38: Asano's Hypothesis and Arina's Fate
A/n: I really like my newly discovered artstyle so I applied them on Arina UwU I think I will draw a manga panel for this story if I ever have more time. Stay tune!
On Sunday the 'ONE' member was interviewed on TV along with the jealous band 'Kraken' having to sit beside them. Their answers to the questions were all scripted by their agency though to display the perfect persona to the public.
As for the problem with Arina's nationality -- the agency had announced to their fans that even though she was from the Evil Empire, she wanted to renew her life and was a strong anti-regenist; therefore she regained her image in the public's eyes and they still loved her nevertheless.
After the tour in Yokohama ended, it was time for Arina to throw herself to train for the Junior High Figure Skating Championships. But how was she supposed to train for a full program within merely one month!? By that, she needed a good coach. Like Asano, Arina was also someone who wanted the best; as a result, she contacted her father about this issue and asked for permission if could be trained under the best figure skating coach of all time -- Xenia Petrosyan.
["Fine,"] said her father on the other line. ["But you will have to continue competing for the Orlas Union from then on."]
Alexei surely had some evil plans in his mind when you sense his malicious tone, though Arina always failed to grasp it.
She hesitated for a while after hearing the deal. During the Cold War, sports were also a tool to assert dominance and show the other side that you're superior -- it was that much of a big deal. And the Orlas was currently leading in winter sports. If Arina ever competes for them, then her band's fame would be in danger. However, for now, she didn't take her father's words seriously and merely thought he'd change his mind later or she would just convince him if needed. She was his dearest daughter after all.
And so now under the Comrade Chairman's command, the reputable coach Petrosyan was sent to Japan for a month to train for Arina. Alongside the main coach Petrosyan herself there were also a coach for technical elements -- Garold Dyomin, and a coach for choreography -- Lenin Ilyin.
People might wonder why Arina invested that much just for a junior high tournament. They might need to know she was someone to do everything most earnestly. Perhaps that was a trait she had that resembled Asano.
Plus, one might wonder why was team Petrosyan the best figure skating team of all time. The answer was hidden, however, that they break their students on a regular. If a normal team trains four times a week, they made it double the number of times. Their students were reported to have their backs, arms, and legs injured frequently. But did Petrosyan care? No. Her team was like a factory. If a talented student was injured to the point they no longer can compete, then she will just replace them with another less injured talented student.
On Monday Arina began her intense training. Her schedule was too full that now whenever she finished school she had to rush to the ice rink immediately. And that left the Big Five to wonder why she suddenly wanted to be absent from their band's activity for the whole month because she was busy with something else. 'What could that thing be?' they thought.
Seo and Teppei once secretly followed Arina after school to find out why but were instantly detected by Arina through her sharp activated sense and had to resignedly give in.
As opposed to many's belief, Arina could handle the intensity of her harsh training due to being used to the military's training in the past. And add up to all of that was her recklessness. She had no fear of falling and that was what makes it easier for her compared to others when they try to do jumps. Sure, it hurts a lot to fall and hit on the hard ice floor but Arina saw it as some sort of thrill, even when her nose was bleeding nonstop from falling.
After two weeks of training, she opted to go for the triple Axel but Petrosyan approached and told her to do quads.
'Quads!?' thought Arina in amazement. It had been sixteen years since the last woman had landed a quad. And that quad had not been ratified due to under-rotation! Then how could she--
'No! I can do it!' Arina told herself whilst slapping her face. Her fiery eyes gleamed with ambition. She was going to be the first woman to jump a quad and that's it!
Quad -- the hardest jump in figure skating. Four complete revolutions in the air. It's called a quadruple jump. And it was changing the world of figure skating. Today's figure skaters are more focused on jumps than ever before. That led to incredible displays of athleticism, but not everyone was happy about it. For lots of fans, quadruple jumps had done little but made figure skating more dangerous than ever.
A quadruple jump was extremely difficult. The leap required incredible momentum precisely divided between vertical lift and spin. Then you had to fight inertia to contract your body, making yourself spin faster. Finally, you land with a force equivalent to seven times your body weight. And all of this was on a surface where many people struggle to stand up. It all took less than a second. There were only about five men in the world that could do this jump, and most of them only knew how to jump one or two kinds of quads.
But the thought of seizing the triumphant overwhelmed Arina too much that she neglected the danger of jumping it and injured herself multiple times. She bled several times on the ice rink as a result and arrived at class with a broken arm one day, making everyone freaked out and asking her what had happened.
