A Touch of Mistletoe (6 page)

"Be at ease," she told him. "Ash is on the job, yes? Concentrate on your routine. And have fun!"

Yuki nodded. A determined expression wiped away his smile as he reached down, folding himself in half again to give the ice a fleeting touch before skating off and crossing most of the rink in a few seconds.

Ash cautiously lowered his eyes after recovering from the red zone his libido had galloped into at the sight of Yuki's graceful figure taking off in his skintight suit. They were going to be in close proximity for at least the next few days; he had to get a handle on himself.

"This afternoon is closed practice," Asami told him. "I don't think Yuki has had trouble at the rink. You may as well take a seat and relax."

Ash nodded. "I'll start my research, if it's all the same." He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. There were a few tenuous leads to look into. If it weren't for Keisuke, though, he might have walked away. There was no firm evidence of any kind of supernatural involvement. Even with the money that was offered, Ash was no show pony. He wouldn't stand to be hired for appearances or easing a renowned skater's superstitions.

No matter how cute said skater had turned out to be.

None of Ash's lines of inquiry turned up anything useful, and the afternoon passed without incident as Asami had said. By the time Yuki left the ice she was praising him for his improved performance, handing him water and a quilted vest and turning him over to Ash's care for the evening. Asami had gone over the essential details with Ash—he'd be staying with Yuki in the short-term rental apartment he had leased within easy commuting distance of the rink. That was another area of concern for Ash, given the apartment was in a perpetual state of transition with one renter after another. He'd been informed Yuki didn't have a permanent residence in Japan besides his parents' place in Osaka, where he stayed the minimum time necessary to be considered resident for Team Japan.

He followed Yuki out of the rink, stooping to clear the door again, and was brought up short by Yuki's shoulders. Over Yuki's head, Ash spotted a row of schoolgirls still in uniform, holding up signs and posters. One of them was holding a magazine with Yuki's face on the cover.

"If you don't mind?" one of the girls asked timidly. "Could you sign, please?"

"Of course." Yuki's tone was warm and kind, with no hint of the impatience Ash felt to get out of there after hours of waiting through the practice session.

"Hanabishi-senshuu, who is this?" The tallest girl looked Ash right in the eye as she asked it.

"Photographer," Yuki replied briefly, glancing over his shoulder at Ash before taking the marker one of the girls held out to him. "He's doing profiles for Japanese skaters."

Ash suppressed a sigh. The entire afternoon had been a study in mundanity. He held out hope for the evening. Yuki had told him the spirit manifested there, and at last he'd have something to feel worthy of the fat salary they were paying him.

*~*~*

The evening was every bit as routine as Yuki's numbered recitation had promised. Ash and Yuki went from the subway to a conbini, a corner convenience store, picked up off-the-rack bento boxes for dinner, and Ash did more research on his laptop while Yuki immersed himself in studies.

"I don't mean to ignore you or be a terrible host," Yuki told him earnestly before turning to a stack of books. "I need to review all this while I can."

"Understood, and you're not a host," Ash replied. "Remember, I'm here to observe."

There was no manifestation that night, however. They woke early to the tune of Yuki's cell phone the next morning and set out for the gym, picking up breakfast from the corner conbini on the way. Ash was poised for it, but from apartment to conbini, then subway to gym, his hackles never rose. There was only the typical thrumming static of human energy that Ash monitored on a sub-conscious level for any deviations.

After the gym, they went straight back to the rink. That day, Ash was in a good position to see firsthand why Yuki had been so composed at the prospect of Ash's constant surveillance. A camera crew showed up before Yuki had even reached the ice and began setting up. Ash kept a discreet distance as a young, brightly made-up reporter followed Yuki around and began asking him all kinds of questions, from his daily routine to any good luck habits he had before performances.

Halfway through the day, Asami sat beside him and handed him a tin of milk coffee. "Most of the open practices for skating events would have coaches from all different countries, but right now it's Nationals, so it's mostly Japanese."

"Yuki-kun has another coach, doesn't he?" Ash asked, wryly amused that she'd managed to comment on his sticking out like a sore thumb without coming out and saying it.

