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“Trace it”, the female orphanage staff points at a piece of paper with a name written on the top of it, Ария Ивановя (Aria Ivanova).
The little girl just stares blankly at the Cyrillic letters.
“Trace”, the orphanage staff repeats her order.
Finally, the girl opens her mouth and says, “That is not… my name…”
“It is your name. Trace or no dinner for you.”
The little girl grudgingly traces out the Cyrillic.
Everything feels off to her. Aria Ivanova is not her name. But that is what the staffs call her. Aria, while not her name, still feels ok, she can feel a connection to Aria, but not Ivanova. Never Ivanova.
But the staffs always delivers when they issue a warning, and winter in Kaliningrad City Orphanages –Kaliningrad, Northwestern Russia- is cold and going to bed with an empty stomach is painful. She knows from that one time they punish her for not praying along –praying feels off too– and once is enough.
“Good”, the staff says as she finishes retracing the Cyrillic bellow the one that the staff writes, “Now repeat that until the paper is full”, the staff gestures at the empty spaces bellow the two names, “Complete that before 6 then you can get dinner.”
The staff then leaves her alone to teach other orphan children.
She traces the Cyrillic with a sense of detachment.
Ария Ивановя is her name.
But she doesn’t feel like Ария Ивановя.
But if she is not Ария Ивановя, then who is she?
She often finds herself waking up very early, hours before their real wake up schedule, feeling restless like she has to do something but can’t put a finger on what. She usually ignores the urge and spends the remaining allocated sleep hours tossing and turning on her mattress.
Should she try doing something about it for once?
She considers it. The worse punishment for her is no-food, but she can survive one missed breakfast.
She quietly gets up from her bed as to not wake her 5 other roommates. She holds her breath when the door creaks, then exhale when nobody stirs.
‘What now…’, She wanders a bit then sees an empty room with toys lying the side. The designated playroom.
‘It’s not locked…’, She enters the room.
Mindlessly, she walks a semi-circle and ends up in the center of the room.
The emptiness and cold white floor remind her of something… But what…?
She lets her body moves on its own, choppy and jerky movement, some which she doesn’t have enough flexibility and others she doesn’t have enough power. But she doesn’t mind, for the first time in years, she feels a semblance of peace with herself.
And she doesn’t want to let that feeling go.
“That girl is at it again”, an orphanage staff yawns then remarks to her fellow co-workers as she spies a certain odd little girl randomly dancing around the bare playroom at 5 AM with a blank look on her face.
Her co-worker sigh, “A shame, that one. She is cute but odd. She never shows emotion! I swear if not for her oddness, she could hope for adoption.”
“Do you think we can set her straight?”
“*shrug* You and your side projects.”
"Well, we do need something interesting to do after all.”
A week with 4 no-food and 10 stand-in-the-corner punishments later the orphanage staff labels it as hopeless.
“It’s not working?”, her co-worker teases.
She groans, “I swear that girl is not odd, she has a mental illness. Weird behavior I can and has fixed before, but mental illness is something else.”
“Really?”, her co-worker looks interested, “Mental illness?”
“Google says it is BPD. Borderline Personality Disorder. [If you’re living with borderline personality disorder, you might feel like there’s something fundamentally wrong with who you are] seems to fit that girl to a T.”
"Should we request a transfer to a specialized orphanage?”
She considers it then says, “Nah. It’s not like I’m a real psychologist. As long as you ignore her oddities, she is good. For info, no-food punishment is most effective to threaten her.”
And they leave it at that.
The orphanage staff frowns as she tries to make out what the girl is doing now. Yoga? Ballet? Well, those stretchy flexible movements that are not possible on her own untrained grown up body.
“Think it’s too late to get that orphanage transfer request form?”, She half-jokingly comments.
“It is”, her co-workers gravely nods, “That girl is already good at pretending.”
Like most children her age, she is at the age where she likes to test boundaries.
When she realizes that the staff decided to leave her alone and will ignore whatever it is she is doing as long as she follows the schedule and doesn’t disturb other kids or staffs, she abandons her efforts in pretending to be somewhat normal and goes full fledge oddball.
She does her weird physical exercises, does spinning jump which almost always lands her on the floor, randomly hitting the toy xylophone keys like she is trying to remember a song but can only remember those few keys, and if left alone, can spend hours staring at the floor like it holds the answer to the mystery of the universe.
And the creepiest thing is that she does all of that with a blank expression.
When the orphanage supervisor comes for a visit, the orphanage staffs have half the mind to lock her in her room. But they decide it would look questionable if the supervisor somehow finds out they’re locking a girl. So they settle with threatening the girl to behave.
And behave she does.
