“Sequins,” muttered Yoshio Fuji to himself, doing what the rest of the team somehow had not yet done (excluding only Keiichi Genma, who for tactical reasons did not divulge anything he learned in his reconnaissance about the Rabid Prince): searching Shirakawa Rou’s name on the internet.
The goal was spite. The reason was no reason, and the plan was simple. Find pictures of Rou wearing sequins. Laugh.
Easy. Fuji had an idea of what male figure skaters wore. There were tights and they sparkled. These things were funny. There had to be a picture that was funny enough to print out and pin surreptitiously onto a corkboard at school. Then everyone would see it and laugh at Rou, and Fuji’s devious goal of sheer schadenfreude would be accomplished with ends as spiteful and facile as the means.
Facile the search proved. He found pictures, he debated which tropical fresh mess he wanted to print out, but with the pictures came videos, and the videos were…
Well, he had seen figure skaters performing before. And he had seen the way Rou moved when he played hockey (whenever he wasn’t attempting something far beyond his skill level), always quick, slick, and suddenly he would burst off the ice like a grasshopper burst out of weeds or a carp leapt out of clear water and break above their heads in a way Fuji could only call eerie. Startling. Rou’s fervor stopped other players in their tracks, as they watched a fellow player turn for a moment into some kind of animal, with animal grace. That drama had its own advantage: intimidation.
Maybe that was the reason inside the ‘no reason’ that Fuji wanted him mocked.
And maybe it was because he did know Rou and had seen him perform some of these moves before that the videos felt so uncanny. He knew that was Rou on his screen. When the camera came close to his face Fuji cringed. But when it filmed him from above, like a watching hawk, as he spun and slid, the further away he traveled the more Fuji felt like he was watching a stranger.
He watched Rou’s legs. He could see it; he could catch the moments that could do something astonishing in a hockey game, confound his rivals, slip Rou past defenses and to the goal. He could sometimes catch moves he had seen Rou pull with his own eyes… and ones he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen Rou pull yet.
Then he clicked on the video with the girl.
—
The thing was that they had just been mocking Rou for being a forever virgin the day before.
Objectively, this had to be true. Rou seemingly had no clue that a woman was different than a man. He claimed to have a twin sister, so maybe that was his problem. He was too used to women as friends. When girls approached Rou, he… said hello. He waited for them to speak. He helped them out if they asked for it. He complimented their outfits or their hairstyles. That was it. Rou saw girls all the time, but he had never seen a girl.
He wasn’t much bothered by the razzing from his team, either. He told them that kind of speech wasn’t beautiful and that was it. They all laughed it off and went home secure that Shirakawa Rou would never touch a girl in his life, a knowledge that made many of them feel better about their relative girllessness.
“Hey,” said Fuji, dragging several of his teammates over to a classroom computer and commandeering it without permission for his purposes, “look at this.” Then he opened the browser, took it to Google, and typed in ‘Shirakawa Rou 2009 pair skate winning performance video’.
—
She was gorgeous. Light, sleek, perfectly poised on long, lithe legs. She had to be older than Rou; her face, perfectly painted with sharp red stage makeup, was set in a confident, mature smile. Her silky hair was wrapped around itself in a bun on the back of her head and thin, athletic form was pinned in a slip of white and red fabric.
If she went to their school, she would be the most beautiful and popular girl in school. She soared over the ice on her sliver-thin skates like a swan over still silver water. And Skirakawa Rou was lifting her in the air over his shoulder with one arm between her legs.
He braced her over his head with his hands on her thighs. She rolled her torso over his chest as he slid her to the ground, and down below his knees, dropping, nearly lying, soaring over the ground and slipping back up again like a sheet of paper caught by the wind. Rou grabbed her hand and pulled her around in circles. She caught his eyes and smiled.
Five or six members of the Oino-Kami hockey team, many of them years older than Rou, stood watching in silent devastation.
What was happening on the screen was clean. Rou had his eyes closed for some of it. When he looked at the girl he looked at their face; they communicated only calculated planning to each other with their glances. When he touched her, his hands found their place and stayed there, like a bird lit on a branch and stayed. Every movement turned in perfect circles, as smooth, as impersonal as a waterfall arcing off of a cliff. Rou had his hands all over her and you could tell he had never looked at her once.
“Yeah,” said Fuji, perfectly content now that several others were suffering the pain he had felt himself the night before, “he has touched a girl more than the rest of you combined.”
As if summoned, blissfully unaware that he had been mentioned or indeed that anything at all was happening outside of the sparkling world of his mind, Shirakawa Rou appeared in the doorway to the classroom.
“What are you all doing here?” he demanded immediately. “Half of you don’t go to this class.”
Second-year Kai Kengo, who absolutely did not go to this class, stared at him like he was watching a disgraced son return home after losing everything in a single drunken night of obviously rigged gambling. He silently grabbed the back of Keiichi’s shirt before he could even start.
“We’re just getting a look at your girlfriend,” said Fuji in monotone.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Rou responded, immediately, factually, but walking a closer step into the room got a better look at what the rest of them could see on the teacher’s screen. “Oh, Ienaga! She’s amazing,” he enthused, gripping a fist in front of his chest.
