"So what have the last ten years been like?"

It's 8am and I am lying awake thinking about the question a reporter posed to me the day before. We were in a hotel lobby in Japan, me nervously downing tea and him only half-heartedly listening, the rest of his attention focussed on making sure his voice recorder was working. I gave him the usual: fun, exhausting, rewarding, definitely rewarding, can't wait to get back out there, etc etc etc. It's not that none of that is true, it has been all of those things and I'm looking forward to the new season starting. But there's nothing like a ten year anniversary to get a guy doing some soul searching.

Ten years. Where are they now? - asks every news outlet with a painfully old photo of us as teenagers appearing on screen. On the face of it we're pretty much exactly where we were ten years ago: in the Bladebreakers. It hasn't always been the case, but - and fans will argue about this until the cows come home - we will always consider ourselves Bladebreakers even when competing in other teams. I competed with my old team from back home a few times, and the others have all competed elsewhere. The Bladebreakers even had a different make up for one season when Max hurt his back. It was a frightening accident, and makes me never want to try skiing, but despite the one year's enforced rest he was fine in the end. It left a hole on the team though and with Daichi leading up his own team and the championships looming, we had to really scramble to find someone. In the end we took on Mystel, who was amazing considering he was thrown into our team at the last minute. In our tenth anniversary year though we're back to the original foursome. Tyson, Max, Kai and myself, with Kenny running a now much more sophisticated support team for us.

I guess the question is also where are we all now in our lives. What have the last ten years of our lives been like? That would take slightly longer to breakdown. I didn't bother for the reporter yesterday, just fed him the same line as I have all the others. But it's got me feeling all introspective and nostalgic. Ten years, after all, is a long time to look back on.

Now we're all ten years older, we're all pretty much mid-twenties, Kai the oldest about to turn 27 and Max the youngest at 23. Max has…grown up. He's still a whacky teenager between the ears sometimes but boy did he shoot up and fill out. No longer scrawny or short, he's finally grown into that explosion of hair he always has. He's now very good at running his hands through it and making anyone in a 20 yard radius feel faint. He still loves Tyson and Beyblading and mayonnaise matched with inappropriate foods, but now some more of his level headedness has come out. He went through a bad patch around his 20th birthday, when his reunited parents once again decided to split up and never speak to each other again. That really hurt him, and he suffered worse than when they had originally divorced. Nothing like a personal crisis to send your professional career into turmoil. In the end it was a mixture of tough love (Kai and myself), late night drinking sessions and heart to hearts (Tyson, with a bit of me thrown in there too) and cold hard facts about his place in the team based on his performance (Kenny), with some fatherly advice thrown in by Ken and Hiro. He got through it, and he's a better man and blader for it, but he still doesn't like to talk about (or even to) his parents. And you know I said that he has aged well? Well he's currently dating a Victoria's Secret model. Go figure. She's brilliant for him, actually. She's energetic and a bit crazy - she is the one who was on the black run with him when he had the skiing accident - and is a hugely warm person. Even Kai likes her, and Kai has very little patience for most of the human race. She and Max go great together, and my god do they look good together. I haven't seen Max in person in a few months, but the last time I saw a picture of him was one snapped of him leaving a Kardashian's birthday party with his girlfriend Sophia and the Hadid sisters. Even I know who all those people are, and I am terrible at popular culture.

Tyson is as Tyson was. He's still everyone's best friend, still the life and soul. He took it a little too far a few years: too much partying, falling out of clubs at 3am and having too much of a good time. At first we didn't bother; he was young and famous, at the top of his game, and enjoying himself. It never affected his blading either, so it didn't seem like an issue. But after that championship things got a little hairier. Max rang me to say he was worried Tyson was partying too hard and might do something he regretted. We're not sure that drugs was involved, he certainly never did anything too wild, but he was saying the wrong things to the wrong people, getting thrown out of clubs for drunken behaviour and not keeping up with the training that's required of us even in the off season. We didn't know what to say to him, but we knew that something must be wrong if Max all the way in America could sense something was off. We hadn't seen Tyson in a couple of weeks despite living in the same country, so we offered to meet him for dinner. Let's just say it ended with him standing us up and Kai dragging him out of a club by the scruff of his neck at 1am. Once he'd slept off the hangover he apologised, and later admitted that he had been starting to frighten himself. He couldn't remember a good chunk of one week the month before. It frightened him enough to stop it in his tracks, but he'd put the BBA through a lot of effort to keep his shenanigans under wraps. I think they've forgiven him, considering the sheer amount of money he makes them. Aside from that, he's exactly as you'd imagine him. Still as loud, still as brash, still as kind hearted. He and Hilary have always been on-and-off, though right now it's in the off position. He's been busy this off season with sponsorships coming out of his ears, but then again that boy has never really been one to relax and kick back.

