The Shanghai Dragon Returns to China
Following his graduation in December from a university in Detroit, Michigan, short track speed skater Yuan He Long returned to China and has resumed training in Shenyang.
Years ago, Yuan baffled Chinese skating officials when he expressed his desire for an American education but to continue representing China in short track speed skating. Such an act was unprecedented, as almost every speed skater who pursued higher education did so at an institution close to a venue located within their country. Yuan chose to study in Detroit, which lacks a proper speed skating venue like those found in China. Many were worried this decision would hinder Yuan's performance, but his victories following his move to Detroit put such concerns to rest.
While he studied and trained in Detroit, Yuan found love in Japanese ladies' singles figure skater Yūri Katsuki, with whom he graduated in December. Fans and followers have described Yuan and Katsuki as "star-crossed lovers", given their individual skating disciplines. Unlike Yuan, Katsuki stayed in Detroit, skating under Celestino Cialdini. As of late December, the two remain in a relationship.
{HE'S BACK! #shanghaidragon #aherocomeshome}
{Our hero has come home! #yuan he long #shanghaidragon #aherocomeshome}
{His girlfriend is so pretty! #yuan he long #yuri katsuki}
{How did He Long manage to get a figure skater for a girlfriend? #ASpeedSkaterAndAFigureSkater? #inconceivable}
{I ship them #yuan he long #katsuki yuri #yutsuki #loveonice}
{ikr! they look so cute with each other! #yutsuki #perfect #relationshipgoals}
{They should break up}
{...what? #protectyutsuki #youaredead}
Detroit, Michigan
Yūri woke to the sound of her phone ringing loudly. She felt around for her glasses on her desk and slipped them on, blinking at the caller ID of the culprit. She barely registered the name before she swiped the screen and held her phone up to her ear. "Hello?"
"Yūri Katsuki, do you even know what time it is?" A girl's voice boomed.
Yūri immediately paled as she checked her phone. Upon seeing the time and confirming that yes, she was supposed to be at the skating club right now, Yūri screeched as she abandoned her bed and raced through her room to get her skating gear and proper clothes on. Normally she would be out of classes and on her way to the rink but since her graduation in December, Yūri was able to catch up on all the hours of sleep that college deprived her of. Now she had to hurry, but Yūri doubted that Celestino would let her on the ice immediately. Most likely he would send her to the weight room for off-ice training.
"Thanks, Venus!" Yūri yelled into her phone as she shoved her shoes on.
"See you soon, Yūri!" the girl on the other end replied as Yūri shut the door behind her and hung up.
As she jogged as fast as she could to the skating club, Yūri reflected on all the steps she had taken to get here. Sometimes it was hard for Yūri to believe that five years ago, she left Japan and her family in Hasetsu to train at a top skating facility and attend college in America. The training was rigorous, the coursework demanding, and paying for her education was just a pain. Still, she wanted to be a world-class figure skater, high up there like Kim Yuna, Mao Asada, and Viktor Nikiforov.
After all, her dream to become a world-class figure started because of him.
Ever since she watched him win the Junior World Championships on that tiny TV set in her hometown's rink, she spent her most of her career chasing after him. Back then, she and her old rink mate Yuko even copied Viktor's old routines. Seeing as they were both girls, they couldn't copy everything—the difficulty for a woman to perform quad jumps frustrated Yūri to no end. Even though her attempts ended in failure each time, it didn't stop her from trying. She wanted to meet him on the same level, even though she couldn't skate in the same bracket. The best she could hope was to skate at the same competition.
So when the chance to train with a top figure skating coach and still go to college came, she took it.
In the beginning, she had some regrets.
She regretted that her English wasn't perfect before she arrived. She regretted leaving her small hometown by the sea. Yūri had been overwhelmed by how large the world was outside of Hasetsu and she'd been homesick for a few weeks. She missed not having her friends and family close by to support her. She missed Victor—her little poodle that she'd named after her idol.
It helped that she wasn't the only foreigner in this country.
