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Back when I was younger and more vulnerable, my dad gave me some advice that I kept in the back of my mind ever since. He said to me, “Whenever you feel like criticizing someone, just remember that not everyone has had the same advantages as you.” And I had been thinking about that even more that season, since it was the first time I noticed so many advantages.
I lived in Hasetsu then. It was a small town, and nothing close to the romantic image of the Tokyo skyline. But I would soon learn that I couldn’t escape the romantic, no matter where I was from. Skating could give even the poorest person a chance to live a new, brightly-colored life. I’ve tried to explain why I loved skating so much; that brightness might just be part of the reason. But I’m starting to sound a little gloomy, so I’ll get to the part of my story that is bright and colorful and romantic.
I had always looked up to Viktor. Even when I was little, I would watch the grainy television screen and pray that I would see him in person someday. And it happened. It was the Grand Prix finals, and I had, admittedly, come in last. Victor asked if I wanted a picture with him, but at the time, I was so emotional that I just left. But, I saw him after that. At least, I think it was him. As I leaned out the balcony of my hotel room, I saw a figure leaning out another balcony, in another building, in another place. I have no real proof that it was Victor, but I like to think that it was. I like to think that I caught my idol in a moment of contemplation, his arm outstretched toward the endless city skyline. But that was a long time ago. I went home after that. Then, not even a full year later, I saw him again.
I had just woken up from sleeping for what was probably several days straight, and I heard a dog barking at the door. It was a dog I recognized, and when I ran to the back of the family hot springs, I saw him there. And that’s when I started to see the many advantages in my life.
I admit that seeing my skating idol completely naked was not exactly something that I thought would happen, at any time in my life. Certainly not then. It happened like this: I received a text, then another, then another. Then the phone calls started coming in. Everyone had seen me skating one of Victor’s programs, and everyone felt the need to tell me. I, on the other hand, did not want to hear it. So in the few moments before shutting off my phone, I noticed a small blue advertisement: Eckleburg contacts. Two big eyes. My final thoughts before sleep were ‘god, I could use a pair of contacts…’
And then I woke up. And then I saw Victor Nikiforov naked in my house. And then he told me he wanted to be my coach, and it took me at least a few days for that information to set in.
I could erase all the details after that, I guess. Or I could tell it in the plot-heavy way that would conceal any emotion. But I want to tell the next months like a skating program, with a beginning, middle, and end. With a story and a theme, and lots of feelings. So I’m going to start by describing Victor’s eyes.
Victor’s eyes were mostly blue. They look blue on camera, and until meeting him, I thought they were entirely blue. But, the more time you spent looking at them, the clearer the green was. The first time I saw a fleck of green was after my first Grand Prix event of the season. We were in America then. Although it had been a decent amount of time since he started coaching me, I was only then realizing that there could be more depth to him, and to what I could call our relationship.
We were staying at a bed and breakfast in New York. I think it was near Port Washington. It was more than awkward, since it was just us and this one other group of people. A married couple and a friend, I think. Victor and I made it a game to guess all the drama in their lives. Victor even bet money that the couple would break up by the time we left. I had no idea that I would head back home with ten fewer dollars in my pocket. But, that is what happened, and it happened like this:
There was a man and two women. One of the women, who I guessed was the man’s wife or girlfriend, kept leaving the other two to take phone calls. When she wasn’t off answering calls, she was texting. The man tried to ignore it. The night before we were going to leave, I heard a crash downstairs. Someone had broken a glass, almost certainly intentionally. Looking back, I can see that I was a little bit of a child then. I was about to go downstairs, but Victor grabbed my arm to stop me. I looked into his eyes then, and saw green. Lots of tiny flecks, bubbling around in the low light. I was too emotional then. I was too fragile. I curled up against Victor’s chest, and in our shared bed, we slept closer than normal. I let us sleep closer than normal. I let myself become close to him. And he pushed his fingers through my hair. And I heard a door slam from downstairs. And I felt something brush against my cheek, but my eyes were closed, so I couldn’t tell if it was a hand or a kiss.
When we left for Hasetsu the next morning, the bed and breakfast had one visitor missing. I lost the bet. I also gained something somewhat unexpected, that I couldn’t understand at the time. I would figure out a word for it later. But then, we had to prepare for the Cup of China. And the silly, emotional person I used to be could not handle both skating and these more complicated emotions.