Speaking of people who can't kick back and relax, Kenny is still a big chunk of the brains behind our operation. In the off season he develops algorithms and artificial intelligence solutions for the BBA (I don't know what either of those two things are, by the way, I just repeat what he tells me) and then when the season starts he becomes our data man once again. Kenny. Is. Married. Yeah, let that sink in. His wife's name is Akari, and she's a very sweet engineer at BBA and they met all the way back when they were 17. They got married two years ago, in a really lovely ceremony in her home town in a remote and stunning part of Japan. We were all there, including most of the Beyblading world, and it was in the off-season so we were able to rent a house and stay there for two weeks around the wedding for a holiday. Every time Kenny sends me a message out of the blue I am convinced he's telling me Akari is pregnant, but nothing so far. I tease him that he'll be the first father of the team, but he has now taken to teasing me that I'll be the next one to get married. We'll see, I say with a roll of my eyes, whilst Max and Tyson find photos of ridiculous wedding dresses on their phone or sing 'hear comes the groom'. Nothing good comes from them singing.

And who would I be marrying? Well that's certainly something that's changed since we first got together as a team. Kai and I are together. Yes, Mr Grump himself. We've been together since I was 18, and Kai had just turned 20. It had been a gruelling, emotional championship that year. There was a lot of talk in the press that we had lost our magic. I felt like I had hit a ceiling with my skills and I was struggling. After all I was coming out of adolescence and my body wasn't quite as willing to ping back after every injury or exhausting match. I was having to work harder to keep my endurance up, my shoulder was killing me - it later turned out I needed surgery - and I hated the feeling of letting everyone down. And every time I had needed a person to talk to, or someone to just be with without my brain whirring, Kai was there. He even shared his own worries. Having turned 20 he had suddenly come into his inheritance, but his Grandfather was contesting it from jail. It was hard enough having to whip us into shape, perform in the championship himself, and field a thousand and one calls from lawyers. We leant on each other in that year more than we ever had and once it was all over and we had a bit too much to drink at the end of season party, we admitted that maybe we were more than just friends. After that we just fell into being one another's boyfriends and we haven't looked back. We have our ups and downs, like any couple, and sometimes Kai wants to make me pull my hair out. But I love him anyway, and he loves me despite my flaws, and it works. It just does. So that's almost six years of dating, and that's why the team hear wedding bells chime, even if we don't. I don't want to get married just yet, and I'm not even sure I want to get married at all. I love Kai more than anything. Not sure what a piece of people and a big party will demonstrate more than our everyday lives.

And how is Kai? Well he's currently almost naked and lying in bed next to me, so let me tell you. He's great. He had a late, second growth spurt and is now taller than me by quite a few inches. He cut his hair shorter but the colour is still the same two-tone. He's lost the face paint but he has the same shark fins tattooed on his side, right on his ribs. He's got a few tattoos actually. There's a shaded one of Dranzer on his shoulder, done so beautifully I do find myself admiring it quite frequently. He also has one on his arm, right on the bicep: the geometric outline of a wolf howling at the moon. Why? Because he lost a bet to Tala and that was his punishment. I was pissed off at him for a while, not liking that Kai would actually scar his body with something so permanent just because he lost a bet to his best friend. Idiot. But once I got a good look at it, I actually didn't mind. He got it from his usual guy, who is beautifully skilled in his art and has a price tag to match, so it was nicely done. And although Tala would have seen it as a mocking gesture of him having won something over Kai, I think it's quite sweet that Kai's got something akin to his best friend on his arm. I told him that and his face sank. It was pretty funny.

