"I picked a relatively soft 50 stiffness for your skates. Today, you'll probably only be practicing footwork and gliding, so comfort is better."
"..."
Seeing him crouched down and carefully tying her laces with such focus, warm, sweet ripples spread through Shiina Mahiru's heart.
"Talent Brother, have you learned skating before?"
Seeing how familiar he was with everything, she thought he must have studied it in America before.
"No~ Today's my first time at an ice rink too." Without even looking up, he tightened her skates. "Remember how this feels. Wear them like this next time."
"...Then where did all this knowledge come from?"
He clapped his hands, moved over to Hoshino Ai's side, and answered with a smile, "I've read books about it before."
Besides textbooks, he also liked reading miscellaneous books and magazines, so he had picked up and remembered things along the way.
"..."
Even now, she still couldn't get used to how easily he seemed to treat learning and memorization.
Sakurakoji Talent continued sharing his unverified "experience." "This was a spur-of-the-moment decision, so we'll just make do with these for now. Later, I'll buy you your own dedicated skates online."
"N-No, it's not necessary! It's not like we'll come that many times..." Hoshino Ai waved her hands, feeling that it would be wasteful.
"Even coming once makes it worthwhile. Besides, these are consumables."
In fact, a decent pair of skates cost over a hundred thousand yen, and the blades were detachable consumables—strictly speaking, the boots were too, just replaced less often.
After buying blades, you still needed to have them sharpened. Then, after practicing for a while, they needed to be ground again... Every step cost money~
Of course, experienced people bought sharpeners online and did it themselves, saving around two thousand yen each time.
Even