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10 April, MD 3
Suwon WFC at Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels WFC; 0 - 2
The night before Incheon, Kyujin's mind is a twisted knot. She lies flat on her back on the hotel bed and stares up at the blank, stuccoed hotel ceiling; she listens to the soft sounds of Jinsol's snoring and tries to will the inside of her body to go completely still. She counts each time Jinsol snores. She counts each time she breathes in and out. She counts sheep. She counts, just to count. Each time, she wills the numbers to fade into sleep and the numbers out-will her effort. The night before Incheon, Kyujin stares up at the ceiling and finds sleep elusive.
If she was in her apartment in Suwon, Kyujin could turn her head to the right against her pillow and her gaze would fall on a white, wall-mounted calendar with their matchdays marked in neat black ink. Except matchday 3. The lettering on matchday 3 is rushed and erratic, and Kyujin does not look at it under any circumstances. Matchday 3 is a brand seared into the surface of Kyujin's mind. The wall-mounted calendar is all in black and white, but in Kyujin's mind, matchday 3 is circled over and over again in red.
Except, Kyujin is not in her apartment in Suwon, and if she turns her head to the right all she sees is the side silhouette of Jinsol sleeping as deep as ever. Kyujin sighs and flips her pillow onto the cold side. She closes her eyes and grits her teeth. She tries and fails to sleep.
Before kickoff, Kyujin usually keeps her eyes trained on the pitch ahead of her. She scans the open spaces, finds the places of the attackers she's supposed to be marking and the defenders she's supposed to be taking on. It's a centering, a way to focus in on the touchline to her right and the expanse of trimmed green she'll make her own in the ensuing ninety minutes.
Today, she does none of those things. Today, she keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the ball in the center circle and the '9' emblazoned across the back of Jinsol's white jersey as she stands over it. She hops from left foot to right, focusing on the solid shift of her gravity over the toes of her boots.
All around her, the Incheon grounds are a sea of red. There is red on the pitch too, eleven jerseys matched against their own. Still, Kyujin doesn't stare down the touchline. If she does, she'll see Jiwoo, in Incheon colors instead of Suwon, staring back at her.
She takes a breath in, then lets it out. She tries not to think about Jiwoo. When the whistle blows and Jinsol kicks matchday 3 off from the center circle, Kyujin bursts forward towards the halfway line and everything begins.
In the years that Kyujin has played for Suwon, the idea in attack has always been the same. They're good on the ball, steady in their system of build-up play. If they play the ball between themselves from one side of the pitch to the other, they'll move the opponent's defensive shape with them. This frees the cross-field switch to the opposite fullback, plenty space ahead of her. From there, amidst the confusion of a defense needing to rapidly shift and cover, there's more than enough room to find and feed Jinsol in the box, lurking in front of goal for a clinical finish.
Kyujin watches the ball zip around the pitch and waits for the switch. It comes; she picks the ball out of the air with her left foot and touches it forward with her right as she looks up, expecting open field ahead. There is a stretch, unoccupied. Jiwoo stands in front of it, rotating over to close her down.
Kyujin takes a touch towards Jiwoo and then another. She feints outside, dropping her shoulder and shifting her body sharply to the right. Jiwoo doesn't bite. Jiwoo stays low and shifts her feet and keeps her eyes trained on Kyujin's hips, textbook defensive form. Kyujin steps over the ball once and then again; Jiwoo is still there, stubborn, unwilling to take the bait. She's angled outward, forcing Kyujin towards the touchline and the side of the pitch Kyujin does not want to go.
Pressed to the edge of the field and shadowed by Jiwoo every step of the way, Kyujin can go nowhere. She plays the backwards pass to their center backs, the ball coming awkwardly off of her foot as Jiwoo presses in behind her.
Kyujin grits her teeth as the ball cycles to the other side of the pitch, out of her reach. Fine. If she can't beat Jiwoo on the dribble, then she'll do it on the run.