In terms of blading, he's been taking more and more of a back seat with the Bladebreakers. He's always our coach on top of our teammate, and now I think he feels he's coming to the end of the road with competing. He's said it a few times, and I've told him to think it over and not rush into it. But I get the feeling this 10th year anniversary championship will be his last. Just like I've had problems with my shoulder, he has problems with his wrist and back. After so many years of competing it takes a toll on your body.

Outside of us and blading, his personal life got…interesting about 18 months ago, in the shape of his father who appeared out of nowhere like a ghostly spectre. He started by writing letters which Kai ignored. They'd communicated all this time only through lawyers and only when needed, but now Kai's grandfather was ailing in hospital after a (much deserved) heart attack in jail. Not the best time for Kai's father to suddenly try to step back into Kai's life. Which is a good thing as turns out Alexei Hiwatari is as manipulative as they come. He wants the inheritance that Kai battled so hard to get from Voltaire, that's the long and short of it, and Kai doesn't want to give him a cent. I'm not surprised, seeing as this is the man who wilfully left his small son with his monster of a father, and from what Kai says he was hardly a warm and loving man before the fact. Plus Alexei is dangling the identity of Kai's mother over his head, reeling him in with promises of telling him the whole story then whipping the rug out from under him when Kai refuses to play ball. It's a bruising battle of wills and we're both pretty sick of it. This is one of the reasons we chose Japan over Russia - there's no other Hiwataris running around ready to make life miserable.

You might be surprised to hear that our home life in Japan is really quite domesticated. We share a house just outside Tokyo, and two cats Tiger and Leo. The cats were a birthday present to Kai from me, and he is totally besotted with them - sometimes even more than me I swear - although no-one would ever be allowed to know. We travel when on the circuit but our house is our home, and our bed is the best place in the world. Especially when Kai is lying in it with just his boxers on.

So that pretty much just takes us up to me. Aside from being with Kai, things are the same for me. I blade, I train, eat, sleep, repeat. I miss my village. I haven't been back in 3 years, not since I finally told them about me and Kai. Lee and Maria knew, and although it took them sometime to come to terms with it, they were understanding. Lee had gone back to the village about 5 years ago, bowing out of the competitive circuit and training kids from the towns and villages nearby. Mariah went to live in Shanghai and got a job in a big PR agency. She loves it, and her family like that she's settled down. She'll be married soon I'm sure. The expectation probably was that no matter how long I was away and who I met, I would always come back home too. They knew my blading would keep me away, keep me busy, and introduce me to the outside world. But the hope was always there that it wouldn't affect me, that I wouldn't want to stay. Unfortunately they're wrong, and I finally told them one of the biggest reasons a few years ago. There wasn't a lot of talking after that. Lee became a mediator, and he did a good job, but I know my parents. They aren't interested in a son who won't come back home. They want a son who, no matter how long he was away and how much he enjoyed himself, comes back in the end to raise a family. It doesn't really help my guilt that I am their only child. My Dad struggles with it especially. He was never really a very emotive guy, quite closed off and hard to talk to….wait, am I dating my father? OK, I'll circle back to that later. Anyway, he hasn't taken the news very well. My Mum just wants me to be happy and I know she is just waiting and hoping I'll see the light. It makes it difficult to go back. I've met her a few times in the biggest town a few hours from our village. We shopped and ate and caught up, but it was difficult when I was skirting any mention of Kai or our lives together, and she didn't want to talk about their disappointment in me. I'd love to take Kai back to my village and show him where I grew up, but it's just not going to be possible for the foreseeable future. We go to Shanghai pretty frequently for tournaments, and one year we took a long weekend in the mountains to do some more training. It was beautiful up there and although about 5 hours from my home, I was able to give Kai a feel of what my upbringing had been like when we wandered around local villages and swam in the waterfalls. It wasn't the same, but it was nearly there. I know Kai's interest in my childhood is piqued, but it'll do for now.

