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“And you should know it’s haunted.” The young man said, as though expecting a crash of thunder to highlight his words. He was a handsome sunny college kid - an unusual customer in the Sashiko vintage and antique shop.
Tiana smiled politely. ‘Haunted’ was the number 3 most common backstory for any teddy bear or doll that came into the shop. It was barely beaten out by #2, ‘belonged to my great-grandmother during the war and should probably be in a museum’ and #1 ‘found this in an attic/garage sale and I’m sure it’s worth ten thousand dollars’.
“Am I to pay more or less for a haunted bear?” Tiana asked. Rude, maybe, but she always wondered what the customer’s expected when they claimed supernatural interference.
“Eh,” Looking away when the teddy’s escort blushed perhaps made up for the rudeness of her question. “I just thought you might need to take special precautions.” He added.
The idea that he was imagining special glyphs drawn in salt to exorcise the toy was intriguing. Chanting and flickering candles. Latin. Or that was just what she was imagining.
Now she had to have the bear. The sad lump of dirty fur in the rumpled paper box was intriguing, if not well cared for. Probably a natural fiber like mohair or alpaca, in an indeterminate dark color. Stuffing had shifted or disappeared, leaving a characteristic slump that could hide damage to the fabric. But the lovely caramel and gold eyes had survived and were reason enough.
“Would you take $20 for him?” She began, wondering how much of a fight the bargaining would be. It was her least favorite part of co-owning the shop. The young man looked a bit embarrassed to be in the store, but also had that hungry college student manner that suggested a prolonged battle.
She watched his eyes as he hesitated. “I know he’s in pretty bad shape, but he was my … my god father’s favorite. You aren’t going to cut him up for parts, right?”
Unexpected. “I might give him new stuffing, patch holes if necessary, but I won’t remove any parts of him that are able to be cleaned and repaired.” She had a quick look at the fur again. “He’s pretty dirty, but I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he isn’t salvageable.”
“Could you do $50?” He tried, chewing his lip nervously.
“Hmm. Do you have any history on the bear? Any pictures with your god father?” Provenance raised the value of antiques, everyone loved a good story.
The young man slumped like someone had deflated him. “Not really. I mean, my godfather gave him to me when I was little - sent him all the way from Thailand. My Dad wasn’t a big fan of ‘non-educational’ or ‘unmanly’ toys but he couldn’t get rid of this guy because my godfather gave him to me. The bear’s name is Yorick, because naming him after a character in Hamlet was as close to making him educational as I could get.”
Non-educational toys, poor kid. Tiana’s master’s thesis was on the historical and social value of the teddy bear, but this kid didn’t need the lecture. She resigned herself to overpaying for the bear just because she had a soft heart and a weakness for good stories.
“$40, and I’ll email you a picture of him once he’s fixed up so you know he’s in good shape again. If you can find a picture with your godfather, you and Yorick I’ll give you another $25.”
The bright grin from the young man was surprising, like his despair was burned away under the midsummer sun. “That would be awesome! One last selfie!” He took pictures of himself with the bear, her with the bear, the three of them, and all over the shop. Maybe she should invite him back to take his own ‘after’ pictures when the repairs were done. All that social media picture taking seemed like the kind of advertising her roommate and co-owner insisted they needed.
It was only a matter of paperwork and exchanging information.
—-
Fortunately, Tiana’s business partner was out during the teddy bear transaction. There was almost no money to be made in repairing teddy bears - the tedious delicate hours of work were rarely rewarded with a traditionally valuable piece. The emotional value of seeing someone find a happy memory from their childhood made real was incalculable - but couldn’t be used to pay taxes.
The more prosaic furniture in the antique store, as well as the Sashiko repaired vintage clothing, were the workhorses that paid for Tiana’s ‘hobby’. While the beautiful repairs and reinvention that went into the Sashiko clothing was an art form passed down from Tiana’s extended family, it somehow wasn’t as rewarding as applying the same skills to a fabric toy with eyes to watch her with gratitude.
