Yurio's door had been locked for the whole day.

Saffron wood blocked any hope Victor or Yuuri had in trying to reach the now eighteen-year-old blonde. The ivory framing encased him inside, leaving Victor to huff and lean on the cerulean wall beside the door. Sighing, Victor looked over at Yuuri, a small frown of concern painted on his flawless and slim face. Yuuri crossed his thin arms, breathing in the thick scent of honeysuckle wafting from the air freshener plugged into the wall across from the door.

Yuuri ran a hand through his wavy ink hair, grown out to nearly his shoulders from the past few months. He licked his lips and turned back to the door.

"We'll be downstairs if you want to talk."

Not even a curse thrown at Yuuri's direction. That's when they knew Yurio was upset.

Yuuri tapped Victor on his shoulder, nodding at him as they trudged down the spiral staircase.

Victor Nikiforov was the passionate one.

If passion was a skill needed in life, Victor would be the master of the universe. Whether it was exposing his heart on the ice or to his loved ones, he was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. Some people thought him uncomplicated due to him being an open book. Victor considered himself true to himself.

Whatever he thought about his emotional outpourings, he remained subdued throughout today. When Victor sat down at the glass dining room table, he stirred his lukewarm hot chocolate for what felt like the thousandth time. His phone remained sheltered in the pocket of his sere polyester sweatpants. He shut off his phone many hours earlier. When his phone blared at seven in the morning, Victor let it ring, too comfortable in Yuuri's arms under the lavender sheets. By phone call twenty one, Victor had no choice but to answer. What followed was a minute long tirade from Yakov in Russian.

Victor could barely catch the words before Yakov shouted that he had to hang up to eject some nosy reporters from the rink in Moscow.

Doping. Russia. Hush money given out to various athletes. Found out. Olympics. Banned.

Banned.

Victor nearly had a heart attack as soon as the phone call went dead. When he turned on the news, he saw the headlines. Sure enough, his home country was going to be shut out of the Olympics completely.

"He's been training for this moment," Victor said while staring at the chocolate trails swirling around the mug. His spoon clanked with the sides of the porcelain in a nearly hypnotic rhythm.

Yuuri looked up from his steamed rice, fog pasted on the lenses of his oil glasses. "Huh?"

Victor set the spoon down and grabbed the mug by the handle. "He cared about these Olympics. Especially these Olympics."

Yuuri sighed as the fog evaporated from his glasses. He mashed a grain of white rice between his thumb and the ivory marble island in the kitchen. True, Yuuri was not horribly upset or surprised by these events. Victor had confided in him about a few of these situations in his country, and Yuuri was no fan of Russia to begin with. However, he knew the pain of missing out on important contests, and Yurio's success meant more money for the household they had.

He reached over and rubbed the back of Victor's neck in assurance. "He's young. "He'll be twenty-two in four years. He'll still be great."

Victor shook his head. "It's not about being competitive. Yurio's going to skate into his thirties. He just has that energy to him," Victor said before taking a sip of his hot chocolate. "But those others aren't going to be there."

"Otabek."

Victor looked up at Yuuri, his eyes reddening slightly from the saline growing in his bright blue eyes. "Yurio told me about his dream of competing with Beka in Olympics. You know Beka won't be around in four years."

"A lot of those skaters won't be."

Victor drew out a long breath, composing himself before taking another swig from the mug. As he did so, the phone rang. A number from Kazakhstan.

Yuuri took the phone. Putting the sound on speaker, he accepted the call.

"Is Yura okay?" A low, almost monotone voice echoed out into the spacious condominium.

Neither of the two said anything for a few seconds. White rice billowed steam that reflected from the warm recess lighting built into the tall ceiling. A cuckoo clock ticked by the front door.

Yuuri cleared his throat. "Has he texted you today?"

"Nothing," Otabek said over the phone.

"Then he really hasn't talked to anyone today," Yuuri said more to himself than anyone else.

Victor balled his fists, shaking his head in agitation. "It's not right, Beka. He had nothing to do with this. You know that, right?"

"Not for a second did I think he was," Otabek shot back at the two. "Yura wouldn't even look at anything like that. I believe him and I trust him. He doesn't have to say anything to me. I just want to know if he's alright."

Victor's eyebrows jumped up. He swallowed in a flash and tightened up his shoulders. "He hasn't left his room all day."

Otabek sighed. Yuuri squeezed Victor's shoulders in assurance as they looked down at Otabek's face on the phone. "Okay. Tell me if anything changes. I've called him thirty times and texted him at least every ten minutes. I can't reach him."

"We'll work on it," Yuuri said. "If he doesn't come out by tonight, we'll take the door down ourselves."

Otabek hung up. The phone flashed back to it's home screen.

