Chapter 29

“Did you know? Lerusha’s mother was a dancer.”

Alexei brought up something from two years before. On the day his parents died, there had been another man and woman beside them. Learned and kind people whose only crime was existing. A couple who had not fallen like Wojciech, who had worked diligently.

Maxim Belov and Alisa Belova.

The innocent people who had crossed from Russia into America a little later than the others but were unlucky enough to drift here. Alexei was mentioning them now. Strictly speaking, they were the people who had caused his parents to die.

“Yes.”

Yuri could not dare guess Alexei’s heart, so he answered quietly, and Alexei went on.

“Maybe because Lerusha takes after his mother, he’s good at ballet. I saw him dance before, and he was really cute.”

Lerusha was that couple’s child. People knew Valeri Belov, whom Alexei lived with while pretending he was his younger brother, as Valeri Sorokin. To protect that brother, Alexei had learned how not to cry even after days like this. Yuri always pitied his friend for that.

But Alexei was smiling as he looked at the ballet company poster. The boy looking up at the poster with a blood-covered face turned his head, met Yuri’s eyes, and wrinkled his nose.

“Later, Lerusha might want to dance like his mother, so I’m going to make a lot of money. And I’m definitely going to leave this fucked-up city.”

Even with bruises blooming over his pale skin, Alexei did not look miserable. There was conviction in his eyes. As if he had witnessed a soul burning white, Yuri got goose bumps.

Looking at the boy who put into words a thought Yuri had never once had, Yuri sensed that Alexei would certainly leave this place someday. The friend who had been breathing in the same space suddenly looked far away. If the chance came, Alexei would get in a car, cross the edge of this hell, and leave far, very far away.

An unbearable sense of shabbiness turned into anxiety and stirred a whisper in Yuri’s heart. Alyosha, don’t go. Stay in this city with me. Swallowing what he wanted to say, Yuri silently nodded. Not even realizing that a back molar had fallen out and he was still bleeding, Yuri swallowed the blood, then spoke for his friend.

“Then I’ll help you stay alive.”

Alexei laughed. It was a laugh too hollow and empty with sorrow for a boy. “Right. If you hadn’t been there, I would’ve died earlier.”

“That’s true.”

“Thank you, Yuri,” Alexei thanked him sincerely.

Staring at his beloved friend, Yuri realized that the joy he would gain from seeing Alexei finally free would be greater than the loneliness he would gain from Alexei leaving him. And he also realized that he and Alexei were fundamentally different people. Alexei had conviction and a goal to climb upward and move forward, while Yuri had no desire except to protect his family.

The memory of the past, suddenly dragged out as if someone had thrust a hand into his solar plexus, made Yuri’s throat sting. He swallowed a small dry cough and squeezed his eyes shut so he would not look at Cherriot. Once he realized that this childish, chaotic young man was a fundamentally different creature from Yuri himself, dry thirst rose in him. He wanted water.

“Are you okay?”

Then Cherriot, who had been quiet, spoke to him. When Yuri opened his eyes, Cherriot had pushed himself up and was looking at him. Gentle concern rested in those beautiful green eyes.

“Yes.”

Yuri did not know what the question was about, but he answered anyway.

“Should I bring you water?”

…And yet strangely, Cherriot asked as if he knew what Yuri wanted. When Yuri stared at him, Cherriot rose from the sofa and went to the kitchen.

“What book are you reading so intently? You were so focused I couldn’t bring myself to bother you.”

Cherriot took out two glasses, filled them, and returned to the living room. Yuri stared at him placing the glasses on coasters. The fact that coasters were needed to prevent water stains on wood passed through his mind. He had never seen anyone care about something like this.

So that was why he’d managed not to talk.

It had been because he had not wanted to interrupt Yuri’s reading.

Staring at the water pooled in the glass, Yuri turned over what Cherriot had said. It felt strange. Knowing that even during the time Cherriot had been silent, Cherriot had been conscious of him, made Yuri’s fingertips itch.

After hesitating, Yuri reached for the water glass and whispered in a locked voice. “I thought you were focused on the hockey video.”

“Hm? No. I just put it on. I’ve watched that video hundreds of times already, so I have it memorized now. I’ve thought hundreds of times about where I made what mistake, what might have changed if I’d made a different lead. I really thought we could win the Stanley Cup this year…” Cherriot returned an answer close to talking to himself.

Turning over the words, Yuri tried to estimate the effort he could not guess at. Perhaps because he could not grasp it at all, Yuri became a little curious about what Cherriot was like playing hockey.

…In truth, maybe he was quite curious.