Anyway. It's way past 8am now and I'm already behind on everything I had planned to do today.

"Kai. We have to get up. They'll be here soon."

I run a hand down his back, trying to shake all the nostalgia from my mind.

"Kai."

I trace the Dranzer on his shoulder blade for a little with my fingers until he says, in a voice that makes him sound more awake than I know he is, "I know."

"Want me to make breakfast?"

"I'll get up."

Tiger starts to scratch at the bedroom door. They were shut out because little cats didn't need to see what was going on in our bedroom after dark last night. I know it's Tiger outside because he is the constantly hungry, mouthy one of the two.

"He's going to scratch that door down one day."

Kai finally moves and rolls onto his back, stretching out and kicking back the last of the covers. There's the little dips of his hip bones down into his boxers that he fell asleep in last night and I kiss it, because it's on my list of Top 10 Favourite Parts of Kai Hiwatari's Body.

"You don't feed him enough at night."

"What?! I do. He'll get fat if he eats any more." I nip him on the stomach with my slightly-sharper-than-average teeth. Kai raises an eyebrow without even a wince and rolls off the bed to go to the bathroom.

"You spoil those cats!" I shout after him. He slams the door shut in response. It's true, he does. He acts like he doesn't care about much in this world but if someone tried to harm those cats he'd skin them alive. And he does overfeed Tiger. I'm pretty sure the person who sold me the cats screwed me over and gave me one kitten and some sort of lynx-like creature's baby instead. Leo is a normal sized, black cat, whippet thin and a bit anxious. He loves to sleep on laps - especially Kai's - and hides for days on end around the house in weird places. Tiger is built like a rhino and kills anything that moves. He likes play fighting and sitting on your shoulders which gets very, very painful considering his weight. He's not fat as such, just…huge.

I pull a t-shirt on and pad downstairs, barefoot and just in my soft pyjama bottoms. The light is cascading in through the kitchen windows. We forgot to pull down the shutters, and our dinner is still not tidied away from the top. We really did hurry to bed. I blame the vodka cocktail Kai made us. Vodka makes me frisky. Oh great, that means Tiger will have been eating beef stew last night off the counter. How is he still hungry now then? Speaking of Tiger, he is on my feet the minute I stand still trying to clear away our dinner. Leo meows at me from the top of the fridge.

"Why are you up there? Come on, I'll feed you."

I feed them there awful stinky cat food in the living room and then try to tidy up. We have guests coming, after all. All of the Bladebreakers and, much to everyone's delight, Tala and Bryan. They were not happy once they were told that the Bladebreakers would also be crashing at ours, but what were we supposed to do? Yes the demonic duo asked us first, but we couldn't say no to the rest of our team wanting to stay too. Tyson's house is too far out and Kenny might be in the throes of domestic bliss but they only have a two bedroom house on the other side of Tokyo. Hardly the place to accommodate lots of visiting friends. Plus, I miss the guys. I always start to get fractious towards the end of the off-season and want to be around a big group of people again. Kai could go years without seeing another human being probably, but although he won't admit it he doesn't mind having everyone around. If anything it gives him people to boss around other than me and the cats.

I go back into the kitchen and keep on scraping plates. The crashing and banging is why my usual cat-light reflexes don't pick up the sound of someone walking into the room behind me until they say: "Could you make any more noise first thing in the morning?"

The voice isn't Kai's, which explains why I pretty much throw the plate I am holding into the air in shock. I manage to catch it before I spin around and breathe out a long, frustrated breath through my teeth, "My god, Tala ,what the hell are you doing here?!"

Tala, who until now I thought wasn't arriving until this evening, is standing on the other side of the kitchen aisle in a tank top. I can't see his bottom half so I hope to god he is wearing something down below, and he's holding a mug in his hand. He gives me one of the icy stares that tells me he thinks I'm a moron. Thankfully after dating his best friend for 8 years I am pretty used to those.

"I'm learning how to do the splits," Tala said, totally deadpan, "What do you think I'm doing?"

He raises an eyebrow just like Kai does and moves towards me, mug in his fingertips. He pours himself a coffee out of the machine that I hadn't even noticed was brewing.