“This is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” said Kengo.
“She’s an incredible athlete. It was a shame I didn’t get to skate with her more,” Rou said, complimentary, respectful, completely chaste. “She taught me a lot in the brief time we were pair skating. I didn’t know her at all before, we were matched by her coach for the competition. She helped me break out, even, because she was more established.” Rou watched himself skate with her; and he was watching himself, his eyes tracing his own skates, the trails they made, whatever flaws he saw in his own performance.
“You barely knew her?” asked Keiichi in a wheeze.
Rou straightened up and crossed his arms, because he might not know what all of them were so upset about or even what was going on, but he was ready to square up with Keiichi in any situation. “It’s not uncommon,” he said. “Some people excel in pair skating but some never do it at all. It’s a completely different category from single figure skating. I pair skated with my sister all the time but we never competed together. Ienaga’s coach scouted me for her after she had a falling-out with her last partner and wouldn’t skate with him. She was an incredible—watch this jump,” he demanded, and every incredibly insecure and 100% virginal member of the hockey team turned to watch despondently as Rou gathered the girl in his arms, slid both his hands down her waist to lift her above his head, and then tossed her into the air. The camera focused on her spinning through the air, twice, thrice, but if one looked at the corner of the screen, they saw the blank, wide eyes of Rou not even fucking watching. Then she landed, and he grabbed her hand to whisk her around the ring.
“An arranged match,” said Kengo weakly.
“She was so strong,” complimented Rou sincerely.
That was, typically, the clue for Keiichi to lose his fucking mind at Rou, but he was standing in still, disgusted disappointment. When Kengo took a deep steadying breath in, the rest of the men turned to him, expecting a defusal of the situation.
“That’s it,” Kengo said, calmly, nigh serenely. “I’m going to get this little punk.”
Chaos erupted immediately. Almost everyone earned a suspension, which was going to come with additional hell when the coach learned about it. Fuji, who didn’t fight anyone, almost got away with it before they realized he had been using a teacher’s equipment without permission.
Rou, who was not in trouble for being attacked and who could have just gone back to class to relish in his victory, went home instead to meticulously paint over his fresh black eye with a box of makeup he kept under the sink (right next to his sister’s single bottle of mascara). Then he changed, since he was already late for school and might as well, into a shirt glittering with sequins.
He did win that fight, whatever it was about, and in his mind, it was more beautiful to emerge from the chaos in style.
Unfinished Follow-up
Scene 1 Ienaga bursts into a classroom like ‘Shirakawa I don’t care if you’re in high school or whatever it is you’re doing now pair skate with me’ and Rou thinks and says ‘I will do this for you alone Ienaga’ and the teacher is like ‘You cannot do this in my classroom’
Scene 2 Ienaga is in the hall she explains she has a routine only Rou can do she has rejected 3 men already who could not properly balance violence and beauty it can only be him. Rou says I hear you but I’m banned. And she says not from this tournament and not if you’re just one half of my pair and don’t compete on your own. Rou says I hear you but I have dedicated my soul to hockey. We would have to like practice at night. Ienaga says for you I will do this.
Scene 3 the school is in a fucking uproar because Rou has adult women breaking into classrooms to tell him they need him. Hockey club is losing it. Rou swears this will not interfere with hockey and everyone says this is not the point. Keiichi hates this especially because to him this is Rou going back on his word. Rou emphasizes this is the only person in the world he would do this for as he respects her as an athlete so much.
Time passes. This is a fic in which Rouge is a one-sided thing. Keiichi has a crush on Rou he doesn’t fully understand. Scene is a rehearsal happening after hockey practice in the night. Several hockey club members stay to watch. Koichi look at his brother and thinks, ‘Ahh, he has a crush on a boy again.’ Quick overview of the times big G knew little G had another boy on his mind but nothing ever came of it. He know his brother and he knows he has feelings for Rou he probably doesn’t understand himself. Keiichi is watching spellbound but corrects himself when he realizes he’s being observed.
Surely a scene in which a gravely disappointed Haruna explains to her brother that he sucks for doing this. Probably she gangs up with Keiichi to tandem harass him because that would be funny, but they keep finding that their actual arguments do not match and start arguing with each other–turns out neither twin can stand little Genma. ‘I see what you mean. This guy sucks.’
The climax of this one is probably Keiichi watching Rou actually perform in the contest but I don’t have a full plot here and should not write this.
–
A chilly spring sunrise had become a warm, slow, sleepy afternoon, and the students of Oino-Kami were for the most part trying to stay awake. Near the front of the room, glowering at the sheets of paper in front of him, Shirakawa Rou broke the silence of test-taking with the shuffle of his leg against his desk and the tapping of his foot on the floor. Occasional coughing and sniffling from spring colds broke and fell silent again, and the rope tying a flag to a flagpole banging unevenly in the wind.
Even the best students were far from completing the test when a dull sound began to come into the quiet room from the hallway. The click of heels heralded quick footsteps; they came fast, and quiet a few students looked up to the door to the room when they came close enough to seem like the footsteps were coming for them.
