𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧, young royals

Chapter 29: Simon

Alps, Novo Amor

29: Simon

11:39pm.  It was thursday night.

Tomorrow was our last exam day before the third-year's graduation ceremony, the end-of-year's ball, and summer break.  We should've been studying, really, but that's all we'd been doing for the past weeks, and we were too tired to keep going, yet we weren't sleepy enough to go to bed so soon.

So I took him to the ice rink in Bjästad.  It was closed at this hour of the night—closed, but never locked.  We could be alone.

I watched him tie his skates, the two strings of his grey hoodie dangling out in front of him.

Needless to say, he looked worn-out. It had been a rough week for both of us, and the finals could only make it worse.

The air was crisp and cold in the arena, unlike the one that was hot and suffocating outside. 

In the summer, this place was the vestige of winter.  Because time didn't exist here.  Always the same light, always the same temperature, always the same scene.  I thought we might like to be trapped in a timeless place, too.

"I didn't know you skated," said Wilhelm, tugging off the guards on his blades.

I shrugged.  "Mom took us here a lot when we were kids.  Sara wanted to be a figure skater, but that was before she found out about horse riding."

He glanced up at me.

"I was in a hockey team."

I smiled.  "Were you really?"

Wilhelm nodded.  "Erik was, too, and I wanted to do everything like him.  But it wasn't my thing."

We went into the ring and let our feet glide on the ice.  It had been a few years since I'd skated, but it's sort of like walking or talking, really—you don't just forget how it's done.  With each turn, I felt my blades bite into the frost, and my body responded on its own.

Wilhelm's feet carried him on the farther side of the rink, testing out how much he remembered.

He looked out of a movie.  I saw him in black and white, sailing on the ice, head in a mist, eyes sullen and cheeks frost-bitten.  I was vehemently reminded of the first time I saw him. Really saw him.

His feet moved effortlessly yet smoothly.

I chased after him.

The sound of steel scraping ice sounded strangely like a conversation between just us. Something nostalgic, like remote laughter in the back of an empty room and the chime of piano keys. Something pure and short-lived.

Wilhelm circled the ring once before spinning on his blades to face me, crossing his feet behind himself as he began to skate backward.  Away from me. Out of reach. Like the breeze that slips through my fingers, I couldn't catch him, couldn't hold him.  He was pulling away, yet an invisible thread kept heaving me to him.

Our eyes locked, 6 feet away from each other, and I picked up my speed, hitting the ice harder to outpace him.

He watched me skate past him, and we both spun around to face each other again. Suddenly, the roles were reversed. I skated backward, blades kissing the ice roughly with each stroke.  Away from him. Realization struck, and he started to chase after me.

With each push he made in my direction, I curved away, and he got more and more desperate to reach me.  When he got too close, I whirled around and abruptly cut into the centre of the ring.