"When did you get here?" I ask, trying to wrestle my heartbeat back to safe levels.

"This morning about two thirty."

"How?"

"Through the front door."

"I didn't hear you!"

"Kai did."

He exits back out of the door that leads into the downstairs bedroom that he and Bryan always use when they stay. It's out of our way, has easy access to the kitchen and has an en-suite, so it ticks all of their anti social boxes. Fine by me, I don't need them on the other side of a wall whilst Kai and I are in bed together, and I really don't need to lie awake at night worrying about them sharing a bed on the other side of the wall. I catch a glimpse of Bryan's pale form splayed out on the bed, his arm dangling off the side, and then the door is shut.

Well, that went well. I am about to fly up the stairs to speak to Kai but he's suddenly at the doorway.

"Was that Tala?"

"Yes, as it turns out. When did they get there and why are they here already?"

"There was a storm in Moscow, so it was either get on an early flight or potentially get delayed a few days. They went early. They landed in Tokyo at 1am and they made their way here. I told you all of this this morning."

"What? No you didn't."

Kai narrows his eyes at me, "Rei, we had a whole conversation about it."

"When?"

"At midnight when I finally got the message from Tala. And then when the doorbell went because they'd arrived."

"Was I awake?"

"I thought so. You sounded it."

Ok, well that's a bit of a shock. How can something go on in the house like two new people arriving and I sleep-talk my way through it?

"Well I wasn't. I don't remember any of this."

Kai lifts a hand to the back of my head and scratches at the base of my neck, the place that makes me purr, "It's fine. I dealt with it. Is Tala awake?"

"He came to get what looked like his second cup of coffee of the day. I saw Bryan was fast asleep in their bed still."

"They had a rough flight."

And Bryan gets hideously travel sick. That's something I never would know unless I was dating Kai, one of the few friends Bryan has on this planet. Kai removes his hand and pours us both a cup of coffee, something I sorely needed to restart my heart. I check my phone, just in case any of our other guests might suddenly show up early. The Bladebreakers group whatsapp was chock full of messages, but none that caused any concern. Max had boarded his flight in Los Angeles for Tokyo despite almost missing it, which was not unusual for the scatty brained American. Tyson was doing last minute packing this morning. He is only a half an hour train ride away and it's still too much to ask Tyson to be prepared. Kenny was banging on about a new algorithm he wanted to show us and then had let slip that Tala and Bryan were staying. I should have known. The rest of the messages were Max and Tyson complaining. Max must have been on a plane with wifi in first class. I send a message telling them there's not much they can do about it, it'll be fun anyway. I get a few grumbling responses back but I know they'll get over it once they arrive.

I watch as Kai doesn't bother to knock on our guests' bedroom door. Either he has superhuman hearing (I've got a suspicion he has), or he is under no illusion what travel sickness can do to his former teammate. I avert my eyes just in case he's got this wrong, but I don't hear any admonishments. I finally take a peek and Kai has arranged himself on Tala's side of the bed and is looking down coolly at the unconscious Bryan. Tala must be somewhere else in the room because the en-suite beyond the bedroom is dark and I can hear him speaking to Kai, loudly and in Russian. I'd like to say that after 6 years of dating that I've dedicated my spare time to learning the native language of the love of my life. It's not true though. I can speak my native Chinese, English, very good Japanese, and that is it for me. I can understand more than I can speak: I can only say hello, goodbye, thank you, and 'no', but I understand when Tala is talking shit about me or giving Bryan a hard time for some indiscretion. I can also understand a little bit of dirty talk, thanks to Kai. One of these days I will find a tutor, learn in secret, then surprise Kai. I hope. I doubt it, but I can dream.

I leave the three of them to catch up and start digging through the kitchen for breakfast. I have 6 hours until everyone arrives, to brace myself for the onslaught of my team signally the frantic year ahead, the next championship and all the craziness that comes with it. I can't help but smile into the fridge as I shuffle through potential options for breakfast. Ten years, and I've yet to lose my love of the start of a new year in the Beyblading calendar.