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When Joy landed the final triple loop in her sequence, she stopped her music with a tap to her ear buds. Ice sloshed under her skates as they scraped her way towards the bleachers to pick up her phone.
Her muscles were sore and a sheen of sweat had covered her forehead, despite the chill of the rink. Her nose was probably as red as Rudolph's at this point and her cheeks were definitely flushed.
Scrolling through her playlist listlessly, her finger hovered above Fly by the famous Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi for the fifth time, hesitant. The said track was Dong Sicheng's previous Grand Prix's set piece, and he definitely did the masterpiece a grand justice with his magnificent choreography.
It was almost embarrassing how many times Joy had looped his programs, especially the one he did at the last GP Finals. She watched that so many times she could remember every bit of it by heart, could skate the whole sequence flawlessly. But she could never quite reach the level Sicheng was on.
His performance was splendid not simply because of his immaculate, impeccable execution, but also because of his emotions. He poured his heart into every of his performance and bled every last bit of his soul into his skate. Everyone who'd watched him could see it, could feel it, it wasn't an easy feat to accomplish. Joy honestly felt that Sicheng would've gotten away without any deductions even if he stumbled, fell or messed up in general though it would have been considered cheating on the judging panel's end, but it just felt possible. He just had this... magnetic field about him that attracted everyone towards him. It was unexplainable, almost unrealistic even, but that was him. That was Dong Sicheng. The epitome of pristine.
She lowered her finger and pressed onto the song track, letting the familiar melody play in her ears as she stepped from the rink and sat down, unlacing her skates.
She could imagine the whole performance in front of her now: every move, every jump, every step. All taken with unmarred ease, all executed with textbook perfection.
She closed her eyes and smiled.
One day.
She was going to be this competent one day.
｡･ﾟﾟ･
"So what is this I'm hearing about you and Park Seonghwa?" Wonwoo inquired between chews. His words were heavily muffled by the food in his mouth, but the other two understood him just fine anyway.
The dumb, dumber and dumbest were at the usual Chinese restaurant they always hung out at, wolfing down a five-person hotpot as if they weren't on strict diets set by their coaches.
Mingyu perked up at that. "Yeah, dude! You know he even defended you when..." He trailed off with a sheepish look when Hyojin fixed him with a nasty glare.