Victor brushed away a tear. He knew he would be a target of many questions from the media. Possibly, he would be brought in for questioning by his government and even the Olympic Committee. Being a coach of an Olympian from Russia would certainly raise issues with him. He was shocked that the press weren't already pooling outside his building like piranhas circling around a dead fish carcass in the Amazon. Yakov would have his hands fuller than a doctor performing neurosurgery. Not only was he a coach of many years that Russia had relied on to provide many Olympic figure skaters, but Georgi and Mila were poised to be on the Olympic Team as well.

Yuuri still had no idea what to think. He knew any line of questioning would be offensive at this point, but he needed to get his facts straight.

"Victor?"

The man looked up at Yuuri. Tears were streaming down his face. His gray hair, normally nice and neat, was frazzled and oily from lack of wash. He appeared to have aged by decades, the shadows of the sun setting behind the skyscrapers outside jumping over his face.

"I wouldn't even try it, Yuuri." Victor said. "They pressured me, but I said no to so much money. And Yurio...he wouldn't either. I protected him from ever being asked that stuff. He would never try anything like drugs."

"Yeah, he is kind of a prude that way."

Yuuri and Victor looked up at the intruding voice.

The young woman's wheat hair remained short and in the neat pixie cut that had grown to almost a bob style that framed her heart-shaped face. Her thin, slightly curved figure donned a periwinkle sweater with skin-tight jeans around legs that snaked down to her maroon rain boots. Wearing a small grin, her dark royal blue eyes sparkled by the glass chandelier hanging over the island in the kitchen. She threw her backpack towards the wall, and she strutted towards the couple at the table.

Isabel Flynn took a small thumb and wiped away one of Victor's tears. "You don't look good being all melodramatic, Victor."

Victor sniffled and etched a small smile on to his puffed face. "It's been a long day, Izzy. Was school okay?"

Isabel snort. "Has Yurio jumped off the roof yet?"

Yuuri shrugged. "He's been locked in his room all day. At least we assume he is in there."

Isabel ticked a few times with her tongue. "I haven't seen him this upset since I told him Mean Girls wasn't real."

Victor traced a circle on the glass surface in front of him. There were very few ways they could coax Yuri out of his room. If even Otabek couldn't reach him, there was no way in hell his girlfriend would get him to face the world.

Yes, that's counter-intuitive, but Yurio was an odd ball in his own special way.

Isabel Flynn was the funny one.

There were a couple of ways people defined funny. In Detroit, the older folk that rambled around the bus stops with cracked plexiglass referred to funny as "really weird or off-putting." To the crowds of businesspeople sauntering down Congress Avenue with long cocoa trench coats and swinging briefcases clacking by the sides of their black penny-loafers, funny was "funny-looking" which was a nice way of saying ugly. To Isabel and Yurio (and perhaps even Yuuri's) generation, funny was supposed to mean humorous or something that illicit a laugh.

Isabel Flynn fit the phrase in a number of ways. Yes, her earlier days of having nothing on television but old sitcoms and screwball, razor-sharp witted comedies gave her a funny bone of titanium. She always had a quip or word to bury in edgewise when Yuri had a mean remark about something.

Was she funny-looking? Nope. Isabel had the looks to rival the covergirls on a magazine. Not that she flaunted those looks, because they were certainly not what convinced Yuri to be her boyfriend. However, her attractiveness was a decent resume-builder.

No, Isabel Flynn was weird and maybe off-putting. She was random, hyper like a jack-in-the-box ready to erupt. She was spontaneous to the point of taking Yuri to crevices of Detroit that he did not know (or wanted to know) existed. A wide smile was planted onto her face like cement gluing a handprint onto the surface of the street. She just seemed to happy and too bubbly all the time. Being around her was exhausting. It explained why Yuri was sleeping in until noon almost everyday at this point. Training for the Olympics took up almost as much energy for Yuri.

Maybe that was why it took so long for her to get close friends like the ones she had now. Nobody really took her seriously until now.

Perusing such philosophical musings was way too much effort, though. So Isabel found it necessary to focus more on the tempura fish in front of her. One wrong move, and the fish would splatter into the sizzling pan underneath her and splatter third-degree-burns all over the kitchen. Coconut oil popped in anger with heat tickling the bottom of the copper-plated saucer. Cooking were some of the few times Isabel was completely focused and concentrated to the point of not blabbering a mile a minute.

"I had never expected our first teacher to be so weird. Cannabalism is not normally done in America as far as I know."

The rail-thin boy had white hair much like the parmesan cheese spilt on a wooden cutting board next to him. His shirt, matching his hair, neatly tucked into his long pants. Much like Isabel, he had a smile always at the ready. However, his smile was less wild and more placid than Isabel's. Isabel first noticed his eyes were crimson like an albino bunny. She didn't want to be too rude, so she decided not to ask him about it yet. She liked him as a chef partner even though he made no sense half of the time. He spoke in a weird way about the future and classical music and these weird creatures that apparently destroyed the world and giant robots that tried to save them. Isabel assumed he was some geeky fanfiction writer.

