Chapter Text
He steps up on the dais, standing proudly on the topmost middle platform, arm cradling a bouquet, gold medal hanging heavily around his neck. Representing the Republic of Korea, in first place, Sunghoon Park.
He nods and waves, pinning the camera with a practiced smile. But when the flashes die down and the crowd begins to disperse, the smile slips off his lips as he descends from the tier.
Sunghoon retreats to his dressing room, gulping down water in a rush, shouldering through the people in the hallway.
“What’s wrong? You did well,” Jungwon says, readily taking the flask Sunghoon hands him. A few staff greet them and he responds with a curt nod before he sidles up to the athlete in worry.
“Did something happen?” He presses, met with silence as Sunghoon pushes the door to his room open.
“Nothing happened,” He says dismissively, taking a seat to undo the laces of his skates.
Jungwon crosses his arms with a sigh, watching Sunghoon change into his sneakers. He’s been working long enough with Sunghoon as his friend-slash-manager-slash-assistant coach to know that his scowl and his knitted brows aren’t just nothing. But then again, he knows Sunghoon well enough to know that he won’t be talking about it anytime soon.
Deciding to let it go for now, Jungwon helps him gather his things as they wait for his coach.
Sunghoon all but shoves his belongings into his duffel bag before walking towards the mirror. His hair is still styled with gel, half of it slicked back, half of it falling over his forehead in a perfect fringe. There are lines of concealer below his eyes, caking with all the sweat that had mixed with it, powder seeping into the folds of his lids.
He takes a ply of wipes and swipes it against his skin, the coolness of it somewhat refreshing; grounding, the cold surface bringing him back to his senses. He takes a deep breath for the first time since the competition. Slowly, the makeup dissolves under the tissue, and more and more of his bare face shows. In the mirror, Sunghoon is staring at himself. Not the gold medalist, ice-skating prodigy, crowd favorite Sunghoon. Just…Sunghoon. Tired Sunghoon with dark circles. Uncertain Sunghoon with doubtful eyes. Displeased Sunghoon with a scowl tugging on his chapped lips.
He nearly injured himself today.
Had he not been able to recover from his triple axel that went slightly askew, his ankle could have easily given out. A sprain would’ve been the least worrying at that point. What he fears is a broken ankle and a demised career.
Wiping the last bit of product, he chucks the tissue into the bin with more force than necessary.
. . .
The next time he stands on the podium, is in a different country. He’s met with things that are foreign to him—the food, the language, the culture. But one thing’s for sure, the feeling of standing at the top is the farthest from being foreign. The consistent weight of the medal slung around his neck, left arm holding a bouquet delicately, right hand clutching the gold token as he poses for pictures—these are things ingrained into his very being.
He shakes the hands of the silver and bronze medalist in all good sportsmanship before skating to the gates of the rink, meeting Mr. Han, his coach there. He’s handed his skate guards and given a proud clap on his back. “Nice job there, Hoon. You did well adding another combination.”
In the middle of his routine, he had readied himself for a quadruple axel, launched himself into the air, but had failed to land neatly. He slipped and briefly landed on his rear, but he got up as fast as he fell, movements nothing short of agile and graceful. He had even managed to make his recovery look like it was part of his choreography. To make up for the deductions, he added a last minute combination of jumps and turns before his routine came to an end.
“Thanks,” He answers softly.
His coach carries on with his duties, talking to the managers, checking on his other skaters, and Sunghoon’s stumble is left unmentioned.
Familiar faces with unknown names greet Sunghoon with warm smiles and firm handshakes, a flurry of congratulations in different languages pass by his ears. And for once, he’s displeased with the positive reception. He knows that the moment they turn around, they will whisper and murmur about the way he fell, how disgraceful his landing was, and he wishes one of them would at least speak their mind instead of giving him all the practiced smiles.
“Sunghoon!” The sound of someone calling him, and sounding perplexed at that, makes him turn his head towards the source. From the other side of the rink, is his old friend storming towards him.
As the man approaches, Sunghoon sees the scowl on his face and prepares to receive an earful.
“Let me see,” The man says skittishly, taking the sleeves of Sunghoon’s ombre of white and teal blue attire between his fingers. After a few seconds of assessment, he makes a strangled noise of irritation. “You lost more stones!" He says, lamenting over the swarovskis that have come off Sunghoon’s costume in the process of his fall.