There was her old roommate and friend, a conservatory student named Ketty. She was another international student, one from Georgia. (Yūri had skated in the international scene long enough to recognize that Ketty was from the country, not the state in America. It was a fact that flew over most Americans' heads and made those outside America laugh at the country's ignorance.) But now that she was no longer a student, Yūri had no choice but to move out of the dorm she shared with Ketty and in with a fellow rink mate competing in pairs'.
There was Phichit, a fellow skater who came from Thailand to train under Celestino. They'd gotten along well and Phichit sometimes complained that he wanted her as a roommate instead of the speed skater he was assigned. The dorms were insistent on same-gender roommates, even if opposite genders were willing to take a blood oath to not mess around with each other.
And then there was Yuan He Long. Back then, he was one of many classmates that she barely interacted with, in and out of classes. Sometimes she saw him navigating the campus on roller blades or on a bike, but that was it.
Then one day, Phichit asked her to come with him to drop off something his roommate had forgotten to take with him to practice. At the time, she only knew that the Thai skater's roommate was, in Phichit's words, "a speed skating fashion snob" who occasionally got on his nerves. So when they reached the rink where his room mate trained, Yūri had fully expected to meet the self-centered skater Phichit made his room mate out to be. She did not expect to see her rollerblading classmate skating impossibly fast out on the ice like he was born on it.
He Long hadn't expected her either, since he lost the curve while turning and wiped out several skaters along with himself when he saw her.
When they got together, Phichit called He Long a "lucky bastard" and the nickname stuck ever since. Yūri wondered why the same never applied to her. To this day, Yūri still had no idea what drew He Long to her. They were practically opposites. He Long was a speed skater, Yūri was a figure skater. He grew up in bustling Shanghai, the largest city in China, and she was from a small seaside town in Japan. He had style, he had flair... he was confident. He didn't turn into a blubbering mess at the smallest things, like she did.
Yet the day he asked if she wanted to go on a date with him showed a very different side to the confident speed skater she knew then as a classmate.
Yūri sprinted up the steps of the skating club and through the doors. She panted as she stopped to catch her breath. It didn't occur to her that she should have moved to the side until someone collided with her from behind. She fell to the floor, followed by the culprit shortly after. "Phichit?"
"Sorry, Yūri!" Phichit apologized as he got up and helped pull Yūri to her feet. The Thai skater was a mess, like he'd just run from a cheetah or like He Long had skated rings around him. "I overslept and I tried to get here as fast as I could and now Ciao Ciao's going to lay into us!"
Celestino didn't lay into them like Phichit was afraid of. He did, however, assign them to the workout room for an hour before he would allow them on the ice like Yūri suspected he would. While Yūri rarely arrived late to practice, on the occasions that she did, Celestino sent her to the workout room every time. For an hour she would be alone, sometimes with another person who arrived late, in a room to lift weights as she tried to ignore the shame that threatened to devour her insides.
Yūri pulled a T-shirt over her head before she met with her fellow inmate in the weight room. Instead of finding him working out, she found him searching through his phone with a dark expression. "Did you fight with your new roommate again?" she asked, having recognized the look Phichit would get whenever he complained about his roommate. Before the changes that December brought, that had been He Long, and her now long-distance boyfriend used to irk Phichit in some way to make the Thai look irritated.
"That jerk didn't bother to wake me up when he came," Phichit grumbled, locking his phone. "He just came in and went back out immediately. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually want the Shanghai Jerk back."
"You know he has to get ready for Dresden and Dordrecht," Yūri reminded as she stretched. "He has to make up for missing Shanghai."
"What's there to make up for?" Phichit set his phone aside and joined her in their warm-up stretches. "Even if he gets on the podium in Dresden and Dordrecht, he might not be an overall winner when the World Cup is over."
Tutorial
"Let's pause the story for a sec, okay?" A chibi version of Phichit wearing a hamster costume said as a chibi version of Yūri brought out a chalkboard and began to write down several cities around the world under the heading 'Short Track Speed Skating World Cup'. "Now remember, kids! The only reason we know this much about speed skating is because the Shanghai jerk was my roommate and is Yūri's boyfriend, the lucky bastard," he added under his breath.
