters bickered the whole way and finally, after much struggle, made it into the Cadillac Escalade Clea had rented.
Maelle seemed to have finally run out of battery. The moment she got in, she curled into herself and declared she was having an autistic episode.
Clea threatened to have her assistant post that statement online and drag her into scandal. Maelle miraculously recovered and began replying in half-hearted mutters.
Why rent such a huge car instead of one of Clea’s beloved supercars?
Because Clea’s luggage was outrageous.
Two checked suitcases. Two carry-ons. Three backpacks. And cameras. Even the back seat was filled with components for her studio lights.
Maelle asked how much the overweight baggage fees cost.
Clea said she’d come on her air mansion.
Maelle asked what that was.
Clea said it was a private jet where she could paint and sleep on an king size bed.
Maelle immediately stuck her tongue out at her for three full minutes.
And now she was getting her hand skin pinched again for not answering.
She supposed she should be grateful Clea didn’t pull her hair like she used to.
“Because you never asked,” Maelle muttered, pinching back—slightly gentler, only because Clea was driving.
“I texted you.”
“I didn’t want to anwer.”
“Reason?”
“So I gain myself another annoying person like Papa, trying to stop me from skating? Absolutely not.”
“Who said I was going to stop you? Can’t an older sister ask what her little sister’s been up to?”
“I just feel like nothing good happens when you know.”
“So you forced me to come find you.”
“...So I can never get rid of family, is that it?”
“How could you?” Clea said, even laughing a little at herself. “I could accept that you had never been born. But I can’t accept pretending you don’t exist after you already do. It’s the same reason none of our families can let go of Verso’s death.”
“…”
“Renoir’s love for you has nowhere to go. He’s developed presbyopia from staring at your skating videos on his phone every day. Every time you fall, he panics and video calls me.”
Maelle’s sore nose twitched. She hugged the seatbelt tighter around herself.
She hadn’t heard news about her parents in a long time.
They are too famous. If anything serious happened, it would be headline news. So as long as Gustave hadn’t tell her, it meant they were perfectly safe.
But they did not know whether their youngest daughter, Alicia, was safe.
They might know where Alicia was competing each season. They could watch the broadcasts. They might even know that before one certain performance she had taken a cortisone injection just to be able to lace up her skates.
But they did not know her life. Her emotions. Her injuries. Whether she had cracked her tailbone in a fall. And most importantly—when she intended to come home.
Their worry was natural.
And that made Clea’s visit only natural as well.
“Even if Aline has become as beyond saving as she is now, she still carried you for ten months. You don’t get to erase that just because you decide to—or because a judge says you must sever ties. We’re not computers. We can’t delete things with a single click and pretend they never existed, or erase the marks they left behind.”
“...The little ditch,” Maelle said in a low voice.
“Hm?”
“Every winter, I used to skate on the frozen little ditch near the orphanage. I smash the ice with my blades, and jump just for fun.”
“That’s no safe entertainment.”
“I know. But skating was the only thing I could do well. The only thing that wouldn’t disappoint you all—but to amaze you.”
Maelle noticed the faint dimness that appeared in Clea’s pupils when her mind drifted elsewhere. She knew what that meant. Memory was interfering—sweet first, then bitter. It was interfering with her, too.
Memory carried tow of them back to the rink. Back to the days of the three siblings.
Renoir was accompanying Aline to a mall to have an evening gown tailored for one of her artistic salons, leaving the children at the rink to play.
There, Clea would pinch her little sister’s nose red, then skate off in a flash so fast her sister couldn’t catch up. Verso would loudly condemn his older sister’s behavior, only to be knocked flat when the younger one, charging recklessly in pursuit, crashed into him.
Every Dessendre child had undergone at least three years of on-ice training.
From a very young age, Alicia showed talent in skating and jumping. One day, when she was five, she suddenly leaping and rotating one and a half turns on the ice, mimicking the adults. Every coach in the rink noticed this little girl, who hid under her blankets each night to study figure skating manuals.
By the time she landed that jump, her brother and sister were already thirteen and fourteen. They skated purely to keep their little sister company. Their ultimate goal was simply not to fall and embarrass themselves. They were long past the age of learning jumps—there was no chance of competing with a four-year-old prodigy.
And Alicia—she didn’t cry even when she fell. She kept hopping across the ice. She chased after Clea just to pull her hair back. She was overjoyed at having found a field where she could surpass her siblings.
“Once winter came, I went there every day,” Maelle continued. “If I fell through, then just let it. If I drowned and froze to death, that would’ve been fine too. It would’ve solved a lot of problems.”
“I warned you not to involve yourself in other people’s conflicts.”
“But Maman’s hatred for me wouldn’t lessen just because I hid. Otherwise she wouldn’t have hit me. And she wouldn’t have lost custody.”
“You know Aline’s feelings for you are complicated, both love and hate.”
“But hate will contaminate the color of love.”
“Fine. I don’t want to explain her either. Do you know Renoir was prepared to divorce Aline just to bring you home?”
“I know. That’s even worse. There’s no need for this family to fracture again because of me. I told him those exact same words.”
“I know you feel wronged, Alicia, but—”
“I’m Maelle now, Clea. You’re still my sister. But I’m Maelle.”
“To me you will always be Alicia.” Clea glanced at her, the look heavy with meaning—yet as always, she was still looking at a little girl not even ten years old. “You call me your sister, but you wouldn’t even wait one year for me.”
“You know why I didn’t wait.”
Maelle’s voice became dreamlike—hoarse, trembling. The sadness lingering at the end of her tone infected her completely. She stopped looking at Clea.
Ever since she could remember, Clea had never been someone who liked expressing her inner thoughts. That was why Maelle had never been certain whether she was someone she could truly trust.
Growing up under the same roof, Maelle only knew that Clea was formidable with a paintbrush—a complete strong career woman. Impatient. Hot-tempered. Fiercely protective, yet fond of teasing her younger siblings. Her rebellious streak and strong will were no less than her sister’s.
But it was true—when it came to the custody decision, “Alicia” had indeed betrayed Clea.
