Chapter Text
When Shane was thirteen, his mother, Yuna, decided, dragging her compact family with her, to visit her motherland, because of a brief and guilty fit of nostalgia and keen familial duty. Never mind that she could barely speak Korean, and that Shane himself only knew basic toddler words here and there. As for David, his father? He couldn’t speak any at all.
Shane didn’t think he recalled much of the trip, years later. The prevailing memory was the hellish muggy heat, since August was peak monsoon season. The lack of physical boundaries that Koreans had also contributed to the discomfort of sticky clothes drenched with clammy sweat the minute they would brave leaving blessed air conditioning.
The Koreans themselves were odd. Strangers, smelling strongly of garlic and sesame oil and cigarette smoke, came up to him, patting his hair, stroking his cheek and running fingers down his straight, proudly Caucasian nose — no flat bridge like his mother’s — all the while proclaiming, “Pretty! Pretty!” in broken, stereotypical English.
It was around this time when Shane began to show his gains from weight lifting and bulking for his beloved hockey. When his aging relatives felt his broader shoulders and swatted his bulging biceps, they shook their heads adamantly and yelled (they always yelled, why did they always yell?) “Why you do that? Too much muscles. Make you too big. Too big like white people. No more muscle and you nice and slim and pretty like Korean, yes?” in their limited English, grammar be damned. His mother grimaced and blushed but remained uncharacteristically silent; she later explained that because she was the youngest and a female and these were her elders, she couldn’t really argue against them because they had more authority because of something about age and Confucius and patriarchal society and whatnot.
Shane didn’t get it then and doesn’t understand even now but he shrugged at the time. It’s a Korean thing, I guess, he remembered thinking and still believes.
He shrugged a lot during that trip. He shrugged when his relatives berated him for not knowing how to use chopsticks, only using them to spear his meat patties like an oriental shish kebab (they reluctantly acquiesced and glaringly gave him a fork for the rest of the trip). He shrugged when they loudly hollered at his mother for not making him learn Korean. (They praised his Dad though, because he knew how to say “hello” and “thank you”. “See! See! Big white man know speak Korean! But you, Shane-mom and Shane — you Korean. You need speak Korean!”) Shane, of course, Shrugged to all of this babble.
His actual grandparents were cool, however. They lived in Canada for a while, raising his mom in Montreal. They made sure to quiet the other relatives when it got too loud even for them. They moved him to their much quieter bedroom when he acutely showed his irritation from being manhandled so much for his looks, his muscles or his existence in general. His grandfather — Halabeogi — in particular, spoke to him in English and French — very heavily accented, but fluent — and translated for his grandmother — Halmoni — as they’d talk and listen to him about hockey. After all, Shane reasoned, They probably watched a lot of games with Mom when they lived in Canada and miss the sport.
***
He does remember something very distinct. Even now, after all this time, the sharp clarity of the incident hadn’t faded. During one of their midmorning subway trips to whatever touristy place his mom wanted to cram to make him more Korean or whatever, a stinking drunk businessman staggered to him in the mostly empty train. Shane had been standing, as the seats — hell, everything in Korea — were designed for a population significantly shorter than he was. The discomfort of the seats much lower than the normal Canadian ones, made his legs scrunch up uncomfortably. Plus, the a/c in the car was not very strong, and he didn’t want to sit in a previous occupant’s dried sweat. Gross.
So Shane stood in front of his parents, his father gamely pretzeled on a seat next to his mom who was quietly and rapidly rambling about some historical trap in Seoul and how they should go because of the significance to something and so on and so on and so on. Because she was preoccupied with her spiel, and Shane was spacing out on her words, no one saw the stranger approach Shane’s hair and stroke it aggressively.
“Ah, like Korean hair!” he cackled in barely intelligible English. Shane jumped. Shane literally leapt away from this fucking stranger, who stunk strongly of whatever the fuck alcohol these Koreans drink, on top of the fucking kimchi and meat combination that made his stomach fucking turn. His glare probably also contributed to the stranger shuffling back half a step, smilingly apologizing, “Sorry! Sorry!” with his hands held up. After his mother fake laughed and replied in her own limited Korean that it is okay, of course it’s okay, it’s all okay, the stranger continued in stifling English, “He so pretty! You and…. Daddy?” as he waved his hand to David, “Make beautiful child!” pleased as punch with his stilted sentence.
