The interview with Veronika Haugen had been scheduled six weeks earlier, before Fukuoka, before the ISU review, before any of the current complexity. It was on the calendar as a fixed point and Sophie had determined, after consultation with the brand partners and the ISU communications office, that canceling it would generate more unwanted attention than proceeding. They proceeded.
Veronika was a sports journalist who had been covering figure skating for eleven years. She was the journalist who had interviewed Harin in the Fukuoka corridor on the day after the Grand Prix Final, who had written down Harin's observation that the professional news was also the personal news, who had been present at enough of the season to understand its shape. She was not an adversarial interviewer. She was a precise one.
The interview was at the ISU partner studio, the same one they had used for previous media sessions. Professional setting, recorded. The cameras were set up in the configuration she recognized: two chairs angled toward each other, the ISU logo backdrop, the specific lighting that made everything look slightly more formal than it was.
She and Cas arrived within two minutes of each other. Sophie was there to manage the technical aspects. The production team was there. Veronika was there.
Harin sat in the left chair. Cas sat in the right. She was aware of the specific distance between the chairs, which was the same distance it had been in every other media session she had done with him.
The interview began with the Fukuoka questions, as she had expected. Veronika asked about the technical achievement , the scores, the program level, the competitive result. The answers to these questions were the same answers they had given multiple times in the post-competition period. She gave them precisely. He gave them. They were in sync on the technical answers.
Veronika asked about the decision to accept the ISU invitation to continue the partnership. This was also expected. She had her answer prepared: both the competitive logic and the personal logic, framed in the professional language appropriate to the setting. She gave it. He gave his version. They were in sync.
Then Veronika said: "I want to ask about the current period. The registration review, Lena Brandt's clearance. How are you two navigating this?"
She had prepared a version of the answer to this question. The version she had prepared: neutral, accurate, neither confirming nor denying anything beyond the procedural facts.
She said: "We're navigating a complicated administrative period. We're doing it together."
Veronika waited.
She did not add anything.
Veronika turned to Cas.
He said: "The review is a procedural matter. Our position on it is clear. We're focused on the spring program and on what comes next."
Veronika looked at both of them. She had the expression of a journalist who recognized a prepared answer when she heard one.
Veronika said: "You said, in Fukuoka, that the professional news was also the personal news. Are you still in both categories?"
The question landed differently than it would have two weeks ago. She held it. Veronika was asking whether the professional and personal were still aligned , whether what had been declared in Fukuoka was still operative under the current conditions.
The accurate answer was: yes. They were still in both categories. The review had complicated things procedurally. Their personal situation had not changed.
She said: "Yes."
One word. Clean. The full answer.
But she heard it as Veronika heard it: clean and short. In the Fukuoka interview, after Veronika had asked her about what came next, she had given an answer that was two sentences and a subclause. This was one word. The difference was measurable.
She saw Veronika note it.
After the interview, in the corridor with the cameras no longer recording, Veronika said , not for attribution, the professional shorthand for off the record: "You're both doing something careful in there. I've interviewed you four times this season. This is the most careful."
She said: "Thank you for noting it." Not a confirmation. Not a denial.
Veronika said: "I hope the review resolves well. I think it will."
She said: "Thank you."
In the car going back, Sophie at the wheel, she and Cas in the back: the specific silence of two people who have just been in a room performing together and are now out of the room.
He said: "Veronika noticed."
She said: "Yes."
He said: "Were we different?"
She said: "My answer to the final question was one word."
He was quiet for a moment. "We've been giving each other the full information. That should make it easier, not harder."
She said: "Having the full information doesn't mean the information isn't complicated. The interview catches things the body knows before the mind does."
He said: "What does the body know?"
She said: "That we're in a review period. That the outcome isn't confirmed yet. That there are things outside our control."
He held this.
She said: "I'm not concerned about the interview. It was what it was."
He said: "Are you concerned about the review?"
She said: "I'm in the review period. I'm doing the work. I'm not going to be concerned about what I can't change."
He said: "That's the managed version."
The observation landed. He was right. What she had said was the managed version , the answer she would have given before the past ninety days, before she had learned what not managing looked like.
She said: "The actual version: yes. I'm concerned about the review. I believe it will resolve correctly. I'm also aware that I'm in a situation where the outcome is not within my control and my body is responding to that in the ways I've told you about."
He said: "The ninety percent."
She said: "The ninety percent. Which I correct. Every day."
He said: "I know you do."
