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Yuna finishes her routine to a smattering of applause, her cheeks red and her breath heavy in her lungs. She turns to see Yotsuha standing rinkside, her mouth dropped wide in awe and Yuna smiles. Yotsuha always has a way of making her feel like she’s skating for an audience of a thousand when it’s really just one.
“You don’t have to clap,” Yuna says, tossing her arms over the barrier. “It’s just practice. Nothing special.”
Yotsuha’s face goes slack, tears welling up in her eyes and she clasps her hands together in front of Yuna.
“Don’t say that,” she says and the weight of her expression nearly has Yuna stuttering out an apology. “Your skating is always special. From the moment I saw you, I knew you were different, Yuna. You were always the brightest out there on the ice. Even through everything–through Hikaru, through training camp, through the Olympics–you always stuck it through.”
Yuna leans forward, frowning. Yotsuha’s emotions are a tangled-up mess in front of her and she struggles to find the end of them.
“What are you trying to say, Yotsuha?”
Yotsuha tilts her face up to her, eyes wet. She’s crying for real this time, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, but she’s smiling at the same time and the sight cracks Yuna’s heart right in two.
“I’m quitting,” Yotsuha says and Yuna feels the sky crack open and fall on her head. “My parents think it’s best and I think they’re right. I’ve never even got close to the Olympics these past two times and I can’t keep skating forever, especially with exams coming up. I’m going to focus on college instead.”
Yuna opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She can’t picture a training camp or a tournament or a practice where Yotsuha isn’t plastered by her side, doing a triple a couple dozen feet away.
You said I stuck it through, through everything, Yuna thinks. But you were there too.
She wants to tell her to keep skating, to keep pushing, to keep going even though the greed of her own request eats away at her heart. But one look at Yotsuha’s face dashes that hope against the rocks because she has seen Yotsuha crushed with despair after a low score and this is not it. The face that Yotsuha’s making now is the one she makes when she lands a wobbly triple toe loop in competition–disbelief that she’s here and overwhelming relief that she’s made it.
She knows that Yotsuha had a bad fall last year in competition. There’s a permanent scar going across her ankle that Yotsuha had shown her late one night at training camp, clustered under one blanket, Yotsuha’s stubby fingers rolling up the pantleg of her pajamas. Yotsuha reaches for it sometimes, absent-mindedly while she’s waiting in the Kiss-and-Cry or after warm-ups and Yuna wonders if it’s from a leftover, lingering burn or just a habit.
Yuna’s throat clogs with emotion and Yotsuha starts to turn, smile small and sad as she heads for the exit. Yuna doesn’t know what to say but she knows that she can’t let it end like this so she grabs Yotsuha’s hand before she’s fully out of reach, half-vaulting over the barrier to do so. She hears one of the assistant coaches holler out a reprimand behind her but she doesn’t care.
“Wait,” Yuna pants out, stalling for time and Yotsuha does, wiping at her tear-streaked cheeks with her free hand. “Um. Tomorrow.” The beginnings of a plan start to form in her mind and Yuna curls her fists around the edges until she can feel them digging into her palm. “Can you come by the rink after practice? There’s something I want to show you.”
“Sure,” Yotsuha says. “If it’s for you, Yuna, I’ll come.”
“Okay.” Yuna lets go of Yotsuha’s hand like a rubber band snapping, all the tension abruptly released. She realizes she’s left imprints of her fingernails in Yotsuha’s skin but Yotsuha doesn’t mind, not even rubbing at the spot before folding her hands back into her jacket. “Thank you.”
Yotsuha tips her head curiously at her before she finally nods and exits the rink.
It takes a couple of Youtube searches to find the song but Yuna gets it eventually. Now comes the hard part.
She beelines for Coach Sonidori when he finishes talking with Rioh and thrusts her phone at him before he gets a chance to speak.
“Please choreograph me a program to this song,” she says, dropping into a deep bow while still holding her phone up. She risks a quick glance upwards and finds him totally shell-shocked–that is, his eyebrows have risen a centimeter higher than normal. “By tomorrow.” His eyebrows rise another centimeter and Yuna dips her head lower.
“Yuna, you can stand up,” he says and Yuna finally straightens at that. He takes a closer look at the song on her screen, his brow furrowed. “It’s a bit late to change your program though.”
“It’s not about my program,” Yuna admits and his eyebrows rise another centimeter. She’s pretty sure he’s setting a new record at this point. “But it’s important to me. It’s very important.”
She shifts her weight from foot to foot as he considers her. Yuna feels four years old again, being scrutinized and terrified that she won’t measure up.
But whatever Coach Sonidori saw in her the first time, he must see again because he finally gives in with a nod.
“Come find me after practice and I’ll see what I can do.”
Yuna beams up at him, half-delirious from the shock, and Coach Sonidori cracks a rare smile back at the sight.
