Kino Makoto sat in the kiss-and-cry area with her long-time coach, awaiting her marks at the Japanese Novice Championships. Unlike those skaters before her, however, Makoto couldn’t have cared less what scores she received despite having performed the best skate of her life.

Triple toe, double salchow, double lutz… She even managed to pull off a magnificent double axel, a jump she had recently learned and had landed successfully only a handful of times before. Her parents would have been so proud of her had they been there…

‘It shouldn’t have been like this,’ Makoto thought, wiping away a tear as her scores were announced over the speakers, causing the audience, who had only just sat back down after giving her a standing ovation following her emotional performance, to rise from their seats again.

By then, everyone knew her story. She had come to the competition a virtual nobody, an underdog with only an outside chance of taking home a medal. Nobody had paid Makoto much attention until yesterday when her coach informed her that her parents’ plane had crashed on route to Sapporo for the competition. Though she had wanted to withdraw immediately, Sato-san convinced her to finish competing in honor of her parents’ memory.

The scores were good enough for the silver. Ignoring a nearby reporter, Makoto hugged Sato-san, gathered an armful of the flowers that had been thrown on the ice after her performance, and headed back to the dressing rooms.

There, she broke down and cried.

DISCLAIMER: "Sailor Moon" is the property of Takeuchi Naoko.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Any comments or criticisms can be sent to me at ElysionDream@aol.com. This was written for the genre_challenge at Livejournal, Theme: Ice Skating.