“Calm down, Jay.” Sunghoon says flatly as they retreat to their section.
“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one who glues them on one by one.”
“If you did it properly they wouldn’t have come off.”
Jay looks at him in full offense. “If you didn’t fall they wouldn’t have come off!” Sunghoon rolls his eyes, fetching his change of clothes from his bag. Well, as much as he finds Jay annoying, at least he isn’t being pretentious and telling Sunghoon that he did a good job when they all know he could have done better.
“Also, what happened? You’re lucky it wasn’t obvious that a few stones came off or you would get more deductions,” Jay says. In all the years they’ve known each other, He knows for a fact that Sunghoon rarely has slips on competitions. He would practice diligently until every miniscule part of the jump has been drilled into his brain and cemented into his muscles.
Sunghoon counters with a shrug. “Well, I still won, didn’t I?”
Jay presses his lips together, conceding. “Point. But you better not do it again. I didn’t design your amazing costumes only for you to fucking land on your ass wearing them.”
“Weird way to cheer me up, but thanks.”
Jay is a relatively new designer in the skating scene—only managing to be part of the industry by Sunghoon’s invitation. See, you can consider them somewhat childhood friends. They’re from the same hometown, attended all the same schools as they grew up. But they weren’t always this close. Jay was that rich and quiet kid from downtown and Sunghoon was this reserved child who was often absent from school because he was too busy training.
His mother wanted him to have a normal childhood, but really, with his career as a child skating prodigy, effortlessly seizing medals at the tender age of nine, they couldn’t really help it. Sunghoon wanted to pretend that his career didn’t affect his life outside of it much. But everytime he does go to school, he feels the repercussions of it.
The faces in his class were all unfamiliar, he didn't know what chapter of the lesson they’re in, no one really talked to him. Some kids would be kind enough to say hi, yes, but at the end of the day, he ate lunch alone, and went home alone. That is, until one day, a kid with angled brows and sharp eyes sat himself in front of Sunghoon’s desk, the straw of his apple juice box between his lips.
“You skate right?” He asks. Sunghoon nods.
The kid speaks again after a few seconds of thinking. “Why?”
Sunghoon blinks, not really understanding the question. Skating has been everything he’s ever known.
“Why not?”
A few years later and they’re in their last year of high school, Sunghoon sits himself in front of Jay’s desk, peering over the sketch he’s been working on, messy pencil marks lined across the back of his notebook.
“What’s that?”
Jay raises a brow to acknowledge his presence before crouching to resume his drawing. “It’s a design.”
“For what?”
“For you.”
Sunghoon tilts his head. “Why?
“Because your costume was fucking ugly last season.”
Confused, Sunghoon pries the notebook away from his friend’s grasp, eyes panning over the clumsily made sketch. A top that hugged the waist, its neckline beautifully low to flaunt the collar bones, billowing sleeves that would look majestic with every turn, and gems dotting the hems. He finds a small smile tugging on his lips.
Unfortunately, they part ways right after graduation, both choosing veering paths. But a few years later, they reconnect with Jay receiving a call from an unsaved number. When he picks it up, he’s surprised to hear the voice of his hometown friend.
“Hey, Jay. My costume last season was fucking ugly. Can you do something about that?” And the rest is history. Since then, Jay has managed to clothe Sunghoon in the most stunning tops dotted with glinting stones that highlighted his turns and made him seem iridescent under the lights. The most beautiful designs that hugged his figure perfectly, and the most alluring pieces that turned his routine into a story. Jay liked doing that—coordinating Sunghoon’s attire to his song choice. He once danced to O’ for a Muse of Fire by Walton and Jay had him dressed in a glorious array of warm colors, see-through fabric sewn into his sleeves in layers, tapering off into pointed ends. It made him look like he was on fire, flames dancing across the ice with his every turn.
Fans began not only to anticipate Sunghoon’s performance, but also the attire he was donning for the season. Not to brag, but if figure skating has a best dressed category, Jay’s sure they would win it by a landslide.
Sunghoon ignores him for the rest of the time Jay nags him about his costume, leaving him seated in the corner with his arms crossed over his chest as he gives an endless sermon. Jay, after a while, finally stops talking and stares at Sunghoon, the cogs in his mind turning, pondering on what to clothe him in for their next big stop—the Olympics.
