Chapter Text
Pink tulle and pigtails run underfoot with a squeal and Shirayuki just barely avoids stumbling over when she is steadied by a firm hand as petite as her own. Looking up, she is met by Kiki’s faintly amused expression and Shirayuki feels her cheeks heat. Why did everyone here have to be so pretty? Mumbling her apologies, Shirayuki rights herself and follows the other woman into the studio.
The room is filled with small children much like the one who just tripped her, either laid out on the floor as they “helped” one another stretch or dangling themselves from the lowered barre. It was a sea of pink and giggles with one lone boy hovering at the edge of the classroom.
Shirayuki can’t help but be confused as she takes in the scene. This couldn’t be what Zen meant when he said that he was going to ensure that she was ready for the prima auditions.
She’s so bewildered at the scene that she doesn’t even notice Kiki leave to gather the instructor until they both are at her side.
“Shirayuki,” Kiki’s voice and expression as placid as ever calls her attention from the room. Shirayuki turns her head and her heart bottoms out when she sees the tall, black clad figure at her side. “I trust you two remember one another?”
It’s rude, but Shirayuki can’t prevent her expression from stretching into a frown. For his part, Obi looks uncomfortable as well, reaching behind his head with a forced grin.
“Yes,” she replies slowly. How could she forget the man who, just a few weeks ago, tried to ruin her auditions by soaking her pointe shoes just moments before she was to try out for the company? She had barely managed to pass.
“Of course I remember the mademoiselle,” Obi responds with a nervous laugh, and… there’s something about his voice that is different. It’s not the American accent she is becoming accustomed to and she has to strain a little more than normal to understand him.
No one could ever accuse Kiki of being circumfluous. She gets straight to the point. “Zen would like you to train Shirayuki for Nikiya’s role.”
The both of them blanche, and Obi stills for just a moment, almost imperceptible if she wasn’t looking carefully for a reaction. After a beat, his face stretches in a grin that is too big to be genuine. “I’m sure the Boss could find someone more suitable—”
“He says you,” Kiki interrupts, causing Obi to wince.
Shirayuki’s own misgivings must be plain on her face for when Kiki turns back to her, the other woman’s face smooths into a warmer expression.
“Obi teaches the intensives,” Kiki explains. When Shirayuki turns her head sharply to give the room a skeptical sweep, taking in the children and impatient mothers sitting along the edges of the studio, Kiki’s lips curve into a rare ghost of a smile. “And Level 1.”
Obi winks when Shirayuki turns her gaze back to him. Her frown deepens.
“I’ll leave you two to work out the details,” Kiki continues without preamble. “Please, Shirayuki, let me know if the situation becomes too unbearable and we’ll work something else out.”
And with those words, she departs, leaving Obi and Shirayuki staring awkwardly at one another.
It’s Obi who breaks the silence. “Eh— I have a class,” he gestures. “It starts soon?”
Shirayuki flushes, glancing quickly across the room once more. One little girl is staring at them both with an impatient scowl. “Ah, right. Ano, I have rehearsals until 2?”
When she looks back at him, he’s not looking in her eyes but at her neck. A faint tickling sensation informs her that her hair has, yet again, fallen from its bun—a frustrating recurring instance since she cut most of it off less than a month prior. Just as she is about to reach up to tuck the wayward strands behind her ear, she finds his hand is inches from her face.
Shirayuki flinches, taking a rapid step back.
His hand hovers in between them for a moment before he pulls back. When she glances up, his face is unreadable. “I can meet you at 3,” Obi replies. “Studio B is available at that time of the day.”
Shirayuki nods, pointedly looking at the floor as she pushes her hair back behind her ear. “Mm. That’s fine. I’ll, ah, let you get to your class then.”
She begins to bow before remembering that this is not the way things are done here. Glancing up at him, she remembers watching Kiki and nods curtly before turning towards the door. Behind her, she can hear the scoring of music and the pattering of little feet.
She knows she should be grateful that he’s taking time out of his day to help her, but the thought of working so intimately with a person who actively tried to sabotage her future in this country galls her. On top of that, Shirayuki didn’t even think she wanted to be a prima at this point in her career, and she’s not sure that Zen’s grand idea was worth her working one on one with this man, but–
“Good morning, my little ballerini’s!” Obi’s voice echoes through the room, his hands clapping together and Shirayuki spares one more backward glance as his troupe of toddlers circle up, arms out and looking towards him with silly grins as he begins to prance across the studio. When they begin to mimic him, he looks every inch the mother duck.
–maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.
~ ~ ~
It’s bad.
Yuzuri is the one who grabs her arm when she finds out, fluttering with excitement and talking much too quickly about her private lesson for her to keep up. She drags her out as soon as rehearsal is finished to push her towards the window overlooking another studio.
“Him? You mean him, right?”
She looks through the window to see Obi, now with a Henley pulled over his unitard, weaving through a throng of teenagers moving through the steps of a routine. From what she can see, there doesn’t seem to be any major flaws in their stature, but Obi apparently catches them as he grabs arms, nudges legs with his feet and turns hips minisculely.
He’s far more hands on that any instructor she has worked with, and from the flush on certain girl’s expressions, she suspects that some of their mistakes are intentional.
“Yes, that’s him,” she replies, and the excitement on Yuzuri’s face is blinding.
“Mademoiselle Ashlan!” Obi admonishes, drawing Shirayuki’s attention back to the studio as he comes up alongside a tiny brunette. “No one wants to watch you hop around like a bunny on stage.”
She can’t hear the young woman’s response, but Obi grin splits his face before he suddenly becomes taller, the rest of the classroom delicately bringing their fingers to their lips to conceal their giggling. “Like this, Mademoiselle Ashlan.”
Shirayuki gapes. “He knows pointe?”
Yuzuri’s leans towards her, as if she is imparting an issue of national security. “I hear they make them do everything in the Russian Ballet.”
~ ~ ~
Shirayuki enters the empty studio at a quarter ‘til, her footsteps echoing across the floorboards and her hair tightly pulled back. Thankfully, Obi is not there yet so she fiddles with the cassette player, fast forwarding until she gets to the appropriate score.
The minutes tick by as she runs through her warm ups and she glances at the clock again. Five minutes ‘til, and he’s still not there.
Maybe he forgot? She knows that it might be too much to hope for.
Deciding that it would be a waste of the space to not practice at the very least, she pounds out the tempo of the music in her head, raises her arms, and sinks into the choreography. She’s only seen this particular dance a handful of times before it was announced that Haki would be unable to perform the role due to her pregnancy and Shirayuki pauses several times, attempting to remember.
It happens, as it is wont to do, that she reaches a point that memory no longer serves her. “Et-o,” to mumbles to herself, “it is three runs or four?”
“It’s three runs and then a tour jete.”
The voice comes from close, so close that she can feel the vibration against her back and she yelps in surprise. Turning on her heels, she looks up and finds Obi hovering over her and his lips trembling.
“How long have you been there?” she breathes, hand pressed to her pounding heart.
The edges of his eyes crinkle. “Long enough.”
Shirayuki feels the blood rush up to her cheeks as she looks up at him. He’s tall, her acknowledgement of that fact feeling more acute now that they are alone together, and a study of attempted aloofness—he reminds her somewhat of Izana, except Izana didn’t carry the same tension in his shoulders. Izana didn’t carry anything, actually, except Haki.
Her eyes go wide, gesturing towards the large wooden stick loosely grasped in Obi’s hand. “Ahh… What’s…?”
Obi looks down at where she’s pointing. “Ah, this?” He shrugs, lifting and pressing one end of the stick to her shoulder until it is squared with the other side. “This is to adjust your posture.”
She rubs the skin where he had touched her and mutters, “It looks like a keisaku.” At his confused look, she clarifies, “You know? What the monks use to hit you if you are falling asleep?”
Obi laughs, and the sound is brighter than anything she has heard from him. “I was taught with these back home, but don’t worry. I don’t hit,” he comments as he walks away, pulling his Henley off and revealing skin that she had been too busy to notice in the morning. Her eyes go wide at the crisscross of marks slashing his back and upper arms.
Is he some sort of gangster?
“Alright mademoiselle, from the top,” Obi announces, turning around and laying the stick across his shoulders.
Shirayuki’s mind goes black and she suddenly feels like she is scrambling, nerves filling her body with wet concrete. “Why?” she asks stupidly.
That twitch is back at the edge of his lips. “You’re always in the chorus line. I need to see what you’re like when you’re not hiding.”
Irritation wells in her. “I don’t hide,” she protests.