Unlike her failure to act normal one year ago, she imitates what other kids are doing remarkably well that even people who see her past behavior could only call her normal.
It only lasts during the supervisor's stay. She goes back to weird after the supervisor leave as if she knows it is that one person that could get her into trouble.
“If we call anyone, that girl would know and act normal, and we’ll be the one to be questioned… Well at the bright side, at least this way there is hope for that girl’s future.”
For today’s playtime, the staff brings out stacks of magazines and colored books for them.
She picks a still glossy if a bit tattered magazine and starts flipping it. Mostly for the pictures, she can’t read that well yet. She ignores the feeling the indignant feeling that insists she can read.
She pauses when she sees a photoshoot of two men.
Admittedly, the silver haired man is strikingly beautiful, but he is not the one that draws her eyes.
‘I… know this man…’, she thought as she runs her finger on the black haired man’s face.
… down-stroke and hook … Nicely done ..uur..!
On the paper is a sloppy and shakily written 勝生 勇利
‘Is this my name…? It’s very hard to write…’
Hmmm~ It have wonderful meaning though~
‘Courage right? Mother told me!’
Yes, that's right!
They say a name is like a prayer
Katsu is from the word winning, Ki from living and Yuuri from courage
“… Yuuri …”, the girl whispers the name as tears start falling, "Yuuri Yuuri Yuuri… How could I forget…”
Like how a dam is open, the memories start pouring in.
…
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…
The staff tasked with watching over the group is startled when a girl suddenly burst out crying while holding a magazine.
The staff gingerly approaches the girl, come to think about it, this is the first time that girl ever showed emotion, “What’s wrong?”
“I… I saw a man so handsome I start crying", the girl says with a teary voice.
The staff frowns, that… sound like English…
Then the girl starts laughing madly with tears running on her face.
‘Oh my God, the girl snaps’, the staff watches with wide eyes as she isn’t sure what she should do now.
In the end, they’re forced to pick up and carry that girl to a secluded room because she starts babbling nonsense words, won’t stop crying and starts disturbing people around her both physically and mentally.
They don’t know whether it is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing when the girl’s personality changes drastically overnight.
In one hand, the girl finally shows emotion like how normal human being should. In the other hand, her odd behavior is –as much as this shouldn’t be possible– becoming even odder –shouldn’t be possible dammit–.
For day one, she starts her day by religiously scanning magazines for anything remotely connected to Yuuri Katsuki, a Japanese figure skater, and starts ripping out the pages, no-food punishment be damned. Then she collects those pages, starts babbling nonsense to it all day and end up sleeping while hugging them.
For day two, she goes back to her original randomly dancing routine, but this time she sings while doing them. It would look like normal hyperactive children’s behavior if her choices of songs aren’t on the same random unrecognizable nonsense language. And she also suddenly burst out laughing or sobbing at random interval.
For day three, she is obsessed with critically looking at herself at any and every reflective surfaces. Admittedly she does have a strikingly cute appearance of a typical Russian girl, but with a rare combination of straight jet black hair and vivid blue eyes. The staffs just hope she wouldn't add narcissism on the top of her already large list of mental problem.
On the start of day four, she finds one of the staff and asks, “Hey, what would you do if one of your parents die, and then they reincarnated as your husband’s illegitimate child from his previous affair before you?”
The staff eyed her like she is insane, but the girl is unfazed as she just sighs and says, “Yea I thought as much.”
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…
‘Now what should I do…’, she sighs, she desperately wants to meet Yuuri… but 6 years is enough time to move on and change. She isn’t sure what kind of Yuuri is now, and how would he take if this body really turns out to be Victor’s ex-lover’s illegitimate child…
She sighs longer. At the very least she knows Yuuri is happy and together with Victor.
‘Hapiness is such a fragile thing… And paradise can crumble when you add too many people…’, she smiles weakly, ‘Yuuri’s happiness is way more important than mine…’
She looks upward towards the snowy skies, ‘People shouldn’t shy away from happiness, but schadenfreude is not my thing’, she closes her eyes, ‘if it is really fated, we’ll see each other again…’
‘But until then I shouldn’t look for him…’
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The staffs are ushering the kids into a minibus. Apparently, some famous people are inviting them for charity ice skating session. While she appreciates charity as much as normal people do, the cosmic joke is real when they are joining the event too.
“Behave”, one of the staff warns her and she doesn’t have enough mental energy to do anything other than nods and broods all the way on the bus.
‘What should I do, what should I do, what should I do’, she mentally panics then she slaps herself.
The staff sitting beside her is giving her a hard stare but she ignores her.