It was a weird class in the finest culinary school in Detroit. Almost everyone had weird hair, and many hailed from other parts of the globe. Isabel had no idea the school was this famous. It appeared everyone that wanted to be a chef was in the large kitchen classroom.

"Even my friends in Japan did not partake in it," the boy said in a smooth, even tone. "But to hear Mister Kaneki say that he had feasted on people multiple times was so atypical to what I normally hear humans consume."

"It died out a few years ago," Isabel said. She bit her lip as she lowered the tempura with the gentleness of a nurse delivering a baby.

"You previously said that about Angels, didn't you, Isabel?"

"A lot of things die out quickly, Kaworio."

"I appreciate the compliment, but Kaworu will suffice," the albino boy said with his grin.

"Compliment?"

"You mention your significant other with the 'io' suffix. So you must view me in such a way as well."

"Thanks, but Yurio isn't into open relationships. I thought you had a boyfriend."

"Shinji is a boy who is a friend."

Isabel slid the tempura onto the saucer. the oil burst to life with a cacophony of sizzles and pops that lifted thick steam into the busy air. The kitchen was filled with the hiss of cooking and the cursing of students. With the tempura safely on, she stood upright and wiped her brow. Grinning, she looked over at the clock on the monitor.

"Still time to season the asparagus. Get the cilantro."

Just as Kaworu went to grab the spices, Isabel felt the vibration in her apron pocket. Peering into the pocket, she saw her phone rivet with the urgency of ambulance lights. Puzzled, Isabel hummed to herself as she pulled out her phone. When she read the words in the text, her heart plummeted to her stomach. She covered her mouth with her gloved hand.

Then, she realized her glove held traces of pepper.

She nearly keeled over from both the shock and the pepper burrowed in her nose. She wheezed out and coughed away from the food, hunched over as she processed what she just read.

"May I join in, Isabelio?"

Isabel cleared her throat and looked up. Kaworu held a green container in his limp hand.

"What?" Isabel huffed out.

"You were holding your phone in front of you. That's what humans consider a 'selfie' around this area, correct?"

Isabel ripped off her apron and gathered up her bag. "I have to go. You can finish this off."

Just as she left, she whipped herself around, looking back at a content Kaworu. "By the way, that's dish soap in your hand."

Kaworu looked over at the bottle in his bony hand. "But cilantro tastes like this, right?

Knock.

"Kitty."

Knock.

"Kitty."

Knock.

"Kitty."

A thump from the other side of the door reverberated around the hallway. The wall shook with a painting of white skates jiggling on it's hook beside the frame.

"Leave me alone," the voice shouted from the other side.

Victor put a soft hand on Isabel's shoulder, sighing as the vibration halted on the wall.

"He's been like that all day," Victor said. "Nothing is getting him out of there unless it's a fire. And even that might not be enough."

Isabel reached out towards the golden doorknob like a snowflake falling on the cracked pavement outside. She touched the doorknob. The cool metal glistened from the pale sunlight gleaming from the start of the wide hall. She gripped the bulb and blew out a warm breath of air into the lukewarm atmosphere. Victor took a step back and released Isabel.

"Have you tried the doorknob yet?" Isabel said while looking back at Victor.

"No. I value my life," Victor said. "You know he's going to have a knife and a machine gun on whoever goes in there."

"Well, If I do die," Isabel said in mock terror. "I leave all of my things to you, Victor."

The Russian man clutched his chest. "An honor. Thank you, Izzy."

Isabel, unsure if Victor was serious about the warning, gulped. Staring at the door, she reflected on how she was going to confront Yuri. Obviously, telling him everything alright would not work. He would probably chuck her out of the room faster than Victor flashing his quad salchow at the last Olympics. Telling him that the next Olympics would be in four years would result in a similar response. Sure, she could just try and bribe him with some American movie. Perhaps Mean Girls would be the only American film Yuri would appreciate.

There was the option of making out with him, but Yuri was not one to give in to his hormones. He was a weird teenager that way.

"Izzy?"

"Yes, Victor?"

"I hate to be impatient, but you've been standing there for ten minutes."

Isabel looked back towards the door. The silence inside shrouding a heartbroken young man.

Finally, Isabel frowned. Snapping on a brave face, she bucked up her shoulders and twisted the knob.

Welcome back ladies and gentleman.

So this is episodic in nature. Think of this series like a sitcom. It won't be a long 3 arc story like Detroit and the Good Life With You. It's more slice-of-life. I really hope you read and review. Without reviews, we are just writing for ourselves. I want to entertain you all as well!

So what did you think? The doping scandal is a big deal, and we will talk about that in this first episode. Also, what did you think of the characters? Story? Dialogue?

And please tell me you got the references to the other anime. I think this series will be chock full of them.

Thank you so much. See you soon!