"But first you should know that there are two sports that are called speed skating," Chibi Yūri added, flipping the blackboard. On the opposite side were drawings of two ovals, one of which was much larger and engulfed the other. "The main difference is the size of the rink they skate on and how many skaters are allowed on the ice at a given time. The sport skated on a rink that's almost the size of an athletic track is more often referred to as speed skating, though it's also called long track speed skating. In long track, races are held in pairs. Its sister sport, short track speed skating, takes place on a smaller track that's typically the size of a hockey rink and more than two skaters can be found on the rink at once. Short track is what He Long competes in."
"But why are there two sports? Why doesn't Long compete in long track?" Chibi Phichit asked, pressing a small finger to his cheek. "Who knows, who cares! Anyway~The Short Track Speed Skating World Cup is a series of races held over several set distances measured in meters: 500, 1000, 1500, 3000, and then there's the team relay events. Three thousand meters for women while men skate five thousand. Skaters earn points at each competition and the one with the most points on a given distance at the end of the World Cup is the overall champion."
"The World Cup takes place in six different cities all over the world and speed skaters typically skate at all of the events, assuming they make it past the qualifying rounds" Chibi Yūri said, flipping the blackboard to show the names of the cities where the World Cup events were being held or were held already. "This year, we have Montreal, Toronto, Nagoya, Shanghai, Dresden, and Dordrecht. But He Long sprained his ankle in the middle of the World Cup and he ended up not being to return home to compete."
"He still could have gone to visit his family there," Chibi Phichit corrected. "But because the Shanghai event took place at the same time as the Grand Prix Final, the lucky bastard decided he'd rather surprise his lucky lady when she won bronze in Sochi!"
"Phichit!" Chibi Yūri squeaked.
Detroit Skating Club
"He Long wants to see the World Cup through to the end," Yūri said as she set up the leg press.
"Well—" Phichit jumped up and grabbed the pull-up bar. "—even if he's not the overall champion this season, he's still got a bunch of medals. If you ask me," he added as he hoisted his body up until his chin was over the bar, "anyone could do speed skating. All you have to do is be faster than everyone else and try not to cause a wipeout."
"The last time you said that, He Long skated rings around you," Yūri pointed out.
"Ugh." Phichit hung from the bar, a disgruntled expression on his face. "You just had to remind me, Yūri," he grumbled.
"A lot of work goes into maintaining that kind of speed. And you have to maneuver past everyone ahead of you to get the first position."
Phichit looked aghast at her words, like Yūri had just confessed that she committed murder. "Oh, no—tell me that jerk didn't corrupt you when we made that bet about who had the harder sport."
Before Yūri had gotten together with He Long, he and Phichit had a small disagreement about whose sport was more difficult. Yūri, of course, took her rink mate's side. The three of them ended up trying each other's sports for a while with their coaches' permissions. Phichit had laughed whenever He Long over-rotated, stepped out of, or flubbed his jumps at the Detroit Skating Club. He Long responded in kind by comparing Phichit to a snail when the figure skaters were on his ice. They weren't as fast as the rest of He Long's rink mates, but Yūri had been able to hold the curve and sneak to the front of the pack as well as most of them. That didn't stop her thighs from punishing her the morning after day one.
In the end, there was no clear winner. That didn't mean they didn't pick up something from each other's sports. He Long's coach had seen a definite improvement in how the Chinese fashion student managed his passes and turns. Yūri, on the other hand, became consistent in getting all the rotations into her triple jumps. Celestino had been overjoyed, but that quickly turned to shock when she started over-rotating and stepping out more often than she did before the bet was made.
Phichit made a noise that sounded like he was on the verge of screaming. "I can't believe I corrupted my own best friend by introducing her to a speed skater! Of all people! I'm a horrible person!" he wailed with each pull-up.
"You were his roommate for how long and you still hate him?" Yūri asked incredulously.
"Not hate," Phichit corrected, grunting with his next pull-up. "He just got on my nerves. A lot. And the only thing I'll ever like about having that snob as a roommate were the Korean skincare products his mother sent him."
Yūri laughed weakly. "They were that great?"
"They were the best!" he gushed.
