This is the story of Ayame, a young artistic gymnast who, due to a stroke of fate, can no longer practise her sport. In search of a new purpose in life, she comes to Sendai from her home town of Sapporo by chance to work in the house of a famous fig...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The run-through rehearsal was due to start on time at 3:20 p.m. ... and was a complete mess at the beginning! Nothing worked...
At some point in the morning, the cooling system for the rink had broken down, which was pretty much the worst thing that could have happened! Nobody noticed it at first; it was only two hours before the start of the rehearsal that one of the in-house technicians discovered it and reacted immediately. Still, the ice wasn't quite ready yet, they had to wait at least another half hour before it would be passable.
The sound engineers reported that there was a problem with the connections, someone had changed something without permission and they now had to check all the cabling completely, but had been working on it for a while. So by the time the ice was ready, the sound should be ready to go again.
Last but not least, two costumes had disappeared! No one from the wardrobe staff could explain it... they were frantically searching the entire backstage area for them.
Yuzuru ruffled his hair, pissed off. This wasn't a good start at all! The first photos were to be taken today... no, that wasn't good at all. And he himself was ready to go and already in his first costume. Now he had to keep warm and couldn't do much else.
"Okay..." he growled. "Then, if there's no other way, we'll do the photos for the two numbers tomorrow. If worst comes to worst, I'll just go on the ice without the right costume!" he finally decided.
"I'm going back to the gym now! Please come and get me when everything is ready!" he said to Kentō-san, one of the two stage managers, and hurried off.
Ayame hadn't said anything because she could see how upset Yuzuru was and how hard he was trying to hide it from everyone and not lose his composure completely. He had made a decision now, so what else could she advise him?
She nodded to the stage managers and quietly followed Yuzuru into the gym. She didn't want to leave him alone. He seemed very nervous now, but tried not to let that show. But he couldn't fool her, so she stayed by his side.
They were alone in the gym. Yuzuru had already put his music in his ears, his cell phone, towel and water bottle put down and had gone straight to one of the fitness machines, which he was now starting to use almost manically.
Ayame watched him carefully, ready to react at any time if he needed anything.
Indeed... after a few minutes, he stopped maltreating the machine. Sweat was already standing out on his forehead. He let his arms hang limply and stared at the floor in front of him.
Ayame had got up from her seat and slowly approached him. There was something different about him...
"Yuzu?" she asked him cautiously. "Are you okay?"
He didn't turn to her immediately and stood there motionless for a while. Then he switched off the earphones and looked at her.
"Aya... is it going to be okay, what I'm going to do?" He suddenly looked so small and completely insecure. The confident Yuzuru of the last few days had disappeared. "Why are so many mistakes happening today? Is this a bad omen?"