It happens ten minutes later. Ten minutes later, Incheon are playing by the halfway line when they lose it, pressed high up the pitch, and Jiwoo is out of position and Kyujin is already sprinting away into the free space down the right, calling for a through ball. On cue, the ball zips across the pitch, right into her path. Air rips across Kyujin's face as she bounds ahead on the counterattack, nothing but green stretching out in front of her, Jinsol making a run into the box to her left and calling for a cross. Kyujin takes a big touch forward and focuses on the placement, imagines where she'll swing through with her laces, body twisting over the ball, digging it out of the ground and right onto Jinsol's arriving head.
Imagines, because as Kyujin winds up to cross it in, there's a sudden, unmistakable blur. Jiwoo flies in from nowhere to intercept; the ball leaves Kyujin's right foot and ricochets off of Jiwoo's outstretched thigh onto Kyujin's knee and them out, harmlessly, for an Incheon goal kick.
Jiwoo picks herself up from the ground with a roar, every single one of her teeth showing, triumphant. Lungs burning, Kyujin throws her hands up in the air in frustration and then turns away, unwilling to watch as the Incheon crowd chants Jiwoo's name.
There's a prickling against Kyujin's neck as she jogs back to her spot on the right side of the defensive line. Kyujin recognizes the weight of Jiwoo's eyes immediately; no one else would be watching her now. She feels her jaw tighten. She won't look back.
At the half, they're already down a goal.
The locker room is stifling as Kyujin finds her way to her spot on the bench, in the corner with Jinsol on her right and the wall on her left. Kyujin sits down and stares angrily into the empty air as the coaching team runs through their halftime team talk. It's not a hopeless position, they say, along with all of the usual things: they're only a goal down. They just need to stick to their game, just need to be first to a few more loose balls and a few steps ahead of a few passes and they'll be right back in it. Kyujin knows these things before they say them; they go through Kyujin's ears and out again without so much as a second thought.
Jinsol's face comes in and out of frame after they finish. She kneels down in the exact spot that breaks Kyujin's line of sight, like she's trying to get Kyujin to back down. Kyujin does not back down. Kyujin tries to stare so cuttingly through Jinsol that her gaze carves holes into Jinsol's chest.
"I know you're frustrated," Jinsol says. At this, Kyujin almost scoffs. "But like the coaches said, it's fine. Sure, they've studied up." Her gaze darts around Kyujin's face, twisting, trying to carefully hold itself in something neutral. "But we'll get an opening. Just focus on your game."
The thing is, Kyujin knows that Jinsol is being avoidant. The issue at hand is not just that Incheon has clearly studied up on their tendencies better than they have for Incheon. The issue at hand is that Jiwoo has. That Jiwoo, standing as Kyujin's mirror on the other side of the pitch in Incheon red instead of Suwon's away white, has had everything about Kyujin figured out for forty-five straight minutes.
The thing is, not once has Jinsol—has anyone—mentioned Jiwoo's name.
Kyujin doesn't think about any of this. She reaches down and unties the laces on her cleats and ties them again, laces hissing as they rip through the eyelets, pulled wickedly tight. "I got it," she says instead, through a clenched jaw after Jinsol waits and waits for her to say anything at all. After that, as they line up to go back out onto the pitch for the second half, Kyujin doesn't say anything at all.
Eighty minutes in, Incheon are on the attack. The ball comes over to their left—Suwon's right, the side that Kyujin is defending and Jiwoo is attacking. Kyujin covers their left winger when, to her side, Jiwoo sprints forward on an overlapping run along the touchline. The ball is spread over to her just as Kyujin has flipped her hips, rushing to cover over, but she's already a step late. She closes down; she's just a meter away when Jiwoo takes her final touch and scans the field and crosses the ball in off of her wicked left foot.
Kyujin can only watch as the ball hangs in the air, spinning and spinning. Jiwoo's cross lands right at the feet of another Incheon player—Oh Haewon, center midfielder. Haewon doesn't hesitate. Haewon swings through the ball with her right foot and it rips into the top corner of the net, completely unsavable.
