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 Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 5:25 pm
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How he’d ended up with this assignment, Yuuri had no idea. Why he needed to interview someone who worked professionally as a performer and how it correlated to his writing class, Yuuri had no idea. But he was there. Awkwardly standing outside the front entrance to the… he didn’t know what the theater was called, but he’d plugged the address into his phone and this was where it took him.
Maybe he would be lucky and they might be too busy to talk to him.
Maybe he could make some stuff up. He didn’t need to talk to anyone, right?
Maybe he could just… turn around and not have to deal with this.
Against his desire to flee immediately, Yuuri pushed the door open into the front lobby to look around. He could hear music coming from the other side of the doors that obviously went into the theater, to which he hesitated again.
He couldn’t do this. There was no way he could interrupt their practicing or whatever they were doing so he could do some stupid interview. His heart felt like it was going to jump right out of his chest it was beating so fast. Yuuri took a step back towards the entrance, and then paused because he needed to do this assignment, and took a step towards the other doors again.
The awkward pacing went on for a few moments before a couple of the performers burst through the theater doors, bundled up and looking like they were going for a smoke break or a quick run to the store for food. The sudden noise had Yuuri jumping about a foot in the air, and he quickly scrambled to the side to get out of their way, clutching tightly to the strap of his shoulder bag so that maybe they wouldn’t see him.
“You okay? You look lost,” one of the women paused to ask as her friend waited by the door. Yuuri felt his heart sink, and he swallowed down his nervousness as best he could.
“Um… I’m supposed to… interview… someone…” he mumbled as he stared at the ground, his face flushing red. He could see the way the woman’s eyebrows raised in his peripheral.
“Prinny’s probably bored out of his mind in the back,” the first woman’s friend said, amusement in her voice. “Better him than me,” she added with a laugh.
Somehow that comment led to instructions on how to get through the theater, what side hall to take, and the door where one of their principal dancers was resting from a sprain or something… Yuuri was too dazed at that point to really pick up on details, but instead politely nodded and thanked the women before awkwardly shuffling where he was told, hoping not to draw attention to himself as he slinked in the shadows of the theater, and finally stopped in front of what he could only assume was a dressing room door.
He could still back out. He could still just go home and make stuff up. But he was there. And he would just read off the questions and get it over with and he would leave and never see these people again. He hoped. Except the women told him that they would text this Prinny person to let them know he was on his way so… it would be rude not to at least… try, right?
“Excuse me…? Are you, um… I was supposed to… interview someone,” he asked after quietly knocking on the door and being asked to come in. He’d hoped he wouldn’t be heard, but alas.
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Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 7:18 pm
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It was only a slight sprain, but he didn't want it to get worse. So two days of sitting out and babying his feet was in order. One, if he could make progress and prove that it was very much improved, but Colin didn't want to accidentally destroy his ability to dance just so that he could avoid boredom for a day.
So he sat in his dressing room, sewing a pair of dance slippers the way he liked them, as he'd been taught, with one leg shoved into a trash can full of ice with no idea that some of his peers had passed one of the DCU partner projects off onto him.
Yuuri had unfortunately done his soft knocking at just the moment when the music Colin had been listening to had been in a fade-out, so he'd heard the quiet knocking and invited him on in. "Hi!" Colin said sunnily, not bothering to rise from his seat but gesturing Yuuri over with a broad, bright smile of welcome, "Come in, please. Have a seat, I'm your guy!"
The danseur was wearing a fairly normal looking track-suit jacket in dusky cadet blue, though the collar and cuffs were faded rainbow material and the back had script that read 'i'm tired' in all lower case white letters. Laying over the counter was a pair of horrifically bright, fuzzy pants in strange orange and purple geometric patterns that the blond had ostensibly worn at some point, along with some other articles of clothing that were bright and strange. Upon his lower half was a light blanket and what looked like bare legs - maybe he didn't have under pants on. Maybe he did - there was no way of knowing.
"Colin Hargrove. Pleased to meet you." He'd heard that someone would be coming to do an interview, but not whom would be selected to do it - or if it would be just one person. It made sense that the other dancers, busy with practice, would direct the college student his way. "I'd get up, but I've kind of got my leg in a bucket of ice and I can't feel it right now, so I'm not going to."
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Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:01 pm
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This was a horrible idea. Probably the worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of horrible ideas. Yuuri was not cut out to do some stupid interview for some stupid class that he didn’t even want to take but needed to pass with a high grade in order to keep all the educational nonsense in good standing.
