Unexpected ▪ Yuri On Ice

Can I exist?

YK

They say, when you loose your other half you lose yourself. You live for them, breathe for them, smile for them, exist for them. Once they are gone. You are gone too.

But I haven't lost Victor, not in the semi literal way. He isn't buried under gravel and mud and decaying nature. He’s close, he breathes, I could still go to him, talk to him, touch him, if I so wished. I cast myself away from him, I decided to walk away. So why do I still feel dead? Why do I feel without purpose and direction and a reason to smile?

It isn't fair.

When I walk through my front door I can finally stop walking. And I do. Keys slip from my hand, hitting the ground too loudly as I push the door closed with my back and slide, slide until my body is deadweight on the floor, all its kinetic energy flittering away. Exhaling deeply, I stare far, far away; past the sofa, past the wall, past the street, looking directly at nowhere.

It hurts. My chest. Everything but nothing. It hurts but it all feels so numb, so distant.

What happens now? What do I do? What is my use?

I sniff, rub the remaining tears from my eyes too roughly, and try to get my head straight. I can't stay dead. I can’t decay to a point of no return. I made a choice, I’m not going to let it reduce me to ash because I made the right choice. If I had stayed it’d only be worse down the line, just as it was with Carson. I can't afford any more anxiety, any depression. I can’t.

Before him, what was I before the sun rose into the clouded sky? It's so hard to think of a time before that, all the memories seem like fillers, fillers between leaving the fallen angel and accepting the dazzling sun. I see them all in black and white, through a grainy filter, existing but unclear, unimportant. What made me smile then?

The feeling of understanding, that made me smile. Gymnastics, training with the guys, getting new moves, higher difficulties, that made me happy. Movies, comics, the world of fantasy, that made me happy. Pichit. Pichit made me happy, with his talented eyebrows, his famous suspicious grins, his pressing desire for selfies, the way he’d always make me laugh, even at the lowest points.

I smile to myself, happy it feels natural, not pressed, like my chest is. I call him. He picks up after three rings.

“Hi” I whisper, just about holding back the cracking in the tone. Pichit will make everything alright, he’s done it before, effortlessly, he will do it again.

“Hey! where are you guys? We need you”

You guys

Victor and I? Is that how we’re seen, as a unit? What am I without my other half?

I’ve ripped myself in half and all i can see now is the searing pain, images of our front room warping in my eyes.

“Yuuri? Yuuri are you alright? Are you crying?”