After an hour had passed and Phichit and Yūri had cooled down from their workout, Celestino had finally forgiven them for showing up late by sending a message through their group chat to hit the ice. He pulled Phichit aside to talk to him before the Thai skater could set a foot on the ice.
Yūri kept her gaze on the ice as she skated figures, squinting to see each curve that she carved. Hardly any skater today knew what figures were, unless their coaches had competed during the time they were a required component. Ever since she started skating, Yūri skated figures to warm up and relax. The last part helped her a bit whenever a competition was coming up and with the Four Continents Championship in a few weeks, it would take more than five minutes of figures for her to appease the anxiety that tried to consume her.
Yūri jolted when she felt a heavy hand fall on her shoulder. She whirled around, shoulders falling slightly when she saw a young man with brown hair behind her. "Coach Celestino is calling you," he explained, cocking his head in their coach's direction, where he was indeed waving Yūri over to the rink boards.
"Th-thanks, Giles." Yūri skated away as fast as she could, hoping she didn't look too eager to get away. Giles was Phichit's new roommate, but the Thai skater knew him for longer since they were both new skaters at the club when they arrived about two years ago. As a pair skater, Giles had come with his partner, who was Yūri's new roommate. She'd gotten along with Venus, though Yūri would admit she was a little scared of her at first.
Venus' partner, on the other hand, made Yūri uncomfortable. Giles would frequently offer to join her during fitness training and invade her personal space like he belonged there. When that happened, Venus had to drag her partner by the ear and tell him off. When she started dating He Long, Giles seemed to back off, though he would try to strike up a conversation with her.
"You wanted to see me, coach?" Yūri linked her fingers together as she stood before Celestino, separated by the rink boards.
"I want to talk to you about the technical elements of your free skate." Celestino gestured for her to come closer so she could see the notepad he held in his hand. Yūri leaned over to read the jumps he had written down and crossed out. The step sequence and choreographic sequence were already accounted for, but Celestino seemed to have trouble deciding on her new jump composition. She was fine keeping her jumps as it was, but Celestino didn't share her views.
"A Triple Axel-Triple Lutz?" she read. Axels and Lutzes had the highest base values, but the Lutz jump was one she had trouble with. One would think that since she could do a Triple Axel, the Triple Lutz should be no problem.
Celestino thought along those lines as well. "Why not? You can already do a Triple Axel and landing this in combination will raise your technical score."
"But I always land wrong on my Lutzes," Yūri reasoned. No matter how many rotations she got into a Lutz jump, she had a habit of landing on the wrong foot or edge, which turned her intended Lutzes into toe loops or even earned an edge violation.
"Then we'll work on it," Celestino said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. "The rotations are taken care of. Now we just need to make sure you hold the—Giles!" he shouted. Yūri turned around to see Giles and a dark-skinned girl who was glaring daggers at the young man standing in the middle of the rink while she rubbed her lower back. "Were you trying to kill Venus?! What were you thinking, dropping her like that?"
The pair skaters immediately raised their voices, each trying to make themselves heard over the other. They almost reminded Yūri of the seagulls back home in Hasetsu, except the seagulls didn't swear each other out like Giles and Venus were doing now.
"Both of you, get off the ice!" Celestino roared over the duo.
Yūri scurried away as the furious pair skaters skated over and jammed their blade guards on before meeting with an equally irate Celestino. She joined Phichit on the other side of the rink. Neither of them could hear the conversation, but they could still keep an eye on the event. "Do you know what happened?" she asked.
"They were doing a lift," Phichit explained as he skated a Mohawk turn. "I don't know which one it was, but Giles looked like he wasn't even trying to hold the position. As soon as he lifted her, he practically threw Venus."
"So a throw jump?"
The Thai skater shook his head. "They weren't in the position for it." Phichit glanced at the other side of the rink. "They've been fighting a lot more recently." As if to prove his point, the pairs skaters' voices rose to the point that they could catch pieces of what was being shouted.
"—this irresponsible flirt—!"
"—she's too heavy—!"
"—weak-ass with the arms of a noodle—!"
"—both of you—!"
Yūri swallowed nervously. It was a known fact that in pairs and ice dancing, both skaters needed to work together. If Giles and Venus were fighting, their performance would no doubt be affected. "I just hope they can work it out by the Four Continents."