"Don't worry, guys! I just got hit by a bus and survived it with only a broken arm," reasoned Arina ridiculously.
Asano certainly did not believe in what she said. While Arina was away from her busy training schedule, he seized the chance to find information about her. He once went on his father's laptop in secret just to find some data about Arina, but it was no use as his father's carefulness was on a whole other level.
In addition, he also sneaked into his father's office to search for her files. But again, it was all in vain as there was no trace of what he wanted to find whatsoever.
'Is there anything else?' he thought to himself. And suddenly it hit him! Arina previously had an internship at the Kunugigaoka Science Lab, and her personal information must still be there. Therefore he walked to the lab on Sunday to pursue his curiosity just to find out that she had faked her file! Which made him even more curious than ever.
Whenever his brain was given a chance to relax he would use it to connect the dots and solve the mystery revolving around Arina. The Orlas Union...guns...military skills...Kunugigaoka Lab...what was in there that made her fake a file just to intrude in there? After doing research which still came out with no result, Asano opted to apply for an internship there too...if he wasn't that busy.
Add to that, the bearskin purse Arina gifted him...with a few unwashed bloodstains on it, made Asano wonder too whenever he look at it. If there was blood on it, then this was definitely handmade. The truth soon slowly revealed itself to him when one day he noticed there was something odd about the purse.
The skin of the bear began to produce a slimy texture.
'What in the world?' questioned Asano, unable to believe such an abnormal thing. As a result, he proceeded to place it under a telescope to discover the reason behind it.
Alas! After days of studying the cells, he had concluded that this was a fusion between a bear's cells and the subatomic particles of ANTIMATTER! How the heck did Arina get this kind of stuff!?
Asano was seriously freaked out inside when he unraveled this truth. He tried his best to calm himself down, placing a hand on his chin, he began to analyze the situation:
'Does this means that...these kinds of things were the product of the Orlas Union to threaten their enemies...hmm, no. Another more convincing and fitting hypothesis is that it comes from the Kunugigaoka Science Lab, and the Orlas had sent a spy, in particular, Arina to intrude into their territory and steal their information. But how could this little girl be a spy for the Orlas? If so, then she would've completed her mission and come home already...but no. Another hypothesis is that...she's Avenir's child... considering they have the same surname, that makes more sense. But there still isn't enough evidence to support this hypothesis.'
For the following week, Asano stopped bothering about being superior to his father and Lilliana Chadwick but only focused his mind on finding the truth behind his crazy hypothesis. He refused to believe Arina was an Orlas spy but he also couldn't deny the fact that she chose to study abroad here in Japan but not anywhere else. Her existence already was a huge mystery. It seemed as though she had been trained professionally in firearms and survival skills and the fact that she refused to talk about her background was undeniably suspicious.
By that, he tried even harder to discover the truth. And it was time for social networking to come into the picture. Asano began to find ways to approach the scientists in the Kunugigaoka Lab and befriend them so he could carve some information out from them. Unfortunately to his effort, even though he had successfully befriended some of them, they still refused to by any chance reveal their secret to any outsider.
'Strange...strange...strange!' The more Asano contemplate it the crazier he became. If the Kunugigaoka Science Lab was seriously behind this, then the possibility of Arina being an Orlas spy was more likely than ever. But then, if she was a spy for them...then why would she choose to stay and join his band? Then does that make her a betrayer? Had she given up? And what was she doing nowadays, to begin with!?
Thus he joined Seo and Teppei's path to stalk Arina after school, but just like those two, he was caught by her sharp sense and had to give in.
Without Arina, the boys felt rather empty as they had been used to her brightness and the company of food and sweets. Not just them feeling that way, their band attracted a lot of fanboys because of Arina, and what will they do when the agency announced her absence for a whole month? Stopped attending their concerts because of the emptiness of course. Asano would have gone insane after learning that fact if he wasn't paid his mind too much to the undiscovered mystery.
'Synchronicity' a concept defined as the occurrence of meaningful coincidences that seem to have no cause arrived at him on the day he was still struggling to search for an answer.
Seo Tomoya exclaimed in excitement to the Big Five that he had befriended a psychic guy who had the ability to predict one's future just by looking at their face. And how did the boys react to that you already knew it...
"That's all nonsense," commented Asano. He simply didn't believe one bit in superstitious things.
"Yeah, even I can't believe in it myself," admitted Ren.
