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Inori spots her at the end of the warm-up. There’s a dozen girls out there on the ice, spinning and flipping and twisting, but there’s only one real star of the show and that’s Hikaru–poised in the center, at the epicenter of it all. She digs her toe into the ice and flips into the air, glides cleanly as if she’s lifted up by wings and lands on the ice with a startling finality. A few scattered claps arise from the audience and Inori finds that she’s one of them, her hands drawn together on their own.
“Close your mouth,” Rioh says in disgust, materializing at her side. “You’ll catch flies at this rate.”
Inori glares at him and his stupid gelled-up hair and his stupid glasses-less face. Four years hasn’t done anything to hamper his attitude and it’s always a shock to see him without his glasses, like if you made an ugly frog uglier.
“I don’t catch flies,” she huffs, crossing her arms. “I catch worms.”
“What? No!” Rioh sputters, face red. “It’s an expression! It means stop staring. And ugh, that’s gross.”
“Worms are amazing and adorable creatures, a key part of our ecosystem,” Inori says valiantly, chest puffed up. “Unlike some people I know,” she mutters with a side-eye. “And what do you mean staring? I wasn’t staring at anyone–uh, I mean anything.”
Rioh shoots her a flat look.
“Right,” he says dully. “As if everyone in the whole circuit doesn’t know about your gigantic crush on Hikaru.”
Inori yelps, startling a few passerbys, and quickly covers her mouth with both hands.
“Who told you?” she cries.
“You did!” Rioh says, flapping one hand at her. “You’re not exactly subtle. All you do is talk about Hikaru!”
Inori does some quick math in her head as the announcer calls the first wave of skaters off the ice.
“Could it be… do you like Hikaru-chan too?”
Rioh’s eye starts twitching uncontrollably in response.
“I’m gay,” he spits out.
“Me too!”
“I know!” Rioh shouts. A passing family gives the two of them a wide berth and a wave of novice skaters scampers anxiously past.
“She’s always so beautiful when she skates,” Inori says and they watch as Hikaru leaves the rink, graceful even as she steps off the ice. Coach Sonidori is on the other side to receive her, ducking down to discuss something about her routine and Hikaru nods wordlessly.
“I know,” Rioh says quietly. Inori balls her hands into fists and steels her resolve.
“I think I’m going to do it today,” she says.
“Beat her?”
“Tell her.”
“Tell her what?” Rioh asks although he has a sinking feeling he already knows what.
“I’m gonna tell her how I feel.” Inori’s got the same look in her eyes that she has before a free skate, the resolve to move mountains. Rioh thinks she got that look from Tsukasa, or maybe it’s the other way around.
“Good luck,” Rioh says and he thinks the same thing that he’s thought ever since they’ve met. That Inori Yuitsika is crazy, a modern-day Icarus thinking that she can fly close to the sun with her hastily-crafted wings.
Inori turns to him, eyes wide.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” she says. “Are you sick?”
Rioh snorts, a smile slipping onto his face.
“I said good luck ‘cause you’re gonna need it.”
“Hey!”
Hikaru’s the first to go, completely dominating the stadium, and no one’s even a stone’s throw away from her score. Inori’s one of the last to skate and she stares up at the looming numbers on the screen above her as she stands rinkside.
“Watch your posture on the landing and you’ll be good, Inori-san,” Tsukasa says. He’s wearing his sweatshirt with the two worm-like strands and Inori doesn’t need them anymore but she grabs them anyway. She tugs them tight until her skin turns white from the strain and she asks the question she’s been meaning to for the past few months.
“Do you think I can reach her?” she asks because Tsukasa has to know, he has to. He’s the one who built her choreography from scratch, he must have known when she made her request at the start of the season. He’s seen her dance this story over and over again, he must know what she’s trying to say.
She turns her head up to face him and Tsukasa stares at her the way he always has. Ever since crossing into Juniors, there are dozens upon dozens of people who look at her like this, like she could land a quintuple jump if she tried, but Tsukasa has always been the first, the only one who always has had this look in his eye when he sees her.