There was a book I read once, and I had been having trouble remembering the title. It was about a man and his friends, who were generally fake and terrible people. When I was reading it, I thought, ‘who could relate to a guy like this?’ I thought he was nothing like me. I thought he was just a boring rich character with no real personality, and no real friends either. But, by then end of the book, he had a friend, I think. That’s beside the point, though. There was one part in this book where the man went to a party, drank too much, and woke up in some naked man’s bed. Or did he wake up in the train station, and just remember the man’s bed? Anyways, this is what I was thinking about when I first met Christophe Giacometti.
Christophe was unlike anyone I had met before. He was unlike any of the men in Hasetsu. He was unlike most skaters I knew. He was not entirely unlike Victor Nikiforov. My first thought when I met Christophe was of the man in the book I had read long ago. My second thought was, ‘hey, I’ve never been to Switzerland.’ Part of me probably understood that if everything happened a certain way, I could visit Switzerland. I could live there. This was all a lot of thought and analysis just because a man I had recently met touched my butt out of the blue.
So I thought a lot about Christophe, and I thought some about Victor. And when I had the opportunity, I escaped my coach to talk to the other skater.
“Yuuri! You’re skating really well these days,” said Christophe. “Thanks,” I said quietly. Christophe talked a lot. His voice fluttered up and down, ringing like soft bells.
“You know that old guy, Yakov? They say his nose is so big because he has a huge silver collection, and he polishes it all himself,” I could see why so many people liked Christophe. He was good at murmuring beautiful, insignificant things.
“Hm,” I replied.
“Is something on your mind?” He asked.
“No, nothing in particular.” I was a terrible liar. Christophe crossed his arms and looked down at me. He knew.
“Actually, I mean, I don’t want to sound, like, weird or anything. Oh gosh, this is already kind of weird.”
“What is it, Yuuri?”
“Um, I, uh…” Words weren’t easy for me then. I guess they aren’t now really, either.
“Christophe, are you, uh, you know… are you like… do you like…”
“Yuuri, are you trying to ask me if I’m gay?” Christophe leaned back when he laughed. His laugh was like bells, too.
“…Yeah,” I admitted. Then the chill of the ice became even more apparent.
“Why… Why do you want to know?” He asked. He was close to me now. I thought about what Victor’s face would look like if he saw all this. I thought about Victor.
“I’m, um, I’m just, like, curious, you know?” I barely managed to stutter out these words.
“Yeah, I called it ‘curious,’ once, too,” He said. He was close enough that I thought his eyelashes would be able to touch me. If I was a more active person, I could have ended up with Christophe. I could have both broken Victor’s heart, and spared him. I could have done a lot of things.
“Yuuri? Where are you? It’s almost time.” Victor was calling for me from the light end of the hallway. I prayed that he couldn’t see my silhouette, and without another word to Christophe, I left.
I remember laying in a big, half-empty hotel bed and scrolling through Victor’s Instagram while he was in the shower. I almost jumped when I saw the picture of him and a few other Russian skaters posing in front of a bright yellow Rolls-Royce. The color was about as tacky and fake as Victor ever got. But, what shocked me even more than the yellow, was all of the shady comments on posts that went so far back. ‘I heard that he’s actually secretly twice as rich as he says he is,’ read one. That was one of the more normal ones. Some were outrageous. ‘I heard that Victor accidentally killed someone once,’ and ‘I thought I read somewhere that Victor can’t actually drive,’ were two of my favorites. After thoroughly stalking my coach’s Instagram, I head the bathroom door click open. I wouldn’t be used to Victor’s spontaneous nudity for a long while.
“No photographs, please,” joked Victor. I tossed my phone to the bedside table and hurled a pillow at him.
“I was not!” I yelled. Victor caught the pillow and threw it back at me. I shielded my eyes, and both of us couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes.
Then we were lying under covers with the lights out. And we weren’t touching.
“Hey Victor, are you asleep?”
“No, not yet. What’s up?”
“Do you… Do you know how to drive?” My voice cracked when I asked this, so it was met with more laughter than expected.
“Yeah. Not well, though. I’ll show you when we’re in Russia. I’ve got this really tacky yellow car that I got when I was younger…”
“Yellow?”
“Yeah, I know. Yellow.” We giggled like children, even though there was nothing particularly funny to laugh about. Then, when time had passed, and I was almost certain that Victor was asleep, I moved closer to him. I pressed my face into his shoulder, and I stayed awake.
In another part of the world, Russian skater Georgi Popovich had lost the key to his hotel room. Like any rough night of figure skating, his eyeliner was running, and he wanted sleep more than anything. He could hear his coach snoring, but no matter how vigorously he knocked on the door, there was no answer.