Sophie pulled up to Harin's building. She got out. He did not get out with her , the car needed to take him to the Saint-Laurent apartment and it would double back. She looked at him through the window before the car pulled away.
He looked back.
Both of them in the specific look of people who had just done something difficult in public and were now in the after of it.
She went upstairs.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: Day 108. Veronika interview. My answer to the last question was one word. Cas noticed. I told him the actual version: yes, I'm concerned. I'm correcting the ninety percent every day.
She wrote: The review will resolve. I believe that. I'm in it. I'm doing the work.
She closed the notebook.
She sat at the desk.
The east-facing window. The Saint-Laurent building, seven blocks away, the lights coming on as the December evening arrived.
She was going to give full weight tomorrow.
She was in it.
She was doing the work.
She was going to find out.
She already believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
In it.
There.
The day after the interview, the ISU office sent a notification to Sophie and both lawyers: management had filed additional documentation under ISU Regulation Article 23.4, Subsection C. The review period was being extended by seven business days to allow for full consideration of the supplementary filing.
Seven business days was one more week.
She read this in the equipment room after the morning solo session.
She sat with it.
She wrote one message to him: ISU extended review. Seven more business days. You'll have the same notification.
He replied in four minutes: I know. I just heard from my lawyer. Are you okay?
She: Working on it.
He: Can I see you tonight?
She thought about it. She thought about the interview and about the one-word answer and about the seven additional days and about the specific quality of what she was holding right now, which was more than she had been holding three days ago when she had told him about the wound and had felt the shape of things settle.
The shape had shifted again.
She typed: Tomorrow. Give me tonight.
He: Yes.
She put the phone away.
She went to the joint session.
She gave full weight on the lift.
She was not certain it was a hundred percent.
She did not check.
She cooked that evening and ate alone and went to bed at nine-fifteen. She lay in the dark and thought about the seven additional business days.
Seven days. In the context of a career spent measuring progress in seconds and fractions of scores, seven days was not a long time. She had spent seven-day blocks in intensive training that had produced meaningful technical development. Seven days was a thing with a shape she understood.
In the context of waiting for a decision that determined the structure of the next season of her life, seven days was a different thing. Not impossibly long. But longer than three.
She thought about what the seven additional days contained: joint sessions, solo sessions, Petra's Monday call, the spring program planning that continued regardless of the review outcome. All of it real and productive and happening independently of what ISU was processing.
She had been doing this, she realized, throughout the review period: holding the waiting separate from the working. Keeping the two layers from bleeding into each other. Giving full weight on the lift while the review was pending. Running the step sequence at development level while management's supplementary filing sat in the ISU office.
The bleeding had happened anyway. The interview had caught it. One-word answer. He had noticed.
She was doing the best version of holding two things simultaneously that she knew how to do. It was not a perfect version. The body did not do perfect under sustained pressure , it did its best, which was different.
She was doing her best.
Seven more days.
She was going to do her best for seven more days and then she was going to receive the decision and she was going to receive whatever it said.
She closed her eyes.
She thought about the lift. The specific mechanics of it: three taps, weight transfer, the moment of full commitment when her body was no longer on the ice and he was the only thing between her and the fall. She had learned to make that moment in week seven and had made it many times since and had found, in the repetition, that the moment of commitment did not get easier or harder. It stayed the same. It was always the same choice, made the same way, requiring the same decision.
Every lift was a decision.
She was going to keep deciding.
She slept.
In the morning she went to the rink at five-thirty-two. He was there at five-thirty-four. The two minutes were hers and the two minutes after were his and between those two minutes was the practice ice and both of them arriving at it.
They ran the warm-up. They ran the program.
She gave full weight.
She was as certain of it as she had been the previous week. The body had been uncertain yesterday , she had not checked because she had not wanted to know. Today she was certain.
She had decided.
Seven business days.
She was in it.
She was going to be in it.
She was going to give full weight every day.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
In it.
Coach Mira noted, after the run: "Good session. Lift is holding." She said it the same way she said all technical observations: as a fact about what was present rather than a judgment about what it meant. Harin received it as a fact.
The lift was holding.
Seven days.
She was going to hold it.
She was going to find out.
She was there.
She saw him that evening, as she had agreed. They met at the Saint-Denis cafe , not the back corner table, the window table she had discovered she liked. He was already there when she arrived, which was unusual. He was typically a five-thirty-four kind of person , present, but after her.
She sat down.
He had already ordered her coffee.
She received it.
