Figure skating is a dance, where you curve your body to the wind singing in your ears as you glide across the ice. Figure skating is an imitation, as you step and skip and spin like a snowflake in its graceful descent through the air. Figure skating is an art, and it is the only way he knows how to paint a masterpiece with.
He remembers the winter evenings in the countryside, with only starlight and firefly light illuminating the small pond behind the cottage. With his fingers trembling from the biting cold, he laces up the pair of leather homemade skates he got on his previous birthday. He steps onto the ice and its like he takes off into the darkness. Even gravity bows to the little prince on ice and he soars in a way that would make an angel hide his wings in shame.
Fast forward and suddenly he doesn't know where he is anymore. The ice underneath his brand-new $800 skates feels different. It's cold- all ice is cold- but it's dead. When he takes a experimental glide, he doesn't glide. This isn't skating, it's just making his way across a slippery surface with overpriced bladed shoes. It's feels wrong, but when he tells that to the man who brought him to the city, it is shrugged off as the farfetched musings of a child.
He is put into training. Every day, every minute, every second, he is made to contort himself and push himself off the ice. He spins until he gets dizzy and collapses, but then he gets up and spins even more. It's a nightmare and the rink becomes a grave of lost childhood dreams. Soon, the magic of a little pond illuminated by stars and fireflies is swallowed up by fluorescent lights and the heartless pursuit of perfection.
When the curtains rise on him, he dazzles. With hair like moonlight-kissed snow and eyes like the colour of the mid-winter sky, he looks like he was born to be on the ice. He makes a stadium's worth of jaws drop when he executes a quadruple flip, something even seasoned professionals have difficulty doing, in his junior debut. With one program, he becomes a hero that brings the nation to its knees in awe.
He becomes who the nation wants him to be. A prodigy who never ceases to amaze, a smooth-talking flirt to cater to his female (and male?) fans. In time, he gets hooked on the exhilaration of surprising everyone and the pleasure of seeing girls swoon at the kisses he blow. These traits become his actual personality. But there are also parts of him that he keeps for himself. He lets himself be air-headed, be selfish, be free-spirited. It's the only way for a coward like him to stay even a little true to himself. He can't stand the thought of losing himself completely just to please everyone else. The dead child in him says 'No' and it is the one time he listens.
The seasons go by quickly. He grows his hair out and cuts it short again. A poodle catches his eye while he passes by a pet shop and he gets it and names it after a hometown he has forgotten. (Almost.) The only thing that remains constant are the medals and trophies- they accumulate in the apartment that is more pit stop than home. He is only there to sleep and play with Makkachin, then he is back on the rink again.
It's almost ironic how although he has stopped loving it, it's the only thing he has. He has spent his whole life skating and he knows he will be nothing without it.
He is nearing the end of his senior career and he knows time is running out. Figure skaters can only skate for so long. He tries to fight it by choreographing even more difficult programmes, pushing himself until he almost breaks. But he feels the strain in his knees when he lands, sees his youth slip away in his thinning hair. The end of his reign is upon him, like a tidal wave waiting to crash.
At 27, after more than a decade of seeing people literally worship him, he is surprised when the young Asian male turns away from him after the Grand Prix Final. It takes him too long to realise that the male is Katsuki Yuri, who was in the same bracket as him. For someone who has never tasted the bitterness of defeat since the very beginning of his career, he feels Japanese-Yuri's dejection like a tangible thing as he watches the young man turn and walk away with his head hung low. It almost hurts and for a brief second, he is reminded of a young child at ten and the moment he decided that it was too hard to continue to love skating.
It's a year later when he sees Katsuki Yuri again and it's in the cover of his 'Stay Close to Me' free program. Yuri mimics his program so closely, but he's projecting an entirely different aura. He can see Yuri's distress, crying out for someone to bring him out of his slump and find his passion for figure skating again.
He has always been kind by nature. That is why he promises to choreograph a program for Yuri Plisetsky in his senior debut, tells Christophe that he will be looking out for him in the World Championship. It is the reason why now, he decides to help Katsuki Yuri.
If two lost people come together, will they find their way?
Viktor Nikiforov decides to find out.