Shane, of course, was used to this by now. Strangers complimenting and (fucking) touching him when they’d go out were annoyingly typical. As this stranger and his parents were awkwardly trying to communicate with each other, he looked around the train at the other occupants who seemed invested and entertained in this odd interaction on an otherwise quiet subway. For the most part, they smiled at him and nodded their heads. He could read their thoughts: Yes, yes, of course he’s so beautiful! He is so pretty! He’s prettier than Korean! Better than Korean! he could see in their grins of approval.
However, one girl around his age stood out. She sat a couple of seats away from them with her friend in their matching school uniforms. Her glare obviously did not reflect on the others’ opinions.
Her friend sitting next to her smiled teasingly and said in Korean, “You have to admit, he is a pretty Korean.”
The angry girl retorted, “He’s an ugly son of a bitch. And he’s not Korean.”
Shane’s Korean sucked. However, he knew the basic words. The cuss words. (Like, who doesn’t learn the cuss words in a foreign language first?, he idly thought.) Also, if he didn’t know the word before this trip, he now more than understood “pretty” since he had heard it multiple times a day. In short, he understood enough of their conversation to get the gist.
He felt his face freeze. Obviously, the students didn’t realize he could understand them because they continued, loudly, other insults and observations that he didn’t know but gleaned from context and body language. He turned back to his parents and the drunken stranger, realizing that they had somehow missed this interlude. The stranger who started this whole damn mess finally yelled, leering at him, “Sorry! Sorry! I go! Pretty boy!” turning around and lurching away.
***
They finally, finally flew back home. Back in Ottawa, life continued. Yuna quickly stopped using whatever meager Korean she accumulated a couple of days after they arrived and the weird flavored snacks they brought with them were finally eaten or thrown away. Korea turned into a past memory that Shane didn’t revisit very often as hockey occupied most of his brain.
However, as time passed and he got better and better on the ice, the chirps and comments grew as well. Even worse: although the slurs — whether from parents or players — had always existed for as long as he played hockey, he wasn’t able to brush them off as easily after the Korea trip.
One particular flavor of insult became difficult for Shane let go. Every time someone chirped him, “Go back to your shitty country, you’re not welcome here” or some similar variation, he remembered the vitriol of that one student on the subway. He remembered the strangers who kept calling him pretty and pawed at him and would not leave him the fuck alone so that he could just fucking blend in with the others, or at least could pretend he fit in with them. He remembered wanting, while being surrounded by the foreign food, the foreign smells, the foreign words, during that trip of hell, of wanting to go back to the familiar and safe comfort of his home in Ottawa.
***
After losing his Montreal team, after losing his captaincy, after losing his salary, after losing his title of being the Best Player In The League and instead got Asian-and-gay-who-happened-to-be-good-at-hockey, after fucking losing every goddamn thing he knew he was going to lose when he came out of the closet and he should be fucking grateful he was still allowed to play, Shane was formally introduced to Troy Barrett at their first practice of the season.
Shane clearly remembered him always hurling insults about him being from any generic Asian country that Barrett could remember with his micro brain. Frankly, Shane was surprised Barrett knew his name, since he usually called him “China-man” or “Jap”. During moments of creativity and inspiration, Barrett even expanded to homophobia and misogyny with “pretty oriental faggot” or “girly yellow geisha fairy”. Had Barrett even heard of Korea? At least get the country right, you fucking racist homophobe. Even after receiving redeemed Saint Barrett’s tear-filled apology for the homophobic slurs, Shane only felt irritation that Barrett was too stupid to be able to make amends for his stupidity in not insulting him for being Korean.
Fucking Troy Barrett. The dumbass clown couldn’t even get the country right. And now he had to play with him and make nice with this racist, homophobic dickhead because they were on the same team and he was Ilya’s fucking best friend.
Goddamnit.