She said: "Seven days."
He said: "Yes."
She said: "Management's supplementary filing."
He said: "My lawyer says it's a delay tactic. The supplementary documentation doesn't introduce new regulatory grounds , it re-argues the existing position with additional case references. The legal position doesn't change."
She said: "But the timeline changes."
He said: "Yes."
She drank the coffee. He drank his.
She said: "In Fukuoka, after the competition, I thought the most complicated part was behind us. I thought what came after would be the simpler part."
He said: "After Fukuoka."
She said: "After Fukuoka." Pause. "It's been more complicated than I projected."
He said: "Is that a problem?"
She considered this genuinely. Was the complication a problem? The complication was real , the review, management, the extended timeline, the one-word answer in the Veronika interview. These were real. They were not catastrophic.
She said: "Not a problem. A thing I'm in."
He said: "We're in."
She said: "Yes."
She received the we without comment. It had been in the sentence before she had said it , both of them, together, in the complicated thing. This was still true.
She drank her coffee.
He said: "I'm going to talk to my lawyer tomorrow about accelerating the personal statement we discussed. Not waiting for the review to conclude , filing it now, as the review continues."
She looked at him. "You mentioned a personal statement before."
He said: "I want to file something separate from management's position. On record with ISU. Before the seven days are up."
She said: "What would it say?"
He said: "What I've decided. In my own words. Not filtered through management."
She held this.
She said: "Tell me before you file it."
He said: "Yes. I'm going to."
She received this as the assurance it was. He was going to tell her before , not ask her permission, which was not what she had asked for. Tell her. Include her. Before.
She looked at the window. Montreal outside. The December evening, dark and cold and the specific quality of a city that was carrying on regardless.
She said: "Seven days."
He said: "Seven days."
She said: "We're in it."
He said: "We're in it."
Both of them at the window table. Both of them in the coffee and the complicated period and the seven business days and the personal statement that was going to be filed.
She was going to give full weight tomorrow.
She was going to be in it.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
Seven days.
In it.
There.
She walked home alone that night. He stayed at the cafe for a second coffee , he had mentioned he needed to review the materials his lawyer had sent before morning. She left first and walked the seven blocks in the Montreal December.
She thought about the personal statement he was going to file. She had not asked what it would contain beyond what he had told her: what he had decided, in his own words, separate from management. She trusted that what it would contain was what he had decided. She had received what he had decided many times now , in the Fukuoka ISU debrief, in the statement he had given management, in the words he had said to her in the Saint-Laurent apartment and in her own apartment on the night the crack had first opened.
She trusted it.
She also noticed that he had mentioned filing before the seven days were up. This was new information , that he was willing to act before the review concluded rather than waiting to see what the review produced. This was the thing she had been observing in him throughout the review period: the difference between managing a situation and deciding a position. He had been doing some of both. The personal statement, filed now, was pure decision.
She arrived at her building.
She went up.
She sat at the desk.
Notebook: Day 109. Extended review , seven business days. Veronika interview, one-word answer. He told me about the personal statement. He's going to file it before the review concludes. He's going to tell me before.
She wrote: I am going to give full weight tomorrow and the day after and for the remaining seven days. I have decided this. The decision is the decision.
She closed the notebook.
East-facing window. The Saint-Laurent lights, visible at the right angle.
Both of them in the seven days.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
She was already there.
She woke before the alarm. She made coffee. She ran the solo session. The session was the same session it had been all week: focused, technical, building. The step sequence upper body positioning was close to the level Coach Han had identified as the target. She would reach it by the end of the week if the current trajectory held.
She arrived at the joint session at nine. He arrived at nine-oh-two , two minutes after the scheduled time, which was slightly unusual, which she noted without assigning significance.
They ran the warm-up. They ran the program. The lift: three taps, weight transfer, full commitment.
She gave full weight.
He held it.
Both of them in the program, both of them fully there, the quality of the session at the level it needed to be at regardless of the external situation.
Coach Mira and Coach Han debriefed them after. Technical notes, spring program planning considerations, the lift development timeline with Petra. All of it proceeding.
At the end of the debrief, Coach Han said to Harin, with the Coach Han economy of words that she had come to understand over four years: "Good." One word. She had given a one-word answer to Veronika the day before. Han gave her a one-word response. Both were complete.
She went to the equipment room.
Seven business days.
Day two of seven.
She was in it.
She was doing the work.
She was going to find out.
She was already there.
She believed.
She was there.