Yuna strikes the landing pose as the music filters out and turns her head.
“What do you think?” she asks, skating up to the barrier and Coach Sonidori’s mouth folds down half-a-centimeter.
“It’s rough around the edges, it shows that you’ve only been working on it for a day,” he says and Yuna’s shoulders sag. “But it’s good. Your jumps are flawless as always, Yuna.”
Yuna perks right back up at that because Coach Sonidori’s praise is as good as a gold medal.
“Now go home and get some rest,” he says, pointing towards the locker room. “I don’t want you to over-exert yourself so close to competition.”
Yuna nods and takes off for the exit, practically skipping.
“And good luck with Yotsuha,” Coach Sonidori calls out when she’s nearly out of earshot. Yuna trips over her own foot, nearly decapitating herself with her skates in the process. She cups her hands over her ears–which she knows are bright red–but can’t do anything about the flush in her face.
“You knew?” she asks, voice small. She feels mortified, like she’s been ripped wide open, all her emotions laid bare on her chest. This is even more embarrassing than that one time Inori caught her in the bathroom with the hand puppets.
Coach Sonidori actually laughs at that, like she’s said something funny.
“I never forget my students’ programs.”
Yuna waits until most of the other skaters have filtered out, only a couple of elementary schoolers dawdling by the back of the rink while their mothers wait on the sidelines to collect them.
“Yotsuha,” she says, passing over her phone and tucking the bluetooth speaker into her jacket pocket. “I wanted you to watch this program. I made it for you.”
Yotsuha flushes scarlet at that, one shaking finger pointing towards herself in disbelief.
“F-For me?” she squeaks. “You’re gonna skate for me?”
Yuna nods once and pushes off the barrier.
“Watch me,” she says and skates to the center of the ice.
The music starts and it is just as bright and cheery as she remembers. It’s not the same program but she still feels like she’s skating past the ghost of Yotsuha as she spins and turns, a hello and a farewell all wrapped up in one.
As she skates, she tries her best to pack her feelings, the story of them into her body, into her steps, into her jumps but that has always been Yotsuha’s domain.
Elegance and grace Yuna has in spades but she has never been able to measure up to Yotsuha’s passion. Yuna’s been called stoic and impassive, her skating cold and mechanical as she hardens her expression into a mask for her performance but Yotsuha has always been an open book. When she falls, the despair is written in her eyes. Even as she pushes herself back up for a recovery jump, her sadness is written into her skin, detailed in the curve of her body. But when she flies, it makes you feel like you’re in the air too, lifted up to the sky by the light in her expression.
But Yuna tries. God, does she try. When she arches her back into a Biellmann spin, she says you said I pushed through but I could only do that because you were there with me, pushing every single step of the way. When she digs her toe into the ice for a jump, she says you said I was bright, the brightest thing out there on the ice, but you were wrong. And when she crashes back onto the ice in a landing worthy of +5 GOE points, she says I was only that bright because I reflected your light.
When Yuna finishes, her heart is beating in her chest like she’s just skated for three hours instead of three minutes. She grips the edge of the barrier, half-manic as she leans out towards Yuna.
“Did you get it?” she asks and Yotsuha blinks at her, eyes wide and uncomprehensive.
“That’s the music for my first program,” Yotsuha says. “But you skated it so much better. My performance was a mess, I fumbled my first jump and it completely threw me off, my mind went blank about recovery jumps and I forgot the spin–”
“It was beautiful,” Yuna says, cutting her off. “That’s what I thought that day when I saw you, up in the stands. And I wanted you to see how beautiful it was too.”
“Oh.” Yotsuha covers her mouth with her hands, like she’s been let in on a great secret.
“When you said you were quitting, it made me realize that I didn’t want a medal,” Yuna says and her words feel like a quad jump come to life. “More than an Olympic spot, more than a place on the podium, more than anything, I just wanted someone to see how much work I was putting in and say good job.” She’s crying now, she can feel it streaming down her cheeks and Yotsuha is gaping at her, shocked by the sight. “And it was you. It was always you.”
Yuna bows her head like an apology, like a prayer.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to realize,” she says, grabbing her hands, and Yotsuha flinches at her touch but doesn’t pull away.
“It’s okay,” Yotsuha says, giving her hand a squeeze. “It was never a chore to support you. I didn’t do it out of obligation. I did it because it’s, well, it was you.”
Yuna squeezes her hand for courage because she knows that she’s already taken so much, already asked for so much but she has one more request buried in her heart.
“I know I can’t make you skate again but please let me be selfish one more time.”
“Anything,” Yotsuha says immediately. Yuna gathers her courage and lifts her head.
“Promise you’ll watch me, wherever I am, wherever you are.”
Yotsuha smiles like she’s said something funny, even as she lifts one hand to wipe away her tears.
“I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to,” she says. “I couldn’t look away from you even if I tried.”