"I'm hoping they'll make the podium," Phichit added as he cast a furtive look where he knew Celestino was before unlocking his phone. "Maybe it'll stop their problems."
When Yūri returned to her apartment, it didn't surprise her that Venus was already there. The pair skater looked up from the pot she was stirring. "Hey, Yūri," she greeted as she turned off the stove.
"Hi, Venus." Yūri shut the door behind her. The memory of her rink mate giving her partner the most hateful glare she had ever seen terrified Yūri. And here she was, making dinner without so much of a grumble about her day or her partner. She wondered how long it took for Venus to make dinner this time. Dinner always got done faster if Venus cooked when she was furious about something. Yūri had learned this soon after she had moved in.
"I made jambalaya," Venus said as she scooped out a bowl for Yūri.
The Japanese skater accepted the bowl and sat down. "Are you okay?" she asked hesitantly.
"Of course I am," Venus replied nonchalantly as she served herself a heaping scoop. "Why wouldn't I be?" Before Yūri could open her mouth, Venus continued, "Oh, you mean what happened at the club today."
"You guys have been fighting a lot lately," Yūri explained.
Venus sat across from her with a spoonful of flavored rice in her mouth. "He's a fucking bastard," she said. Yūri knew Venus for a few years and just recently became her roommate, but she still wasn't used to hearing profanity come out so freely. "He's so stuck-up, acting like I'm not following his lead—when I clearly am—and completely ignoring the fact that he doesn't follow the choreography at all." They both took in another spoonful at the same time, but Venus finished hers quickly to add, "With the attitude he's got, he should have just gone into singles!"
"Did Celestino do anything?"
"He just told us to get our act together for the Four Continents." Venus lifted her spoon to her mouth. "Oh, I'll behave, but if that boy can't do the same, I won't have any problem if we don't make the podium," she muttered darkly. "The cocky asshole deserves to be knocked down."
"But...won't Giles blame you if you two don't get a medal?" Yūri asked worriedly.
Venus set her bowl down and planted her elbows on the table while she rested her chin on her hands. She gave Yūri a vague smile. "Yūri...I'm happy that you care about me enough to worry. But you don't need to. I've been skating with that idiot for years. I know exactly how to deal with this."
After dinner, Venus did the dishes while Yūri retreated to her room to make a long overdue phone call. Given the thirteen hour difference, the person she was calling should be awake by now. "Hello?" A woman's voice answered lazily.
"Hello, Mari? It's me."
"Yūri!" Her older sister sounded much more awake now. Yūri felt guilty, thinking that she might have woken her sister up. "About time you called!"
"I didn't wake you, did I?" she asked, sitting down at her desk.
"Nah, don't worry about it. You know we get up early to get breakfast ready, anyway." Yūri could hear shuffling sounds, like her sister was moving things around. Maybe she was preparing a room for a guest? "So how's Detroit, now that you graduated?"
"It's great not having homework anymore," Yūri answered. "But it does feel different now that He Long went back to China."
"Your speed skating boyfriend?" Mari questioned. Yūri nodded before realizing that her sister couldn't see her and made an affirmative noise. "When the season's over, you should visit us. And bring him over, too. I wanna see what this guy's like."
"Don't make it obvious that you're going to kill him," Yūri laughed weakly.
Her sister snorted. "I'm not gonna hurt your first boyfriend, baby sis. I'm just gonna take him around town, ask a couple things, then come back when he's cold and pale and—" The sound of a dog barking and jingling noises made Mari stop. "Hang on, I'm gonna turn on FaceTime."
"All right." Yūri pulled the phone away from her ear and tapped on the FaceTime icon. The familiar faces of her older sister and her dog flooded her screen, behind them the comfortable setting of the hot spring inn. "Vicchan!"
The miniature poodle barked excitedly as he sniffed Mari's phone, pressing his nose to the screen and leaving marks. "I missed you! Who's a good boy? Were you a good boy?" Vicchan yapped in agreement as he pawed at Mari's phone.
