✍🏻See You Again

2 🫐 Chapter 2

When I was somewhat calmer, though not enough to dare turn around and look at Javi who was skating somewhere behind me, Nam poked me to get my attention.

"How about we practice on somebody else?"

"Huh? Practice what?"

"How to say 'Hi'."

I'm not a violent person, I swear, but I was really close to punching him. Where did people get all the friends I read about? The ones that came rushing at 2 am over a simple text of 'I feel lonely'. All the friends I had were the ones who ate everything in my fridge, already came with sweatpants in their backpacks, and teased me mercilessly 24/7.

Before I could go to prison for an assault or at least retort something witty, Nam started to wave at somebody. "Yuzu! Come over!"

Oh, right. Hanyu Yuzuru. Javi's close friend. He skated over, a nervous smile spreading on his lips. I was actually looking forward to meeting this one. Though I was born and raised in the States, my mum was from Japan and always pestered me over my bad Japanese. I had no issue communicating in that language. If one looked over the grammatical mistakes, wrong prepositions, tenses, and incorrect degrees of various levels of politeness.

"Good morning," he said in English with a heavy accent and clear discomfort on his face. So much so that his cheeks and ears started to tint pink. I wasn't one to make others suffer and so I switched to Japanese to end his struggle.

"Good morning and nice to meet you!" My enthusiastic smile widened when I saw the sparks of child-like happiness suddenly reflected in his eyes when he realized I can speak Japanese. Right after they disappeared as he grinned so much his nose scrunched up together with his eyelids, hiding the eyes completely. Cute.

"Well, I will leave you two to it," Nam muttered, probably annoyed that I didn't freak out or that he couldn't understand us and catch any gossip. Or both.

He skated away, leaving me alone with Yuzuru who went back to looking a bit anxious as he watched Nam's back disappear.

"Um, we met before," he said randomly, scratching the back of his head.

"Yeah, we did some ice shows together, but you usually stuck with Javi or the rest of TCC." I started to slowly skate again and he joined me by my side, matching my leisurely speed.

"I didn't know you speak Japanese."

"So you would have talked to me before if you knew I could?"

"Sorry."

He mumbled and hung his head, making me replay what I said and if it sounded like I was offended or something.

"I just hate English. So much." He let out a grim chuckle and briefly glanced at me before quickly looking away again and focusing on the skaters in front of us not to crash into anyone.

"Well, I need to practice my Japanese, so if you don't mind all the mistakes I'm making, I'm happy to speak only Japanese with you."

He smiled again from ear to ear, "I think the mistakes are actually really ---" suddenly he paused as if unsure how to finish the sentence, looking for the right word. He then followed up by mumbling something I couldn't catch and started to skate away. "Sorry, Brian is calling me over."

Usually, I was quick to respond in any conversation, but he was gone so fast I barely managed to inhale to speak. He surely could have placed well even among competitive speed skaters.

Though the encounter was somewhat strange, it still went better than I expected. I always heard stories about how intense he is on the ice during practice but here he seemed genuinely nice. And after what I did in front of Javi, who was I to judge on what's strange?