PRESTO

seven. "the path of loneliness."

Sometimes Yui wished time would stop. Stop or rewind.

Fame was exhausting. If she could go back and change anything, she would've chosen not to become the person she is today. Maybe she would've even chosen to set her parents free by getting angry at them when they encouraged her to pursue her passion.

Her youth before fame seemed like a blur in the black and white and the vibrant shades of her life now. She remembers the days acing high school in Canada with the best friends whose names she no longer remembers, the days she used to complain at getting up before seven-o'clock and when her mother used to make dinner for her and her father admonish her for not sleeping before ten-thirty.

"Chicara does not accept those who do not fight for their victory."

Her sensei's words echo. They were harsh, but somewhere in the half-drunken state Yui was always in. She knew he was right.

The sins of Gods were that they were arrogant. Arrogance became their downfall.

"It doesn't have to be yours," were the words that her teacher didn't say.

Did she want it to be?

Yui closes her eyes and asks herself the endless questions.

* * *

She goes to Russia for the Rostelecom Cup. Viktor is there, he greets her with a smile and nothing more, she didn't find herself missing him, either.

Yui takes her selfies with Viktor, still the same smile, still the same smirk and glint. But after that skate: they seem to mean less. Their last dance seemed to have broken off any pretences that they used to hold.

And Yui just finds herself unfeeling of it all — an unfeeling, calm state that was akin to drowning. The initial fire Viktor set has gone out and Yui does not attempt to fuel it further or reset it. And when Ivana Serbryakov asks her why she showed up on the ex-Olympic gold medalist's footsteps of all places, Yui just says—

"Because this sort of collateral damage isn't fun anymore."

So Ivana lets her in with her usual scowl, so different from the triumphant, feminist aura of her in her days of past glory.

Yui doesn't think she recognizes herself, either.

You've met a terrible fate, haven't you?

* * *

That night, she curls in the linen blankets and remembers the foreign nickname her mother used to call her, the loneliness in her chest grows, and the heat behind her eyes burn.

* * *

When she walks into the skating rink the next day, her chin is still held high and her visage unreadable. But Yui feels the gentle waves of exhaustion behind her eyelids and the weariness in her bones. The nips she fires at Yuuri are habitual and things she no longer needed thinking to do. Her life is no longer hers, and all she sees are through the looking glass.

She is like a mixtape that day: hot and cold and again. There is no in between: one moment she's sulking with Minako, the next she's in a corner.

Yui doesn't feel the stares and whispers her former friends and rivals whisper behind her back. She was still one of them, despite everything. Mind full of brilliance, path glorious and still every inch ignorant of the world around her.

Her hand shakes when she grips the handle of the bathroom door as she exits.

She keeps walking.

She has to keep walking.

* * *

"How long are you going to keep standing there?"