Drinking the water, Yuri looked toward the laptop screen. Because Cherriot had left it on the sofa, Yuri could now see the video. He could not distinguish uniforms, but the moment beautiful reddish-blond hair flashed across the highlight on the screen, he knew it was Cherriot.

He swore he had not meant to watch, but when he saw Cherriot in a blue uniform cutting cleanly across the ice and firing the puck, his eyes went there on their own. After a scene where Cherriot’s tall, long body slipped past a player of similar build and pushed the stick, the video showed him wearing a fierce expression and shouting hotly at players who collided with him.

Yuri’s gaze fixed on the face that usually looked white, now flushed red with excitement, and the long, solid neck so furious that veins stood out. Baring his teeth like a beast as he protested, Cherriot looked threatening. It was strange that a man as innocent and bright as Cherriot could make a face like that.

“What’s this?”

A voice sounded right beside Yuri.

“Did you suddenly realize how handsome I am and fall for me?”

Warm breath tickled the shell of his ear, and Yuri whipped his head around. Their noses brushed in that instant.

“What are you doing?”

He had no idea when Cherriot had come behind him, but Cherriot was bent over, unnecessarily close. He had come so near, as if whispering into his ear, that the distance between them had narrowed enough for them to see themselves reflected in each other’s eyes.

Even with Yuri’s face going cold, Cherriot did not move away. Usually, he would have said, All right, all right, and backed off, but now he stared at Yuri openly.

Their breathing mixed. Soft breaths trembled faintly in the air. Yuri could not tell whether he was breathing or Cherriot was. When it felt as if their breaths were tangled together, Yuri unconsciously looked at Cherriot’s lips. He had felt it the first time he saw them, too, but those reddish lips resembled his name.

“Wolfie.”

Cherriot called him in a low voice that seemed to resonate from his chest. The moment Yuri heard Cherriot’s voice, markedly lower than usual, something inside him chilled for no reason.

He could simply tell him to get lost or push him away, yet strangely, his body felt stiff. Yuri tightened his grip around the water glass, hard enough that the joints of his pale fingers stood out.

“…What?”

If he stayed like this without answering, he felt something extremely strange would happen, so Yuri barely cleared his throat and responded. Cherriot still did not move away. He stared at him from right in front of his face, then slowly parted his lips.

“Do you know our lips just touched?”

No way. Yuri’s grip on the cup tightened further as he frowned.

“Nonsense.”

“It’s true.”

“It wasn’t my lips. Our noses brushed.”

At that, Cherriot curved his eyes slyly as if he had heard the answer he had been waiting for. “Did you hate it?”

“It was a mistake in the first place—” Yuri was about to correct his nonsense, then closed his mouth. The hand gripping the water glass continued to tighten. “Stop fooling around and go back to your seat. Why would you talk from behind me? What would you do if your nose bone broke?”

“Hm.”

Cherriot finally gave Yuri room to breathe. His eyes moved as if he were thinking, and then he straightened. Looking down at Yuri, he asked, “Wolfie, I think I’m a little strange.”

“You’re strange by default.”

The answer escaped before Yuri realized it, and Cherriot smiled even after being insulted.

“Wolfie knows how to joke?”

“That wasn’t a joke. I meant it.”

“I mean it too. Something’s been a bit strange since earlier.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes and looked up at Cherriot. He had no idea what would come out of his mouth, but judging by how he had pestered him that morning, there was a high probability Cherriot would beg to go out. Intending to refuse decisively, Yuri answered.

“In what way?”

But Cherriot gave an answer Yuri could never have deduced with his common sense.

“I really wanted to kiss you just now.”

“…”

For an instant, Yuri lost the ability to speak and parted his lips. Perhaps because he had never imagined such an explicit statement of desire would come out, unlike ordinary flirting. Rather than anger or displeasure, the soft sensation of their noses brushing came to mind first.

“Of course, I do approach people I like without hesitation, but I’m still not the kind of shameless person who kisses someone as soon as we meet. But…”

Sunlight entering through the window pierced through Cherriot’s lashes and lit the center of his eyes. Green eyes, their pupils smaller and darker than usual, stared persistently at Yuri. He felt like an animal searching him. For an instant, Yuri remembered Cherriot on the ice, baring his teeth as he crashed into men.

“I’ve kept wanting to touch you too much since earlier.”

The low confession rang out.

Thinking of Cherriot, who usually behaved lightly, those words should have been an extension of his earlier jokes, but the whisper now floating in the air felt different in texture.

“And then I looked at your eyes.”

Or maybe.

“And I thought your eyes were prettier than the lake outside. So much prettier they can’t even be compared.”

Maybe I felt it that way.

“Am I crazy?”