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REO SHOULD'VE KNOWN Chris and Anri were scheming from the moment he met her. She had a glint in her eye that appeared to know of something, and the way in which she chose her words was always calculated as if trying to kindle a particular feeling in him. As if she wanted him to think about her words hours after their conversation was over.
She was waiting by the apartment complex when Reo arrived from the airport. His arrival in Toronto had been too early for his college to receive him, therefore Chris had used his "contacts" to get him a place to stay in the meantime. Apparently, Anri was the coach of a local figure skating team, and most of her skaters lived in the same building whose landlord she informed about Reo.
"Mikage, right?" She greeted him, shaking his hand and smiling gracefully. There was no air of cold professionalism around her, and Reo had to remind himself it was because he wasn't being welcomed as a subordinate but a friend of a friend.
Anri Teieri had every right in the figure skating world to act above all – and above him, too. She was one of the few skaters to achieve a Super Slam in her career - because she had won major international competitions during her junior years, and then major senior-level competitions in a different category.
Reo wasn't much of a fanboy, but he wasn't ignorant of her multiple achievements either. Before Chris had told him, he hadn't expected the Anri Teieri to be training teenagers in North America. He smiled back at her, polite but tightlipped.
"Just Reo," he clarified, "I don't like people addressing me by my family name."
"Well, Reo, I'm Anri. It's a pleasure to finally meet you," she amended. Her lips quirked up slightly at the sound of his name, and he got the impression she might like him better now that he had drawn a line between him and his family.
"No, the pleasure is mine," Reo replied. "I'm thankful for your help with all these living arrangements, and on such short notice, too."
"Oh, don't worry about it," she helped him inside, motioning for him to follow towards his new apartment. As they walked upstairs, she spoke: "Chris told me you skated...?"
"I used to," Reo said, uninterested in deepening the subject.
"Were you any good?"
"Years ago," he answered, trying to ignore the sting of his confession. "But I came here to study, not skate."
She didn't seem too discouraged by his comment, "Yeah, Chris told me a little about it. He said you were a great boy, too young and talented to retire..."
