Work Text:
Fictober Day 24: There’s not enough time
Inori watched Mittens practice. She had basically mastered a tricky double jump, and it made Inori impatient. She wanted to jump and land beautifully just like Mittens. Just like Hikaru. She wanted to skate and spin and jump and shine as a medalist. Maybe if she did, Mittens would be friends with her again. Maybe if she did, she could see Hikaru again.
But Coach Tsukasa was right. There’s not enough time for her to learn to do it all. She had to choose. He had her choose her path, and she chose the taiyaki, so she’d make her performance the most delicious taiyaki she could. Polish the basics. That was her decision.
She would learn to skate solidly. She would learn to step beautifully. She would learn to carve figures in the ice and gesture in a way that catches people’s attention just like Coach Tsukasa.
It was difficult. Her muscles burned with the exercise. Her belly and legs ached from what Coach Tsukasa called ‘core exercises’ but it didn’t feel like she was getting better. For all that Coach Tsukasa praised her, saying that she had potential or that she was a genius, she couldn’t help looking at the other girls at the rink. A lot of them were younger than her and already doing jumps with more rotations than her. She knew, she knew, that she started late. 6 years too late if practically everyone else was to be believed, but it was so frustrating that everyone was so far ahead of her. Potential doesn’t trump experience. The judges wouldn’t give her performance points just for having the potential to skate beautifully.
But if nothing else, the past 6 years have taught her patience. You can’t speed your way through digging a hole, if you do you might cut the worms apart. She would be patient. Her efforts would pay off. Coach Tsukasa’s belief in her potential would not be wasted. She would do the practice and maybe, just maybe, her taiyaki would have some strawberry in it too.