Custody are usually entrusted to direct or close relatives, by law and child’s will, but their grandparents were gone early. The year Verso died, Clea was only seventeen. She had fought for her sister’s custody—that was true. Renoir had fought as well.
But Alicia refused them both.
During those two years, she isolated herself completely. She did not want to see her Papa, torn painfully between her and her Maman. Nor did she want to see Clea, who, after losing her brother, was no longer capable of controlling her emotions.
At the very moment Alicia most needed comfort and guidance, seventeen-year-old Clea Dessendre spoke words as cruel as those of her Maman, Aline.
And the isolation of the orphanage cemented something in Maelle’s mind.
In those desolate, frozen-lake days—lonely, barren, cold, and filled with hidden danger—she became convinced of one thing:
Since minors couldn’t be sent to prison, her Maman had found another way to send her to one. Where she is at now.
“After Gustave found out, though, I stopped doing that.”
“Who?”
“You seriously don’t know him?” Maelle looked at her in disbelief, tinged with anger. See? This was why she could never quite trust Clea. She seemed concerned, yet she didn’t even know the name of her guardian. “My coach. And foster parent. He was passing by and saw me practicing jumps on frozen pond. I thought he was going to stop me. Instead, he just asked, in a absent-minded way, he asked me if I wanted to skate at his club. You know the rest. It’s been covered in plenty of interviews.”
In truth, that version was understated.
Even the most conservative reports praised Gustave Lumière’s selflessness and determination. Alicia’s life had been derailed during the most important years of childhood training, meaning she entered advanced development later than other children. Fortunately, her gymnastics and fencing training had kept her physical foundation strong.
The reason she had once quit wasn’t solely the catastrophe that struck the Dessendre family. Skating had merely been one of countless introductory hobbies scattered across a wealthy household.
Clea and Verso had been tossed through more than a dozen or even twenty different interest classes since childhood. Aside from fine arts, even if they displayed exceptional talent, everything was only ever pursued halfway.
It was obvious the Dessendre family had opposed Alicia becoming an athlete from the very beginning—not merely “unsupported,” but forbidden.
If the Dessendres had truly respected their children’s wishes, Clea would likely have been a national shooting or equestrian team member, and Verso would have entered a conservatory as he had dreamed.
Gustave was not the first to discover the gold within Maelle.
But he was the only one who cherished it enough to lift it carefully into the public.
“Isn’t it pretty good now?” Clea said. “Sure, you’re not one of those Russian spinning tops, but in France you’re basically a prodigy.”
She almost added that Alicia had somehow mutated the family’s art genes into athlete genes. But after a moment’s thought, she decided against provoking her sister further. She wasn’t confident how many seconds it would take for Maelle to roll down the window and jump out of the moving car.
“Good? Good what? My fans are going to nickname me ‘Queen of Butt Falls.’”
“You should be grateful you fall on your butt and not somewhere else. That’s the only place on you have any fat,” Clea burst out laughing, as though Maelle were a stand-up comedian instead of the little sister she was supposed to protect. “Oh, and there’s actually another nickname people don’t dare tell you. ‘Watcher Butt.’ Because even though you’re underage, you’ve got a pair of hips sculpted like a video game model—”
“Shut up! You shameless adult!”
“Stop struggling. I just turned on the child lock.”
“Drive faster!”
“You asked for it. Then hold tight.”
Clea placed both hands firmly on the steering wheel.
Because she couldn’t read the worm-like script on the menu, Clea let Maelle do the ordering. Obviously, this old-world heiress-artist rarely visited developing countries, had limited exposure to this kind of foreign cuisines, and was too lazy to even open a translator—unlike Maelle, who would spend several days after every competition abroad devouring authentic local food.
The appetizer arrived, and this very stereotypical French woman immediately began to frown.
A transparent rice paper wrapper, stuffed with thick lettuce and pale rice noodles, completely unseasoned.
“……”
Clea Dessendrere’s signature thick brows nearly twisted into a yin-yang symbol. She looked as if she were chewing on tire rubber rather than food.
“Dip,” Maelle pushed a plate of mud-colored sauce toward her. Seeing her sister’s face grow even darker made her secretly delighted. “There’s shrimp inside. You have to bite deeper.”
Clea followed the instruction skeptically. She survived the first trial—the sauce, thank heavens, did not taste like poop, but like dried and ground fermented fish. Salty and briny, yet rich with seafood and mushroom umami and a splash of lemony freshness.
But the next second her tongue was stabbed again. Regret was the only flavor she could taste now. Letting Maelle decide had been the gravest mistake she’d made this year. This dish, wrapped with whole mint leaves, was going to poison her to death right here.
Across the table, Maelle was already slapping the table in laughter, snapping photos of her sister painstakingly picking whole mint leaves out of the lettuce and dipping the roll into her own foie gras sauce she brought from France.
The main course was beef pho. Maelle skimmed the reddish slices of beef out of Clea’s large bowl, scooped herself a small portion, dabbed away the floating oil with a piece of blotting paper, and then skillfully ate the rice noodles with chopsticks.
Clea watched her performance with a cold expression.
Earlier, she had been fooled by Maelle’s motions and taken a sip of the soup herself, only to choke from the heat. Those East Asians with iron-cast esophagi just love drinking something hot enough to cause second-degree burns if spilled on skin!
“So? Your dinner is three shrimp and five bites of grass?”
Clea said, putting down the chopsticks she had already forgotten how to tame.
“Of course not. There’s more.”
Maelle reached into her backpack, pulled out a carb nutrition pack, finished it in two gulps, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and declared herself done.
“Why in the hell you go on a diet on your age of growing tall?” Clea shoved the beef in her bowl toward Maelle, only to have it pushed back with the explanation that red meat caused inflammation. At last, the extreme diet of a women’s singles figure skater finally infuriated the older sister—who had originally planned to take her out for butter-dipped Australian lobster and a tomahawk steak with garlic butter.
“Eat, you little brat.”
“I’m a senior women’s singles skater! I eat seven meals a day!”
“No excuse, you child.”
“I’m not!”
“You’re underage.”
“Hmph!” Maelle turned her head away. “There’s a post-competition gala tomorrow. I have an exhibition skate. I can’t just eat freely.”