“Inori-san, you have touched so many peoples’ hearts with your skating,” he says. “Me. Coach Hitomi. Your family. The other skaters at Lux. The judges.” He takes a deep breath and Inori knows that while the two of them have pushed each other over the years, pushed each other far past what any other skater would dare to do, Tsukasa has never once lied to her. “I think you can reach her too.”
Inori nods and ties Tsukasa’s sweatshirt strings into a knot. With his reassurance like a hand on her back, she pushes off of the ledge and skates onto the ice.
In the end, it all comes down to one thing. She knows the whole stadium is waiting with bated breath, wondering what crazy new thing Inori Yuitsika will show them this time. But when she jumps, it is only for one person.
It’s a grueling thing getting airborne. Gravity and fatigue are fighting her every inch of the way, her body flagging after dancing and spinning and skating for three minutes straight. Her legs ache like they’ve got 20-pound weights looped around the ankles but she packs every single hour of training in her limbs, lines her muscles with every second-place podium finish, every second spent watching from the other end of a television screen and Inori closes her eyes and jumps like a prayer.
She counts the spins as she goes–one for each year spent chasing her. One, two, three, four. When her foot hits the ice, she knows she’s solid.
Inori Yuitsika lands Hikaru Kamisaki’s signature jump, the quadruple axel, with a textbook-worthy landing at the end of her skate and the whole stadium bursts into applause. The crowd is one colorful blur but she still finds Hikaru’s eyes at the center of it all, front-row, nearly rinkside, staring straight at her. Inori cracks a grin, even as the din of the room drowns out her music.
I’ve finally caught you.
Inori holds her ending position for the required ten seconds, drops into a bow and then starts skating for the exit. Even as a crowd of reporters surges forward to greet her, Inori keeps her gaze fixed on Hikaru. She gets off the bench and makes her way towards the ice like she’s drawn by a magnet.
Inori can’t wait any longer. The words burst from her throat like a firework.
“Hikaru Kamisaki!” she hollers, dropping down onto one knee on the ice. There’s the click and whir of metal as a dozen cameras are trained on her but she doesn’t care. “I’ve loved you ever since I saw you land the triple axel, triple loop on television. Would you please do me the honor of going out with me?”
Inori wishes she had something, flowers or maybe another pair of ice skates, but she has nothing so she just turns her empty palms out towards her. The cameras click and whir as this time they swing around to face Hikaru, eyes wide as she takes another step towards the ice.
“Inori-chan, I–”
“No. 21, Inori Yuitsika, please depart the ice so the next skater can go.”
Somewhere in the stands, Inori knows Rioh is laughing at her. Mortified, she scrambles off the rink and it’s a madhouse from there. Reporters swarm her with microphones, their cameras and hoodies blocking Hikaru from her vision, and it’s only when Tsukasa manages to cut a path towards her that she finally gets escorted to the Kiss & Cry.
“It was a beautiful skate,” Tsukasa says as they wait for her score, his eyes rimmed red. Inori stares out into the sea of faces beyond but can’t find the one she’s looking for and the despair is enough to numb even the joy of the Kiss and Cry. She leans her head on Tsukasa’s shoulder and he lets her.
“I hope she thought so too.”
It’s not Hikaru who finds her in the bleachers, but Rioh and Souta, both of them wrapped up in puffer jackets after their skates.
“Great skate, Inori,” Souta says, flashing her a thumbs-up.
“Are you stupid?” Rioh says, face beet-red. Inori ignores him, craning her neck to see around them but it’s just the two of them standing on the steps.
“Do you know where Hikaru-chan is?” she asks and Rioh’s face softens slightly.
“Jun Yodaka wanted to talk to her,” he says. “She told me to tell you to wait for her.”
“Oh,” Inori says, her shoulders slumping forward.
“But seriously, are you stupid? What were you thinking, getting on one knee? It was a confession, not a marriage proposal! And then getting chased off the ice by the announcer?” Inori flushes scarlet at the reminder. The memory has been replaying on loop in her mind, the cameras, the disembodied voice and the full-body shame coursing through her veins. She doesn’t think she’ll be forgetting that anytime soon.