You've reached the end of this chapter
The interview with Veronika Haugen had been scheduled six weeks earlier, before Fukuoka, before the ISU review, before any of the current complexity. It was on the calendar as a fixed point and Sophie had determined, after consultation with the brand partners and the ISU communications office, that canceling it would generate more unwanted attention than proceeding. They proceeded.
Veronika was a sports journalist who had been covering figure skating for eleven years. She was the journalist who had interviewed Harin in the Fukuoka corridor on the day after the Grand Prix Final, who had written down Harin's observation that the professional news was also the personal news, who had been present at enough of the season to understand its shape. She was not an adversarial interviewer. She was a precise one.
The interview was at the ISU partner studio, the same one they had used for previous media sessions. Professional setting, recorded. The cameras were set up in the configuration she recognized: two chairs angled toward each other, the ISU logo backdrop, the specific lighting that made everything look slightly more formal than it was.
She and Cas arrived within two minutes of each other. Sophie was there to manage the technical aspects. The production team was there. Veronika was there.
Harin sat in the left chair. Cas sat in the right. She was aware of the specific distance between the chairs, which was the same distance it had been in every other media session she had done with him.
The interview began with the Fukuoka questions, as she had expected. Veronika asked about the technical achievement , the scores, the program level, the competitive result. The answers to these questions were the same answers they had given multiple times in the post-competition period. She gave them precisely. He gave them. They were in sync on the technical answers.
Veronika asked about the decision to accept the ISU invitation to continue the partnership. This was also expected. She had her answer prepared: both the competitive logic and the personal logic, framed in the professional language appropriate to the setting. She gave it. He gave his version. They were in sync.
Then Veronika said: "I want to ask about the current period. The registration review, Lena Brandt's clearance. How are you two navigating this?"
She had prepared a version of the answer to this question. The version she had prepared: neutral, accurate, neither confirming nor denying anything beyond the procedural facts.
She said: "We're navigating a complicated administrative period. We're doing it together."
Veronika waited.
She did not add anything.
Veronika turned to Cas.
He said: "The review is a procedural matter. Our position on it is clear. We're focused on the spring program and on what comes next."
Veronika looked at both of them. She had the expression of a journalist who recognized a prepared answer when she heard one.
Veronika said: "You said, in Fukuoka, that the professional news was also the personal news. Are you still in both categories?"
The question landed differently than it would have two weeks ago. She held it. Veronika was asking whether the professional and personal were still aligned , whether what had been declared in Fukuoka was still operative under the current conditions.
The accurate answer was: yes. They were still in both categories. The review had complicated things procedurally. Their personal situation had not changed.
She said: "Yes."
One word. Clean. The full answer.
But she heard it as Veronika heard it: clean and short. In the Fukuoka interview, after Veronika had asked her about what came next, she had given an answer that was two sentences and a subclause. This was one word. The difference was measurable.
She saw Veronika note it.
After the interview, in the corridor with the cameras no longer recording, Veronika said , not for attribution, the professional shorthand for off the record: "You're both doing something careful in there. I've interviewed you four times this season. This is the most careful."
She said: "Thank you for noting it." Not a confirmation. Not a denial.
Veronika said: "I hope the review resolves well. I think it will."
She said: "Thank you."
In the car going back, Sophie at the wheel, she and Cas in the back: the specific silence of two people who have just been in a room performing together and are now out of the room.
He said: "Veronika noticed."
She said: "Yes."
He said: "Were we different?"
She said: "My answer to the final question was one word."
He was quiet for a moment. "We've been giving each other the full information. That should make it easier, not harder."
She said: "Having the full information doesn't mean the information isn't complicated. The interview catches things the body knows before the mind does."
He said: "What does the body know?"
She said: "That we're in a review period. That the outcome isn't confirmed yet. That there are things outside our control."
He held this.
She said: "I'm not concerned about the interview. It was what it was."
He said: "Are you concerned about the review?"
She said: "I'm in the review period. I'm doing the work. I'm not going to be concerned about what I can't change."
He said: "That's the managed version."
The observation landed. He was right. What she had said was the managed version , the answer she would have given before the past ninety days, before she had learned what not managing looked like.
She said: "The actual version: yes. I'm concerned about the review. I believe it will resolve correctly. I'm also aware that I'm in a situation where the outcome is not within my control and my body is responding to that in the ways I've told you about."
He said: "The ninety percent."
She said: "The ninety percent. Which I correct. Every day."
He said: "I know you do."
