Mazaki used to be one of my best students. A little top-heavy for a ballerina, breasts too big for fashion and only good for getting leering looks from the men that sometimes came to watch the lessons, but an excellent dancer overall. Long legs. Clean form. Dedication. Poise. Grace.

And most of all, dedication.

Then Mazaki took off for a few months, a few months that stretched into nearly two years. Prime dancing time. Prime training time. She was all over the news and magazines, the girl who stood at the right hand of the famous duellist, Yugi Motou. I dismissed her as just another girl who gave up her dreams for a boy and forgot about her, got on with training my new cadre for the corpse ballet.

Then she came back.

Walked right into the studio, bold as you please, and joined the other girls for a warm-up. I couldn't be having with that, of course, so I called her to the middle of the floor and put her through her paces, made her do every move she knew, hold every position I'd ever taught her.

She couldn't do it, of course. Been away too long.

She collapsed in the middle of a tour jete and fell to the floor, hands over her face and legs splayed outwards.

And then she wept. She wept for a long, long time.

I never saw her again after she left the studio. Pity. She could have been great.