“Hmph. I thought you weren’t planning to appear in front of the media again.”
“You are right, okay!? I don’t want to go! But my coach team worked on exhibition program hard, too! And don’t underestimate figure skaters! Our profession is made of one hundred thousand failures and nineteen successes.”
Fine, philosopher on ice. Clea made a face and raised an eyebrow.
“Can’t you spill it now? What are you doing here?”
Maelle leaned back defensively in her chair, biting on the straw of her iced water before suddenly firing the question.
“I just finished an exhibition in Los Angeles,” Clea lifted her chopsticks slightly as she spoke. “I need some legitimate expenses to lower my tax bracket. Like, going to see something inspirational. Or buying winter clothes. Otherwise the United States of America will skin me alive.”
“Tch. I knew you were definitely up to something.”
“I’ll take you shooting after tomorrow’s Gala.”
“You will come to the Gala too?? I’ll consider it only when your invitations stop sounding like orders!”
“It’s a perfect way to relieve stress. I booked a helicopter.”
“Don’t you know I fear heights?!”
“You jump that high on ice and you’re still afraid of heights?”
“That’s different!”
“By the way, when you were in Russia, did you ever see those junior girls? The internet says they can already land quad jumps only men do. Can you arrange for me to meet them?”
“Can’t do it. They’re skaters from Eteri Tutberidze’s group. I don’t quite see them much. And they just moved up to senior this year.”
Maelle replied lazily, propping her face in one hand while Clea flipped through photos on her phone. She was already tired of being asked about this.
“I train at the Plushenko Academy. Angles of Plushenko.”
“Oh. I can’t remember Russian names.”
“Then remember the nicknames. Plushenko’s group is AOP.” Maelle could practically see several bottles of Clea’s favorite red wine flashing through her mind. “Chinese fans call Tutberidze ‘Noodle Sis’—Instant Noodle Sister—because her hair looks like instant ramen.”
“Pfft—HAHAHAHA—”
Now the entire pho restaurant was filled with the laughter of this red-haired French devil. “The Chinese never disappoint with their mean verbal insults, hahahhahahaha!”
“Yeah, yeah, hilarious. So funny I could die. I’m already afraid to imagine what kind of nickname they’re preparing for me.”
Maelle chewed on her straw, bored.
Only an outsider like Clea could laugh like that. The real Coach Eteri was a real devil most people couldn’t imagine. But Maelle had no intention of explaining. Even if she said that Eteri once dragged a little girl across the ice by the leg for failing to execute a movement properly, Clea would only shrug and say: Isn’t that just Aline?
“Speaking of which, why didn’t you join this ‘Instant Noodle Sis’ group? Her girls are way more famous than the one you’re in. Or you just couldn’t get in?”
Of course. The one question she least want came anyway.
“I didn’t dare.”
Maelle slumped into her chair, hugging her sports backpack like holding a doll bear.
“She really feels like Maman…”
“Oh.”
Curiosity instantly drained from Clea’s face.
“So you went to Plushenko’s group because you have a father issue.”
The young athlete immediately started kicking her sister wildly under the table.
Laughing, Clea stuffed a sliced lemon into her mouth—only to be informed by Maelle that the lemon juice was meant to be squeezed into the pho. Clea reluctantly took the advice again. Unfortunately, the sculptor’s fingers applied too much force, and a stream of lemon juice splashed directly onto her bare chest. Muttering under her breath, she got up to look for the restroom.
Seizing the opportunity, Maelle grabbed her backpack and bolted. She sprinted a full kilometer down the street before finally pulling out her phone, typing with the relieved grin of a fugitive who had escaped disaster.
She didn’t have time to waste sparring with Clea.
She had other people to meet.
When Clea realized the little rabbit had slipped away and began bombarding her with calls, Maelle was already about to get out of her Uber. Of course, she declined the call and replied with a ghost-face emoji.
“Where did you run off to?”
“Oh, I’m going to rendezvous with my soulmate. So please do not disturb.”
“Soulmate? You have a boyfriend now?”
“Stop spreading rumors! I do not have a boyfriend! No girlfriend either! François from ice dance and I are just acquaintances! Now give me some personal space and stop being a stalker and an annoying pest!”
After sending that message, Maelle hopped out of the car—then immediately turned around and chased it down for two hundred meters to add a tip.
By the time her breathing finally began to settle, a thick leather-gloved hand tapped her shoulder. She spun around at once. The familiar white hair and black clothes nearly made her burst into tears with relief.
“Alicia!”
Maelle threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around her and practically hanging off the slightly taller girl in the black mask. Alicia didn’t speak. She hesitated for a moment before placing a hand on Maelle’s back, stroking it with unmistakable gentleness. The moment that comfort came, Maelle buried her head even deeper. Tears slowly dampened a patch of Alicia’s soft white hair.
Calling Alicia her soulmate might be a bit of an exaggeration. Maelle had only said it to keep Clea from interfering.
But it wasn’t entirely baseless either.
Because Alicia was… well, the person Maelle sent her will ” to before every takeoff.
Yes. For three years now, Maelle had harassed Alicia with countless pre-flight wills. And Alicia never complained, receiving and reading them all, never left. She still showed up at her side like this—sharing her joy, or helping her dissolve her sorrow.
That’s right. Maelle Lumière, is afraid of taking a plane, prepares her last words before every plane takes off.
—And of course, last words are entrusted to the one person you trust most. The one person you’re willing to let see all your shadows and still accept you.
For Maelle, that is the closest distance two people can have in this world.
Alicia’s only two negative comments had been: “This reads like prose or poetry,” and “You’d need notarization for it to have legal effect.” Which was already extraordinarily tolerant of her. Alicia wasn’t as extreme as Maelle—she didn’t prepare pre-flight wills or send her own testament to Maelle. But she wasn’t as carefree as ordinary people either. Alicia had once been afraid of heights and flying too. Now she had evolved into the stage of life where, if the plane falls, then it falls.
After all, she once went viral for calmly guiding the gun to her chest when she was caught in an armed robbery in Detroit…
“Oh, right. Congratulations on winning the Grand Prix. Sorry I ran off without congratulating you.”