. . .
A deep breath in. His music starts, he pushes himself forward, and his story begins. He glides through the ice, feet seamlessly moving with ease, hands flowing with control. He skates backwards, pushing himself off the ice with the pick of his skates, twirling into a double toe loop. He clicks his tongue in dismay. That was supposed to be a triple.
He continues with his routine, arms fluttering in intricate movement, then he goes for a jump combination, but his rotations lack momentum. His triple axel dwindles into a double, as with his flips. He clicks his tongue again in building irritation.
He takes a sharp breath, skating by the sides of the rink before he spins upright, drifting back into the center for another attempt at a complex combination. By this time, he’s gritting his teeth, the blades of his skates chafing the ice with every jump he barely lands.
Riding the momentum, feeling the chill nip at his cheeks, he launches himself into a quadruple axel. But this time he over rotates, and he’s sent flying across the ice in a distance he can’t handle. His blades crash against the ice with a gauche thud, and he stumbles to his knees, falling onto his side and skidding across the surface with his head hung low.
There’s a deafening ringing in his ear. After a few seconds, it fades out, and he hears his coach telling him to try again—voice stern and tone stiff. He gets up on his feet, dusting off the shaven ice that had clung to his pants and gloves.
He skates back to center, takes position, and starts his routine from the top. But something just wasn’t falling snugly into place. Like bicycle chains that weren’t properly attached to wheels, or like a zipper that fails to align its teeth properly—something was just…wrong. He tries again and again, but each time he does, something always seems to go awry. His quads turn into triples, his spins are too slow, his landings are too rough, his extensions are too short, his triples diminish into doubles, and he’s left gritting his teeth and hitting the ice in frustration each time he stumbles onto his knees.
Before he knows it, the sun has long set, and he’s the only skater left on the rink.
He tries again. A deep breath in. His music starts, he pushes himself forward, and his story begins. But the words to his story are all wrong, chapters mixed up, sentences incoherent. He’s dancing to an excerpt of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3—a song of triumph, an ode to freedom. But his movements are anything but. His steps are empty, the flow of his hands and his long strides lacking the expression of liberty. He doesn’t seem free at all.
But he tries, and keeps trying, as the music crescendos, he pushes forward, sweat trickling down his temples as all is lost to him. The instrumental reaches its peak the same time he does, jumping into a spin as his damp hair whips against his cheek. But his shifts slowly come undone, his movements losing its precision, and it sends him nearly crashing into the ice once more.
The music dies down and everything stills in the rink, silence echoing against the surface of the ice. Sunghoon stands there, chest heaving as he tries to maintain his final position, the wheels in his mind clinking and clanking from all the turmoil. He grits his teeth, frustration creeping up his veins until he’s clenching his fists so hard that his knuckles turn white.
After a while, there’s a voice. “Sunghoon,” his coach calls for him, snapping him from his stupor, his tone not sounding pleasing to him at all. His voice is coated with pity—as if he was feeling bad for Sunghoon and this enrages him all the more.
Lips pressed into a thin line, a ghost of a scowl pulling at the corners, he skates towards the man he has trained with for more than a decade.
Mr. Han passes him a towel and his water bottle, before speaking contemplatively.
“Sunghoon, what’s wrong?”
He refuses to meet the eyes of his coach, instead choosing to lean his back against the walls of the rink. Mr. Han sighs, resting his forearms on the ledge as he looks at his skater in concern. Sunghoon doesn’t speak, and his heart hurts for the boy he has seen grow up on the ice.
Mr. Han has been a coach for more than half of his life. With his hair beginning to gray, and wrinkles forming around his eyes, he’s surely seen a lot of skaters through the years. Some come and go, but some stay—some stay as if the ice was their home in the first place.
He first met Sunghoon when he was eleven—a rising child athlete who was still growing a tooth in the gaps of his front teeth. He had the smoothest hair that fluffed up everytime he jumped, and the brightest smile whenever he managed to land properly.
At the age of twelve, they all came to the unanimous decision to put Sunghoon under Mr. Han’s wing—his training becoming more meticulous as they began to groom him for bigger competitions. Soon enough, his young feathers are patted down impeccably, and he takes off into the international skating scene. When Mr. Han says he’s seen Sunghoon grow up, he isn’t exaggerating. He was there to patch up all the bruises from his falls, and he was there to hand him his skate guards after every victory. Time had gone by so fast for him that before he even knew it, Sunghoon had bloomed into a fine young man, seizing gold after gold.
