Tokyo (3)
Honda Reina, age eleven!
Her specialties: receiving confessions from boys she'd only ever thought of as friends—and figure skating.
Her favorite things: anything that went kirakira, sparkling and bright!
The reason she had started figure skating in the first place was that very sparkle.
The moment she saw, on television, a skater spinning in a dazzling costume that glittered and shone—from that instant on, figure skating became inseparable from Reina's life.
Figure skating is the sport that turns you into a princess!
Reina believed it with complete sincerity.
Skating costumes were covered in glittering stones; from head to toe you armored yourself in brilliance, then glided across the ice beneath the spotlight. And when you jumped, the costume flashed under the lights and left trails of light behind you, drawing every eye in the audience.
It felt like becoming the most dazzling star in the world.
The ice was a dream space that held all the sparkle she loved.
That was why Reina loved figure skating.
And that was why she wanted to jump farther than anyone else—higher, all the way to the place that shone the brightest.
But the time of pure sparkle did not last long.
Around the age of ten, her height suddenly began to shoot up.
At first she was delighted, thinking taller would only make the costumes look better on her. Her long arms and legs created more elegant lines; when she spun she seemed to bloom even larger, like a single great flower.
The problem was the jumps.
She could no longer spring as high as before.
Her old technique had used a light body to stay in the air longer and complete the rotations. It was the method she had learned from the coach she idolized, and it was a point of pride.
But for Reina, whose height and weight had suddenly increased, that method no longer fit.
Her balance collapsed. Landings often wobbled. Even that brief moment before takeoff when she drove power into her knees began to frighten her.
Once, twice, three times—every repeated failure tangled her thoughts further. As her success rate dropped in competition, her confidence plummeted with it.
Perhaps that was why Reina stopped going to the club rink.
She told her coach she needed private practice and spent months training at a public rink near home instead. In the end, she still could not land the jump she wanted.
I have to land the quad Salchow…
On her coach's advice she had abandoned the triple Axel and chosen instead to raise the quality of her Salchow. To stay in contention for gold at junior competitions a year from now, she needed to complete a quadruple Lutz as well.
…Why won't it work?
She had only gotten heavier. She had only grown a little taller. Yet she could already see a version of herself that no longer shone.
And then came an ordinary day like any other.
Reina was repeating the same routine as always, paying no attention to the stares around her.
Quad Salchow—under-rotated. Again. This time the rotation was enough, but her center of gravity wavered and the landing failed. Every attempt at four revolutions ended in failure.
Her body did not feel sluggish, yet somehow the ice seemed far away.
If I could just jump a little higher…
That was what she thought, but right before takeoff her body curled in on itself. The preparatory moves her coach had suggested never seemed to settle into her muscles either.
Then, from the entrance to the rink, came the sound of skating—a clean shhh of blades cutting ice. Reina lifted her head.
…
Black training clothes, neatly tied hair. A small frame, yet every stroke carried power.
Cute.
The girl slowly pushed her skates and crossed the rink. Her gaze never wavered; her body flowed smoothly from one movement to the next. Then came a triple flip, and Reina's heart dropped.
The way she floated up so lightly, the way she landed as if it were the most natural thing in the world—it made Reina envious.
The envy lasted only a moment.
…A triple Axel?
The girl changed edges and prepared a new jump. The only jump taken while facing forward… and three revolutions at that. She failed. Yet unlike Reina, even in failure no emotion seemed to show on her face.
Their eyes met for a brief second and that was all—then the girl whose name Reina did not know demonstrated two Salchow jumps.
One used the same method Reina herself had always used: a strong push off the toepick for both takeoff and landing. The next was a Salchow that used the entire blade.
You can do it that way too?
No one had ever taught her that method. More accurately, the thought of doing it that way had never even occurred to her. Every coach had insisted that jumps could be a little lower as long as artistry was emphasized, and that once you grew tall it was better simply to give up.
Reina stood frozen in place. In her mind the two jumps the girl had just shown her played on loop. She drew a breath and traced with her eyes the path the girl had taken.