"Nishishishi, I think you're out of your mind to believe in such things, Seo," laughed Koyama, lifting his glasses.
"Well, did he guess anything right yet?" asked Teppei, rubbing Seo's back to calm him down from the rising anger.
"He guesses right about my current state in life and so was for many people's future when they look back at what he had predicted years ago!" proclaimed Seo fumingly.
Eventually, to prove that he wasn't lying, Seo called his psychic friend over to their band studio one day and requested him to flex his ability to the Big Five.
"Hmm," hummed the psychic, as he scanned Teppei's face. "You seem to have a crush on someone for years already but never man up to confess to her."
That single sentence struck Teppei in utter amazement. His jaw fell and his eyes shot wide open. How the heck did he know!?
Ren and Koyama were also in shock after hearing so. Asano, however, still needed more than that to get himself to believe in the psychic's ability.
'Seo must've told him about me and the minions' was his initial thought. Therefore, having the so-called psychic guess right about Koyama and Ren was also no big deal to him. Not until his turn came...
"You're pursuing a mystery, don't you?" said the psychic wide-eyed. Asano, upon hearing this, straightened up and an astonished expression began to form on his face.
"I just want you to know that your intuition is a hundred percent correct," confirmed the psychic eerily. Asano could feel a shiver run down his spine.
"And your future, oh boy, is not going to turn out as you'd like to."
"What!?" Asano blurted out unconsciously. The psychic immediately placed a finger before his lips, indicating for the fuming Asano to shut up.
"Shh...let it all to fate."
Asano furrowed his eyebrows in irritation. He couldn't stand the way this psychic guy stretch his words to make them sound more mysterious. It was all odd and cringe-worthy.
"Oh! And here's another friend of mine, Kame! Would you like to see her face too?" Seo said, showing Kame a picture of Arina on his phone.
Beyond the boys' expectations, Kame started to react abnormally to seeing her face. He began to hug his head and wailed in pain, dropping his knees on the floor.
"Wha-What's wrong!?" exclaimed Seo. "KAME!"
The other boys watched him in horror. What was in Arina that made him react this way?
"Su-Such destiny ahead of her," spluttered Kame finally. "Her energy overwhelmed me somehow."
"What do you mean!?" the boys shouted all together. What exactly had he seen?
"Her energy...isn't really human-like," Kame regained his composure and stood up straight again. "She seems to be an angel sent by God to save the current world."
"Rubbish," Asano, again, blurted out absent-mindedly.
"Believe it or not, she will manage to have the entire world kneel before her in the future," Kame again stretched each of his words, widening his eyes eerily.
"They both kneel and throw her to the air as their savior, she will not only be respected and feared, she would be loved by billions for her gentle heart. (The Big Five were petrified while listening to him) A true 'Savior' -- because of her millions of lives will be saved in the future. She's someone who will have an impact on centuries come and goes without a person like that coming into the world."
"That childish girl!? How!?" Seo clutched his head in unfathomableness.
By this time Asano had already dropped his temporary belief in such things and folded his arms. The thought of Arina becoming someone like that in the future was simply hilarious to him.
"But you!" Kame turned to Asano, to which he gave away a look of 'What do you want?'.
"If you manage to marry the Chadwick girl, then your fame would even rise above the Savior. Instead of impacting centuries, you would impact this world ETERNALLY!"
Asano grimaced. How the hell would he believe what this crazy guy said? Although, having him mention Lilliana was somewhat eerie to him, as he had been involved with her recently. And what Kame had told him about his fate if he ever marry Lilliana had fed his pride and ego, which managed to somehow convince him to believe a little in his prophecy again.
"And another thing," Kame predicted one last thing before ending his prophecy. "That Arina-girl will not able to avoid her fate in the future. Her death is inevitable. At least she tried her best to save humanity and this world despite much of her bloodshed before parting."
After her success in jumping her very first quad Lutz today, Arina merrily twirled around in the sunset, and spoke to the world in a dreamy tone:
"Isn't it wonderful to be alive every day? I'm grateful to be born into this world. Thank you, dear Mr. World, for letting me in. As long as I'm here, I will not let you down but try to live my life in the most meaningful way! Today I've helped a lovely gramma to cross the street and I've teared up ever since for no one was there to help her but me. Oh, why -- why Mr. World? Why can't I do more for her on behalf of everyone? Please at least let me save one more if you ever want to throw me out. I promise you I won't ever gonna disappoint. I love you, dear everything."
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