“I don’t think this is going to work,” Yuuri whispers, trying and failing to stifle a giggle as he looks at the not-at-all suspicious bulge in Viktor’s coat. “Maybe we should just give up and try somewhere else…”
“Nonsense.” Viktor puffs out his cheeks and blows out a breath, eyes narrowing in that determined way of his that Yuuri loves so much. It’s the same face he makes while practicing, endlessly hard on himself to drive to perfection, or when he’s watching Yuuri with a critical eye, finding something to improve. In this context, though, it’s… well. “I didn’t win five world championships and the Olympics to ever give up.”
“Vitya,” Yuuri groans, but Viktor starts walking, his empty sleeves swinging comically at his sides (his gloves are pinned to the wrist cuffs, as if that adds realism) as he leans back and hefts the lump at his belly along the way. There’s nothing Yuuri can do but grab the suitcases and hurry after him.
By the time he catches up, Viktor is already at the front desk, frowning at the clerk as she asks for his ID. “Yuuri,” he says. “Yuuri, hand this woman my passport, please. I don’t remember where it is.”
Yuuri nearly dies, because it’s in the pocket of Viktor’s coat, but he just sighs and reaches in, and–
“Rrooowf,” Makkachin complains, wriggling in Viktor’s arms under the coat, as soon as Yuuri’s hand brushes her head. Viktor and Yuuri lock eyes, panicked, for half a second, and then Viktor turns to the clerk again.
“I,” he announces, “have a stomach condition. It makes my body make strange–”
“Rwoomph!”
“–noises, as you can tell–”
“It’s true,” Yuuri blurts out, hands fluttering at his sides in an effort to avoid clutching his head in consternation, panic, and despair. The clerk is going to call the police on them and then eat them alive, Makkachin included, and that’ll be a horrible way to die! “I–he’s in assisted living and I’m his nurse–”
“Sirs,” the clerk interrupts, bemused, and Yuuri’s life flashes before his eyes. Oh, god, they never even got to get married and they’re about to die in a stupid hotel in stupid America! “Uh, you know, we are pet-friendly…”
Viktor brightens instantly with a smile that diffuses all Yuuri’s anxieties (well, in combination with the words pet-friendly), opening his coat and setting Makkachin down with an oof. She immediately sits down on Yuuri’s feet and licks his hand. “Oh, you are? The website didn’t say so, and we were afraid we made a mistake in booking–”
“…for an additional seventy-five dollar per night fee,” the clerk adds.
Viktor’s face darkens.
He sniffs, daintily fishes his wallet out of his coat pocket, and shakes his head. “So this,” he mutters in Russian, “is why the motherland rejected capitalism. I understand now.”
(Yuuri makes him explain to the clerk why he’s overcome by a sudden coughing fit.)
Anyone else only in their 20s but feel like they are running out of time to get their life together??
Don’t.
I felt this way too, in my twenties, but you know what?
I began transitioning at 30. I went back to grad school at 32. I’m living my best life, and while I’m a little behind the curve compared to some of my classmates on some things, I’m also so far ahead of them on others.
You need follow nobody’s schedule but your own.
Life is hard and the world isn’t doing any of us favors.
Be kind to yourself, and remember that you still have plenty of time. The only difference between starting now and 5 or 10 years earlier is now you have more experience.
“This is the big reveal that’s mirrored in the game of mahjong. Rachel draws a tile in mahjong. It’s a set-building game; it’s very much like poker, so you can draw a card that gives you the win. So Rachel draws the win, but instead of winning, she lets Eleanor have [the winning tile], and so that mirrors the dialogue because what she tells Eleanor in that moment is, ‘Your son has proposed to me, but because I don’t want him to lose his relationship with his mother, I am going to say no and in the future, when he marries someone you think is appropriate, you’re going to remember that that’s because of me.” ~ Bourree Lam, journalist
Crazy Rich Asians (2018), dir. Jon M. Chu
It’s better than that. She’s a game theory expert, and knows better than to play a lose/lose hand. She explicitly says that to her students in the opening scene of the movie. This is Rachel using her professional expertise in her personal life, and turning a lose/lose situation into a win/win by not playing a game based on fear. It’s paying off the very first thing we ever learned about her as the climax of the story.
The script for Crazy Rich Asians has the kind of scriptwriting tightness only the very best romcoms have, like Top Hat, How to Steal a Million, and While You Were Sleeping. Except it understands racism and misogyny better than those films do, for obvious reasons, so it juggles even more balls, with even more skill.
It’s really well written, and should be taught at film school, stat.
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