Some of you are saying that the citizens of Hasetsu probably think Viktor is just Yuuri’s eccentric foreign boyfriend and I cannot say how much I agree.
“What a nice young man,” says Tamura-san, who used to run the fish shop in town and now usually sits beside the register and chats with customers while her grandson rings them up. She was born before ice skating was declared an Olympic sport and has absolutely no idea who Viktor Nikiforov is.
“Yes, we’re very glad to have Vicchan staying with us!” Hiroko says of Viktor, who’s standing behind her cradling fifteen pounds of tuna and smiling brightly at Tamura-san.
“How good of you to follow Yuu-chan home after he graduated!” Tamura-san continues, about ten decibels louder than she needs to. Tamura-san is about 87% deaf in her old age, but nobody has the heart to tell her so. “You must love him very much!”
Viktor, who has no idea what she’s just said to him but who heard Yuuri’s name, just blindly says, “Oh yes!” and grins even brighter.
“Have you seen Viktor Nikiforov?” demands a rabid paparazzo of some poor fisherman just trying to do his job.
“Who?” asks the fisherman, frowning at the lens of the camera.
“He’s tall? Foreign? Silver hair?”
“You mean Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend?” says the fisherman. Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend had run by ten minutes before with his poodle in tow, European synth pop blasting so loud from his headphones that it could be heard for a full minute both before and after he ran past. The fisherman doesn’t exactly know where Katsuki-kun found that guy, but he looks at Katsuki-kun like he hung the stars, so the fisherman can’t blame him.
In the end, he tells the paparazzo to go the opposite direction of the one he just saw Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend go.
A girl from Hasetsu graduates high school the summer Yuuri returns from America and is inspired by his experiences to go to college in America as well. She arrives in her freshman year dorm room and is greeted by a poster of Viktor Nikiforov hung up by her roommate.
“Why do you have a picture of Viktor?” she asks, bewildered. Viktor is wearing a pair of black slacks and a bright pink shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel.
“Oh, you know who Viktor Nikiforov is?” her roommate asks, excitedly.
“Do YOU?” the girl asks, incredulous. Viktor is known to her as “That foreign guy that followed Yuuri back from America when he came home” and also as Viktor-Who-Puts-Jam-In-His-Tea-Like-Who-Even-Does-That. Certainly not as Viktor Nikiforov, Five-Time World Figure Skating Champion and definitely not as Viktor-Who-Deserves-To-Be-On-Someone’s-Wall.
Come October, Viktor has started introducing HIMSELF to people as Viktor I’m Yuuri’s Boyfriend. While half of Russia reads articles about Figure Skating’s Living Legend, a sleepy town in Japan wakes up every morning to Yuuri’s Boyfriend Viktor wheeling through town on his bike with Yuuri and Their Cute Dog.
Viktor loves Hasetsu.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