Yuuri eyed the man warily, looking from the trash can of ice with his leg stuck inside, to the shoe in his hand that he seemed to be sewing, to the bright, fuzzy… he wasn’t sure what they were… thing on the counter. Maybe some weird prop from a Dr. Seuss story?
He was very aware that he could easily run.
He could turn around and the guy wouldn’t even care because it was just a waste of his time, as much as it was a waste of Yuuri’s.
But that would be horribly rude, and Yuuri deflated a little at the bright smile he was being given, and quietly, begrudgingly, shut the door behind him. He took a couple steps to one of the empty chairs and purposefully sat a few away from the man who introduced himself as Colin Hargrove, avoiding eye contact as Yuuri pulled his bag onto his lap so he could dig through for a notebook and a pen… which was hiding… in the bag… somewhere… that he couldn’t seem to find…
“Yuuri Matsunaga… Thank you for your time… I’ll try to make this quick,” he mumbled awkwardly under his breath as he gave up his frantic search for a stupid pen and figured he could just try to remember everything.
“Um…” he started, glancing at the man’s leg in the ice bucket again, and then cautioned a glance at his brightly smiling face, only to quickly avert his gaze again to something other than the felled Truffula tree on the counter.
“What… uh… do… I mean…” he tried to think of something, quickly flipping through his notebook and wishing he’d written something down before hand. He’d honestly been hoping he wouldn’t actually have to do this. “How… are you…?” he finally asked, but his voice raised higher than necessary at the end, making it obvious he was unsure of what to ask rather than asking Colin how he was.
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Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:06 am
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Colin watched with interest as a mousy young man with strongly Asian features came creeping in as though his very existence were an imposition. Low self-esteem. He was eyeing everything in the room in a way that suggested he expected it to jump to life and attack him - So he's familiar with Destiny City or has been the victim of abuse... - and seemed to want to melt into the floor. The guy - Yuuri - also took a chair a distance away from from Colin as well - Asocial or simply terrified by social situations? - and began frantically hunting for something in his bag.
Disorganized by accident or choice? What a strange fellow. I've never met someone in the partnership programs that didn't want to be in them.
While Yuuri was digging, Colin stabbed his needle into the elastic of his shoe temporarily and leaned to reach into his own dance bag, pulling out a pencil, which he offered to his new companion with an innocent smile. "Oh, don't rush on my account, Yuuri."
The danseur's expression was positively beatific as he gave over the writing utensil and went back to sewing his shoes with short, forceful stitches. The notebook in Yuuri's nervous hands seemed...empty. No questions thought out before-hand, nothing planned. Had this young man meant to come into his company and waste their valuable time during a busy season? Just because? Or was he really just that awkward? You should hope that you're just that awkward, or I'll destroy you for pulling this s**t.
Colin's smile never faltered, "You didn't bother preparing for this interview, did you?" He put his sewing down in his lap, holding the needle carefully between neatly manicured nails and brushed unruly curls back from his face. "You're going to take five minutes right now and you're going to write down a few questions for this interview that you need to do for your class. And then we're going to try this again and when your instructor contacts me about whether or not you were prepared, polite, and professional I'm going to tell him you were an absolute delight and that I enjoyed our interview."
"Because you are going to be an absolute delight, aren't you Yuuri? When we meet, that is. You'll have your questions, and your pencil, and your notebook with questions that you want to ask me."
And then he sat back and returned to his sewing.
"A good starter series is "How long have you been dancing, did you always want to be a ballet dancer, has being a male ballet dancer ever caused any problems in your personal life...that sort of thing." Wasn't he being helpful?
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 3:11 pm
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He didn’t like this at all. He didn’t like feeling as though he was being judged, scrutinized, guilted.
Heat rose to his face as he tried to calm himself, but the way he was being spoken to, told what to do, threatened with the clear indication that this man could easily tell his instructor whatever he wanted and there was nothing Yuuri could do to change it.
Quitely, furiously blinking back the tears that threatened to fill his eyes, Yuuri wrote as he was told. ”How long have you been dancing?” “Did you always want to be a ballet dancer? Has being a male ballet dancer ever cause any problems in your personal life?”
A child being chastised. That was how he felt. That, and sick.
This was why I didn’t want to do this. They could have just told me no one was available. I would have been fine taking a failing grade instead of… this...
Red, but dry eyes lifted to look at the man with the cheshire cat smile. Yuuri felt small. The way he was spoken to a clear indication that he was unliked, unwelcomed, maybe tolerated, but only just.
He felt numb.
“How long have you been dancing?”
It would be an absolute delight to leave.
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