Chapter Text
Shizuru walked over to one of the large windows of the bedroom and stopped there, resting her forearms lightly against the glass as she looked out. Snow had settled over everything—trees, rooftops, the narrow paths threading through the Olympic Village of Milan—softening the lines of a place that still felt unfamiliar. A handful of high-rises stood nearby, close enough that she could make out balconies and windows, far enough that they all blurred into the same shape if she didn’t focus. When she glanced down, people moved between buildings in steady, purposeful lines, their figures small enough that she didn’t feel part of it yet.
That would change. It always did.
She had learned, over the years, that it took very little time for a place like this to settle into her memory. A few days, sometimes less. The view would become specific. The way the light shifted in the afternoon. The routes she took without thinking. Even now, she could already sense that this was one of those rooms she’d remember long after she’d left it behind.
She wasn’t tired, which surprised her a little. Travel usually caught up with her all at once, but this time there was only a quiet restlessness humming under her skin, a kind of contained energy that made it hard to stand still. Her heart felt slightly ahead of her thoughts, beating faster than it needed to, and she shifted her weight, exhaling slowly.
Excitement, she thought. Or something close to it.
She wanted to go outside. The idea had been there since she’d arrived, hovering just out of reach, and now it felt harder to ignore. She wanted to walk around, to get a sense of the place while it was still new, before routines took over. More than that, she wanted to see the rink. Not to skate—she never did that right away—but to stand near it, to feel the cold air around it, to touch the ice if she could.
It was a habit she’d never quite managed to explain properly. People called it superstition, or routine, or something she did to calm herself down. None of those descriptions felt entirely wrong, but none of them were quite right either. She just liked to know what she was stepping onto before she asked anything of it.
Ice had its own way of responding to you, its own soul. Some surfaces felt open, almost welcoming. Others didn’t, no matter how skilled you were. She’d learned early on that forcing things rarely ended well. Skating worked better when you paid attention, when you adjusted instead of insisting.
In that sense, it wasn’t so different from a romantic relationship, though she didn’t linger on the comparison. Both required time and patience. A certain willingness to listen and understand each other. It was made of compromises, of frustration and of victories. An understanding that control was mostly an illusion, even when things went well.
“All right,” she murmured, mostly to herself.
She turned away from the window and took in the room properly. It was small, clean, and efficient in the way temporary places often were, with too many neutral tones and not much personality. She doubted she would ever appreciate grey walls, no matter how often she encountered them. Still, it was comfortable enough.
Her eyes landed on the bed, and she paused.
The blanket spread across it was patterned with small illustrations of the sports represented at the Games. It was an odd choice, slightly playful, and it stood out against the rest of the room. She smiled faintly. She liked that someone had thought about it. That someone had decided the details were worth the effort. She’d always believed they were.
She crossed the room and knelt in front of her bags, reaching for the zipper of the one she usually unpacked first. The sound was soft and familiar, grounding in a way she hadn’t realized she needed. She slipped her hand inside, already half-distracted, and frowned when her fingers closed around something solid.
She tried again, slower this time, until she found the edge of it and pulled it out.
A hockey puck.
She stared at it for a moment, then turned it over in her hand. It felt heavier than she expected. A second puck followed, then a third object that definitely wasn’t hers. Her attention snagged on the engraving etched into the rubber.
Natsuki Kuga.
She lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, the realization settling in with an odd mix of disbelief and resignation. This wasn’t her bag. She pulled out a few more items— raglan shirts, hoodies—all clearly too big, all very clearly not her style.
She let out a quiet breath.
“Ara. Of course.”
Four Olympic entries. Years of travels, schedules, and carefully organized chaos. This was the first time her luggage had been mixed up. She supposed there was something almost impressive about that.
The name lingered in her thoughts. Natsuki Kuga. Japanese, she assumed. A hockey player, apparently. She pictured someone taller than her, broad-shouldered, probably just as surprised to find Shizuru’s clothes in her room as she was to find hers here.
She reached for her phone, already preparing herself for the inconvenience of sorting it out.
The knock at the door came sharply, close enough that it made her look up.