Maelle released the hug and looked at her with bright, steady eyes—at this girl two years older than her, her only true friend during her time in Russia.
Their first met was besides the Yauza River. Maelle had gotten lost, her lips cracked from the cold, frostbite blooming on her ears. This girl—who didn’t share a common language with her, whom she had only met once, and who happened to share her former name—had run over, draped her own scarf around Maelle’s shoulders, and pulled from her coat a book she had long wanted to give her, edge warmed against her chest.
Car headlights flickered past on the roadside. Maelle saw the light in Alicia’s eyes tremble like candle flames. She knew her own must look the same.
The white-haired girl blinked, took out her phone, and typed for a moment. Then she turned the screen toward Maelle, showing her the French translated by the app.
“If you hadn’t fallen so many times, the medal would have been yours. Are you okay? Any injuries? ”
“Don’t worry. My butt is sturdy…”
Maelle said, rubbing her eyes.
She wasn’t using the translator to speak along with it. Alicia was born in France, but her family emigrated to Russia when she was very young. Her French had long since deteriorated to the point where she could hear and understand it, but could neither speak nor write it properly. Her English was poor as well, so she relied heavily on translation apps. Most of the time when the two of them hang out together, strangers assumed she was mute.
This time, of course, they were going out together too.
And it will be on walking!
The two girls strolled side by side, chatting in a rhythm of “you speak, I type.” First topic came to skating programs. Alicia’s short program of this season was The Nutcracker, and her free skate was The Phantom of the Opera. Maelle doesn’t have much thought on The Nutcracker. As for The Phantom of the Opera—cut and edited from “Phantom of the Opera” and “Angel of Music”—Maelle declared it the program that best matched Alicia’s temperament and performance style. Today’s execution, she insisted, had been flawless. No one in the future would ever skate it with the same feeling Alicia brought to it.
First, the costume. The costume was crafted with such care—midway through the program, it transformed from a black suit into a white dress, perfectly completing the shift between light and shadow, between characters. In the first half’s jumps, abandoning the softness of previous seasons, Alicia fully embodied the darkness and brutality of the disfigured Phantom when his mask was torn away. Then in the latter half’s step sequence, she shifted into the bewildered Christine searching for the Angel of Music. And most importantly—the hand choreography of removing the mask…
Heavens. Every time, Maelle found herself unable to look away. She could already see holy light descending upon Alicia’s face through the performance. She needed eight different close-up angles just to relive that movement.
Alicia scratched her cheek awkwardly, unused to such overwhelming praise—but she was happy to see that Maelle no longer looked dejected.
“I intended to add ‘think of me’ to the music, but declined.”
Fortunately, the place Alicia planned to take Maelle wasn’t far. Before long, they stopped talking about work.
They walked and wandered until they reached the Coca-Cola flagship store, built in the shape of a gigantic steel-and-glass Coke bottle. Unfortunately, they couldn’t drink carbonated beverages, nor buy the 16 world-flavors Coke sampler. Instead, they each bought a Coca-Cola tumbler. That way, before their next on-ice training session, they could add a spoonful of Medovich honey into their supplements—not only to prevent hypoglycemia, but also to pretend they were drinking Coke.
Next came the chocolate factories—Las Vegas specialties. M&M’s, Ethel M, Hershey’s. Walls covered in chocolate, a paradise of sweets. Americans had even made a Statue of Liberty out of chocolate.
In that candy-and-chocolate heaven, Alicia suggested Maelle to pick some gifts to bring back to her family. To choose the right ones, they sampled plenty of dark chocolate. Alicia tasted them with a faint smile, while Maelle kept sticking out her tongue, declaring that once she returned to Paris, she would take Alicia to Jean-Paul Hévin in Le Marais to buy some real chocolate and mail to her. Then she enthusiastically interrogated Alicia about whether she preferred sour, sweet, or bitter.
After buying an excessive amount of teeth-aching chocolate and M&M’s, they continued strolling and unexpectedly spotted an ultra-long pink Hello Kitty food truck. The two of them jumped excitedly in place to see over the crowd, who blocked the counter—but sadly, they couldn’t eat any of the desserts being sold.
The final stop was Maelle’s choice: the famous Titanic Museum. But they weren’t there to admire replica cabins or ship artifacts. They were there to pay for staged photos at the railing—recreating the iconic “You jump, I jump” scene—then have the photographer Photoshop the back ground as windswept ocean.
Yes, they were shooting Instagram content.
They spent a full thirty minutes there trying to get a clip of Maelle throwing Alicia off the railing—followed by a perfectly synchronized off-ice double Axel jump.
Most of the time was spent disguising Alicia’s solo takeoff so it looked like Maelle had thrown her (of course they weren’t actually doing a throw jump—safety first!). The synchronized double Axel, on the other hand, only took two tries. They used to do that a lot back the time in the locker room.
“The fans are definitely going to ask why it’s this sort of jump.”
Alicia smiled and handed the translator to Maelle.
Maelle wiped the tip of her nose, lifted her chin, and replied with studied indifference, “If we don’t jump this jump, then what jumps are we supposed to jump?”
After playing cool, she suddenly hugged one arm and avoided Alicia’s gaze, speaking in a lower voice, almost to herself.
“Help me… post that on Instagram, Alicia. Tag me.”
Alicia tilted her head slightly as she typed. “What caption?”
“Mm… I haven’t thought of one yet.”
“Then leave it to me. I’ll write: She’s better. Please don’t worry, fans of Little Rose.”
“…All right.” Maelle’s nose stung, but she held it in. “I’ll treat you to dinner for finally not writing something as painfully formal as a letter.”
She burst into laughter as soon as she finished speaking, head recalling the countless times Alicia had addressed her followers in both languages as “handsome boys” and “my beautiful girls.” It seemed every Russian did that when they greet and give blessings, but Alicia’s posts were usually accompanied by a grey, unsmiling selfie, sometimes even mask on, and the top comment would inevitably read, “Babe JUST can’t let go of her black-and-white filter,” followed by, “This belongs at a funeral.”
Maelle laughed for a very, very long time before Alicia, neither amuse nor offended, poked her abs lightly to make her stop.