“I’ll get you for this, Yakov… First I lose my girlfriend, now I have to put up with this?” Georgi was muttering to himself, leaning against the door with his face in his palms. And Christophe Giacometti happened to have a room in the same hotel, and happened to have been wandering towards it. And Christophe Giacometti happened to have been drinking. And Christophe Giacometti happened to wonder what it would be like to marry someone like Georgi, and he drunkenly giggled at this. And Georgi looked up, and their gazes met. Georgi Popovich would wake up to someone he had only spoken to once, someone who had a voice that rang like bells. Georgi Popovich would need to re-think is theme of heartbreak.
Russia was a beautiful country to skate in. Leaving the rink at night, the sky looked electric. Stars were brighter there. One night, I leaned out the balcony of a new and different hotel room, and I took a picture of the glistening moon. I was reminded of an old friend, and I sent it to him. Phichit Chulanont’s phone buzzed, and I’d like to think he was reminded of me, and of how close we were before this whole story started. He was the kind of person I would have stayed close with. He was the kind of person who could remember and recreate closeness easily.
Victor joined me on the balcony. We leaned against the metal railing like two copies of the same photograph.
“Sometimes, when you’re far enough north, you can see auroras at night. We might see them while we’re here, Yuuri. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Victor spoke softly. It was in moments like these that I felt I was seeing him as he really was, and not just as a copy of himself.
“Yeah,” I replied, twice as soft.
“Sometimes they’re all different colors, but a lot of the times they’re green. They’re just these streams of green light, way up in the sky. Sometimes they even make the moon look green. Sometimes they make the moon look like it has a halo.” Victor sounded nervous now, but only slightly. Like he was confessing something. Before I could think about what any of it meant, he headed back inside. I was alone on the balcony again, with only the image of Victor left in my mind.
When I saw Phichit at the rink, he gave me one of the biggest hugs I can remember. We talked about trivial things, like who was dating who, and how our families were. It was then that I noticed that Victor was out of sight. I wished Phichit luck and left. The hardest part about what happened next was the crowds. I pushed through as many people as I could to try and find Victor. It felt like every other minute, I was stopped and asked for a picture. I ran up some stairs and down a hallway. From a window, I could see nothing but rising and swirling smoke. My initial panic told me that Victor had been hurt.
When the smoke cleared, I couldn’t see Victor. Instead, I saw the mangled remains of a car. It looked like it had been a nice car, but I couldn’t tell. Up above the wreckage, the familiar eyes of the Eckleburg contacts ad watched me. I wished I had my glasses. I continued down the hall.
The end of the hall looked unoccupied at first. It looked like it had been unoccupied for a long time. The first thing I noticed was the broken clock. It was stuck at midnight, like it was from a fairytale scene that was frozen in time. Then I heard the low murmurs. As I inched closer, the two obscure figures came into the light. Victor Nikiforov and Christophe Giacometti, talking comfortably like two old friends. But they looked different than friends. Christophe had his arm resting against the wall so that he could lean in towards Victor. Victor did not move away.
“Victor?”
“Oh! Yuuri! You’ve met Christophe, haven’t you?”
“Victor… we need to… we need to leave.” I had to force these words out. I grabbed Victor and led him away as he sputtered out questions and excuses that I honestly did not hear at all. I remember that I started to cry. I pushed Victor into the wall above the staircase.
“You’re my coach, right?” My voice kept cracking.
“Of course I am, Yuuri, I was only… talking.” When Victor said this, I felt cold again. Colder than I had felt in a long time.
“Do you… Are you… Do you… like Christophe?”
“Of course I like Christophe.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Saying that was the first time I can remember seeing Victor with such a conflicted and sad look on his face.
“I do… I do like Christophe. We, uh, we dated once. Now he’s with someone else, though.” Silence. I couldn’t breathe.
“Yeah. Okay. I, uh, I need to go skate now,” I said. I didn’t hear what Victor said as I descended the stairs. I only remember hearing the broken clock start to tick again.
Victor held a party that weekend. The Nikiforov household was something I could not have expected. I overheard someone saying they thought he hired someone just to squeeze orange juice for mimosas. I could have believed it. Between the columns and the chandeliers, what I couldn’t believe was that anyone actually lived there.
The party could have been about me. It could have been about skating or coaching or success. But all I saw was Victor trying to pull Christophe from Georgi. All I felt was sinking. I spent most of my time with Phichit.
