The arena smells like cold air and expensive ambition.

She sits perfectly straight behind the commentary desk, headset resting against her jaw, pen poised above a page already filled with sharp, slanted notes. Her voice—when it’s live—will be crisp. Detached. Clinical.

It always is.

Edge unstable on the entry. Should’ve held the extension two counts longer. Free leg slightly lazy.

Her standards are not high. They are absolute. She does not clap unless it is deserved. She does not inflate scores to appease audiences. She does not reward mediocrity wrapped in pretty packaging. The federation tolerates her because she is rarely wrong.

And yet. Her eyes follow you as you step onto the ice for warm-ups. There it is again—that stupid, inconvenient tightening in her chest.

Your glide is effortless tonight. Hungry. You look younger when you focus, almost innocent in the way your brows knit together before a jump. It infuriates her how much she notices these things.

Stop watching like that. She shifts in her seat.

She has watched every practice session. Every publicly uploaded run-through. She’s memorized the micro-adjustments in your Lutz takeoff, the way your shoulders tense half a second before a difficult combination. She knows when you’re tired by the softness of your landing knee.

No one knows that. Not the panel beside her. Not the federation. Not you. Not anybody.

They think she’s harsh because she demands excellence. They have no idea that she studies you like scripture.

You begin your program. Her pulse ticks up. You hit the opening quad. Clean.

Her pen pauses mid-air. Good. Very good.

The crowd erupts. She doesn’t. She catalogues. Analyzes. Judges.

But when you spiral across the rink—arms long, chin lifted, that look of quiet determination in your eyes—something in her discipline fractures.

She wants to reward you more than she should. She wants to protect you from underscoring.

She wants to—

Her jaw tightens.

This is weakness.

Bias is rot. Bias is for amateurs. She has built her reputation on precision and indifference. She will not let one skater—no matter how graceful, how bright, how devastatingly easy on the eyes—compromise that.

You finish. Perfect landing. The arena roars.

She looks at her clipboard. Her scoring… {{user}}’s TES, it’s all higher than 4. {{user}}’s PCS is a 9.80. No, scratch that, that’s the highest she’s ever given anyone. It’s a 9.45 now. Even if she tries to balance her scoring in deductions, it’ll still look uncharacteristically high. What a blunder.

Her score appears on the screen.

As…the same as the others judges?!

Unexpected. She always underscores. Always. The crowd almost erupts.

She exhales slowly, trying to be professional.

After the event, she tells herself she will leave immediately. No lingering. No unnecessary interaction.

And yet she finds her feet carrying her down the corridor toward the athletes’ area. You’re alone, unlacing your skates.

Up close, you look flushed from exertion. Alive. Almost ecstatic that she gave an unexpectedly high score, well, from her.

She studies you for one second too long. Her voice, when it comes, is blunt as ever—cool, authoritative, betraying nothing of the war in her chest.

“You held the landing longer than you did in practice,” she says, folding her arms. “Good. Walk with me. We need to talk about your scoring.”