PRESTO

ten. "metamorphosis."

Blank slate.

Yui likes being first. First to skate, first on the podium, first on the ranking charts in school. And first onstage. 

But: "Ms. Akaashi? Would you like to walk with us?" 

Yui doesn't know the name of the girl in front of her. But she knows that the chance to truly connect won't come again. Call her a coward, but everything Yui has always came to her on its own. Years of rejecting interaction with the members of her orchestra have taken its toll, she realizes. They hesitate to talk with her now that the awe is gone. 

One day you'll realize you're burning. 

Yui smiles, hesitantly and gets up. The girl seemingly slumps in disappointment.

"Sure," Yui says.

"I'll just g—" The brunette's head snaps towards her. "What?"

Yui blinks then smiles again. "I said yes. Yes, I will walk with you." 

Distantly, she can hear kaa-chan's proud laughter and her shrill of 'oh my daughter's all grown up now'. Picture tou-san's chuckle and the crinkle of newspaper, long legs crossed and tucked beneath the kitchen wood made of cherry wood. There is the scent of coconut in the air from her and her mother's shampoo with a whiff Chanel Nº19 Poudré Tsumori Akaashi adored alongside the freshly ground coffee beans that were the pride of Eugene Akaashi. 

"R-really?" The girl lights up and hushed whispers are murmured. A few others rise and ask the same thing, Yui is more than happy to comply although her stomach twists into knots as she thinks of going on stage with them. Yui isn't sure when the narcissism started, but she knows how to hide it well enough so that she had a better approval rating than bitches who could work better off the ice than on it. But it's hard to agree that her way had been wrong. Only now does Yui realize that all of the facades she put up — mean, bitchy, cynical, narcissistic, prodigy, genius had always been a way to make sure she fit in, to make sure she never lost that spotlight. 

For all the memories she has with her parents, Tsumori and Eugene weren't the best of parents. It wasn't that they were bad people. But being disillusioned and disconnected geniuses, they... Didn't know the proper way to love. They simply didn't care as much as the parents of her elementary and middle school classmates did, the ones who had envied Yui when she bragged about how she got to stay up until four AM, eat a carton of ice cream for dinner and get whatever she wanted. The only reason she stopped eating junk food for every meal was that of her need to win, not that her parents finally realized the importance of eating healthy meals. Yui knows that they did but also knows that they neglected to teach her. 

That was why she had clung so hard to Viktor. They had become so... Just so used to each other that they hesitated to adapt to anything else. They were so attached to another because of their similarities that they simply couldn't exist on their own. It wasn't that Yui was the sun to Viktor's moon. No, they were the tyrannical night skies who sought the same stars, darkness of the exact same shade. Darkness was free to roam in darkness, but what was the darkness without the sun and the stars? Yui took the stars when she left — she left at the height of her power, in blinding camera flashes and weeks of reruns on sports channels. Viktor is the sun, still alight, but burning amidst the candlelights that become dimmer and dimmer as the time went. 

Without each other, things simply... Weren't right. 

And Viktor had loved her— In his own way. At some point, some time. And that was why— The press's questions, the nosy reporters: "Will you be getting back together?" "Why haven't you pursued someone else?" "What made Yui Akaashi so special?" "What did you like about Viktor Nikiforov?"