Beyond the Sound | Yuzuru Hanyu

70.

Maya coughed awkwardly when she noticed him look around the apartment.

She knew it was small but it had been their home since Kaiya was born, being more than enough for both of them to survive.

Because yes, in the past years, survive had been the keyword. Maya couldn't afford much luxury if her daughter was going to keep skating.

"Kaiya... Can you go to the bedroom for a little bit? Maybe work on your off-ice?"

"Okay."

Yuzuru watched the small girl disappear excitedly just before his eyes settled on the woman who dictated his every thought.

"So..."

"Yeah."

"I really don't know where to start." Maya muttered, looking at the ground.

"Huh... can we sit?" he quickly asked, looking at the small couch.

Nodding, the woman sat first and watched him settle by her side.

"You look well." she said in Japanese for the first time with a gentle smile.

"No, I don't. I barely slept."

"And you have questions."

"Of course I do, Maya..." he was about to raise his voice but still held it together as he thought of the small girl in the adjacent room

"Yeah. And I know what the first one is."

"You know... at the club, when I saw her skate I tried to reason that it couldn't be... there was no way you would be pregnant when you left. I thought to myself that the girl had to be younger."

"But then you asked her age."

"You heard that?"

"Yeah."

"I need to know for sure... I feel like I know the answer but..."

"You need to hear me say it. So, yes, she's yours. You deserve to know that."

Yuzuru started into the face of this woman, the mother of his child, and tried to reason that she was the one who broke up with him, who said she didn't have feelings. Yet, he couldn't help but blame himself for the state of her life at that moment.

"Stop overthinking, Yuzuru. I still know you well enough to see when you do. Don't blame yourself"

"She's my child, of course I will blame myself."

"You didn't know..."

"You could've said something."

"I tried, your mom said you didn't want to see me."

That made his memory go back 6 years. He remembered that day. The doorbell had rang in his parent's house and he was there, he had been staying there to avoid her in the first place. Yuzuru remembered earing Maya pleading with his mother for help to talk with him.

Back then, he could've never thought that she wanted to tell him something like this but now? Now he felt even worse.

"Oh God, Maya..."

"It's alright."

"No, it isn't. I was there. I was a coward."

"I was a coward as well."

"What do you mean?"

"I came to Canada. I could've told you the truth from the beginning but I was too scared."

"About the pregnancy?"

"No, I was never scared of my baby." Yuzuru looked confused but Maya gave him a reassuring smile. "Before I tell you this, I need to know... Are you with anyone? Girlfriend, fiancé, wife?"

"No."

"No?"

"No, Maya. I couldn't... after you... I was a mess."

It made her a bit sad to hear that, but there were things she had to focus on at that moment.

"Please turn your phone off, smartwatch too. I need to get some things from the bedroom."

Yuzuru was very confused but still did as asked. It didn't matter if he was supposed to be mad at this woman, she would always be his biggest weakness. Well... maybe now a smaller girl would take that place.

Maya came back to the room with a bunch of papers.

"Before I tell you anything, please know that even if my choices weren't always the best, they were always done with the best of intentions."

"Okay." he muttered weakly.

"Back then, after we got engaged and I went back to Tokyo, I started receiving these letters."

Maya never thought that the day would come when she would finally show these to him, but it seemed like fate, as Yuzu said, had intervened.

"Letters?"

She handed the papers to him and kept explaining.

"At first, I thought it was a silly joke but as I received more and more... I couldn't help but worry."

As Yuzuru ran his eyes through the papers that she was showing him, he quickly understood why. 

Maya allowed him to read each one carefully, with the attached pictures.

The amount of detail in the information described was crazy, even scary.

"This... this was before you broke up with me." he said looking at the dates "When we were fighting."

Maya nodded and pointed at one of the last letters, wordlessly making him look at the one letter that dictated their fate.

Yuzuru's eyes widened and Maya could swear she saw a tear fall on his face.

"I couldn't risk it, Yuzu. I saw the picture with you in bed and I freaked out."

"So you just did as they asked?"

"The plan wasn't to just let you go but I needed them to think that so I could look into whoever was behind everything."

"What happened?"

"The only conclusion I ever got to was how they did it." Maya pointed at his phone that was lying on the couch, turned off and discarded. "They bugged our devices and were listening to every conversation."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah."

"You... you did all of it for my safety?"

"Not just yours. A few weeks after we broke up, the symptoms started showing up and I found out about Kaiya."

"If they were after the relationship..."

"She was the one leverage you had, even if you broke my heart."

"Yes."

As Yuzuru processed all of the information in front of his eyes, he stared at Maya. He had judged her for so long, had hated her for years, and in the end, all that hate was the one thing that stopped him from seeing what was right in front of his eyes.

She had done it all for him.