With every spin, his childlikeness started to make way for maturity. With every jump, the smile on his face morphed into a harder look of determination. And with every routine, his love for the ice…melted away and turned into obligation.
Sunghoon remains silent, his hair falling over his troubled eyes.
Mr. Han didn’t want to say it out loud, at least not before Sunghoon does, but it seems like he’ll be hell bent on not acknowledging it at all. He speaks again after a while, voice careful.
“...Are you in a slump?”
Sunghoon rears his head to look at his coach incredulously. “I’m not! It’s just a bad day, okay?” He steps off the ice, brows furrowed as he begins to pack his belongings.
Before his coach could even stop him, he exits the rink, determined to come back the next day in a better condition.
He doesn’t.
It seemed to be getting worse actually, if that was possible.
Jungwon sighs heavily, seated next to Mr. Han as they watch Sunghoon move across the ice, his aura overflowing with aggravation.
“Sunghoon, stop.” His coach tells him after two hours of him trying to get his routine down. “You’re going to hurt yourself at this point.”
Everyone knows that he is as stubborn as the ice he skates on, and if they don’t force him off the rink, he’ll only try and try until he gets his spins and jumps down perfectly. Usually, that works. But usually, it will only take him half an hour before he gets the groove and momentum of his routine. They’ve long gone past the thirty minute mark and slight worry begins to grow within them. It’s uncharacteristic of him to take so long.
“C’mon, sit down.” Mr. Han tells him, pulling him by his arm and sitting Sunghoon in between him and Jungwon.
Jungwon hands him his water bottle, and he chugs it down before leaning his arms against his knees in dejection. Mr. Han, on the other hand, puts a towel around Sunghoon’s nape, sighing as he pats down the sweat from the back of the skater’s head.
He sighs, mulling over the right words to say, then he starts speaking carefully. “Sunghoon-ah. I know you don’t want to admit it, but we only have barely a year and a half left before the Winter Olympics. The sooner we address this, the better. Okay? ”
Sunghoon’s damp fringe is falling over his eyes-–obscuring his vision, hiding from him the concerned looks they’re giving him. Well, he’d rather not see it after all. It makes him feel more pathetic than he already does.
They wait wordlessly for his response, at the edge of their seats. A minute or so passes, and they’re nearly convinced that Sunghoon wasn’t going to talk. It feels like an eternity before the silence between the three of them is finally interrupted. It’s Sunghoon who speaks. “Okay,” He says in a low voice, finally relenting.
At this, his coach releases a breath of relief, patting Sunghoon on the back. “Good. Rest up tomorrow. You’ll join Mina’s classes on Monday.”
Without much of a choice, Sunghoon does exactly that. He sleeps through the majority of Sunday, and before he knows it, he’s in his ballet shoes standing before the floor-to-ceiling mirror of Mina’s dance studio.
He gulps. When his coach said he was going back to the basics, he assumed he would be training with those on the intermediate level at least, not with world renowned dancers who excel spectacularly in their craft.
To his left, is award winning prima ballerina Nakamura Kazuha, and to his right, is the young up and rising ballerino Nishimura Riki who had managed to land his first lead role in a play at 19. The latter he’s seen quite a few times, enough for them to be considered acquaintances. They first met when Mr. Han sent him to the studio for a few ballet drills years ago, and there was young Riki, shoulders still narrow and limbs gangly.
In front of them is Myoui Mina—a retired prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet who had swept awards in the most prestigious of competitions in her prime. She has dedicated her entire youth to perfecting her craft. After a while, the stress and pressure began to get tiring, and she made the most pivotal decision in her life—to stop performing. After a while, she settled down in Korea and started her own studio, pursuing her love for ballet still.
She walks in front of them, posture perfect, poised. Even the way she walks is painted with grace, the way she cranes her neck refined. She counts to the music as she watches them perform basic drills with hawk eyes. They start off simple—with squatting down into pliés, and swiping the tip of the toe around in a rond de jambe. As the hours pass, the drills get progressively harder and harder, and it leaves Sunghoon with the realization that his foundations are…to put it frankly, shit. (It isn’t actually that bad, he just has ridiculously high standards.)
