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The thing about time is its predictability.
No matter how desperately one wills for it to slow down or speed up or rewind, it never can. It marches ever forward with the callousness of a tyrant, unmoved and unwavering regardless of how great one’s attempt to alter it may be.
Seconds will become minutes, minutes will become hours, hours will become days. Each moment carefully accounted for, not an instance unmarked, nothing untainted by the label of a time and date. No experience, no matter how magical, can ever be truly timeless.
Everything we love must pass, and everything we so desperately hope to hold onto must someday fall away, lost to time like the thousands of summers left forgotten. Each moment an unremarkable grain of sand in your life’s hourglass, indistinguishable from the next. Time comes for us all, tearing away the one thing we hold most precious, depriving us of the ability to immortalize that which we value most.
For Miya, time was coming for his childhood.
The concept of a childhood was, for Miya, somewhat foreign. He lacked the quintessentially fond memories of playing outside with friends, birthday parties, family vacations. In their places stood long practices, competitions, and morning runs in an attempt to be better prepared for what his coaches demanded of him. He had no humorous stories of meaningless mistakes, meant to be cast aside and equated to the inexperience of a child. No, he had the times he failed, and the times he did not; for no mistake is meaningless when a thousand eyes are waiting in the shadows to see you fall apart. His life wasn’t marked with childish innocence or opportunities to learn, it was simply shrouded by the notion that he was only as good as his last competition, and the knowledge that that too would never truly be good enough.
So no, Miya didn’t have a childhood in the traditional sense of the word. But he did have the label which accompanied it, “child.”
That single word was half of the label which had become synonymous with his very name, the one which he based his self worth upon: child prodigy .
So long as Chinen Miya was to be considered a child, he was to be considered a child prodigy, a title which he wore with pride for twelve long years. But just as time had granted him twelve years of childhood, in such a sense, time was also bound to allow him no more. Now, as he stared at the clock on February twenty-first, Miya was confronted with the reality of his situation: in forty-seven minutes, he would turn 13. He would no longer be a child , but rather a teenager . In forty-seven minutes, Miya would cease to be a prodigy and instead be nothing more than someone who knew how to skate; and the thought terrified him. He would cease to be special, and become just another replaceable member of the team.
Being a child prodigy came with more than just a flashy label and a skill, it came with expectations. He’d lost his childhood to his skating, a trade he had, at the time, made willingly. No, he didn’t get to run around with his friends eating ice cream on hot summer days, but he gained something infinitely better: recognition.
A thousand and one newspaper clippings from all the competitions he’d placed first at, gold medal after gold medal, interviews that made other skaters his age look on in envy. His self worth was equated to how many times he’d placed first, how many parents wished their own children were more like him, and of course, the label of child prodigy. He’d sacrificed everything to hold onto the local fame his skating granted him, basking in the knowledge that he was the youngest skater at his competitions and his ability to win despite that.
But what was it all for?
Perhaps his fear was not in the idea that Miya would lose his status as a child prodigy, but in the fact that it had become his identity. He’d sacrificed everything for it, given up everything he cared about, destroyed his body and mind. And for what? For it to be thrown away in forty more minutes?
Miya was horrified by his birthday, because his birthday marked the end of everything he’d worked for. He would no longer be a prodigy, and without that label to use as an identity, what was left? Would he still be special when a new twelve year old joined his team, replacing him as the youngest? Would he still be special when his own spotlight was flipped off, power being diverted to make another’s shine brighter?
No, a single day wouldn’t mark the end of Miya’s career as a skater, but his competitions were twelve and up. Someone younger, faster, more talented was bound to come along eventually, it was only a matter of time now. In thirty-eight minutes, he would be 13 and after that the decline was inevitable. He’d worked too hard, given up too much, and, if he didn’t make the national team, his years of competing would end at eighteen. And by then, would anyone even care about a mere former prodigy when he stood beside the new children on the team?
If you’re the youngest when you’re the best, it’s met with endless praise and recognition. For any age beyond that, winning was the bare minimum, a sign that perhaps you deserved to be on the team. And Miya would soon be beyond the age where his achievements meant he was valuable. Soon, all they’d mean was that, for a short time, he hadn’t been a waste; soon, his coach would stop introducing him to people, and opt to instead show them the trophy of their unnamed ‘youngest’ skater, failing to acknowledge that the boy who’d lost everything for a trophy stood a few feet away.
Soon, his name would be reduced to memory while someone new took his titles away one by one.
Perhaps that was why, as he sat alone in his room, staring at the clock, a single tear dripped down Miya’s cheek.
Or, perhaps it was the other facet to Miya’s hatred for his birthday: the solitude.
The envy that came in knowing that, were he anyone else, his birthday would be spent celebrating with friends. Perhaps, had he been normal, he’d get to school and be morning and be greeted by people wishing him a happy birthday. Maybe they’d skate together after, or go to his house. Maybe they’d enjoy the sugary cake he was forbidden from so much as considering , lest he gain weight and lose his value.
Maybe it would be like before Takashi left.
Miya had new friends, yes, but none who knew his birthday. Reki and Langa wouldn’t excitedly text him in half an hour, racing to wish him a happy birthday first. Cherry wouldn’t mention it at ‘S’ the next night, Joe wouldn’t make a little cake so they could celebrate after. To everyone else, it would be just another day, while to Miya it would be the end of the world.
It was better, in a way. Plenty of people hated their birthdays due to the attention such a day often yielded, but Miya was accustomed to attention. What he truly hated was people pretending to care.
His mom didn’t care about his birthday, she merely pretended because she was supposed to. His dad had done the same before he left. Takashi used to care, but the others didn’t. They had never thought Miya to be deserving of more attention than he already earned on a normal day. His birthday was just another show, except it was one in which he was not the only actor. People feigned caring, he feigned gratitude, the world moved on.
There would be no obligatory well-wishes from his friends this year, not if they didn’t know. He’d avoid the awkward game in which each party pretended to care.
Still, as the clock ticked down, he couldn’t help but glance at his phone, holding onto some childish hope that somehow they’d know.
But alas, there was no sudden flurry of texts at midnight. There were no calls, no pings in the group chat. He was forgotten for another year.
He wasn’t even granted the worthiness of some massive catastrophe, a tragedy marking the end of everything Miya valued. There were no explosions, no meteors, no fires. The passing of Miya’s childhood was quiet, unremarkable. Just like he soon would be.
The next morning, he’d get up and go running before school, sit through hours of classes, and go to practice. He’d train with the same vigor he always did, because something as meaningless as his birthday was hardly enough to earn him a rest day. He was only as good as his last medal, and slacking off certainly wouldn’t win him one of those.
A birthday was merely another day to work.
After school he’d go home, study, go to ‘S’. Perhaps delude himself into thinking his friends were being nicer than normal because by some impossibility they knew. But he’d still know, deep down, that for them it was just another day. His birthday would pass by with a painful lack of eventfulness.
Perhaps, if Miya were normal, things would be different. But he wasn’t, and they weren’t. This was the life he’d sacrificed for, and for the first time, he truly wished he had never picked up a board.
Chinen Miya may have become a teenager, but that didn’t stop him from crying himself to sleep with the pain of an abandoned child, lost to the one thing he ever found meaning in.