She didn’t move right away, momentarily wondering what it could be now. Rolling her eyes, she barely managed to hide her annoyance as she walked to the door, curious and cautious at the same time. When she opened it, she froze—and then instinctively stepped back, because standing there, as if she had just walked out of her imagination, was one of her favorite pairs of skates.
“I think these are yours… and I think you got my stuff.”
Hoarse voice.
A dark-haired girl stood in the doorway, balancing Shizuru’s skates in one hand and a travel bag slung casually over her shoulder. She was tall, athletic, radiating the kind of confidence that almost made Shizuru want to step carefully around every word she said. Casual, maybe even blasé, but there was something cocky in the tilt of her chin, in the way she leaned slightly against the doorframe.
Shizuru opened her mouth and hesitated. “Oh. Are you Kuga-san perhaps? Kuga—”
“Natsuki, yeah. That’s me,” the girl said, cutting her off. “I think our bags got mixed at the reception desk. What a brilliant idea the delegation had, forcing us to use the same ones…”
Shizuru swallowed. “I’m…”
“Fujino. Shizuru Fujino. I know who you are. We all know who you are.”
The casual declaration, meant perhaps as a friendly acknowledgment, only made Shizuru feel slightly exposed. Not uncomfortable in a treacherous way, but in that way you do when someone sees more of you than you intended. In the way when someone instantly assumes things about you, about your life…
She didn’t know how to respond, so she stepped aside and gestured for Natsuki to come in, already hurrying back to the bed to shove the pucks, shirts, and hoodies back into her bag as quickly and neatly as she could.
“So… you play hockey?” Shizuru asked, her voice betraying her awkwardness despite her best efforts at casualness. She bit her lower lip, embarrassed by how hard she always struggled with small talk. It didn’t matter how practiced and carefully cultivated her media persona was—here, in her own room, she could barely string words together.
Natsuki raised an eyebrow, a small smile twitching at the corner of her lips. “Nah, actually I’m on the bobsleigh team.”
“…Oh…”
A burst of laughter escaped Natsuki before Shizuru realized her mistake. The blonde had missed the sarcasm entirely and looked utterly lost.
“I’m kidding! I’m the captain of the hockey team, yeah. I play hockey. It was a joke—just a joke. You know, something that’s supposed to make people laugh?”
Shizuru remained blank, staring as the words settled awkwardly in the space between them. Natsuki’s grin softened into a casual smile. “Ah, well… never mind.”
The dark-haired woman dropped her bag and skates onto the floor and started sorting her own things without asking. Then she glanced around the bedroom. “So that’s what individual apartments look like…”
Not a critique, really. Still, it made Shizuru shift uncomfortably. Most athletes shared rooms. Individual apartments were a privilege, no matter how small or bland. She knew that, and yet… somehow, she felt compelled to explain herself.
“I need… quietness to focus,” she offered, a little too quickly.
“Don’t we all need that?” Natsuki replied, almost teasing, and Shizuru’s face heated as the words hit her like a mirror she didn’t want to look into. Her usual composure wavered; she stumbled over inaudible words, attempting to apologize and justify herself at once.
“Ara… yes, of course. That’s not what I… I mean… it’s not… I know, it’s—”
Natsuki didn’t wait for the mess of words to untangle. She simply walked back toward the door with that casual, almost insolent ease, waved to a couple of girls in the hallway, and winked at Shizuru, who was still fumbling for a coherent apology.
“See you later, Fujino.”
And just like that, she was gone.
Shizuru remained still, leaning slightly on the doorframe, until the hubbub of the corridor reminded her where she was. Voices carried through the hall, laughter, greetings, shoes scraping on the polished floor—it was chaotic and warm all at once. If it weren’t for the Olympic logo plastered on the walls, it could have passed for a slightly rowdy winter camp.
A guy walking past whistled at her, only freezing when he realized who she was. “Hey… sexy—oh, sorry,” he muttered, quickly retreating.
Shizuru stepped back into her room, closing the door and leaning against it, eyes shut for a long moment. The quiet pressed in, comforting and familiar. A deep sigh slipped out, heavier than she realized.
This wasn’t how she had imagined the start of her very last Olympic Games. Not at all.