Gold, love and mint tea (Yuzuru Hanyu )

27 - Spring time

AN: You can listen to the song up there as you read the first part of the chapter ^

~

Munich - May 7th 2017

After pressing replay on my favorite Florence and the Machine album again I leave my phone at the boards, cranking up the volume a bit more. There's nothing like having the rink for yourself at sunset and listening to your favorite music so loud that you can't even hear yourself think. That was precisely the point: to stop thinking. Stop thinking about stupid Yuzuru and his inability to remember to give me his number. Stop thinking about next season and the Olympics. Stop thinking about how the hell I'm going to beat Zhenya. And most importantly stop overthinking my approach to my bloody triple axel! God, Chris must really be rubbing off on me.

Anyways, that's enough thinking for now. The whole point of this is to avoid thinking and that includes thinking about what I shouldn't think about... Well that was a confusing train of thoughts. After doing a few extra stroking exercises I felt ready to start jumping again so I leap into a single Axel out of footwork, trying to get as much height as possible. I did it again until I was satisfied with the result and decided to move on to double axels, striving to make my air position tighter and the speed of my rotation faster.

I do some light footwork in order to gather enough momentum before bringing my arms backwards and stepping forward bending my left knee. With a swinging motion I take off, pulling my arms tightly above my head. I realize that the jump is going to be under rotated before I even land so I keep my rotation tight and decide to land on both of my toe picks instead of trying to land on one foot. Well I guess that was to be expected since I haven't attempted a triple axel in months...? Or maybe years? I can't even remember...

It's a good thing I was wearing my padded shorts because I did it again. Sometimes I fell and sometimes I didn't but I quickly realized that my jump didn't have enough height to do the three and a half rotations most times. And when I put all my focus on getting height I didn't put enough emphasis on the technique. I guess I should probably be doing this with a coach present huh? Let's just say that patience is not my strong suite and for some reason Misha thinks I'm not ready yet. Maybe it's because I don't get enough height?

I let out yet another deep sigh and crank up the volume of the music before closing my eyes and starting to skate around randomly, mumbling a few lyrics here and there until the chorus came and I stood in the middle, hopping around on my pick toes and yelling the lyrics.

"A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes. I screamed aloud, as it tore through theeeeeem! And now it's left me blind... THE STARSSSS, THE MOOOON, THEY HAVE ALL BEEN BLOWN OUT"

The music was so loud that I couldn't even hear myself sing. Which was probably a good thing because I'm a terrible singer... I let myself lie down on the ice, still singing and wiggling around as you would if I were making a snow angel "You left me in the dark. NO DAWN, NO DAAAYYY, I'm always in this twilight."

"Damn... Looks like you finally snapped and went insane..." I gasp when I hear Christina's mocking voice in my ear and my eyes snap open, seeing her right in front of me.

"I did not snap!"

"What's got you singing like a madwoman then?" she asks in a smug tone, sitting down on the ice next to me.

"Just letting out some frustration..."

"What are you frustrated about?"