‘Calm down, think of good things…’, but her good things are memories filled with Yuuri and her funny distracting stories are stories she has told Yuuri, ‘…me, you’re not helping…’
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…
She silently cries at the first sight of Yuuri, ‘Oh God they look happy. I really really want to hug him...’
“Maam she is crying!”, the kid beside her reported her to the staff.
They're currently lining up while several of the staffs get them on the ice one by one and make sure they're coordinated enough to not slip and fall, or attaching the worse of the group to the rink edge.
One of the staff frowns and makes a move to take her somewhere. It is an important event for the orphanage and they can’t afford a mentally unstable girl making a bad impression for their group.
“No! Let me stay”, she resisted and says in low voice, “Let me stay or I’ll cause a scene.”
The staff frowns but stops pulling, “Stop crying then.”
“I can’t”, she honestly says, “I’ll just stay on the edge and if they ask, just say I’m a super huge fan and I’m so happy to meet them that I cried. It’ll make them happy. But let me stay!”
The staff frowns harder, ‘Is that how 6 years old supposed to talk?’
In the end, the staff left her to do as she wishes.
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…
…
It’s Yuuri that notice her.
Of course.
It is kind of hard to remain oblivious to her, no matter how silent she is crying, when she constantly eyed him for 10 minutes or so.
She watches as Yuuri skates closer with a gentle unthreatening smile on his face. Then he stops a respectful distance before her and goes down to see her on eye level.
“What’s wrong?”, Yuuri says in slightly accented Russian.
“I…”, at this point, she is feeling so much it hurts, “Can… I hug you…?”
Yuuri blinks but spreads out his hands, "Sure."
With shaking hands, she draws closer and gently hugs Yuuri.
When she felt him hugging her back as gentle as she does, she breaks. She tightens her hugs using all her power and clawed her fingers on his back and cries on his shoulder while apologizing, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t do this, I’m very sorry”
Yuuri softly says, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re not doing anything wrong, do you want to talk?”
Talk? She has tons of things she wanted to talk, but the most important one is, “A-are you living properly Yuuri…?”
“? Of course”
She takes a deep breath and calms herself down, that is all she needs to know. As long as Yuuri is living, she is fine with anything happening to her. She releases him and offers a bashful teary smile, “I’m sorry, I’m such a huge fan of yours, I get too excited… You’re much more handsome in real life…”
Being a fanboy himself, Yuuri can understand the sentiment. Besides, he might not be Victor, but this is not the first time a fan is crying on him, still, “Thank you, I think you might be my youngest fan”, which he doesn’t expect since he has retired last year. Plus no other children recognize him.
“I… found pictures of you on magazines…”, she shifts her eyes downwards, “And I… I love your skating! You’re very beautiful!”
Yuuri smiles, now that the girl is calming down, he has time to truly look at her. Black hair with blue eyes is a very rare color pairing, and Yuuri notes that her blue eyes have the same sticking blue shades like Victor, "Thank you, you're really cute too!"
The girl hides her face with her hands, “Really…?”
Yuuri rubs her head, “Yep. Actually, now that I think about it, you look a lot like Victor when he is young.”
The girl freezes then she says with teary voice, “It… is such an honor to be compared to someone as great as Victor Nikiforov…”
Before Yuuri can say anything else, the girl let go of her hands to reveals new tears on her face but with a bright smile, “Thank you Yuuri! I think I’ll leave for a while. This is a bit overwhelming for me… Goodbye…”, she says as she waves and skates backward to the rink opening then turn her back and run.
Yuuri watches her retreating back, feeling a bit lost. Something feels off but he can’t put a finger on what.
Yuuri skates back to Victor, Victor is rather useless when it comes to people crying so he left him behind for that.
“Is everything okay?”, Victor asks as he sees Yuuri’s expression.
“Mmm… She says she is my fan, but something is off…”, Yuuri lightly frowns.
“It’s the first time your fan runs away crying from you?”, Victor offers.
Yuuri pauses, if he thinks about it that is actually true, “…Maybe…?”
“Do you want to know more about that girl?”, Victor asks.
Officially, they’re here with children from several orphanages in order to help them decides which orphanage and how much are they going to donate.
Unofficially, after Yuuri’s retirement from competitive figure skating, and subsequently, Victor’s retirement from coaching, they have too much time for themselves and are toying with the idea of adopting.
With most of their life occupied with skating, none of them knows remotely enough about children and what to expect, so they decide to use this opportunity to observe and get a feel about children in general. Then move on to younger or older age group if this age group doesn’t fit them.
“I think yes…”
So they skate to the nearest orphanage staff, a pale-looking woman who gets paler as she notices them getting closer.
Before they can say anything, the staff apologizes, "We're so sorry for your inconvenience! We would teach her later!”