When they were done fooling around, they found a Chipotle and split a bowl of chicken and guacamole over rice. Alicia suffers from anorexia, so after taking the bare minimum bite she began tapping on her phone.
“I noticed you kept looking outside the rink while you were skating.”
Maelle’s chewing slowed, then gradually stopped.
“Did someone come to watch you?”
The red-haired girl stared at her as a flood of disordered memories rushed back, washing through her mind until she completely forgot to swallow what remained in her m outh.
The senior skater in front of her was watching with concern, her left eye focused carefully. Maelle suddenly remembered that Alicia’s right eye had been deteriorating for years; she could barely see with it now. Even with her hair bangs covering it, her vision was unaffected. The doctor had said her right eye might go blind next year, though that was hardly the worst thing that had happened in her life. Her story twisted and collapsed in ways so tragic that even a Russian novel would hesitate to treat a kind little girl so cruelly. That was why Maelle refused to behave like a fragile glass bottle in front of her.
Compared to Alicia’s suffering, her own hardships felt smaller. That was precisely why Alicia’s presence and companionship had always given her strength.
Looking back on the years they had known each other, they were completely different skaters, yet their friendship had remained unbreakable. They both had mothers who frequently visited psychiatric hospitals, overprotective fathers, and deceased brothers. But Alicia’s family history was far more complicated, and there would never be room for a new family to neither heal nor replace what was lost.
Alicia’s sister had disappeared during a trip. Her brother, after murdering his girlfriend, had taken his own life, because of depression. During the investigation, the entire family had been detained, and in the end they emigrated under the crushing pressure of public opinion. Greece had been their original destination; buying a house there would have secured residency, one of the most easiest way to migrate. But after a short stay, Greece still did not feel far enough away, and firearms were much harder to obtain—Alicia’s father could not sleep without a hunting rifle under the bed and another in the living room. So they continued eastward, arriving in a frozen country, hoping that the cold might freeze at least some part of pain inside them.
Maelle understood her. Alicia was deeply sentimental, the kind of girl who would spend her whole life mourning the family she had lost.
Even though language was sometimes a barrier—at times their communication was hardly more efficient than that of two mutes—it never affected their bond or shared understanding. They were close in age, similar in aesthetic taste, both loved the feeling of emptying their minds through skating, and both preferred trousers over skirts. Their coaches on both sides tacitly allowed it; neither of them had particularly long legs, and trousers flattered their proportions. It was better than risking the two stubborn girls refusing to skate at all if forced into dresses.
Even when they were playing around without restraint, Maelle knew clearly that opportunities like this—competing in the same arena, traveling together after competitions—are about to vanish. In recent years, women’s figure skating had been dominated by the terrifying technical progress of Russian girls. Maelle had managed third place at the 2017 European Junior Championships, which had earned her entry into the Plushenko Academy as a French singles skater, but when she arrived in Russia she was stunned. Why were the junior girls here rotating four times in the air instead of three? Isn’t that suppose to appear in Men’s single?
Now, even reaching the top ten at a world’s major event felt like something to thank heaven for.
And Alicia was not one of the skaters who had mastered the triple Axel or the quadruple jumps.
Like her temperament, she was old-fashioned and surrounded by a distinct artistic aura. With her longer skating career and doll-like appearance, she was well known enough to require a mask when going out. Among judges and fans she was famous as an “artistic jellyfish,” a term whose performance score is way higher than complements. Her strength are her steadiness and flawless performances. Her French blood and her upbringing in Russia gave her both the nostalgic melancholy of a bygone era and the cold, distant restraint of the Russian wind. Even her albinism white hair lent her a tragic beauty. Yet her jumping techniques had never risen high enough. In today’s Russia, without quadruple jumps, artistry and stability alone could no longer secure a career. With worsening injuries and the facial scar she received from a fall two years ago, this season might be her last.
She was only eighteen.
Unlike Alicia, who trained in Russia, Maelle had always lived in France, yet even before going to Russia she had already been a pure-blooded jumper. French artistry and elegant presentation were not her strengths, and she knew it. So she placed her bet on technique and difficulty. In her mind, technical scores would not betray her—landed was landed, fallen was fallen—while program components depended too much on the event, the nationality, and the judging panel. She had endured enough prejudice at home; she refused to be discriminated against again on the ice.
Who wanted to stay never had the chance, who did not kept receiving invitations. That was the reality for both of them training in Russia. After mastering the triple Axel, Maelle left Russia, believing at the time that the 3A alone would carry her onto World Championship podiums, even, the Olympic stage. Now she had no choice but to chase the quadruple jumps as well. She had already picked up minor injuries because of it—secrets she had not yet revealed to the public.
As these fragments of memory surfaced, Maelle found herself holding Alicia’s hand without thinking, as if doing so could somehow keep this competitor—who had always taken care of her in that distant, frozen country—by her side a little longer.
“It’s Clea.”
Maelle swallowed the food in her mouth as though she were forcing down a stone.
She did not look at Alicia, but she felt Alicia’s fingers twitch; perhaps her eyes had widened.
Of course Alicia knew who Clea was—the name that appeared most frequently in her wills, annotated in parentheses as a woman who never buttoned her shirts properly and was painfully thin, a woman whose very mention shattered sentence structure, and yet the first person Alicia had to contact if the plane crash.
“I don’t know how to describe it, but… the moment I saw Clea, the ice beneath me turned into something else. A mirror. A projection.” Maelle forced herself to stare at their clasped hands, tracing the creases and burn marks on an old glove to anchor her thoughts. “There was something moving underneath the ice. Surging. Like...a sea whipped up by a storm.”
“… ”
“It wasn’t reflecting me. It was showing me the past.”
Or perhaps it was that Clea Dessendre had stripped Maelle Lumière back to her original form, replacing the skater on the ice with Alicia Dessendre.
A girl born with a golden spoon in her mouth, who at three watched ice dance performances with her parents, who stepped onto the ice at four with her sister and brother just to play—yet at seven, during a reckless phase of rebellion, befriended the wrong people. Some “friends,” resentful of wealth, set her family’s house on fire. Her brother died in the flames trying to save her. After that, her Maman lost her sanity, and not long after, lost custody in court because of domestic violence.