As a skater, the fundamentals of the craft are closely related to ballet. He remembers taking a class when he was eight before he fully ventured into skating, and small Sunghoon with fluffy hair was the only boy in the room. He was embarrassed alright, but he wanted to skate, so he focused on the positions he was being taught. He only wishes that he had the same amount of resolve the eight year old Sunghoon had.
When they begin doing arabesques, this is when he realizes that he had become careless with his basics. He stretches his leg out behind him, left arm parallel to it, right arm extended in front of him.
“And hold,” Mina says, tapping her pointing stick on her palm to the beat of the music playing in the background. She circles them, eyes scanning their form. “Chin up,” She reminds, and Sunghoon abides, feeling sweat trickle down his temples as he tries to maintain the form.
“Higher, Sunghoon-ah.” She says, gently using her stick to guide his leg in the air. He grits his teeth, feeling wobbly on his feet. It always somehow feels easier to hold this form while he skates. It sounds silly, he knows. But he was so used to doing these while gliding across the ice, and now that he has to do it while staying still makes him hyper aware of all the details and angles he has to maintain.
Mina assesses his form pensively, pointer ready to correct his stance.
“Higher.” She raises his foot with her stick.
“Square your shoulders,” A poke to his shoulder.
“Breathe,”
“Long neck.”
“Square your hips.” she pushes his hip into its proper place.
“Graceful arms.”
“Butt in.”
“Turn out.” She says,
“Hold your core.” A tap against his abdomen. He sucks in a breath, trying to do exactly that. “Hold your core,” She repeats, this time sounding more stern and Sunghoon wonders how much more he could clench his abdomen without passing out.
Finally satisfied with his arabesque, Mina calls for a short break. And as soon as she turns around, he drops his frame with a heavy sigh. Immediately, he feels a cramp shooting up his leg. He stumbles to the floor, hurrying to ease the spasms in his muscles. Thankfully, Riki is quick to help him, holding his leg against his shoulder and flexing his ankles.
“Hyung, you okay?” He asks with a chuckle, all while stretching his leg.
Sunghoon grunts, finally feeling the cramp beginning to subside. “I’m fine,”
“This is because you’re old,” He says unprovoked, making Sunghoon look at him, bemused.
“Oh, shut up.”
Riki merely laughs at him, donning his boyishly boxy smile.
They sit down for a quick snack after the cramp finally ebbs down, and as they converse, Sunghoon notices that Riki’s Korean has improved vastly since the last time they met. Well, that was nearly four years ago, so it really shouldn’t be a surprise. Riki has also grown so much taller since then, and he’s begun to fill out into his features, shoulders broadening, muscles developing. Sunghoon suddenly has this odd feeling of nostalgia and fondness, as if he watched Riki grow up.
“So,” Riki begins, munching on his energy bar. “Why are you here hyung?”
Sunghoon shrugs. “Coach sent me,”
“Yeah, but why?”
He opens his mouth to reply, but finds it difficult to do so. Instead, he lets a long breath out his nose after carefully choosing the right words. “Guess he wanted me to brush up on my basics again.”
Riki nods, crumpling the wrapper in his hands before standing up. “C’mon then, I don’t think Ms. Mina is going to go easy on you.”
Sunghoon spends the rest of the week in Mina’s studio, somedays accompanied by her students, sometimes alone. She made him review everything from square one, as if relearning the craft from the very beginning. In the past, whenever his coach wanted him to visit his fundamentals, he would always send him to Mina, so training with her isn’t really new. But she has never been this strict with him. Riki was absolutely right. She’s relentless.
His sessions are filled with her correcting his posture endlessly, making sure his body lines were impeccable, ensuring that his pirouettes and his jumps are as clean as they could be. By the end of the week, he feels more like a ballerino than a skater. Briefly, he considers changing careers before quickly slamming down the thought like it was taboo to even think of it.
He returns to the rink after, and he feels somewhat refreshed, veins brimming with newfound resolve. There’s a gut feeling that his quads would all be immaculate, and his extensions would be perfect. He enters the ice, Mr. Han and Jungwon watch him with anticipation. He warms up, then begins his routine promptly after.