“Shut up!”
“And the quad axel? Did you even land that in practice?”
“I did!” Inori protests hotly. “30% of the time!”
“30%? Who even okayed that to go into your program?”
“Tsukasa-sensei,” Inori huffs.
“Well,” Rioh concedes. “I guess Tsukasa-sensei knows best. And it did work, I guess. You’re still crazy though.”
“I thought it was sweet,” Souta cuts in and Rioh’s head jerks up like a marionetta whose strings have been pulled. Inori stares.
“What part?” he asks carefully.
“The whole thing!” Souta says, clapping his hands. “The jump and the confession. It took a lot of courage to say that in front of so many people. I’m sure Hikaru thinks so too.”
Inori watches as Rioh slowly turns a brighter shade of red. She connects the dots again in her head–the right dots this time.
“Ohhhhh,” she says aloud and Rioh shoots her a look of abject horror before it dissolves into a speak-and-I-will-kill-you expression. Inori gulps and clamps her jaw shut.
They watch the last skater’s performance in silence and then Souta wanders off to find Coach Hitomi.
“By the way,” Inori says, leaning down to whisper in Rioh’s ear. “If you copy me, you’ll look unoriginal.”
Rioh sputters like a dying engine.
“Idiot! As if anyone’s stupid enough to copy that!”
Inori finds her only as the venue is closing, all but the main lights having flickered off. Tsukasa is off being shaken down by the other coaches in their routine post-tournament debrief and she already told her family to return home without her.
“Inori-chan,” Hikaru says, standing in the lobby with her hand out to her. She’s only grown taller in the past few years, her back long and broad. Where most skaters would stutter, Hikaru has turned her height into her most formidable weapon, the flashes of her long legs adding extra performance points to her score. Inori has spent the past four years growing in fits and starts, always two inches too shy of her. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“I don’t mind.” Inori takes her hand and Hikaru leads them deeper into the stadium. “Where are we going?”
“The rink. I bribed the janitors to leave it open for me,” she says and Inori notices now the skates on her feet, albeit with the guards. Hikaru only lets go of her hand so she can pull her own skates from her drawstring, looping them tight over her bruised feet. She takes her hand again once she’s done, pulling her out onto the ice.
As they skate in slow, lazy circles across the rink, Inori wonders if Hikaru can feel her racing pulse through her skin. She tries to will her body not to sweat, tries not to drive herself crazy trying to decipher the look in Hikaru’s eyes, tries not to think about the fact that she still hasn’t gotten an answer back to her initial question.
“This feels nostalgic,” Hikaru says, drifting along and Inori realizes with a jolt that it does. It wasn’t the first time that they met but it was the first time she saw Hikaru’s jump up close, like a fairy-tale sprung to life. “Do you remember what I said to you then?”
“You said I was fast,” Inori says because she remembers. She kept the words bundled tight to her chest as she stumbled day in and day out, the reproachful eyes of the other parents fixed on her back. “You said not many people could keep up with you.”
“That’s right.” Hikaru smiles, all teeth. She tips her head up to the ceiling and the fluorescent lights cast long shadows across her face. “Jun Yodaka warned me before I started that it would be a cold, lonely path to the top. That if I sacrificed everything, I could live a life in the spotlight. And I said yes.”
Hikaru tilts her head back to face her, eyes bright. She picks up speed and Inori matches her, their bodies barely a foot apart as they zip around the ice.
“But he was wrong,” she says. “It’s not cold. Your hand is warm, Inori-chan.”
Inori glances at their joined hands, their loosely intertwined fingers the only thing keeping them from spinning apart but it will hold as long as they both keep pace.
“Stay with me,” Hikaru says, staring at her and Inori hears every unspoken addendum to that sentence. Stay with me even if it means you break every bone in your body to get there, offer every minute of your free time like a sacrifice up to your skating, stay with me even if it costs you everything in your life to keep up.
“I will,” Inori says and feels every ache in her muscles burn like a promise. Hikaru grins, her eyes sparkling like the first snow.