Sophie pulled up to Harin's building. She got out. He did not get out with her , the car needed to take him to the Saint-Laurent apartment and it would double back. She looked at him through the window before the car pulled away.
He looked back.
Both of them in the specific look of people who had just done something difficult in public and were now in the after of it.
She went upstairs.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: Day 108. Veronika interview. My answer to the last question was one word. Cas noticed. I told him the actual version: yes, I'm concerned. I'm correcting the ninety percent every day.
She wrote: The review will resolve. I believe that. I'm in it. I'm doing the work.
She closed the notebook.
She sat at the desk.
The east-facing window. The Saint-Laurent building, seven blocks away, the lights coming on as the December evening arrived.
She was going to give full weight tomorrow.
She was in it.
She was doing the work.
She was going to find out.
She already believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
In it.
There.
The day after the interview, the ISU office sent a notification to Sophie and both lawyers: management had filed additional documentation under ISU Regulation Article 23.4, Subsection C. The review period was being extended by seven business days to allow for full consideration of the supplementary filing.
Seven business days was one more week.
She read this in the equipment room after the morning solo session.
She sat with it.
She wrote one message to him: ISU extended review. Seven more business days. You'll have the same notification.
He replied in four minutes: I know. I just heard from my lawyer. Are you okay?
She: Working on it.
He: Can I see you tonight?
She thought about it. She thought about the interview and about the one-word answer and about the seven additional days and about the specific quality of what she was holding right now, which was more than she had been holding three days ago when she had told him about the wound and had felt the shape of things settle.
The shape had shifted again.
She typed: Tomorrow. Give me tonight.
He: Yes.
She put the phone away.
She went to the joint session.
She gave full weight on the lift.
She was not certain it was a hundred percent.
She did not check.
She cooked that evening and ate alone and went to bed at nine-fifteen. She lay in the dark and thought about the seven additional business days.
Seven days. In the context of a career spent measuring progress in seconds and fractions of scores, seven days was not a long time. She had spent seven-day blocks in intensive training that had produced meaningful technical development. Seven days was a thing with a shape she understood.
In the context of waiting for a decision that determined the structure of the next season of her life, seven days was a different thing. Not impossibly long. But longer than three.
She thought about what the seven additional days contained: joint sessions, solo sessions, Petra's Monday call, the spring program planning that continued regardless of the review outcome. All of it real and productive and happening independently of what ISU was processing.
She had been doing this, she realized, throughout the review period: holding the waiting separate from the working. Keeping the two layers from bleeding into each other. Giving full weight on the lift while the review was pending. Running the step sequence at development level while management's supplementary filing sat in the ISU office.
The bleeding had happened anyway. The interview had caught it. One-word answer. He had noticed.
She was doing the best version of holding two things simultaneously that she knew how to do. It was not a perfect version. The body did not do perfect under sustained pressure , it did its best, which was different.
She was doing her best.
Seven more days.
She was going to do her best for seven more days and then she was going to receive the decision and she was going to receive whatever it said.
She closed her eyes.
She thought about the lift. The specific mechanics of it: three taps, weight transfer, the moment of full commitment when her body was no longer on the ice and he was the only thing between her and the fall. She had learned to make that moment in week seven and had made it many times since and had found, in the repetition, that the moment of commitment did not get easier or harder. It stayed the same. It was always the same choice, made the same way, requiring the same decision.
Every lift was a decision.
She was going to keep deciding.
She slept.
In the morning she went to the rink at five-thirty-two. He was there at five-thirty-four. The two minutes were hers and the two minutes after were his and between those two minutes was the practice ice and both of them arriving at it.
They ran the warm-up. They ran the program.
She gave full weight.
She was as certain of it as she had been the previous week. The body had been uncertain yesterday , she had not checked because she had not wanted to know. Today she was certain.
She had decided.
Seven business days.
She was in it.
She was going to be in it.
She was going to give full weight every day.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
In it.
Coach Mira noted, after the run: "Good session. Lift is holding." She said it the same way she said all technical observations: as a fact about what was present rather than a judgment about what it meant. Harin received it as a fact.
The lift was holding.
Seven days.
She was going to hold it.
She was going to find out.
She was there.
She saw him that evening, as she had agreed. They met at the Saint-Denis cafe , not the back corner table, the window table she had discovered she liked. He was already there when she arrived, which was unusual. He was typically a five-thirty-four kind of person , present, but after her.
She sat down.
He had already ordered her coffee.