It starts off well, his movements are clean, his spins are absolute. He glides across the surface, a focused scowl plastered on his face. But halfway through, his drive seems to weaken, granite dwindling, leaving Mr. Han and Jungwon to exchange worried glances.
He lands all his jumps for the most part, but there’s just something that makes Mr. Han furrow his brows deep in thought. He crosses his arms, sighing. Sunghoon still isn’t quite the Sunghoon he knows.
He finishes his routine with much less of a struggle than last time, but there’s a silence that hangs in the air after he does.
“Can you go again?” Dissatisfied, Mr. Han says, gesturing for him to return to the center. He does as he’s told and rehearses his choreography from the top. Soon enough, they realize that his newfound resolve is short lived. He’s back to the same string of events from his training prior to his ballet sessions. His arabesques surely did improve, as did his flexibility. But his spins and jumps oddly remain the same.
This leaves his coach feeling more troubled than ever before. Usually, sending his skaters back to ballet class would solve the most of it. Of course, there are some that require a different kind of regime. However, for a skater of Sunghoon’s prowess, he expected revisiting the basics to seal the deal.
Apparently, that isn’t the case.
He turns to Jungwon, ruminative. “Sign him up this week for some yoga. Or meditation. Whatever,”
. . .
“I what?” Sunghoon asks in distress.
His manager checks his watch. “Have a yoga class in twenty minutes.”
“When the fuck did I start doing yoga?”
“Today,” he answers, unfazed by Sunghoon’s bafflement. “Coach told me to find you a class.” Jungwon begins collecting the skater’s belongings off the floor of his apartment, grabbing his duffle bag and beginning to pack his essentials. “I bought you leggings if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Leggings. Sunghoon slaps his palm against his face as he flumps back against his bed. He wishes he didn’t wake up today.
Left with no choice, he finds himself on a yoga mat at the farthest back of the class, seated amongst a couple of middle aged ladies who have been ogling him and gushing over his looks the moment he stepped into the room.
He blinks, feeling uneasy under the weight of all their gazes. They even go through the lengths of careening their heads to blatantly catch a glimpse of him. His eyes dart around the room, unsure of where to look, and accidentally, he locks eyes with a woman with graying hair. At the sudden eye contact, she turns away with a giggle.
Sunghoon heaves a long suffering sigh. He thinks this is going to do more harm than good.
“Send him to meditation.”
Without much of a head’s up, he’s dragged to a meditation session, pushed down onto a cushion on the floor, and forced to close his eyes with incense burning in front of him. It’s supposed to clear his head or something. Instead, he leaves the class with a foggy mind and a clogged nose. The incense triggered his rhinitis, unfortunately.
He begins to fear Jungwon showing up in his apartment, because it simply meant that their coach put him up to something ridiculous again. Sometimes, it felt like he wasn’t being taken seriously at all. But knowing Mr. Han, all of this is coming from a place of good intention.
“Coach says to let you read this.” Jungwon says, reaching into his tote bag, not even entering his apartment and choosing to stand by the hallway instead. He fishes out a few books and hands them to Sunghoon.
He scans them briefly. “The Champion’s Mind… Advances in Motivation in Sport and Exercise, you know I don’t like reading right?”
Jungwon only shrugs. “Coach’s orders.” Without another word, he takes his leave, only there to deliver self-help books.
Best believe that the books remain untouched, left on his coffee table to gather dust.
Three days later, he receives a text from his manager. Attached to an address is a note that says ‘You have an appointment here at 3 pm. Don’t be late. You better show up.’ Sunghoon, despite his patience growing thin with all the weird methods they’re coming up with to help him out of his slump, doesn’t have it in him to reject their effort.
Which is why, even though he has no motivation to get out of bed that day, he does. He knows that by not showing up to his appointment, not only will be tainting his own image, but he’d be practically dragging his coach’s name through the mud as well.
Following the directions on his phone, he finds himself at the doorstep of a clinic. Sighing, he enters.
“Tell me how you feel,”
Now how does he answer that? He doesn’t exactly feel anything. It’s not that he’s feeling numb or anything, it’s just that right now, he’s not sad, or happy, or angry, he’s just simply…existing. “Um, I’m fine.”
The psychologist nods, writing something on the paper of his clipboard, his thick glasses resting upon the tip of his nose.