Because of that dark chapter, Maelle had always told the world she was an orphan, though it never stopped the frenzy of the media. Now what she feared most was not how to justify her mistakes on the ice, but whether the press had captured Clea on camera and would dig up the past to sensationalize it again.
At least for now, only Alicia knew how poisonous those memories were to Maelle, how their destructive power exceeded injuries and competitive pressure a hundredfold.
“There’s no way I could perform normally while the entire rink was turning into a carousel of my past. One glance, I forgot know how to jump, how to skate. I couldn’t remember which part of the program I was in, how many rotations I had done. I finished the program with muscle memory alone.”
“You have to overcome it.”
Alicia spoke in Russian, the language giving her voice that faint rasp of an old smoker.
“I know. But you understand—I’ve been avoiding them all this time…”
Alicia blinked, withdrew her hand, and began typing quickly on her phone.
“The Maelle I know is capable of anything.”
“……”
“Medals, 3A, quads, the pressure before competition, the shadows of the past…” Alicia murmured to her phone. One French word after another appeared from the translator as Russian letters that all looked the same to Maelle reshaped themselves in real time. Hearing them spoken in that pale, restrained face—so lacking in expression, so lacking in a smile—Maelle felt tears rising again.
“Actually, I am jealous of you, Maelle.”
“Jealous? For having a sister?”
“Yes.”
“No, no, no. You wouldn’t be happy if you had a sister like that.”
“You’re not me. How would you know? You should spend more time with her. See her every day, morning and night. If you’re around her enough, you’ll overcome your inner demons without even noticing.”
“No, no, no, no. That kind of evil desensitization training idea is something only Clea would come up with. Definitely not me.”
“So even you suspect she’s trying to desensitize you?”
“…I’m not!” Maelle’s face flushed uncontrollably red, like a tomato, and she lowered her head at once, furiously mixing her rice to hide it.
Alicia smiled knowingly. The look on her face clearly said: see, that’s exactly how a younger sister with an older sister reacts.
“Next time, choose music that isn’t so sad. It might help.”
“Seriously?”
“Swan Lake doesn’t suit you. For many skaters, music is what makes them—and what breaks them.” She swallowed before continuing, raising a hand slightly as if to underline the point. “You need something lighter. Something with more strength in it.”
“I know it doesn’t suit me. Actually, my coach only suggested I skate a French reinterpretation of Swan Lake because the choreographer suddenly stitched two costumes—one white, one black—half and half into a single dress…”
Maelle sighed, almost laughing at herself. In her first test-skate performance, people led by Lune had criticized her, saying she looked like she was doing military calisthenics. Later, she had taken a different approach, claiming that in her Swan Lake she was Prince Siegfried, portraying the process of searching for and slaying a demon. After refining it along that theme, the program had at least become watchable.
But how could a refinement work when Clea came? Alicia Dissande’s theme held nothing but remorse and pain, not even as dignified as a swan awaiting slaughter.
As if sensing her turmoil, Alicia gently patted Maelle’s arm and drew the red-haired girl’s gaze back to her.
“Are you coming to the gala tomorrow?” she asked into the translator, deliberately slowing her speech so that even across an unfamiliar language, the tone could be understood. “I’m so afraid you won’t come.”
“I haven’t decided…”
That was the truth.
She didn’t want to face the media, or the fans whose tempers were like Pandora’s box. But she also wanted to finish her exhibition skate, and she wanted to see Alicia’s as well—no one could refuse Alicia performing on the ice with her hair down.
Suddenly, Alicia reached out and took her hand.
“Come. After we perform, we’ll have a jumping contest.”
Maelle let out a soft laugh. “You really want to compete?” More than dismissing her with a look of Don’t overestimate yourself, she was genuinely doubtful.
“You should find an empty patch of ice after the gala and redo all the jumps in your program—twice.” Alicia typed rapidly. “The fans will film it. Show them through your actions that you won’t give up.”
“Alright… I promise I’ll be there on time. But you have to stay with me. I don’t want to stand there awkwardly by myself.”
Okay.
Alicia lifted her little finger and waited for Maelle to hook hers, sealing the promise.
Maelle’s worries turned out to be justified.
Back to France, Clea began appearing with unusual frequency. In Paris, she slipped up behind Maelle inside a Jean Paul Hevin chocolate boutique and pulled out a box of chocolates behind her, the one she chose was so astonishingly good that Maelle could not honestly deny it. In Lyon, she blocked her path at the rink with a box of macarons. In the ballet studio’s lounge, she fixed Maelle with a gaze sharp enough to spark fire while watching her draw. She even parked her Ferrari in the most conspicuous spot outside the gym.
There was only one place where Maelle did not feel Clea’s eyes on her: when she sneaked to the Dessendre residence to lay flowers for Verso.
There is no running away.
I have to become an athlete who can do everything.
Maelle chanted this to herself like a spell. When she pressed her palms together in silent prayer, she imagined Alicia—2,500 kilometers away—holding her hand in wordless encouragement. With a small, stubborn frown, she pulled open the sports car door.
Clea asked where she wanted to go. Fresh from the rink, Maelle said she wanted to skate again. So Clea drove them to a shopping mall. They ate there, then went to the public rink together.
The evening session was packed; there was barely room to do anything but shuffle forward or backward. It was the perfect setting for Clea to force a conversation.
The clingy eldest sister talked endlessly, skating backward in front of her as she spoke, just like when they were little. Maelle had to stay alert, bracing herself for the familiar flick to her nose at any moment.
She had no intention of responding. When Clea’s chatter finally became unbearable, Maelle seized a brief opening in the crowd and launched a sudden 2A. The unexpected display of skill sent a ripple of astonishment through the rink. Then she pointed straight at the red-haired woman beside her and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, look—it’s Clea Dessendre!”
Within seconds the crowd swarmed Clea, and Maelle made her escape once more, vengeance sweet and complete.
She had already put on and taken off her skates too many times today, but she couldn’t help it. Skating and reading were the ways she cleared her mind. Reading, however, made her thoughts wander too easily, so during the season she forced herself to resist the temptation.