Obi makes a non-committal sound. “Is that so?” he murmurs, tilting his head and Shirayuki feels her heart skip a beat at the intent look he levels her with. “Are you ready to be a prima, then?”
Shirayuki’s lips straighten into a flat line. “I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “But we’re both here and Zen has asked you to teach me. So… please.”
His lips stretch into a patient smile. “Very well. Let’s both see what we got ourselves into, shall we?”
~ ~ ~
He’s not a gangster; he’s a monster.
It’s barely been fifteen minutes and she can feel her hair, once so prim on the top of her head, clinging to her face, but any attempt to brush it out of the way has been met with that infernal stick, firmly keeping her hands away.
Her lungs burn and she’s soaked with sweat, but he hasn’t let up on her. Not yet. He’s fixated on getting her through this segment and has set a brutal pace, insisting she repeat the same set of steps over and over.
“Again.”
She hates that word, and she especially hates how calmly he repeats it, but at least she’s no longer worrying about being a stranger in a strange land or Zen’s support that she is certain she doesn’t deserve or Izana’s steady judgmental gaze constantly watching her for a misstep: All that she has in her is a drive to get through this once without Obi interrupting her.
She’s almost there.
Bourree, bouree, bouree, arabesque, run, run, run, tou—
Wood cracks against the floorboards. “Wrong foot, mademoiselle! Again.”
~ ~ ~
“I wonder…” he comments, almost conversational, as he circles her slowly. She’s in absolute agony, balancing one toe with her other knee bending at the hip.
“What do you wonder?” she manages between shaking breath. Her foot slips slightly, only to be pushed back into position by that stupid, stupid stick.
“You’re missing… something. I can only teach you technique. It’s up to you to go deeper.”
Irritation flares deep in her belly. She was willing to give him a second chance. She was willing to be forgiving, but now she hates him. She hates him, she hates him, she. hates. him.
Shirayuki levels him with a glare and his smile brightens, looking far too pleased; those strange, cat-like eyes of his glittering as wood presses to her cheek to redirect her vision forward once more.
“Have you ever been in love?”
The question makes her sway, falling out of the releve, and he tuts, disappointed. She doesn’t even need to hear him instruct her to fall back into position. “W- why does that even matter?” she asks, her cheeks hot.
There’s a soft laugh that emerges from deep inside his throat. “Nikiya is heartbroken, mademoiselle. She’s being forced to dance for her lover and his betrothed.” Obi tilts towards her, his voice dropping. “It matters if you can identify with her.”
The flush on her cheeks has moved to her ears. She hopes that he thinks that it is exertion and it not the question itself. “Have you?” she claps back, wobbling violently before righting herself.
The light behind Obi’s eyes has closed off when she can look back him, that fake smirk back in place. “Then have you ever longed for something with everything in you?” he asks, this time softly.
Shirayuki feels off-balanced, shaking, but she doesn’t fall out of position this time. Her brows furrow, thinking back to all the years that she didn’t belong because she looked different, the desperate loneliness that came after her grandparents followed her mother into death, and the anxious search for a place of her own after she was driven from the dance community in Japan.
Obi taps her nose. “That. Right there. If you don’t know love yet, use that.”
~ ~ ~
Shirayuki kicks into a tour jete before falling into a kneel, her arms stretching towards the heavens and her vision swimming.
That was it. She made it.
Her breath is still forcing its way into her lungs when Obi squats beside her. She looks at him, her eyes half desperate, half prepared to hear that dreaded word again, but he looks pleased. “Excellent, mademoiselle! Excellent.”
She can scarcely believe it, blinking rapidly as his palm pushes the sweaty mat of hair from her face. The itching finally stops. “You weren’t even counting by the end. Much better.”
Shirayuki lets out a huff of exhausted laughter, tumbling out of the kneel and is surprised at the feel of his hands catching her so she doesn’t hit the ground. Dragging her eyes open, she finds him as startled as she is. It is somewhat satisfying, though, to see him looking off-kilter.
Obi makes a soft noise, shifting her in his arms so that she is balanced on under her own weight and releases her. Pulling back, he awkwardly pats her arm as his mouth stretches into a tense grin. “You’re not done yet, though. We need to move into the death scene next time.”
Shirayuki’s briefly won elation turns to dust in an instant and she falls back onto the floor, letting out a long, painful groan.