Instead of leaving the counseling session with answers to why he hasn’t been able to focus lately, he leaves with an existential crisis.
The next time his coach rings him up to talk him into an activity he saw on the internet, he finally speaks up rather than just agreeing to everything they sign him up to. “Coach, I’m going for a swim with Heeseung hyung tomorrow. I can’t go to the fortune reading.”
On the other line, Mr. Han sounds a little taken back. “Oh, oh swimming! Why didn’t I think of that? Alright, that’s good! Let’s hope that helps.”
Ending the call, Sunghoon sighs. He’s been sighing a lot lately. From frustration, helplessness, from feeling like he’s being a burden on all the people who support him. He doesn’t know how and why he got there. He’s been running his career just fine, he had even won two golds before things went downhill. This slump was unprecedented.
With a heavy heart, he goes to bed, hoping that meeting his old friend would help.
He emerges from the water, gasping for air. Heeseung’s chuckle fills the empty pool. “I win!”
“Hyung, that’s not fair. You’re literally an olympic swimmer.”
Heeseung pushes himself onto the ledge of the pool with ease, droplets of water trickling down his golden skin. “And you’re a soon-to-be olympic skater. What’s your point?”
Sunghoon rolls his eyes, taking a seat next to Heeseung. Their friendship is as uncanny as things can get. They met when Sunghoon was nineteen, and Heeseung was twenty. At that time, the skating rink he practiced in stood next to the local pool where the older boy trained. They usually arrived around the same time during mornings—they were always the first ones there; beginning their training at dawn. And they were always the last ones to leave, coming across each other as they exit their respective facilities late at night. They would catch each other’s eyes, bow timidly in greeting, only to realize they were walking towards the same direction. It became a routine of quiet nods and awkwardly waiting for the other to talk.
Much to Sunghoon’s relief, it’s Heeseung who does the talking, and they’ve been friends ever since.
As much as they wanted to constantly keep in touch, their demanding schedules have hindered them from doing so. But in the rare windows of time where they do get to meet up, they spend it introducing each other to their own sport. Sunghoon finds that Heeseung has a knack for skating, feeling a little irritated that he was that good from the get-go. And Heeseung learns that Sunghoon swims freestyle better than the backstroke or butterfly.
Heeseung goes for another lap while Sunghoon decides to sit and watch, and even after all these years, he’s still in awe at just how good his friend is. Heeseung, being tall and having long limbs, has an amazing reach each time he extends his arms to pierce through the water. He’s good at all the styles, as one would expect, but his favorite is the butterfly stroke. Each time he brings his arms back, up, around to the front, his back muscles show just how much hard work he has put into his sport.
Finishing in just a few seconds, Sunghoon realizes that Heeseung is pretty much a mermaid at this point. He seems so at home in the water.
“Hyung, have you ever been in a slump?”
Heeseung looks at him, resting his forearms on the ledge as he remains submerged in the pool. He pushes his goggles to the crown of his head. “Of course I have,”
“What did you do then?”
“I took a short break, reevaluated my life decisions. I tried some other things, and I realized that swimming is the only thing I’m good at,” He chuckles. “Is that why you’re here?”
His eyes drop down to the water bottle he was holding between his hands, nodding.
“Don’t worry about it too much, Sunghoon-ah.” Heeseung says, rising out of the water to sit next to him. “Just give it some time, you’ll find your way back one way or another.” He says, and it has been the most reassuring thing Sunghoon has heard since his last competition.
“Do you have any tips?”
Heeseung pauses in thought, holding his chin as his big doe eyes dart around the facility. “Find something you’re bad at.”
Sunghoon tilts his head.
“No, hear me out. Because if you try something out, and you’re shit at it, don’t you appreciate skating all the more?” He reasons. “Don’t you go, ah, this is what I’m supposed to do after all?”
“I guess you have a point.”
Heeseung hums musingly, then he perks up. “Oh, I have a friend who does ice hockey! Do you want to have a go at it?”
That’s how Sunghoon finds himself back on the ice, but donning a different kind of skates. They don’t have toe picks and they just feel all wrong around his feet.
“How is it? Feels new right?” Jake, the friend Heeseung was talking about, smiles at him excitedly.
“It feels wrong,” Sunghoon answers flatly and Jake merely laughs, his high pitched giggles echoing in the rink.
