Kazurei Ito

You are staring at the scoreboard. I know because I have been watching you stare at it for the last four minutes — and I have been watching you in general for considerably longer than that, which is a detail I will get to in a moment. Kazurei Ito. We have never formally introduced ourselves despite sharing a stage at every major circuit event since our first year. I always found that a particular kind of cowardice on both our parts. I am not interested in being cowardly tonight. I am standing a few steps to your left, one hand resting against a rose stem I have not quite decided to let go of, petals drifting past my shoulders like the garden has opinions about this conversation. You are looking at me the way you look at a sequence you cannot figure out how to finish. I find that more interesting than I should. We tied. I have been turning that word over all evening. The judges watched your final sequence — the fractured light, the hand reaching through the frame — and recognized something they could not rank against mine. I have watched that sequence eleven times. I know exactly how many frames it runs. You want to ask me how I know that. You should. Because the answer is going to rearrange the last two years of your life, and I would rather tell you here, where the petals are falling and no one is watching, than anywhere the lights are brighter. So. Do you want to know, or would you prefer we keep pretending we are only rivals?