Humming as she started the preliminary work, Tiana spread out her new project on her work desk in the back of the shop. The glass eyes were stunning, and showed the sort of character and history that made the painstaking repair work worthwhile. The color on those eyes was clearly hand painted, so lifelike under the bright work lights. The bear’s head remained well firmly stuffed and well formed, with only a few tattered, missing threads from the nose. One ear was loose.
This bear, what was the name? Yorick. Yorick’s expression was somewhere between anxious and stubborn. Like he was sure something bad was going to happen and he was determined to survive it. A bear named after a skull might have good reason to look like that, Tiana mused.
“No worries, Yorick, I’ll have you fixed up in no time.”
Arms and legs were in reasonable shape. One foot showing the characteristic puncture and tear marks of a dog attack. The paw pad was shredded, and the whole foot folded over and stitched shut with what looked like dental floss.
The ugly, ill-fitting grey college sweatshirt the bear was wearing was clearly a later addition. It strangled the bear’s natural form, making it a lumpy mess. Tiana felt nearly gleeful using bandage scissors to remove the polyester shroud, especially as it revealed cleaner fur underneath. Short, dense black fur with a blue pattern - usual. Patterned furs were usually dramatic contrasts. This looked like a pattern of snowflakes.
The body was under-stuffed, floppy, contrasting the firm limbs and head. The creases in a slumped bear could cause damage to the integrity of the fabric, she’d have to check the backing carefully for holes. The back seam was strangely messy, with oversized thread and uneven stitches. The seam was leaking, a bit of loose fabric or maybe a tag bulged in one spot.
Sometimes teddy bear interiors were a repository for odd hidden objects. Tiana’s collection of unusual teddy innards included a Christmas ornament, several puzzle pieces, a fuzzy orange sock, and theatre tickets for a long passed preschool play. Yorick might be hiding something new for her collection.
Exterior cleaning first, Tiana cautioned herself. Rushing ahead could cause damage not nearly worth the rush of an faster discovery.
“Another dirty rag? Please tell me you didn’t pay money for that.” Ah, the errant business partner returned from her mani/pedi/spa treatment. Tiana had been too involved to hear the door jingle.
Tiana didn’t bother to look up from the desk, though she could hear the sharp click of high heels. Her college roommate and co-owner of the shop was an excellent accountant. She had the marketing instincts of a Hollywood producer. Diana was also a great friend.
Tiana repeated those traits to herself before looking over her shoulder to see inevitable skeptical look. Bickering over acquisitions was nearly as much a tradition as pancake dinner Thursdays.
(Diana and Tiana as roommates had been the TA’s idea of a joke, but they got along fantastically despite different backgrounds, majors, and career goals. Diana was the sort of stunningly gorgeous business tycoon that broke hearts and wallets with equal skill. Deep violet eyes in ebony skin did more damage than Medusa’s looks, even before the killer eye liner application. Tiana was a frumpy, Japanese fine arts major whose idea of a great Saturday was hunting for vintage lace at the flea market.
The only way they proved incompatible was a during short lived attempt at dating.)
“Dee, did I complain when you bought those not-remotely-like-pearl pearl earrings? Did I comment when you skipped the ebony pen set at auction so that you could bid higher on the did-not-belong-to-the-first-lady pearl necklace?” Diana was a great business partner, but she had a weakness. too. Even her beloved toy poodle - also enjoying a spa day today - was named ‘Pearl’.
“Does constantly bringing it up in conversation count as complaining?” Diana sighed dramatically, running newly manicured nails through her dark braids. “Fine. I know I can’t stop you.”
“You enjoyed it when that 80 year old man burst into tears when he saw the Schuco Janus bear that I rehabbed.”
“I wanted to burst into tears seeing that thing too, it was fucking creepy.” Diana countered, crossing her arms irritably. She peered over Tiana’s shoulder at the bedraggled teddy bear. “A toy shouldn’t have two faces. That’s just wrong. … But the old man was kinda cute, and he bought and $200 display case to put the bear in.”