She bent her knees and laid the blade slightly on its side. This time she did not dig the toepick in hard. Instead she slowly received the ice's resistance with the full length of the blade and lifted her body.
The takeoff felt surprisingly soft. Rotation in the air—one, two, three.
Different.
And the landing. It was only a triple Salchow, yet with this feeling a quadruple would come soon—she could feel it.
Reina raised her face. The girl was still watching her from the far side of the rink.
It wasn't only her looks that were cute and pretty. That heart, so ready to help a complete stranger—it truly, truly sparkled.
Reina hurried over and took the girl's hands. Not knowing what else to say, she shouted the word she loved most.
But the girl only tilted her head as if she didn't understand.
Only then did Reina notice the skates on the girl's feet.
…Korea!
Custom blades sold exclusively by a recently famous Korean brand. You had to go to a store in Korea to buy them; they were impossible to find in Japan.
She couldn't understand Japanese, and she owned Korean skates—therefore she was Korean. Having reached that conclusion, Reina used the only Korean she knew.
"Kirakira!"
She felt the girl's expression change at the word.
Kirakira is a good word in Korea too!
"Kirakira!"
So that's all the words she knows.
Only after I remembered that phone translators existed did I understand why this girl kept saying nothing but "kirakira." I'd wondered for a second if she might be a little slow, but thankfully that wasn't it. She simply knew only one word of Korean: kirakira.
"…You want to practice together again tomorrow?"
I ran the sentence through the translator and showed her the screen to make sure I'd understood correctly.
Nod. Nod.
"We only met today, you know."
"Kirakira!"
"Well… if it's possible, sure."
"Uh… this, my account. Maybe… you… come, I help you."
The girl broke awkward English words into pieces and held out her SNS account. Apparently she wanted me to contact her there if I could.
The moment I checked the ID—
…A hundred thousand?
I thought I'd misread it. Looking again, the number was still one hundred thousand. At the same time I confirmed the username, and finally I understood who the girl standing in front of me was.
Honda Reina.
She had been popular in the early senior and junior years, then retired sooner than expected and moved into the entertainment world. Since I never paid attention to anyone who wasn't an active competitor, it was only natural I hadn't recognized her right away.
The reason I could place her now was simple.
I interviewed her once.
During her entertainment career she had visited Korea a few times. Because of that, back when I was on the national team, I had done a couple of interviews with her. Something about material for a Japanese figure-skating variety show—I couldn't remember the exact details.
So that's why she quit.
Even now she was tall for someone supposedly eleven. In my previous life Reina had stood close to 170 cm. Japan simply had no skaters of that height yet, so there had been no method for coaching a tall athlete—and no reason to develop one either.
And there wouldn't have been any need.
Promising talents at Reina's level were plentiful, and Japan preferred the cute and petite look; a 170-centimeter ladies' singles skater simply wasn't required. Figure skating valued ability, of course, but it was also a winner-take-all sport where marketability mattered just as much.
If she just uses the blade properly…
But if she could skate the way I had just shown her—using the full blade—height wouldn't be a problem at all. In my previous life I myself had earned significant extra points precisely because of the advantages that came with height. The large-scale movement of jumps and skating from a tall frame was actually advantageous for GOE.
Our allotted time ended for the day, and I left the rink with Mom.
On the way back to the hotel I looked at her and spoke up.
"…Mom, is it okay if I go to the rink again tomorrow?"
"Hm? Was it that much fun?"
"…Yes."
New environments were always welcome.
"Then Mom and Dad will just have to go on a date by ourselves."
It was a family trip, so she might have been disappointed, but Mom only smiled and gave permission. I decided that just this once was fine; next chance we got, we would spend the time properly as a family.
And the next day—
Jackpot.
I arrived not at yesterday's rink but at the one a short distance away that Reina had told me about, and I could barely hold back a grin.
Standing neatly along the edge of the rink—something you almost never saw in Korea—was a black pole that anyone who didn't know better might have mistaken for a fishing rod.
A harness.
The harness: a tool that helped with jump practice, and the method widely known as the easiest way to break through the wall of the triple Axel.