Gold, love and mint tea (Yuzuru Hanyu )

Prologue V: On a high

After a few moments he stood up, breaking the silence as he offered me his hand "You are cold". I gladly took his hand, careful not to make any sudden movements.

"Hey, do you have any water?" I inquire.

"Yes, in the bag" he skates towards the exit to get it. Making sure that he doesn't see me, I take out my pill box hiding two pills under my tongue, before hiding the box in my pocket again. Yuzuru hands me a water bottle, that I gladly accept, taking a few sips.

"Thanks" I say, handing the bottle back to him. He skates towards the board where we left our guards, taking a few sips of water himself before putting it down.

"Aren't you worried that people might recognize you out here?" I ask suddenly, as he makes his way back towards me.

He looks surprised by my question, and gestures around us "I don't see people."

"True" I chuckle lightly at his response.

"And no one is here at this time" I urge him to continue, so he does "The first train comes at 11 and it's 10 only. And the people will go to watch the competition".

"Fair enough" I agree.

We both chuckle before going back to skating. I watch him doing some complex footwork, amused about the fact that he's obviously showing off. I've never seen someone so confident on the ice, so absorbed in what they're doing and yet so distant with people. He seemed like a sweet guy but I couldn't figure out why he was so hard to get to know, maybe it's the language barrier. Or both. I realize he stopped in his tracks and looked at me, staring at him. So I did a simple back spin to warm myself up before starting to do some footwork followed by single jumps. He switched to spins, failing to catch onto his foot again, chuckling I went back to doing jumps but this time I tried double jumps, and to my surprise landed them perfectly (I even land my loop which is my worst jump).

"You should try a double axel, if you know how to do it of course..." he suggested enthusiastically.

I pause before answering "I used to be able to do it yeah..."

"Your jumps have good height for your level! They travel a lot across the ice, and you have good bases looking at your footwork... I'm impressed!" he gushed.

"For my level?" I mused, raising an eyebrow at him "I know I haven't skated in a couple of months but I didn't think that I was THAT out of practice".

"That is not what I-"

"I know, relax I'm just joking!" I teased before going across the rink doing crossovers and the most complicated footwork I could possibly think of going into a prefect double Axel. "Huh... I guess I'm not that out of practice after all" I breath out, enjoying the high I get out of doing what I love most.

"Your jump is beautiful..." he said with admiration.

~

"But I don't know anything about you" I whined as I handed him another cup of mint tea that I poured from my thermos flask.

He nodded in thanks "Nothing to know, there is just skating".

"No one is just one thing. Sure, skating is a huge part of your life. The main one even, it's the same way for me. But I enjoy other things, even though I usually don't have much time to do it" I exclaimed.

"Like what?"

"What?"

"What other things"

"The other things that I enjoy?" He nodded "I like drawing. I'm not necessarily good at it... But I love it. I don't like paint, I use watercolor because I'm better at that than sketching."