Both Yuzu and Luhan underestimated how awkward meeting face to face again would be because of the language barrier.

“Hi!” Luhan called out in English across the rink. A very tired looking girl yawned behind the skate rental booth.

“Hello!” Yuzu yelled back excitedly. “Get skates!”

Luhan turned towards the half asleep girl and got some skates in Chinese.

Yuzu walked over to the side of the rink in skates as Luhan laced up his rental skates.

“You skated very well!” Luhan said.

“Thank you! I tried.”

Luhan barked out a laugh before standing up.

“I can do this,” he said to himself in Mandarin, walking over to the entrance of the rink. He stepped out onto the ice and immediately grabbed onto the side.

Yuzu stepped onto the ice after him and immediately skated to the middle with a tiny jump.

Luhan almost stuck out his tongue at him.

“First, get used to the ice,” Yuzu said, gliding over. He demonstrated sliding one skate back and forth, then the other. Luhan followed suit.

After not falling over, Luhan skated forward.

“Stop like this,” Yuzu said, bringing his right foot horizontally behind his left and gently pressing into the ice.

Luhan picked up the skill immediately.

Yuzu spent the next hour after that teaching Luhan some basic stuff. He seemed to be an extraordinarily quick learner.

“Want to put on any music?” Yuzu asked.

Luhan immediately flushed, thinking back to one of the songs he’d been working on with a private studio. Technically, the music wasn’t even legal.

But Yuzu only wanted to play some music, so Luhan skated over to the side, grabbed Yuzu’s phone to make sure he couldn’t record anything, and pressed play on a voice memo.

His phone couldn’t go as loud as a speaker could, but you could still hear the song throughout the rink. He glanced over at the skate booth lady, but she seemed to be sound asleep.

“New song?” Yuzu asked. Luhan nodded.

Yuzu started skating around the rink, and jumped, from what Luhan could tell, a quadruple loop just as the beat dropped.

Luhan clapped, but Yuzu just ushered him onto the ice.

Yuzu didn’t really seem to be paying him much attention, now he just seemed to be running through his short program choreography on the other side of the rink.

Luhan pushed forward onto the ice, looking all around the rink. The ceiling was pretty high, and on his side of the rink, there was a large window looking up onto the city.

He turned away from the window and extended his right leg behind him and leaned forward.

“Straighten your leg!” Yuzu yelled from across the rink. Luhan straightened his leg a bit more, and raised his arms to his sides, then curled up and spun around for a while.

He was skating to his own music. With a friend.

“Try spinning!” Yuzu shouted again.

Somehow the lonely-sounding backtrack made a perfect entrance for a spin just as Luhan’s voice in the song pulled up at the chorus.

Of course, his technique wasn’t that good, and he could hear Yuzu’s quiet giggles from the other side of the rink. Luhan tried to copy the spin where you get closer to the ice with one leg extended (he forgot the name), but-

“Oop!” Luhan moved his arm out from under his back and allowed himself to collapse face-up onto the ice. He stared up at the unfinished ceiling, not moving, at least until Yuzu pulled up next to him with a hockey-stop, spraying ice all over his face.

“Thanks,” Luhan said, struggling a little bit to get the -th sound out. Yuzu pulled up his classic smile and reached out his arm. Luhan grabbed it and stood up, by now the music from his phone having stopped.

“Want to get some food?” Luhan asked, skating slowly towards the side of the rink. Yuzu nodded.

“One more skate,” Yuzu amended, speeding down the rink away from his friend, and immediately jumping into a series of quads at the other end of the rink.

Way to show him up.