After hiding the spare key Gustave had given her—using his position to help her—Maelle stepped onto the rink without turning on the lights. Moonlight alone illuminated the ice as she moved through it.
She tried to jump.
Her once-proud 3A ended in a fall. The quad was under-rotated. The triple lutz had her hand on ice.
To steady herself and soothe her tightening muscles, she set her phone aside to record and let the music system play Swan Lake. Everyone had told her not to overthrow a classic, to simply portray the swan and the princess properly. But Maelle had always imagined herself as the prince—parting the clouds, defeating the giant, stepping into hope.
The music flowed cool and smooth, like water over ice. It did not hurt the way the ice baths in Russia had hurt when they were forced upon her. Slowly, she closed her eyes and moved with the melody.
3A. Good. The success rate was climbing.
Again.
Landing.
Next, the high-value combination—uh, this one is perhaps slightly over-rotated, but her rhythm was returning quickly. Yes, that’s it……
Maelle forced her eyes open.
An image flickered across the ice—
a boy at the piano,
a girl at the harp,
a woman singing.
Months had passed, and she could still see them, as if they were corpses frozen beneath the surface of the rink, a curse preserved in ice, clinging to her like shadow.
It’s fine, she told herself.
Face it. Challenge it. Even if you know you’ll fall, don’t run away.
When the music stopped abruptly, Maelle steadied herself and finished in a kneeling pose, hand resting against an invisible sword. She had no idea whether she had skated well; she had been completely inside it. Only now did she feel the dull, sharp ache in her thigh—the acute muscle pain from earlier falls surfacing at last.
Then she heard footsteps.
Maelle pretended not to notice. Out of stubbornness, she launched into a series of jump combinations. One after another—more than a dozen—until she was exhausted. Only then did she glance toward the figure by the boards and finally glide over in silence.
“I see my desensitization training is working quite well.”
“……”
“Why didn’t your choreographer give you a Bauers? They’re beautiful.”
“Flexibility isn’t my strong suit.” Maelle looked away. She rarely included Biellmann positions in her programs; even if she pulled it up, the rotation speed wasn’t good. “And a deep backbend Bauer only looks good on someone with long legs.”
“Like me.”
“Don’t brag, you don’t even skate.”
Clea smiled, then slipped the guards off her blades and stepped onto the ice as casually as if she owned it—intruding into the rink Maelle had claimed only for herself. Maelle could tell at a glance that Clea’s EDEA skates were brand new.
Perhaps because she had just finished intense training, Maelle wasn’t as irritable as before. She sipped from her bottle of sports drink and tolerated Clea’s presence, skating idly with a sister she did not quite get along with.
“I saw your program just now.”
“……You watched the whole thing?”
“You can’t skate clean—even without me around.”
“That’s because you’ve been haunting me like a ghost lately.”
“So you mean your mind is full of me?”
“Have you always been this narcissistic?”
“That’s not the point. You’re getting more stable.”
“I’m not training for no progress.”
“What are you skating next year? Chopin again?”
“No. My coach and my friend both said I shouldn’t let sorrow numb me. I should turn it into strength.”
“Why not Notre-Dame de Paris?”
“Too old. I’m young.”
“Classics are classics for a reason. You’re a French athlete. If you abandon your own foundation, you’re discarding part of the legacy handed down to you,” Clea said, folding her arms and gliding forward on inertia without pushing. “And you might end up redefining yourself entirely.”
“Then my style is Faust.”
Clea gave her an amused look. “So you’re the devil on the ice?”
“Of course not. I’m the philosopher on the ice. You’re the devil.” Maelle lowered her eyelids and shot Clea a wicked, mischievous grin. “But I’m not as lucky as Faust. I’ll defeat the devil all on my own.”
Clea burst into bright, unrestrained laughter.
“Take a break. Then try again.”
“Why?”
“I have a prize for you.” Clea blinked. “But you’ll have to earn it yourself.”
“What is it?”
“How about I write your competition music for next season?”
“……Really?”
“……That depends on your performance.” Clea felt a flicker of embarrassment. She didn’t actually like joking about something that serious. And she wasn’t joking. But just now, when her little sister heard she might compose for her, she had looked up with those unbearably expectant puppy eyes.
Those eyes were dangerous.
Clea hated the feeling of being led by the nose—especially by this red-haired little skating rabbit.
“Hmph. If I don’t even know what it is, why would I bother competing for it?”
Clea rolled her eyes, then pushed off in quick strokes and left the ice without even putting her blade guards on. From her bag she pulled out a thin booklet.
“Actually, this is what matters.”
Maelle took it and flipped through it at speed.
It was a draft of a children’s picture book—only base colors, sparse outlines, scattered notes in the margins. The story followed a red-haired hero who defeated a demon king using figure skating and candy.
This was… something Clea would draw?
The awkwardness of the content made goosebumps prickle along Maelle’s arms.
And defeating… this Cthulhu-like demon with skating?
“Skating doesn’t break other people’s bones. It only breaks yours!”
“In this story, people duel by competing in ice dance,” Clea explained. When she reached the part about the secret to victory, the twenty-six-year-old couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “It’s stupid. But it works for children.”
“Why so sudden? This isn’t your style at all.”
“Of course it isn’t. It’s Verso’s last work.”
At that name, only the soft scraping of blades against ice remained between the sisters.
“My recent work has been too...restless,” Clea said at last. “So I took out this manuscript I’ve kept all this time. I never let Papa or Maman see it. I’m planning to finish it and publish it for charity. But completing a picture book isn’t like refining someone else’s paint…” She bit her lower lip. “…I’m lacking inspiration.”
“…In what way?”
“The theme.”
“If it’s beautiful, isn’t that enough? Lots of people watch figure skating just because it’s pleasing to the eye. And this is for kids.”
“Do you really think I need you to teach me how to make something beautiful?” Clea flattened her with a merciless look. “Of course I’ve tried that. No matter how I draw it, something is missing.”
“……”
“Because Verso insisted on drawing figure skating… before I went to Los Angles, I watched a lot of programs. I chose the ones that were nearly perfect. But no matter how well they were skated, the moment I started drawing, it felt wrong.”