She received it.
She said: "Seven days."
He said: "Yes."
She said: "Management's supplementary filing."
He said: "My lawyer says it's a delay tactic. The supplementary documentation doesn't introduce new regulatory grounds , it re-argues the existing position with additional case references. The legal position doesn't change."
She said: "But the timeline changes."
He said: "Yes."
She drank the coffee. He drank his.
She said: "In Fukuoka, after the competition, I thought the most complicated part was behind us. I thought what came after would be the simpler part."
He said: "After Fukuoka."
She said: "After Fukuoka." Pause. "It's been more complicated than I projected."
He said: "Is that a problem?"
She considered this genuinely. Was the complication a problem? The complication was real , the review, management, the extended timeline, the one-word answer in the Veronika interview. These were real. They were not catastrophic.
She said: "Not a problem. A thing I'm in."
He said: "We're in."
She said: "Yes."
She received the we without comment. It had been in the sentence before she had said it , both of them, together, in the complicated thing. This was still true.
She drank her coffee.
He said: "I'm going to talk to my lawyer tomorrow about accelerating the personal statement we discussed. Not waiting for the review to conclude , filing it now, as the review continues."
She looked at him. "You mentioned a personal statement before."
He said: "I want to file something separate from management's position. On record with ISU. Before the seven days are up."
She said: "What would it say?"
He said: "What I've decided. In my own words. Not filtered through management."
She held this.
She said: "Tell me before you file it."
He said: "Yes. I'm going to."
She received this as the assurance it was. He was going to tell her before , not ask her permission, which was not what she had asked for. Tell her. Include her. Before.
She looked at the window. Montreal outside. The December evening, dark and cold and the specific quality of a city that was carrying on regardless.
She said: "Seven days."
He said: "Seven days."
She said: "We're in it."
He said: "We're in it."
Both of them at the window table. Both of them in the coffee and the complicated period and the seven business days and the personal statement that was going to be filed.
She was going to give full weight tomorrow.
She was going to be in it.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
Seven days.
In it.
There.
She walked home alone that night. He stayed at the cafe for a second coffee , he had mentioned he needed to review the materials his lawyer had sent before morning. She left first and walked the seven blocks in the Montreal December.
She thought about the personal statement he was going to file. She had not asked what it would contain beyond what he had told her: what he had decided, in his own words, separate from management. She trusted that what it would contain was what he had decided. She had received what he had decided many times now , in the Fukuoka ISU debrief, in the statement he had given management, in the words he had said to her in the Saint-Laurent apartment and in her own apartment on the night the crack had first opened.
She trusted it.
She also noticed that he had mentioned filing before the seven days were up. This was new information , that he was willing to act before the review concluded rather than waiting to see what the review produced. This was the thing she had been observing in him throughout the review period: the difference between managing a situation and deciding a position. He had been doing some of both. The personal statement, filed now, was pure decision.
She arrived at her building.
She went up.
She sat at the desk.
Notebook: Day 109. Extended review , seven business days. Veronika interview, one-word answer. He told me about the personal statement. He's going to file it before the review concludes. He's going to tell me before.
She wrote: I am going to give full weight tomorrow and the day after and for the remaining seven days. I have decided this. The decision is the decision.
She closed the notebook.
East-facing window. The Saint-Laurent lights, visible at the right angle.
Both of them in the seven days.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
She was already there.
She woke before the alarm. She made coffee. She ran the solo session. The session was the same session it had been all week: focused, technical, building. The step sequence upper body positioning was close to the level Coach Han had identified as the target. She would reach it by the end of the week if the current trajectory held.
She arrived at the joint session at nine. He arrived at nine-oh-two , two minutes after the scheduled time, which was slightly unusual, which she noted without assigning significance.
They ran the warm-up. They ran the program. The lift: three taps, weight transfer, full commitment.
She gave full weight.
He held it.
Both of them in the program, both of them fully there, the quality of the session at the level it needed to be at regardless of the external situation.
Coach Mira and Coach Han debriefed them after. Technical notes, spring program planning considerations, the lift development timeline with Petra. All of it proceeding.
At the end of the debrief, Coach Han said to Harin, with the Coach Han economy of words that she had come to understand over four years: "Good." One word. She had given a one-word answer to Veronika the day before. Han gave her a one-word response. Both were complete.
She went to the equipment room.
Seven business days.
Day two of seven.
She was in it.
She was doing the work.
She was going to find out.
She was already there.
She believed.
She was there.
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