At around midnight, Phichit tugged on my sleeve until I followed him into the library. He definitely had been drinking more champagne than me, but I wasn’t entirely sober either.
“You think… anyone actually reads these?” Phichit’s speech was slow.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think they’ve got Wi-Fi.” We started laughing. It felt familiar. It felt like when Victor and I would laugh at silly things, and things that weren’t really funny. I wrapped my arms sloppily around Phichit’s neck. He hugged my waist and pulled me closer. We leaned against one of the shelves, and I kissed him.
I could say that I think of myself as an honest man, and maybe I do now. But then, I knew that I was not being honest. The shelves shook. A dusty Fitzgerald book fell, barely brushing my rosy face. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is that book with that guy who I’m nothing like.’ Phichit opened his mouth and moved his tongue towards mine. I started to feel bad for him. My mind was elsewhere. I pressed my hips into his. ‘I guess I kind of am like that guy, a little,’ I thought. I imagined Victor. I imagined it was Victor who was pressed against the books. The door creaked open. I didn’t stop. I didn’t look behind me. I knew who was there.
Outside, the northern lights glowed green. Yuri Plisetsky was walking home. He was someone I had met, but never really gotten to know. I skated against him sometimes. He made me cry by saying mean things sometimes. I cried more when I was younger. But, even younger than me, at age fifteen, Yuri Plisetsky was walking home that night. He walked on the side of the road, occasionally seeing cars. The cars were just vague blurs to him. He didn’t see them as any more distinct than the auroras above.
A few miles away, Yakov Feltsman had been kicked out of his house again. He was starting to see his ex-wife as a person to avoid at all costs. He was starting to think he should not let her in his house again. He started walking towards the far-off lights, towards a town on the horizon. He felt a buzzing feeling every time a car passed him by. He wondered how his students were doing. He wondered if Yuri and Georgi were doing any better than him. He wondered if he would ever see Victor on good terms again.
The door closed. Victor had seen me. He had seen me and someone else in his own library. I imagined that he would joke about it the next day. I imagined that he would make fun of me, and tell me that he hopes it works out, and that he hopes we’re happy together. That would kill me. But he didn’t say anything just then. Instead, he closed the door.
Then, Victor Nikiforov walked stiffly back to where Christophe and Georgi were dancing. It was a ballet. Victor swept Christophe away and left Georgi shaking, not yet believing that so many things could be taken from him. But Victor and Christophe were already leaving. The yellow car shivered as it came to life. I shivered, too, for other reasons. The car left a streak of light behind as it was whisked away by the highway.
Guests gradually left. The sun was going to rise. I wondered if I would be able to get any kind of taxi at that hour, in the middle of Russia. The thought of going home with Phichit was not particularly appealing at the time. The alcohol had started to wear off, and the stirred-up thoughts about Victor had set in.
Ten miles away, American skater Leo de la Iglesia had just returned to his inn. As he fiddled with the doorknob, he looked out the window. He then heard a mechanical screech and some shouts. He saw everything. He heard everything. He turned back down the hall, then out to the street. Lights clouded his vision. The streetlights, flashlights, and stars were all brighter than it had been inside. When his eyes adjusted, he had only a moment before his vision became impaired with tears.
I couldn’t communicate with my taxi driver very well. My Russian wasn’t great, and he apparently had problems hearing through my heavy accent. We sat in silence for a few long minutes. I kept glancing at the clock, only to realize it was broken. I then tried to focus on the lights, or the stars, or to think through everything that had happened. I couldn’t. It was then that I saw the people. I saw the people before I saw everything else. I had to tell the driver to stop three times before he actually did. I stepped out of the taxi. I pushed through the people, the people I knew. The people who had been filtering to inns and hotels. I forced my way between them. I pushed through crowds.
Yakov Feltsman’s body was wrapped in a blanket, completely still. There was a policeman taking down names and writing notes. Blank or crying faces tried to fill him in on what happened. A shock of red hair, a crooked tie. “It was a yellow car, an expensive-looking one,” someone said. It was Leo de la Iglesia. He was standing underneath a sign with an ad for Eckleburg contacts. I looked around to the corner. There was Yuri Plisetsky, shaking. “It just drove off.”
Any feelings I had then, I cannot describe well. But I got back into the taxi and left. And I slept in a big, half-empty hotel bed. And I dreamt about Victor, and his pale hair, and his blue eyes with green in them. And I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, sweating. And when I tried to call Victor, it went to voicemail.
