A kaleidoscope of confused and misplaced feelings.

* * *

Black and white keys; repeat. Pale fingers joining them. A flutter of white paper sits on the worn, wooden desk beside her, and a pen bleeding black ink onto the fading wood rests beside it. Her eyes are cold, and lips tight with displeasure.

Akaashi Yui was a sight to behold, even in her vex.

Of all people to leave in charge of the music, Viktor left Yui.

Just what went on in his mind?

The music of a routine controlled the entire performance. But he still backed her into a corner; forcing her to apply her former talents together as she once did, and she couldn't just create a random piece or abandon it like she could with others. Her student wasn't just a nobody.

She closes her eyes.

The cold mornings of St. Petersburg, the bitter, black coffees accompanied by laughing blue eyes. The sharp retorts of a boy with angry green eyes. The black sequins of a sparkling dress, the long, ivory and violet coloured, wide sleeves showing off pale and lithe limbs. The clean skates and the sparkling ice. The audience, the music, the notes. Purple sparks, navy lights, shimmering white flashes of the cameras from the sides.

Limbs sore, foot bruised, dead tiredness. Frozen fingers.

And that undeniable sense of satisfaction.

Fine. Yui opens her eyes. The tightness of competition she hadn't felt in years in the cavern of her chest and the feistiness of a younger her strumming in her veins.

Turning to the keyboard, she swore she saw the flash of colour flash across her vision. Turning to the notes of the melody she had begun scratching down onto the white paper. She turns back to the piano and closes her eyes. Raising her hand she shivers at the sudden chill on her neck.

The melody starts off slow, but then one note rings—

And then Yui lets herself go.

That elegant, midnight ebony and the glass chandelier that's been in her mind for God knows how long suddenly fades to a starry sky and then shifts to stormy clouds and then a cloudless sky and then to the blank slate that she had not seen in a long, long time. The passage of notes widen and the notes clash together in agonizing clangs in places, other times they are high and airy like those spins and jumps and everything Yui had never wanted to hear again, but then they are swallowed by their darker undertones, the keys together forming a song so beautiful yet cruel at the same time; everything that never made her any less willing to sacrifice everything to hold that unreachable piece of sky, own that forbidden fruit.

But the bitterness strikes her, and the next keys are a combination of longing and pain and utter loneliness, because throughout all her years. Throughout all her medals and enraged yells at her equally prodigious, trapped parents, she's never once had that urge, that passion for embracing the keys or the ice with all of her beings. Never once felt the ardent joy of passion without the shine of a gilded medal, without the camera flashes and the words that describe a breathtakingness that she never once experienced when she had stood in front of the world.

She bends, desperate for consolation, like a desperate flower in the violent spring storms: newborn and vulnerable, wavering and slowly breaking beneath the pressure of the wind. Those lingering regrets remain, but her fingers glide across the keyboard like the first ripples across the still pond, then a lake, then the thundering waves in the ocean. But then like the sudden wind to a flame, that flicker suddenly blows out, and all the emotions she had bottled up since seeing Viktor, since coming to Hasetsu, since leaving her parents, everything that she had thought she had long gotten over comes rushing out and the—

Clang!

She gets up abruptly, the foot of the piano stool screeching back. Slamming the lid, she hastily wipes the rivulets of tears streaming from her face. And like a waterfall, the thoughts in her mind goes blank as she all but runs, runs to where?

And she stumbles, and falls, and she doesn't get up. Bent by the door of her bedroom. Heart bitter, body tired, mind restless and so, so lost.

Affannato; anguished. Acciaccato; broken down, crushed.

* * *

Viktor finds her in the corner of a coffee shop.

Poésie, it was called. French for poetry— in honour of the owner's deceased husband and his love for poetry.

He sits down across from her, and she looks up from her hen scratched scribbles on her journal and the various paper scattered around her. It's a pretty little shop; with dried, pressed flowers decorating the tables and window edges, pastel coloured paintings decorating its walls. Homely and peaceful. But she suddenly feels trapped— the cushions felt too hot. She's too aware, too conscious. Did he see the slouch in her back was because of the bruise she got crashing into the edge of the table when she fell? The red tint of her eyes from her breakdown?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shakespeare. Sonnet 146. Perhaps one of his most controversial pieces; telling the story of his sins and his soul and the death that eats death.

But, to sacrifice everything, for but the shortest moment in the light of the sun before its fire burns you.

Was the glory worth the fire after?

It wasn't. She didn't want to be trapped by the curse that had ensnared her parents, too, before her.

Viktor orders a black coffee. And for the next hour, he sits there, beside her. Watching. Observing.

What was he seeing?

* * *

Her eyes are swimming with nausea after staring at those sheets.

And he seems to notice because finally, he moves. Laying a cool hand on her feverishly warm one that causes her to snap up with a start, only to see mischevious eyes and an intention she knew that she didn't want to know about.

"No," She starts with a disturbed expression. "Whatever you're thinking about. I don't want any part in it."

"Come on, Yui-chan. This is gonna be fun! You and I are just going to take a walk."

Har, har, har...

"That's what you said when—"

She barely has any time to clutch her satchel before he's dragging her out into the moist air outside, and before she can blink, they're in the Ice Castle, across the street.

Damn that man for being a man. Yui could feel the shriek of rage bubbling up her throat.

Of course, he'd bring her here, she seethed. She'll get back at him for this one day.

"Yui-chan," Viktor blinks inquisitively, "are you on your period?"

Viktor fucking Nikiforov. Entertaining and charismatic my ass. You're that stereotypical blonde bitch who everyone knows is going to die within the first two nanoseconds. Why the fuck does anyone watch you skate, huh? I'd rather—

Before she can finish her thought or even process the ice developing in his eyes, there is a tug on her scarf and she stumbles into him, literally, separated only by the plastic wall. Her face becomes a dangerous blank, as grey eyes turn to azure ones.

Hot.

Cold.

His eyes are of mist and ice. One that she sees up close is cold and hard and determined. The world is but a chess game to this man. And this is but another one to him, one that is personal and reckless.

"Watch, Yui. How can you compose for someone when you don't even know their routines?"

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And death once dead, there's no more dying then.

All victims of the beautiful heist of time, it seemed. Those flashbacks and replays of their memories, over and over again. Those unbreakable walls that surround them. The door that is forever only arm's length, yet the final step they could never take.

Hesitating, waiting, stopping.

And when Viktor begans skating, she doesn't watch. Why would she? She's seen everything about that man; every jump, every spin, every expression of joy and happiness and sadness and anger. Every muscle and crevice of his body had once been hers and a part of the festering wound that wouldn't heal.

I miss you.

The light, beautiful things.

The spotlight.

His hand.

His warmth.

The choice she made in choosing herself.

I miss you.

The acknowledgement of the lies that fabricate and make up their world.

And when a loop takes him to the spot directly in front of her, she could almost feel it; the rash and careless rush of adrenaline, the tip of the words on her tongue. And the look in his eyes that seems almost expectant and hopeful.

I miss you.

But she doesn't.

Because—

The idea that she shouldn't, will stop her from ever telling him the truth.

* * *

and that's chapter five!!!!!!

it felt a bit awkward, because it was originally 'but she doesn't, because she made the right choice in choosing herself.

and because the thought that she shouldn't, will stop her from ever telling him the truth.'

but because i felt like that didn't deliver the emotional impact and overall thoughts of yui as well as the current edition, it became what it is now, lol

dedicated to akirihito mannn i just realized that for all the covers you've made for this book i've neeeeever dedicated a chapter to you (like what??)

so here it is :)

~lucia