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Grandpa is nowhere in evidence when Yuri stomps his way into the house they’re renting. He’s a little put out: the effect of banging the front door and slamming his way into his bedroom is rather spoiled if there’s no one around to appreciate it. He crosses the living room instead, and throws his satchel onto the couch. His English textbooks spill out, and he thinks, for about half a second, of picking them up. Then, remembering Lilia’s spotless apartment, he decides to kick his shoes off in the middle of the living room instead. That has the added bonus of being basically sacrilegious in the eyes of this whole village of people hell-bent on being charming to him.
Not, he thinks, as his phone alerts him to a series of texts from kids he’d just been in class with, that it’s entirely bad having a village out to spoil you. The old people are a bit stuffy, but the girls are okay. Some of the boys, too.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s bored. On a Wednesday after school both the rink and Minako’s studio are occupied by teenagers having fun and/or pretending they know how to dance. Yuri thinks to himself that he never had to calculate for shit like this in St Petersburg, with state-of-the-art training facilities; the thought doesn’t sound convincingly bitter even to his own mind.
The justification Yuri gives himself for ending up at Yu-Topia is that the onsen is practically part of his training regime. He goes into the kitchens first, entirely because it’s polite to greet Hiroko and not at all because he’s looking for Grandpa.
He finds possibly the last thing he expected to find in Hiroko’s kitchen. There’s Grandpa, which is predictable. He reaches out to ruffle Yuri’s hair, and Yuri pretends to hate it, also predictably. Grandpa has on one of Hiroko’s aprons, and is evidently in the middle of chopping up some kind of vegetable, which is still not the unexpected part. The unexpected part is that Viktor is also wearing an apron, and is peering into a metal bowl looking perplexed.
‘I got shell in the eggs, Hiro,’ Viktor says, as Yuri ducks out from under Grandpa’s arm.
‘That’s why you broke them into the small bowl first,’ Hiroko says, unflustered. She hands Viktor a chopstick. ‘Catch it with this. And you,’ she adds, ‘stop distracting him!’
Yuri realises the other Yuri is perched on the kitchen bench, close enough to whisper sickening sweet nothings in Viktor’s ear. Yuri thinks about leaving right then and there, but the sight of Viktor fruitlessly chasing eggshell around a bowl of raw eggs is too funny.
‘Viktor is learning to cook!’ Hiroko cries, seeing Yuri. ‘I suppose nobody ever taught you to cook, either, with all your training!’
Yuri folds his arms. ‘I don’t need to cook.’
‘Everyone should know how to cook,’ Viktor says. ‘Hiro, what do I…?’
‘Into the batter,’ Hiroko says, pointing to a larger bowl. ‘And mix.’ She hands Viktor a whisk, and Yuri is delighted to watch as his coach pretty much instantly gets himself splattered with sticky goop.
‘Beni shoga,’ the other Yuri says, handing Viktor a plate of something red and probably more delicious than it looks.
‘Yurio made blini with me,’ Grandpa says, with a glare at Yuri that suggests he caught the part of the conversation where Yuri disparaged cooking. ‘When he is small.’
‘When I was small,’ Yuri says. The other Yuri’s parents speak English for the tourists, and Viktor’s basically fluent, while he and Grandpa sound like they’ve barely been to school. Of course, Grandpa finished school when he when he was younger than Yuri is now, and Yuri’s own schooling has taken a backseat to skating for the past few years. And everyone around here knows it, because he’s taking English classes with the local high school, and Viktor has somehow got half the town privately tutoring him in one subject or another. Viktor and Yuri K have some plan to send him off to university, which Yuri thinks is probably so that Viktor can wash his hands of Yuri at last. But Grandpa wants him to study for the opportunities, so Yuri will study.
‘My Yuri loved to make cakes when he was a child,’ Hiroko says, a bit mistily.
‘I loved to lick up the scraps,’ the other Yuri says, and swipes a piece of the red stuff from the side of the bowl.
‘The cake is never safe from Yurio,’ Grandpa says, dumping the pile of shredded cabbage into Viktor’s batter.
‘Grandpa!’ Yuri complains, in Russian. ‘You’re embarrassing me!’
‘No, go on,’ Viktor says, because of course he understands everything, ‘tell us about how he used to steal the cakes.’
‘Heat the oil,’ Hiroko says, giving Viktor a shove toward the stove. Yuri’s childhood exploits are forgotten as the process drags out: first too much oil, then too little; then the oil spits when Viktor drops a little batter into it. Yuri K makes a fool of himself kissing the not-actually-burned spots on Viktor’s hand better. Grandpa and Hiroko both beam at them like it’s the sweetest thing they’ve ever seen, and not utterly sickening. Yuri comes to his senses and stalks off to the onsen.
When he comes back inside, Yuri is darkly amused to find the other Yuri doggedly eating burned okonomiyaki. Viktor is poking disconsolately at his own pancake, which lacks all structural integrity.
‘Hardly katsudon, is it, piggy?’ Yuri asks, and is rewarded by Yuri K both blushing and glowering at him.
‘It’s good,’ Yuri K lies.
‘I’d like to see you do better,’ Viktor mutters, in Russian.
‘So would I,’ Grandpa says, coming up behind Yuri. In his inconsistent English he adds, for Yuri K’s benefit, ‘Yurio will not giggle because he cannot cook too.’
‘I don’t giggle,’ Yurio complains, although he thinks Grandpa probably meant ‘laugh’.
‘Grandpa,’ Viktor says - of course he calls Yuri’s grandfather that. Now he’s not winning medals he’s devoted himself to winning over other people’s relatives. It’s disgusting. ‘Are blini easier than this? I miss blini.’
Grandpa shrugs. ‘Yuri made blini when he was only nine,’ he says, in Russian, and then, in English, to Yuri K ‘I will teach Viktor the blini, yes?’
‘Grandpa,’ Yuri says, and he’s aware he’s whining. ‘I can’t make blini anymore.’ He doesn’t remember, and he thinks probably Grandpa did most of the actual work when he was young anyway.
‘I thought you didn’t need to cook,’ Grandpa says, with a sly look on his face.
‘If you teach Viktor you have to teach me,’ Yuri declares. In English, to piss Grandpa off. Yuri K looks delighted, and he and Grandpa exchange complicated looks and raising of eyebrows.
‘The blini is too easy for you,’ Grandpa says, to Yuri. ‘I teach you two Pirozhki, and you will compete, yes?’
‘I,’ Yuri K says, leaning back on his hands, ‘will be judge. Impress me with your dumplings!’
‘You’re not allowed to teach him the katsudon pirozhki,’ Yuri says, to Grandpa, glaring at Viktor. Grandpa smiles beatifically and says nothing. Yuri folds his arms, feeling like he’s been outsmarted, but he’s not sure how.
‘Vicchan!’ Hiroko calls, in what’s definitely an ominous tone of voice. ‘The most important part of cooking is to clean up the mess. Kitchen! Now!’
Yuri K doesn’t seem to feel the need to plaster himself all over Viktor in solidarity while Viktor washes pots, Yuri is pleased to see.