Chapter Text
The ice rink was colder than outside. Not the harsh cold that stings your face and makes you put your hands in your pockets. This was controlled cold. Precisely measured. Expensive, professional. The cold that kept the ice perfect and people on edge. The light from the ceiling fell on it so white that everything seemed much cleaner than it really was. Everything was decorated as expected. The Milan Olympics.
I sat on a bench in the training area, my elbows resting on my knees, looking at my skates. The laces were tight. Just like always, not a bit different. Too loose would mean instability. Too tight would mean pain before the music even started. They were tied just right. And yet it still hurt today. Not so much that it was impossible. Just enough for my body to notice.
A little further away, someone landed their jump in training with the typical slash of a knife on the ice, followed by a silent exit. I automatically raised my head. My body reacted before my thoughts. I watched the axis, the approach, the exit, the shoulders, the timing. Professional deformation. Or maybe just a form of survival.
Familiar silhouettes flashed on the ice. Each in their own world, and yet all in the same arena. Under the same lights, with the same tension in the air. Some were trying out their approaches over and over, some were just gliding back and forth, conserving their strength, some were practicing their calm expression so much that I was getting cramps myself. From a distance, I saw Yuma adjusting his sleeve and saying something briefly to the coach. Then Shun's clean pass to the center, the ease of it seemed almost unfair. A little further away, Mikhail stood concentrated and silent, his head bowed as if he were only listening to the rhythm of his breathing. And in the corner, Andrew was running a hand through his hair and smiling at someone on our team. But the smile was brief, too brief, but it was effortless. You don’t see that on television. Not how similar we all look a few minutes before a performance. No medals, no flags, no titles. Just a few people trying to convince their bodies to cooperate at the exact moment they needed it.
“You good?”
A voice came from the left. I looked up from the ice. One of the other skaters. A familiar face, a familiar accent, a familiar expression with that strange half-smile, but I still couldn’t remember his name. It wasn’t really a question. More like a small ritual, an offer of normalcy.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
It was a lie. A small one. Socially acceptable. But the other man nodded back anyway. Maybe he knew exactly what that answer meant. No. But I’m going to go anyway. The man went back to his team, and I looked down at my hands again. My fingers were calm. That was a good sign. Everything else was worse.
The music from the arena speakers alternated in sections, the program notes breaking up with the organizers' announcements and the sound of knives on the ice. If you listened long enough, it began to sound like something between a concert and an endurance test. Every sound had its meaning. Every beep, every name, every door opening from the ice rink. Everything was getting closer.
I reached out and ran my fingers along the tape under my costume. Carefully hidden under a piece of cloth. It held firmly in place. The skin underneath was less. It burned slightly. With each deeper breath, my body reminded me that I wasn't made of metal, although it often would have been easier. People love talent as long as it didn't look like work. People love a child prodigy until they grow up to the age where they are expected to perform miracles on command.
Someone in the hallway behind me shouted with joy. Probably a good training session. And then applause. Short, team, sincere. I would have laughed at that myself somewhere else. Now my stomach clenched a little more. Not with envy. More with how loudly that one question was screaming at me.
What if I am not the one who fits today?
One of the coaches walked in front of me, fast and focused. With boards in hand and the expression of a person holding his nerves together for someone else. Behind him was an athlete with headphones, his eyes fixed on the ground. A few meters away stood the journalists. Cameras, entire productions and smiles that turn on and off according to that red light. The world outside loved stories. The rise, the fall and the comeback. Genius, failure, and redemption. But inside, it didn't work like that. It was more like adrenaline, fatigue, breath, mistake, keep going, don't show it, even finish.
Another figure skater flashed across the ice and I found myself watching him too closely. Edges. Pace. Height in the air. Impact on impact, brief hesitation, comparison, and continuation. The audience would remember the hesitation. I saw the improvement, too. That was perhaps the problem with elite sports. Those who really understand it often see the pain. And at the same time, they know what it's like to be, in one word, on social media. Choke, collapse, failure. As if the human body were a machine and not a place to store fear.
"Five minutes."
The announcement came sharply, officially, and without emotion. Five minutes. This was no longer training. I couldn't keep trying to convince myself that I wasn't watching the competition. Something inside me automatically straightened. Trained, learned. My body took control of my head as best it could. I rose from the bench, slowly, so as not to show the slight tension in my right leg. I rolled my shoulders once. Inhale and exhale. Once more.
My dad was saying something. Technical, concise, repeated points. I didn’t hear everything. Not because I wasn’t listening. But because in these last few minutes the words start to break down into individual notes and you only hear what you can handle.
“…timimg…no rush..”
I nodded. No rush. Sure. As if you could trust something that had to be hit with millimeter precision when your heart was in your throat and the world was watching so intently it was physically pressing against your shoulder blades. My eyes met another skater, waiting for his turn ahead of me. I knew him. But now I can’t for the life of me remember his name. It was only a brief second. No grand gestures, no grand cheers. Just a tiny nod.
I know that I know nothing in life. I don’t know if I’m going to win today. I don’t know if my performance will be perfect. I just know what it's like to have to go there. There's no going back. I had plenty of time to think before. Not now. Being surrounded by people who understood me was far more valuable than the motivation of medals.
The sound of the arena changed. The audience in the stands grew louder, like an ocean that spills closer. The announcer announced another name, the lights moved, the camera moved closer. Ilia Malinin. It was my name. Everything suddenly happened faster, but I felt like I was in slow motion. This was the moment people love. The last seconds just before the performance. The tension. The potential. The idea that anything could happen. Few people think about what it does to a person standing at the edge of the ice and feeling their heart pounding so hard that even the applause gets lost somewhere in their head.
I pressed my tongue to my teeth, grounding myself for a moment. The ice smelled strange. Metallic, clean, almost empty. The cold air brushed my face as I moved forward. I clenched my fingers, loosened them. Once. Twice. Finally, I pressed them together in a small prayer.
"You know what to do," I heard my dad say, even though I was far from him. The sentence was well-meaning. Maybe that's why it hurt sometimes.
Of course I knew what to do. I'd done it so many times that it was etched in my muscles deeper than some memories. I knew how many turns, when to open my shoulders correctly, when to transfer my weight, how long to stay on the edge, how to breathe between elements, where not to overdo the speed. Knowing is not success. I smiled. Exactly as expected of me. Entire months were about to shrink into a few minutes that would appear to others as either the rise or fall of a favorite. The cold ran down my skates to my bones.
That familiar pressure appeared in my chest. Stage fright, they call it. Tension appeared in my shoulders. A small warning in my right leg that pretended to be nothing. The music hadn't started yet. And that was the hardest part. Not the fall, not the points, not the comments afterwards. But that one breath before, when you know exactly what you can lose. And you go for it anyway.