"He misses you a lot," Mari said, holding Vicchan to her body so that the poodle couldn't smudge her phone screen. "He still sleeps in your room, thinking that you're just going to sleep late."
"Aww..." Yūri laid her head on her desk. "I promise I'll come visit after the World Championships. How does that sound?" Vicchan yipped in response. Yūri blinked as a notice appeared on her phone.
"What's up?" Mari asked.
"Someone else is trying to call me." Yūri was already given the options to end her current call, place it on hold, or refuse to speak to— "He Long?"
"Your boyfriend?" Immediately Vicchan made a tiny growl, making Mari snicker lightly. "I don't think he likes your boyfriend."
"Don't say that, Vicchan. You'll love him." Yūri's thumb hovered over the icons, unsure of what to do. "Do you mind if I take this call, Mari?"
"No problem. I gotta get back to work." Mari lifted one of Vicchan's paws and made a waving motion with it. "Say bye-bye, Vicchan." The tiny poodle began whining and struggling. "Night, little sis."
"Good-bye, Mari. Bye, Vicchan." The last thing she saw of her childhood home was Mari laughing as Vicchan started howling. A menu of icons appeared, indicating that He Long had opted for a normal phone call instead of FaceTime. Yūri held her phone up to her ear. "Hi, He Long."
"Hey, Yūri. Quick question: did you tell a Minami Kenjirō about me?"
"Minami? He asked me if I could ask you to design for him." Yūri tilted her head in confusion. She had relayed Kenjirō's message to He Long in late December. It had almost been a month since then, so why was He Long asking about her fellow countryman now? "Did something happen?"
"No," He Long replied. "Well, he did send me a message saying that he would take the next flight to China, language barrier be damned, and break my shins if I so much as made you cry."
"Oh...Oh!" Suddenly, Yūri was back in Sapporo, where she had given Kenjirō her autograph and the boy had offered to beat up He Long for her. "I thought he was bluffing!"
"What did he say to you?"
"At the nationals," Yūri said, holding her other cheek, "he asked if he could beat you up if you were ever mean."
"Well, he's gutsy. I'll give him that." He Long laughed on the other end. "How's Detroit? Even better, how's Phichit? Is he glad that I'm out of his hair?"
"Well, I'm not sure about that..." Yūri admitted. "He did say that you were a better roommate than his new one."
Yūri jolted when she heard the sound of a large weight falling to the floor, followed by uncontrollable laughter. From the sound of it, He Long had fallen with a case of hysterical giggling. "You mean it?" He Long gasped between laughs. "Phichit Chulanont, the makeup artist who can't put on the right shade of eyeshadow for his life, actually misses me?"
"Only because you're better compared to Giles."
"Giles?" He Long repeated. "Giles, Giles...Oh, you mean that overbearing American pair skater with anger issues and the ridiculous last name."
"That's him."
"And you're rooming with his partner, Venus? Loud and proud, biracial African American whose family moved from Flint—which is still a mess, those irresponsible American politicians—"
"Yup." Sometimes, Yūri wondered how He Long recalled details like he was profiling the victim or criminal of a crime report.
"That kind of thing doesn't fly at all in Asia!"
"Maybe not all of Asia, but what about China?" When she was met with silence, Yūri quickly realized what she had said. "I-I'm sorry, it just came out and—"
"No, you're right. I just forgot," He Long interrupted as a sound on his end made Yūri think he had set a chair upright and sat down again. "But China actually recognizes the problem. Flint, however, still makes its citizens pay for polluted water that no one in their right mind would ever use. I mean, is it really too much to replace a bunch of faulty pipes?"
"Wasn't that what you said during a debate night when you were still here?" Yūri recalled.
"Yeah, and I won."
"You blew everyone out of the water," she continued, biting her lip to keep from giggling. The first time Yūri went to a college debate night was with Phichit, and she had been amazed—and slightly terrified—by what went down. Competitors hurled facts and reasoning like insults and each answer was brutally attacked until the person who gave the answer was either a blubbering mess or a screaming brat.
Basically, the objective was to see who could go the longest without becoming either of those two and it was all done in the name of a pricey gift card to be used anywhere. It was amazing what college students would do for money. "I still remember Venus tearing into everyone about how sending bottled water to her hometown was a joke. She was just as scary when I asked you out."