Tiana aimed her smile at the bear in front of her, rather than at her grumpy roommate. She didn’t need to see Dee’s violet eyes flash with annoyance at her curiosity being caught out.
“Yeah, fine. Just don’t forget it in the freezer. It’s weird to reach for the ice cream and see eyes staring back.”
Tiana and Dee still shared an apartment, the upper floor of the sprawling Queen Ann that housed the antique shop. Sharing a kitchen was rarely a problem, except when a new teddy needed the moth killing powers of the deep freeze.
“It’s only 48 hours. You can survive the mild creepiness that long.” Squinting at the white newsprint layer under the bear, Tiana added, “I don’t see anything that looks like a creepy crawly or an egg anyway.”
The bell over the antique shop’s door rang. “I’ve got it.” Diana sang merrily as she dashed into the front of the store. Dee loved the salesperson role nearly as much as she loved her black pearl anklet. Fortunate for Tiana, who preferred the back room, repairs, and research.
The showroom didn’t bring in nearly the money that online sales generated but the village council insisted that their shop was a tourist magnet, and Dee loved schmoozing with customers. Running a business like this for purely monetary rewards was silly.
She pulled out a soft bristle brush and began gently sweeping over her new project to remove any loose debris.
——
Diana muttered to herself as she hooked the olympic live stream to the entertainment center. Watching the winter olympics was also a tradition between them, although the themed food only got more ridiculous over the years. Where do you even get tiny skis for cupcakes?
Tiana had been surprised to discover her practical, impeccably dressed college roommate was an unrepentant sports fan, with a encyclopedic knowledge of olympic history. Dee’s grandfather was a famous Italian ice skater, and Diana insisted that she had inherited her grace and fashion sense from him.
Tiana had no famous relatives, sporting or otherwise. She also couldn’t reliably determine which sports involved balls and which did not. Mostly, the winter olympics did not involve balls.
Except hockey. That had a ball, right? A flat one.
Dee thought Tiana’s inability to remember anything about sports hilarious. When Tiana had referred to American football as ‘that squashed ball game’ Dee had fallen off the dorm’s loft bed because she was laughing so hard.
Today’s rendition of Olympic Fever was good distraction from Tiana’s complete failure in researching her mystery rehab teddy bear’s origins.
The copper-eyed bear was starting to look like a treasure again, his fur returned to a soft glossiness after seemingly endless applications of soap foam and soft dry cloths. There had only been two holes that required the tedious work of reweaving, and finding a color match for the ruined paw pads had resolved surprisingly quickly. Who knew that the perfect color would show up as overstocked gloves at the drug store?
But opening the teddy bear’s back seam to replace the disappointing stuffing had rendered the teddy bear’s history only more mysterious. While the arms and legs were filled with wood wool (thin, soft wood shavings), the body was stuffed with an outfit of blue spandex and sequins. There was some remanent stuffing inside the body as well, but the odd outfit - sized to fit the bear - had clearly been hidden inside it. Was the outfit somehow more disturbingly un-educational than the bear?
The bit of tag poking out of the seam belonged to the mysterious outfit, it said ‘Worlds 201-“ but the end of the tag was tattered. Possibly “Worlds 207-“ or “Words 201”.
There wasn’t a toy company called ‘Worlds’ or ‘Words’, nor did the name and number match a known design that Tiana could find. The other side of the tag had a tiny figure that looked like a dancer, arms arced overhead and legs wide in a jump or a split. Was there a ‘Worlds’ ballet group that sold teddy bears as souvenirs? It didn’t seem likely. Was there a world-wide gymnastic …thing?
Also frustrating, Tiana was starting to wonder if the bear was actually haunted like the college kid said. It kept appearing in the apartment upstairs, on the coffee table facing the TV. Dee swore she wasn’t doing it, Pearl - bless her furry heart - was too short to reach. It was as though the toy was as desperate to watch the olympics as Dee was herself.