“……”
“It was only after I became possessed enough to go watch you fall—and get back up—that my drafts finally began to look like something.” Clea drifted forward absently. “But I can’t draw inspiration from an athlete who keeps landing on her butt. I wouldn’t survive interviews. Besides, I’m planning to include beginner skating education in it. I’ll have to find a way to get funding from the federation and the sports ministry.”
“So? That’s why you’ve been clinging to me?” Maelle tried to read her sister’s expression, but Clea’s gaze kept slipping away. “You… you’re not here to hold me accountable?”
“Of course not. Do I look that bored? I only care about when I’ll finally see you skate perfectly.”
“Why… why couldn’t you say that earlier? Do you know how much pressure I’ve been carrying, trying to guess your motives? I’ve been skating terribly these past weeks!”
“Pressure?” Clea paused, then quickly understood. A baffled expression spread across her face. “Merde. I hate repeating myself… but since you’ve completely drowned yourself in your tragic collapse narrative, let me help you recall.”
Maelle’s mind began spinning frantically, searching for any detail she might have missed. Yet no matter how hard she tried, Clea remained cast in her memory as the detestable bad villain.
“Didn’t I tell you that deciding your own life is brave, not selfish? Hm? Alicia. Didn’t I say you didn’t have to see me—but when something you think happy happens in your life, you should share it with me?”
“—”
“I gave you time. You still haven’t make it out. So you made me push you. Now you’re going to finish this picture book with me. No skipping.”
Something inside Maelle finally tipped over at the sight of Clea’s face—so stern now that even laughter had disappeared from it.
So that was it.
She had always thought Clea blamed her like Maman did, or wanted to drag her home like Papa.
But she misunderstood.
Clea only wanted to know how her little sister was doing. She had exhausted every method to see her shine at her brightest—and then… and then to complete this…
The belated weight of the children’s picture book pressed down on Maelle’s chest. Her palms began to sweat.
—Could she really help?
Verso’s final work, probably would be tagged at around ten euros for charity, but to the Dessandre family, it was priceless.
“Hurry up. Skate again. Let me steal some inspiration.”
Before her words had even finished falling, Maelle jolted—Clea had smacked her on the butt.
“You!” She spun around, furious. “That’s sexual harassment!”
“I’m your sister,” Clea said, flashing an unruly grin. “For the next five minutes, you’d better not let anything else slap your butt. Like the ice. Or the ice.”
“You are unbelievably overbearing, rude sister!!”
“Hate me if you want, I don’t care.”
“I’m the one helping you. You owe me.”
With that threat flung over her shoulder, Maelle whipped her ponytail and stormed off.
The instant Clea’s finger hovered over the play button, Maelle felt a nervousness unlike anything before—like a gust strong enough to sweep her away.
…Her resilience had never really been the real problem. The falls in competition always came from pushing her jump layout too far. Compared to the pressure at home, those crashes were nothing. That was what she had always told herself.
She wasn’t joking with Clea. She was going to skate seriously—more seriously than she ever had in an official competition.
After all, her skating career had begun with a simple desire: to amaze her siblings.
And besides, no one wanted her to break through this mental wall more than she did.
“I’ll follow you while filming.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“I remember your program’s pattern. Stop worrying about pointless things.”
Maelle gave a small snort, emptied her mind of distractions, and settled into position.
The music had not yet begun. Yet the moment her sister started gliding backward, lifting her phone steadily, Maelle slipped through time.
Why did she skate?
Because it was one of the few places where her brother and sister could be together without thinking about painting—where they could simply play.
Because it was the only place she could beat them.
Clea and Verso were almost adults back there. Adults didn’t stay to play. They painted, went to university, held one exhibition after another. Their bones were already started ageing.
But Maelle was small. She jumped higher. She spun faster. Every movement of hers drew cheers from her brother. As long as she leapt—completed what others could not—their eyes would linger on her a little longer upon the ice.
Bravo.
She caught the look in Clea’s eyes—sharp, satisfied—and it cut her cleanly out of her drifting thoughts.
Something started flared in her stomach, hot and stubborn.
Mohawk step. Inside edge. Everything set.
Maelle fixed her gaze on Clea.
—A creation is a mirror; painting reveals it’s essence. Figure skating is art too, and the principles of art are the same everywhere.
So the picture book’s inspiration, could only have come from an onlooker painter, who saw a defiant little sister and a wicked big sister who teased the little for fun.
And its theme? She couldn’t believe Clea still had to guess.
Of course it was love.
“—”
She wrenched herself into the takeoff, vaulting upward with everything she had, pre-rotating hard, spinning at a ferocious speed—one, two, three—jaw clenched, hands pressed hard to her chest, and under crushing pressure she caught flashes of red in her field of vision, four times—at the instant of landing, before she even heard the spray of ice, she heard her ankle and hip screaming, the impact—seven, eight times force of her body weight—detonating through her brain and adrenaline—
And then her body pitched sideways, her right leg trembling violently—
Stand. Stay. Steady. Stand up! Maelle!
“Shhk—”
Her palm brushed the ice and then, a split second later, her core hauled her body back up. Her mind blanked.
Her quad Salchow—fully-rotated, hand on ice—but landed for the first time.
And then she saw it: a light that flared even before joy did—Clea’s eyes, wide and foolish and utterly unguarded!
She let the choreography go.
It was the happiest Hydroblading she had ever skated.
She had put that compass-like deep edge into the program just for fun, just to lean so low she could kiss the ice—because it looked cool when Yuzuru Hanyu did it, so she wanted to do it too.
Now she was grinning without restraint, arms stretched long, watching them extend as if toward the sky itself, grazing the surface of the ice with something almost tender.
The arc beneath her blade lengthened and lengthened, and in those brief two seconds, countless bright memories flooded in. She moved back and forth through time, returning to every moment she had made a decision.
She had begun skating out of love, to hold on to memories.
With nowhere else to go, she had to skate toward a professional path.
Now she skated for herself.
Through the ice—like a projection room beneath the surface—she saw the far end of the rink.
There were no cameras there. No podium. No judges.
Only her family. The old ones and the new ones, all together, watching her, smiling—quietly, and with satisfaction.
FIN.