“Oh no please don’t”, Yuuri stops the staff, “I’m honored to have someone as young as her as my fan.”
“Actually we’re here to inquire more about her”, Victor continues.
“Ah… Her…?”, the staff looks a little bit panicking, “Well she is a… smart girl if a bit peculiar.”
Both of them notice the staff trying to hide something and badly failing.
“Really, how so?”, Victor pressed.
“Well, she… gets lost in her thought easily.”
Victor and Yuuri discreetly look at each other and Yuuri gives a barely noticeable nod. The staff might want to hide information from them, but they don't spend years dancing around reporters and not learn a thing or two.
In the end, they manage to get the staff to spill.
Yuuri has a quiet talk with Victor then excuses himself to look for the girl.
…
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…
Yuuri’s mind is racing as he searches the area, fans can ask the oddest thing when they meet their idol, so he doesn't think too much about her question, but living properly… The one who is most invested for Yuuri to be living is…
‘But why… If it is really the voice, why doesn’t she tell me?’, Yuuri reviews their interaction, her first word to him is asking for a hug, while the second one is I’m sorry, ‘Why sorry? For hiding the truth from him? In that case, why doesn’t she tell him instead?’
After having a voice in his head, he is very open to the idea of supernatural world and reincarnation, the idea of the voice reincarnating into a child is not that outrageous.
She stops crying after she hears Yuuri’s replies of course, and doesn’t start crying again until… until Yuuri comments that she looks like Victor…?
Yuuri is suddenly reminded of the day he confesses of the voice’s existences to Victor. Actually, it isn't so much as Yuuri confessing, but Victor admitting his suspicion with Yuuri confirming it.
Yuuri still remembers vividly how his own blood freezes when Victor casually asks about that. Yuuri doesn’t actively hide it but he also doesn’t plan to tell Victor. The reason is simple. He doesn’t foresee Victor leaving him even if he tells, but there is a persistent what-if in his head that makes him keep the status-quo.
What he has with Victor is very precious for him and it is scary to even think that he’ll lose him.
So what if it applies to the voice too?
Supernatural occurrences or not, Yuuri knows even the voice is originally human with its own lifetime cut before it becomes a voice. So the voice’s current body, that girl who looks so much likes young Victor… Does it… Is she afraid of ruining Yuuri’s relationship with Victor…?
Yuuri reaches the female bathroom and stops when he hears muffled crying from the inside, then he leans on the wall beside the door. ‘If I'm a person who spends 24 years of my life devoting to help one person and that one person only to shape their life then I leave and comes back to see that one person happily living his life… Would I do anything that could threaten to ruin that one person's life…? Of course not…’
Yuuri takes a deep breath and says in Japanese, “Hey, if it is you, I want you to listen.”
The crying voice stops.
"After you leave...", Yuuri continues to retell everything important that happens in the last 6 years.
Midway through the story, the crying sounds start again.
After a while, Yuuri ends his story with, “and all through that, I keep wishing that you’re here to experience those with me.”
Then there is silence.
Minutes later the girl talks back in Japanese too, “You’re so silly… You have your life Yuuri, what are you doing here?”
“Because a certain someone doesn’t realize that my life now is too strongly built to be shaken by something like ex-lover’s illegitimate child.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I talk about it with Vitya and we decide that we would like to adopt you.”
“… … … He knows?”
“He knows.”
“... And he is okay with that…?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
“Yes.”
“Like really really fine?”
“Yes, really really fine.”
“Both of you agree?”
“Absolutely yes.”
Silence last for a while before the toilet door opens as a red-eyed child slowly comes out.
“I felt really stupid now. Much ado about nothing indeed”, she complains.
Yuuri let out a helpless smile, “What would that make me then? I have episodes like this on pretty much on every competition for... 10 years or so?”
“You’re not that bad Yuuri, you just tend to care too much about people’s expectations on you and over-thinking matters”, she pauses then cover her face with her hands and groans, “And yes that’s exactly what I’m doing right. Pot meet kettle… Really me, you should’ve known better.”
Yuuri weakly laughs as he draws her into another hug, "I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I can’t believe I’m here too… I’m sorry for the trouble Yuuri…”
“Don’t be, have another one if you like, I still have lots of my episodes debt to you. I miss you a lot.”
She snorts then gives a weak but happy teary smile, “I miss you too… I miss you too…”
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…
“I never did get to ask you before… but what’s your name?”
“… Aria (アリア) …
Aria (Ария) is fine…
I think I’m ready to become Aria (Ария) now…
Yeah…
Aria Katsuki Nikiforova sounds fine…
I can start living as her now…”