And what if Shane was deeply and profoundly sad about not being perfect and fluent in Japanese. He can speak English and he can speak French but his Japanese is not up to the mark and he's sad and ashamed and likes to avoid looking at it for too long.
When he was young, he didn't pay enough attention to his maternal grandparents who really wanted him to learn because his hockey interest was slowly taking over and it's not like any of his peers knew Japanese anyways. He's already too Asian for his schoolmates. So he just avoids it. But then he's an adult and he realises Yuna and her parents can speak in Japanese. And perfectionist Shane can't accept his level of comfort with the language. Autistic wasian Shane who's always felt Other can't accept that he is still the Other no matter how much he tries to assimilate. He could literally work his way up, give up his entire identity and life and body and mind and free time and win them all the cups and be the team captain with the perfect peak performance and torture himself and deny himself every single day, and hide his love and his sexuality for so many years and put up with inconsiderate friendships and be the public face of hockey perfection....all for what. He can try to assimilate as much as he wants but he's lost himself in the process. They will still drop him so quickly whenever it suits them. They're already barely tolerating his asian-ness or his gayness (and refuse to tolerate both at once, at that). What was it all for?
Maybe when he's learning Russian for the sake of the one he loves, he also aches to learn his own language for the sake of himself. And it's sad that he even has to struggle so much. That he even has to learn the language of his mother on anywhere near the same level as that of Ilya's mother.