Shutting the laptop, and the frustrating labyrinth of internet research, away. Tiana went back to stitching loose sequins back onto the outfit. Camping out on the couch with her sewing supplies made sense if only to keep her roommate from running up and down the stairs with unnecessary sports highlights.
“Put down the dress, the figure skaters are almost up. You like the figure skating, remember?” Diana fussed, sitting at the other end of the sofa and settling the tiny poodle in her lap. Pearl enjoyed the olympics entirely for dropped food related reasons.
“It’s not a dress. It’s more like . . . a swimsuit? Only who puts sequins on a swimsuit?”
“Swimsuits are summer olympics, this is the winter olympics. Focus. They are doing a tribute to the Katsuki-Nikiforov Foundation and I don’t want to miss it. My grandfather skated with them, you know? The Katsuki-Nikiforovs? They really turned figure skating around and brought the focus back to artistry even though Nikiforov was known for performing quads no one else could and Katsuki had, like, crazy stamina.” Dee’s commentary was more entertaining than that of the excitable TV reporters, though the sweeping shot of an empty ice rink left something to be desired.
“It was the sweetest love story, except with nudity and pole dancing. They were the reason I adopted Pearl, you know. The Katsuki-Nikiforovs were famous for poodle rescue.”
Tiana thought the ‘Katsuki-Nikiforovs’ should have worked out a shorter combined name, the full thing was a mouthful. Katsforov. Nikisuki. Maybe their unknown first names made more sense together.
She also thought that Yorick the bear definitely looked like it was watching the TV. Maybe some latin chanting WAS in order. Usually the spirit of antique objects was less . . . spirited.
“Here it is! Here it is!” Diana cried.
On the screen, a highlight reel showed a silver haired man winking into the camera and later throwing himself across the ice in a melodramatic interpretation of pink-coated despair. Sure, he was pretty, but . . . Then there was a darker haired skater on screen, Japanese maybe? That one demonstrated some jumps that should be impossible under the rules on normal physics. Then they were both doing jumps, simultaneously, that were clearly impossible. Even as an art major, Tiana knew enough about science to be sure that was not right.
Sports were weird.
It was only after a surprising montage of the skaters kissing (each other, and for some reason, each other’s skates) that Tiana put the pieces together. “That one outfit the Japanese skater was wearing, the sparkly one? It looked like the bear’s outfit. Didn’t it?”
“That’s black and red. The Eros program makes you pregnant not colorblind.”
“Not that one - but damn.” A moment of silence for that lip lick. “The other costume when he did that twirly-twirly-swoosh thing.”
“You think it’s a figure skating bear.” Diana did not move her eyes from the TV but the flat tone didn’t require eye contact to convey her opinion. To be fair, the clip of the Japanese skater in a black outfit running hands down his body was impossible to look away from. “You aren’t going to convince me your old bear is interesting.” Tiana had her, she was totally curious.
At the commercial break, Dee looked over at the scrap of sparkling fabric. “Okay, yes. It does kind of look like a figure skating costume, at least if there were leotards or trousers or something.” Dee grabbed a cocktail weenie (which she insisted was still theme related since it was mens skating).
“What was that skater’s name again? Wait. Is there a, uh, skating bowl … rink … skate-off called ‘Worlds’?”
Inexplicably, the probably-haunted bear fell off the table. Dee gasped for air. Pearl stole the cocktail weenie.
“Skating bowl?”
——
By the next morning, it was Diana had unearthed all the details about the Yorick-Katsuki connection. Persons who think figure skating is conducted in a bowl having been determined incapable.
The mystery bear might be a souvenir related to the ‘Katsuki’ of ‘Katsuki-Nikiforov’. Specifically “Yuuri Katsuki” or “Yuuri K” whose name might decay into ‘Yorick’ when a small child repeated it. The outfit was worn during the ‘Worlds’ competition where the pair dominated the competition, and then fell off the podium during an overly enthusiastic public display of affection.