"Oh, I'm not his coach. I'm his manager, here in Japan and for international events, at least. His coach is flying in this afternoon."

"Good to know." Ash jotted it down, though he wasn't sure it was relevant in the overall scheme of things.

He drank his coffee and watched the camera crew shadowing Yuki.

"His spins and footwork have already gotten back up to his usual level," Asami commented. "Of course, in most competitions, it comes down to how cleanly the skater can land the jumps."

"He's still missing a lot." Ash had a front-row view every time Yuki went down hard on the ice, getting up with a laugh and skating off as he dusted white flecks from his black tracksuit.

Asami sighed. "His confidence is usually good. He doesn't get nerves like some of my other skaters, though the pressure can get to him. This... it's different, I've never seen him like this."

Ash hoped he'd be able to resolve the situation for Yuki soon and put his mind at ease, allowing him to focus on the skating he loved. He had to uncover more about the nature of the spirit, though, because only then could he get enough clues to figure out why it had fixated on Yuki.

The camera crew broke off filming long before Yuki had completed his practice for the day. Ash switched from research and review of his meager case notes to simply watching. Yuki was a slim, poised figure on the ice, throwing his entire body into each jump. Even when he spun out and crashed—which happened more often than not—he got up and skated with radiant energy. Ash propped an elbow on the back of his seat and lost time in the movements as Yuki traced through his routine again and again. Watching Yuki made him wish he knew more about figure skating, but it didn't take knowledge to appreciate his graceful precision.

Most of the other skaters and staff had left the rink by the time Yuki approached the open door to get off the ice. He covered his skates and headed for some AV equipment by the side of the rink, beginning to unplug cords and coil them up. Ash unfolded his limbs and walked over to give him a hand.

"Your jumps are incredible," Ash praised, bending to unplug a speaker. When he rose, he caught Yuki pulling a face.

"My jumps were terrible today."

"You get amazing height, though." Ash copied the way Yuki looped the cord, catching one end under his elbow and winding it over his hand. "I swear, it was twice as high as the other skaters. And you get all the way around even when you fall."

"My rotations are clean." Yuki said it like a concession. "But I need to make the landings in order to get full GOEs." He spoke the last word in English.

"Okay, that was English, but I have no idea what it means," Ash told him.

"Grade of execution," Yuki said in English, before switching back to Japanese. "It's the skating system for judging jumps and other moves. And I'm going to need full GOEs to defend my title; Tatsuya is really good."

"Bit of a rival, huh?" Ash teased as they began to wheel the equipment carts toward the back hall.

"I'm only concerned with doing battle against myself. I need to skate a performance I'm satisfied with, so it has to be as perfect as I can make it." Yuki seemed calm, lacking the arrogance Ash would have expected in a boy his age who had already reached such achievements. Then an impish smile flickered over his face. "But, yeah, I'd like to beat Tatsuya; he's been on my ass these past couple of years." He dug a key out of his tracksuit jacket.

Ash huffed out a laugh. "The way he sees it, he's probably trying to get out of your shadow."

Yuki's laugh cut off abruptly as he fitted his key into the lock of the door across the hall. He froze like his muscles had locked. Slowly he began to turn the knob, gulping air as he swung the door open wide enough to push his cart over the threshold.

Before Ash could ask what was wrong, he felt it. The throb of discordant energy rolled over him. If he could relate it to any tangible sense, it was like a sour note plucked on an instrument gone unexpectedly out of tune. He cut a sharp look around the room over Yuki's shoulder and the bright spill of blue paint around the corner to the left caught his eye:  a can had tipped over on an upper shelf, and a kanji had been marked on the wall in bold smudges.

"Could one of the other skaters have done this?" Ash asked quietly, but the sense of the otherworldly presence was so thick in the room he knew the words were on the wrong track even as he said them.

Yuki shook his head. "There's only three people who have a key to this room, and Asami-san gave me hers so that she could go speak with Haruko-kun and his coach."

Any rivalry there?
Ash wanted to ask, but didn't bother. "Yuki, my kanji isn't that good. This one, it's...?" He wasn't ashamed to admit he still needed to read with the Japanese phonetic alphabet as an aid.