"Why? What did she do to you?" Yūri asked.
She briefly registered the sound of scratching, like He Long was contemplating an answer and how to avoid it as well.
"How is Venus, anyway?" He Long asked mildly. Yūri's eyebrows rose in concern.
"Well…I don't think I have any right to say it."
"Let's see…her GPA dropped?" He guessed.
"No."
"She argued with Celestino and Giles about the music again?"
"…No." But that was something Venus did very often. Usually Celestino picked out their music according to their themes for the year, but Venus would pick out her own music for hers and Giles' theme as well. Yūri wondered if today's fight had been about that.
"No? But I sound close. Did she and Giles get into a fight?"
Yūri sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."
"They've been fighting a lot this season."
"Mhm," she murmured.
"Did Phichit set up the betting pool yet?"
"Long!" Yūri cried, shocked by how easily her boyfriend could turn her rink mates' situation into a game.
"With the way they've been going before I left, I'm betting that they'll split by the end of the season."
"Are you betting dollar or yuan, He Long?"
Yūri heard a loud smack on the other end, as though He Long had slapped a palm to his face. "Yūri...Yūri, I love you, but could you please let that joke die already?"
"Sorry," Yūri said, guilty that she didn't feel sorry at all. "How are things in your rink?"
"My rink mates are happy that I'm back in the country," He Long replied. "And with Dresden coming up in a few weeks, the national coach is working us to the bone. Says that we stand a good chance since Viktor's not competing."
"But weren't you sad that he wasn't competing?"
"...Yes," He Long admitted, sounding like a kicked puppy. "I mean, I was hoping to see him on the live broadcast of the European Championships, but he wasn't in any of the lineups."
"Europeans—? Oh! I keep forgetting that short track's European Championships are right before figure skating Europeans." With how closely their sports' European Championships were scheduled—figure skating's started a day after short track speed skating's ended—Yūri almost lost track of dates.
"Yeah, and your Viktor's competing."
"Don't say it like that!" Yūri stammered. She knew that He Long had said that to differentiate the athletes named Viktor in their individual sports, but her Viktor? That just made it sound like her current relationship was nonexistent and she was dating Viktor Nikiforov.
Which would be impossible. What would Viktor Nikiforov want with her, dime-a-dozen female figure skater from Japan? Just being near him had made Yūri feel inadequate. At the banquet in Sochi, she couldn't even bring herself to look him in the eye.
"You know what I meant," He Long said. "And you don't hear me blubbering like you whenever I say 'my Viktor'."
"That's because you know Viktor Ahn is married and has a daughter. And Viktor Nikiforov—"
"—is the exact opposite? A known playboy who can't seem to settle down?"
"He's a legend!" she blurted. While He Long was correct, that didn't mean she liked hearing him make Viktor Nikiforov out to be some heart-breaker.
"So is Viktor Ahn," He Long pointed out.
"Yes, but..." Yūri curled the fingers of her free hand as she tried to put her thoughts into words. "Well...Viktor Ahn is a legend in your sport, but at least you've won enough to stand on even ground with him. Me? To Viktor Nikiforov, I'm just...nothing."
"I wouldn't say that," he finally said. Yūri lifted her head hopefully. "H—" He Long paused, making Yūri tilt her head in confusion before she heard him hiss something in Chinese. Yūri was prepared to bet that what she heard—and most likely would never be able to repeat, owing to the complexity of the Chinese language—was something far from polite.
"What happened?"
"I need to get to practice," He Long answered. Yūri could hear him moving around. "I didn't realize we had talked for so long."
Yūri pulled her phone away from her ear to see that, to her surprise, they had talked for almost twenty minutes. "I'm so sorry—!"
"No, no, don't. I should have kept track of time. Let's see...I don't live too far from the oval, so I can make it in time."
"Good luck in the World Cup!" Yūri encouraged.
"Tha—" He Long paused again, as though he had forgotten to grab something. "I don't need luck. I have you!" Those were his last words before the call ended, allowing Yūri to lower her phone.
"What's so lucky about me?" she asked.