Tiana had watch the video clip of that fall three times. The bronze medalist had turned and yelled at the two fallen skaters for a full six minutes. In Russian. The translation was a work of poetry. If swearing could count as poetry, which it should, since ballet on knife shoes was a sport.
Anyway.
The Yorick’s (or Yuuri’s) correct looks remained a mystery because the only photo of the figure skating teddy bear souvenirs was of the ‘Nikiforov’ version - on display at the Izu Teddy Bear museum in Itō, Japan.
The skaters had been celebrities in their home countries of Russia and Japan. Settling in Japan to coach made even the Russian a Japanese hero, but it still seemed strange that the Japanese museum had only the Russian represented. Sure, the teddy was a stunning art piece in silver fur, with a skating costume of pale blue with lush embroidery and beadwork. It might have a similar snowflake pattern, but the photo wasn't sharp enough to be sure.
Tiana had more experience with teddy bear related searches and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying search combinations to unearth the specifics of the ‘Katsuki’ bear, but besides confirming that it had existed, there was nothing.
By dinner hour Tiana gave up her own hunting and sent an email to the museum - modern translation programs at least reduced the chance she’d be misunderstood - asking for any extra details about the bears.
The response arrived within an hour, which meant someone responded immediately after the museum opened. Diana had commandeered the entertainment center for another day of Olympic coverage - apparently figure skating was a multi-day event. The haunted Katsuki bear had reappeared on the coffee table. Tiana settled on the couch to read the email.
The message contained an unlikely number of exclamation points, but the included photos of an ad for ‘Kawaii Figure Skating Champions’ showing a black teddy bear in a sequined blue outfit next to a silver teddy that matched the picture on the museum’s website. It was definitely the bear sitting in front of her - even in the photo the unique black and blue snowflake fur matched.
Dee was more excited by the combination spin on the screen than the confirmation of what they’d mostly figured out last night about the high maintenance lump of fabric.
Three more skaters and a commercial break later, as translation programs only did so much, Tiana finished parsing the museum curator’s excited message.
“Hey, Diana? Do you want to take a trip to Japan?”
——
It wasn’t surprising that the museum was looking for a ‘Katsuki’ to pair with their ‘Nikiforov’. It was surprising that they were willing to spring for two international tickets and a week’s hotel stay to assure the bear arrived in Japan safely. Diana immediately agreed to close the shop so they could both take the trip which was also surprising - even if it wasn’t tourist season at the moment.
Diana told every flight steward and customs official (as well as a few random folks who didn’t walk fast enough) that this was a Celebrity Teddy Bear who would Absolutely Not Be Checked As Luggage. Tiana kept the bear on her lap for the entirety of the too long flight.
All the cramped travel and sleep deprivation was worth it. Seeing the no-longer-bedraggled bear in the case with his ‘husband’ was ridiculously touching. The costumes glittered under the careful lighting and for the first time Yuuri (no longer Yorick) didn’t look anxious. He was a ‘Treasure Bear’ now, no longer insufficiently educational toy, as he deserved.
Nearly as cute was watching Dee flirt with the hyper museum curator with the red streak in his blond hair. Dee invited him to dinner when he mentioned he had a famous figure skating relative himself. The hair flip and eye lash fluttering was worthy of a classic movie starlet. (Tiana was not invited.)
If there was a second date before they left, Tiana planned to tell him about the pearl thing. After all, he had already taken the warning that the bear was haunted in stride.
There was a legend that all ‘Katsuki’ collectables were inexplicably restless until paired with corresponding ‘Nikiforov’ collectables and vice versa. Tiana figured she didn’t need details or a dinner out nearly so much as she needed an early morning trip to the Takayama morning market.
She emailed an update to the college student who started it all (along with a check to share the surprise bonus proceeds) and grinned when he sent back a three minute video of himself cheering.