Melody of You | Yuzuru Hanyu

31.

All good things come to an end, and the same happened with Sophia's visit to Toronto.

Yuzuru sneakily watched their last concert in collaboration with the home orchestra. He seemed to love watching her perform, just like she loved watching him skate. 

They said their goodbyes again without tears this time, unsaid words always sinking in whenever they parted. The intimacy of their last night was evident, Sophia was more than sure that all of the caresses, all the kisses and all the whispered praises made it more intense. 

It was not just sex, maybe it never was. 

From then on out, the tour passed extremely quickly. Some days Sophia was incredibly bored with rehearsals and the performances. She had been so excited about the tour but turned out far more boring than expected. Still, the calls she often made to Yuzuru helped the time pass. Being in the same time zone allowed for late-night calls that almost made them feel like they were together.

Yuzuru wanted to attend the Montreal concert, but it turned out to be on the same weekend he had to compete in Helsinky in one of his Grand Prix assignments. 

Given that he brought the gold medal home, it was for sure worth it. That was the first competition Sophia watched with her two fanatic best friends. They took care explaining the different aspects of the sport she heard Yuzuru talk about all the time and introduced her to his main rivals in the competition. She had a great time and liked it in the past, but his skating was still the only part of the sport she was interested in, the others never fully marking any interest.

Turns out not only was Sophia a bit more busy as the tour progressed, but Yuzuru's season was also now in full mode. Their talks gradually decreased but they still made sure to talk every day, even if it was just 5 minutes.

It seemed to her that Yuzuru was having bad feelings about the next competition in Russia. Whenever they talked he was always on the edge, speaking of things that weren't going great in practice instead of focusing on the positives.

This was something that worried her. So far, every single time they talked about him competing or practicing in the past, the skater always had a positive mindset and huge hopes for the gold medal.

Of course, this type of mood didn't help, but she always tried cheering him on and keeping contact even when he flew to Russia.

Sophia was in America when she watched his Short Program live. It seemed like Yuzu's worries had been unfounded. His performance of Otonal was one of her favorites so far, not that she had a lot of time to delve into his catalog of programs but from what she had seen, this was one of the ones she loved the most. The skater looked ethereal in his sparkly light blue costume. 

The musician knew very little about skating but for her, he had been perfect, just like he always was. She didn't care about the falls or technical deductions because she only cared about his beauty on the ice.

That's exactly what she told him when he called after the event, that it had been perfect in her eyes. Obviously, he took the time to correct her and mention every single thing that could have gone differently. Every single small detail that he had to improve for the next time. 

Despite all of the technicalities being boring to her, Sophia listened to his rambling with a huge grin. She knew how important this was for him and even if she couldn't give him a good opinion about it, the violinist had no problems listening to him. The sound of his voice was always one of the best parts of her day.

"Thank you for listening to me, I know this is boring to you" Yuzuru said that night while saying his goodbyes.

"You know I love to listen to your voice. I won't pretend to understand half of what you're saying but you need someone to vent to and I will gladly listen to you"

"Soph... I..."

"Don't say it Yuzu, not on the phone"

"But you know that I..."

"I know... me too"

There they were, the unsaid words that always plagued them. The hopes to say them one day face to face never faded. Maybe one day they would have the chance to be more, and then they could say it.

The one thing they didn't know was that later on, they would regret not saying those very simple words.

🎻

The next day, Yuzuru had practice for the Free Program while Sophia was traveling between Chicago and Boston by bus with all the other members of the orchestra.

Sophia texted him good luck that morning and the answer came soon enough.

'Thank you, something tells me I will need it. I have a bad feeling about today.'

'You will be fine. Think positive, you have a gold medal to win! I'll be cheering for you!'

'I will try! With you cheering I have to be great! Have fun on your travel!'

Yuzuru went on the ice without mentioning how he was feeling about that day, it was weird, the sense that something bad would happen.

Most of the session went great, he was feeling good and his jumps were somehow behaving quite well. Maybe he was overreacting after all.

It was only on his run-through that things went south when Yuzuru launched himself in the air for his quad loop. The landing wasn't great, he twisted his ankle and it resulted in a fall. As soon as he felt the pain he knew that he had just reinjured himself. The same ankle of the injury prior to the Olympics.

The injury didn't seem as bad as the previous one but he stopped the run-through altogether and quickly informed his coaches. There was no reason to hide what would be obvious.

The skater took some time to rethink how he could change tomorrow's free to still have a chance before he left the ice.

He knew for certain that as soon as Sophia saw the news of the fall that she would worry so the first instinct as soon as he got a hold of his phone was to text her.

'I reinjured myself but I don't think it's bad. I will still skate tomorrow. Just texting so you don't worry too much!'

What he didn't know was that on the other side of the ocean, somewhere between Chicago and Boston, a bus had just crashed severely in the middle of the highway.