“Alright, Heeseung hyung told me not to go easy on you, so try to keep up with me, yeah?”
Sunghoon scoffs, feeling somewhat challenged and disrespected at the same time. Hockey is just skating with a stick and pushing a puck around. How hard can it be, right?
Plot twist. It’s very hard.
Never, in Sunghoon’s entire life, did he ever imagine he’d have to skate with a long ass stick and chase a puck around pathetically as he flails, when in the first place, he should be the one controlling it.
“Tilt the blade! Cup the puck against the ice, yeah that’s it!” Jake coaches from the sidelines as Sunghoon has a go with the steps he was taught. He tries to anchor himself with his toe pick only to realize belatedly that hockey skates did not have toe picks, and he’s sent into the most embarrassing fall he’s had in a decade.
Jake chuckles, skating over to help him up. “Not so easy, huh?”
Sunghoon clicks his tongue. Jake might just be making small talk to let Sunghoon feel more welcomed, but all the things he’s saying are surely getting on his nerves one way or another. Jake teaches him to do crossovers next, immediately leading into a snapshot, sending the puck all the way to the net in a flurry.
Out of all the strenuous and ungraceful things he’s been taught, the thing he enjoys most is jumping over the wall. For figure skaters, it’s prohibited to even touch the wall, but for hockey players, it’s their best friend. When they go into play, they don’t have enough time to go through the gates, so they quickly jump over the wall instead. This felt somewhat liberating for Sunghoon.
At the end of the day, Sunghoon is tasked to put together everything that he has learned. He starts off by jumping over the wall into the rink, passing the puck to Jake, receiving it as Jake passes it back to him, then he goes around in a forward crossover, only to pivot backwards. He slides the puck through a couple of cones, goes for another round of crossovers before he’s finally required to shoot the puck into the net. It sounds easy in words, but definitely not in practice.
It goes against everything Sunghoon has grown used to, where his movements are usually flowy, here they should be rugged. When his strides should be seamless and elegant, here they should be brute and brazen.
As Jake has expected, ice hockey isn’t much of a breeze for Sunghoon. He applauds him for his effort as he finally makes a goal after more than a couple of tries. “Nice job, mate.”
Sunghoon pants, skating to the wall to support his weight. “I’d like to see you try figure skating,”
“Man, I play hockey for a reason.” Jake immediately answers, making the both of them laugh.
Heeseung was right, this gave him a new sense of appreciation of figure skating, and a sparked realization that it is what he’s good at. He finds holding the stick difficult and handling the puck arduous because it isn’t what he’s supposed to be doing in the first place. He’s meant to be on the ice in gems and glitter, not in helmets and pads. However, despite all this, all his effort of going through the rigorous trials of hockey, these new epiphanies did not translate into his skating.
After a week he finds himself in the rink once more, heart sunken more than it could ever be. There are new bruises on his knees from all the falls he couldn’t save, and fresh marks on his forearms from when he tripped and crashed on his front. Things could not get any worse.
He tries to convince himself that all he needs to do is keep trying—bulldoze his way through this slump until he’s back where he’s supposed to be. But at the back of his mind, he knows that isn’t going to work. He catches his breath, skating around the rink with his hands on his waist to cool down. His body hurts all over. His joints feel like they’re going to snap, he feels like any more attempts at a jump will make him pull his muscles, and his heart feels like it's going to give out.
A muse of fire and yet his flames are dwindling.
All the pent up frustration of the past two months of him trying to find answers and solutions, comes bubbling up, and before he knows it, he’s already filled to the brim with the emotions he could no longer suppress. And for the first time in a while, he allows himself to cry.
His lips tremble as he hurriedly wipes his tears away with the heel of his hand, the gloves absorbing every last drop of it.
He teeters to a stop, holding onto the wall to steady himself as he bends overs and pants, eyes stinging. He hears the footsteps of his coach approaching, then Mr. Han’s heavy sigh.
“Sunghoon-ah, I think it’s time you go home first.”
As much as Sunghoon didn’t want to admit it, his coach is right, as he is the majority of the time. He doesn’t put up a fight this time around. Instead, he relents, packing up his bags and booking a ride back to his hometown.
It’s time he collects himself; get back on track; think things over. And maybe…he’s going to find answers when he returns to the rink of the town he grew up in—Pyeongchang.