High heels were strictly forbidden in the halls of Oino-Kami. Interrupting a closed-book test by throwing up a door and shouting a student’s name was not expressly against the rules, but it was assumed everyone understood it wasn’t done.
A young woman in a black dress and spiked heels entered the room anyway, snapping, “Shirakawa Rou.” She threw her long, silky black hair over her shoulder as she strode into the room and up to his desk.
Rou jumped to his feet. Other students leaned back, even scuttled away front he quickly-advancing woman. She continued, “I don’t care if you’re in high school or playing hockey now or whatever it is you’re doing, I need you to pair skate with me.”
The woman stopped at his desk and crossed her arms. With her heels, she was nearly as tall as the man in front of her. He crossed his own arms, and for a moment, they only stared at each other silently.
“Ienaga Kano,” he responded. “I wouldn’t go back to skating for anyone but you.”
“You’ll do it,” Ienaga informed him.
“For you, I’ll do it,” Rou agreed.
The teacher, an old literature professor who had taught some of the parents of the children in his class right now, cleared his throat from his desk. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s not happening in my classroom.”
Rou and Ienaga both looked over at him, and then both bowed in apology; Rou dramatically from the wait, and Ienaga elegantly, declining her neck. “I’m sorry,” Rou began.
“It’s my fault,” said Ienaga, factually. “I’ll wait for you outside.” And so she left again, her heels and their sharp clicks following her back to the door and out of the room. But she settled against the wall just outside fo the door, waiting in the hall to grab Rou when he left; everyone inside could see just a sliver of her black hair in the edge of one window.
The buzz of intaken breath had only just started up when the teacher said “All of you, get back to test taking. You don’t have much time left in the class and you don’t want to waste it.”
The test was strenuous enough that the stunned students reluctantly accepted this as fact. Rou, who had gotten a little lost on his way taking the test, considered turning it in incomplete to get out into the hall and talk to Ienaga; remembering his academic performance affected his athletic career and, more importantly, would be assessed and mocked if lacking by his sister, bent his head down again like the rest of them.
–
When the classroom door opened up, Ienaga pushed herself off of the wall and turned on her heel to face Rou. He was, as she had known, first out the door. He took a single step forward so that other students could exit the classroom behind him and said “Ienaga.”
“Shirakawa.”
“I forgot to say earlier that I’m banned from hockey tournaments,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I would do this for you, but I am not allowed.”
“I know that,” she scoffed. “I watched your dramatic public breakdown live. Good concept, poor execution, by the way. You’re not banned from every tournament or contest. This one is a multiple event contest where a person is asked to compete solo and pair skate. We already contacted the tournament management, they will permit it if you’re not competing independently and are just appearing as my pair partner instead. You’re just my accessory here.”
Rou processed this. Ienaga raised her eyebrows. Shy, scuttling, students started hurting out of the classroom behind him, doing everything possible to both stay out of the zone of danger around Rabid Prince and part-time street fighter Shirakawa Rou while remaining close enough to get intel on the situation in front of them. Adult women didn’t often interrupt classes to tell students they needed them at Oino-Kami.
“I told my sister I’m not going back to figure skating,” Rou said next.
“So you can tell your sister you’re doing this or you can tell me you’re not,” Ienaga told him, “Though that sounds like one promise too many to me, because you just told me you would do it.”
“Haruna will destroy me.”
“Is it no or yes?”
“I have devoted my soul to hockey.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“We would have to practice at night. I don’t have any other time in the day between school and practice."
“That’s fine,” Ienaga told him. “I don’t have another option. No one else can do the part. I’ve gone through three busts. I’ll take some hard work over settling for a poor performance.”
“Why couldn’t anyone else do the part?”
“I need someone,” Ienaga said, looking up into Rou’s eyes, intense in a way that frankly most bystanders could not read correctly, “Who can balance violence and beauty. There is no one who can combine both like you. All other others could only do one, they could not manage both. I’ve been watching your hockey games. I know you can do it. This part is for you.”
Rou’s eyes had begun shining after Ienaga said ‘violence and beauty’. “I’ll do it,” he said, causing a buzz to filter down the hall. Pointing, then at Ienaga’s forehead, between her darkly painted eyes, “For you, Ienaga. But only this.”
“Deal,” she said. “Next time I won’t be so stupid as to make a routine that needs Shirakawa Rou.”
Instead of shaking hands, or bowing, or something sensible, everyone in the hall was treated to the sight of both skaters nodding and then turning on their heels to walk away without another word. Ienaga, who by all rights had broken into a school which by the code of security most adults were barred from entering, flounced out of one gate as a police car was pulling up to another and escaped consequences completely. Rou went to his next class.
–
Understandably, considering the circumstances, the Oino-Kami hockey team was losing it.
They were hardly the only people losing it. The entire school had heard about what had happened by the end of the day, barring no one. For those who really didn’t care less about hockey lore or the athletic past of one particular first-year student, the fact that a woman had interrupted a class to demand he serve her was absolutely still of interest.