I’m want to tell this next part like it’s the end of a skating program. I want to end with hope or shock or raw emotion. Instead, I have talk about the last time I saw Victor Nikiforov. I have to talk about how I went to his house. I have to talk about how empty and dusty houses like that can be. I have to talk about the end. The real end.
A servant welcomed me into Victor’s house. I had read that he confessed to killing Yakov and driving off. I thought about all those speculations from his fans. ‘I guess he really can’t drive,’ I thought. I tried not to think about the killing. When Victor finally came downstairs to see me, it was like I was looking at someone completely different. Only now can I realize that he probably saw the same in me. In the hazy light, I couldn’t see the flecks of green in Victor’s eyes.
Victor hugged me almost immediately. It was a forceful embrace, but I still felt like Victor was fragile enough to collapse just then.
“Crazy night, huh Yuuri?” He said. His voice was like sandpaper.
“Yeah,” I said. He had stopped hugging me, but still held on to my shoulders for support.
“There’s this pond a few miles away… I want to go skate there, before it gets too warm.”
“I’ll go with you if you want,” I responded. Victor looked into my eyes.
“I… I think I should go alone,” he said. I nodded.
“But I do want to… God, I really messed up,” Victor was starting to stand and steady himself.
“It’s… It’s alright. It’s going to be alright,” I said.
“No, no… I mean, you deserved better. I just thought, in the moment… Christophe still had a chance for a good career…” As Victor rubbed his eyes, it hit me.
“Wait… Christophe was driving. Christophe was driving and you… You admitted to a crime you didn’t commit because… because you…” I was trying as hard as I could not to raise my voice.
“Yuuri. I would have done the same for you,” Victor whispered weakly.
“I… I wouldn’t have wanted you to, Victor! I would have wanted you to… to tell the truth.” Cold wind pushed between us. I turned around to leave.
“Yuuri,” Victor coughed. He leaned his head against my back.
“Stay with me. You’re the only person who would.”
“Really? What about Christophe?”
“He… He doesn’t really care about me. I don’t even think I liked him, really… just the idea of him.” The air was still for a moment. When I turned back around, Victor’s head fell into my chest.
“I…” My voice was caught in my throat.
“I love you, Victor. As a coach, and as a person.” The clouds shifted, and light filtered through the windows in colored bands. As Victor lifted his head up, green light fell across his face.
“I love you too, Yuuri. A lot.” Tears fell quietly down Victor’s face, then down mine. He moved his hands slowly to the collar of my shirt. He lifted his head up towards me. Then, looking softly into my eyes, he kissed me.
I stayed at Victor’s house until the sun began to set. I should have stayed longer. I should have let him kiss me more. I should have stayed forever. But, once the sun began to glow red, I left. I left, and I never got to see Victor again.
There were only a handful of people at the funeral. Yakov’s wife attended, and so did Victor’s father. I didn’t do much, other than cry. It was so different than the bubbling party that had filled the house before. I couldn’t believe any of the events of the past, and I certainly couldn’t believe that Victor was dead. I couldn’t believe how it happened, either.
The day after I visited Victor, he went out to a nearby pond to skate. The ice was already starting to thaw, but he went ahead with skating anyways. Yuri Plisetsky had traveled to Victor’s house, intending to talk about the death of Yakov. When Yuri saw Victor skating, he thought that Victor was mocking him. Lost in his grief over the loss of his coach, Yuri shot and killed Victor, who fell and shattered the ice. Yuri was found with a bullet in his head at the same scene.
And just like that, my coach, my friend, and the man I loved was turning blue as he bobbed to the top of a half-frozen lake. And I couldn’t handle those emotions, so I went to the empty funeral, and I cried until I stopped crying. And then I had to keep living.
And as I flew back to Hasetsu, I thought about Victor. I thought about why he skated. I thought about why he decided to coach me, all the way back then. And I thought that Victor did not see if a clock was ticking or broken. He did what no one else did. He did what he wanted to do. He lived in a way that was momentary. He lived in a way that was genuine. Victor believed in the green light, the dream of a world based on ideals and passion and hope. It eluded us then, but we’ll see it someday. We’ll run faster, stretch out our arms farther, skate even better… And one fine morning——
I don’t want to end this story with something people know. I don’t want to end this story with words. I imagine my ending as an image. I imagine Victor skating with me. I imagine the end of a piece, the two of us, eternally young, smiling with our arms outstretched. I imagine I’ll skate with him someday, when we’re up above those endlessly flowing currents of northern green lights.