"Yuki," Yuki said tightly. He resumed pushing the cart, avoiding the painted wall and stowing the equipment in the corner.

Of course
. Ash followed, took a picture of the painted kanji, and frowned at it. It wasn't the kanji for the typical meaning, 'snow,' that he would have recognized. The lower right stroke was smudged upward, as though the painter had intended to begin another kanji. He shook his head and stowed his phone.

"Can we go?" Yuki's voice was clipped. He stood at the door, one hand poised on the knob, his entire body turned away from the room.

Ash chastised himself for being stupid and headed for the hall. "Yeah, let's go." At least it hadn't been red paint.

*~*~*

Strands of lights had been strung from store awnings, and sprigs of fake evergreen were twined around light poles on the street as Ash and Yuki left the subway. It was one of the first visual cues for Ash that Christmas was fast approaching. Although it was a recognized holiday in Japan, so many things about it were different that for Ash it was entirely unlike Christmas back home.

Yuki had been silent since the rink, in stark contrast to his mellow but constant conversation from their morning commute.

Ash nudged his elbow and was rewarded with Yuki's startled, wide eyes flying up to meet his. "Hey. There a noodle shop on the way to your apartment?"

Yuki's hesitant nod was followed by a more decisive one. His unfocused expression sharpened. "Yeah, do you want to have dinner?"

"I think we should." If it wasn't a place that Yuki stopped by regularly, Ash figured it would be a kind of neutral ground where they could talk.

Once they were settled elbow to elbow on the stools at a little alleyway noodle shop, Ash pried his chopsticks apart and considered how to tackle the conversation. There wasn't really a polite opening, so best to plow in and ascribe it to his American nature. "You knew it was going to happen."

Yuki was seated so close to Ash that when he stiffened, it sent a wave of sympathetic tension up Ash's side. "Not really. I'm not psychic. Not like that."

"But you felt it," Ash persisted. He knew the spirit had been there because he'd sensed it. He also knew it was different for everyone, in many instances so subtle that the person who experienced psychic phenomena doubted their own experience.

After a moment, Yuki's head dropped and his shoulders lowered. "It's like an ozone feeling," he mumbled. "The hair on my arms raises, and at my nape. Like before getting a shock, or the way the air feels right before it starts to rain. It's weird. It's not... I couldn't tell Asami-san that." He sounded a little desperate.

Ash set his hand tentatively on Yuki's nearest shoulder blade and left it there when he wasn't shrugged off. "It's not weird. You're a bit psychic."

Yuki lifted his head and aimed a charming nose wrinkle at Ash, leaning toward him. "Not in a useful way." He waved his chopsticks at Ash. "You thought I was making it up, too. Before I opened the storage room."

"Somewhat, maybe." Ash laughed and took his hand away, rubbing the back of his neck. It might have been his imagination, but he felt a charge running through his skin not unlike the sensation Yuki had described. It could be residual from the spirit. Ash couldn't let himself think it was between him and Yuki. "I had no doubt you were being harassed, only whether it was corporeal or spiritual."

"Now what?" Yuki dug his chopsticks into his bowl of noodles. He'd gone for the thin buckwheat ones where Ash had chosen the thick, floury udon type.

"Now we figure out what she wants, and resolve her attachment to you." Ash wanted to pull his phone out again and puzzle over the kanji some more, but resolved to do it later while Yuki was immersed in studies again. Food was a more immediate concern.

"She?" Yuki repeated curiously.

"Yeah, I could smell her perfume," Ash replied. It went beyond that, but it wasn't a sense he could describe. It was knowing, in a way that defied explanation. People described psychic abilities as a sixth sense, but for Ash it was more like an extra dimension to all his senses, and the intuition to pay attention to what they told him. He could turn his will onto his surroundings and use that to affect the metaphysical, but like flexing a muscle, he didn't think about how he did it, he simply
did
. It was another aspect to practicing his craft that had made it difficult to find a mentor after his Uncle Barry. Psychics and the paranormally-inclined used their talents on instinct and were rarely able to express it in an organized way to pass that on.