The stadium erupts. Haewon is already sprinting away, grinning ecstatically after scoring in front of her hometown crowd. She points an approving finger right at Jiwoo, who jogs over to celebrate with her, the assist to Haewon's goal in her name.
1-0 is a lead that can reverse at any moment. 2-0 with less than ten minutes left to play is practically an insurmountable task.
Kyujin grabs two fistfuls of the front of her jersey, Suwon white stained with grass and sweat and touchline paint. She pulls on it roughly, the fabric stretching, as if in the next moment it might give against the might of her frustration.
Ten minutes later, the final whistle blows. The Incheon crowd roars; the Incheon players pump their fists in the air, triumphant. Some of Kyujin's teammates sink down towards the grass, breathing hard, spent.
Kyujin walks straight back to the locker room.
30 May, MD 10
Suwon WFC vs. Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels WFC; 2 - 1
Before their second match against Incheon, Kyujin buries herself in film. This is something she does diligently before every game, but even more so when she's nervous, and even more so when she feels she has something to prove. Now, she puts on clips from Incheon's last few games and grits her teeth and watches from a distance as Jiwoo's frame dances easily around any and all of her opponents.
Kyujin watches film everywhere. She watches film at the training ground, before, after, and in between sessions. She watches film at her apartment late at night. She watches film on the team bus, phone held tight between her hands, staring intensely. At this last one, she knows Jinsol is watching from the seat next to her and trying to make it look like she's not. This is the first season that Jinsol is her travel mate—in the same row on buses and planes, roommate in hotels—and therefore the first season that Jinsol has really had a chance to notice all of Kyujin's nervous habits. It's distracting, having to ignore the side-eyes she's getting from Jinsol every few minutes; in the years before, it's something Jiwoo would never have—
Kyujin closes her eyes and clenches her jaw. She takes a deep breath and wills the rest of the thought away. She adjusts her headphones and rewinds the clip she's currently on and watches as Jiwoo flies by the Gangjin Swans on a counterattack that she knows leads to a goal.
The home crowd in Suwon is packed and buzzing in the moments before kickoff, and Kyujin can't help but grin. This is one of the things she's always loved, lifting her spirits regardless of the situation. Their stadium is all red and blue, the vertical stripes of their home kit shining against the harshness of the floodlights wherever Kyujin looks. She sees some of her own number in the crowd too, her '25' emblazoned proudly across their backs. A promise sinks into her skin, the same one she's always made. She'll win this one for them.
Having won the toss, Incheon choose to start with the ball. The jeering begins even before they've kicked the ball off, a continuous barrage of whistles and boos from the Suwon crowd. It's nothing new: Incheon are perennial WK League champions and one of the closest teams geographically to Suwon, and both of these taken together means they're not well-liked when they make the trip to Suwon twice a year.
What is new is the moment when the volume suddenly reaches a much higher level, when the barrage of sound loudens and thickens until it's an impenetrable, incessant wall of noise. It is so much louder now than Kyujin can ever remember it being. From her spot at the end of the back line, Kyujin scans ahead on the pitch and quickly finds the reason for the noise. Thirty yards away, the ball is right at Jiwoo's feet.
The first thing that runs through Kyujin is a wicked sense of satisfaction. This is deserved, Kyujin thinks, the furious, relentless ire of the fans that once chanted Jiwoo's name at the top of their voices. This is what she gets for signing for someone else, and for Incheon of all places.
The feeling is sharp and cold and then it is gone. From thirty yards out, Kyujin can still see how Jiwoo's face twists in one moment and falls in the next. She still has the ball at her feet; there's still space to run into ahead of her. Usually, Jiwoo would burst into it, always pushing the attack forward.
Today, Jiwoo just stands over the ball for a moment before she plays it back to one of Incheon's center backs. The ball cycles away from her side of the pitch. From thirty yards out, Kyujin watches as Jiwoo lets out a long breath and her frame shrinks in on itself.
Unlike the game in Incheon, for ninety minutes in Suwon, Kyujin consistently has an edge on her side of the pitch. She's as involved in their build-up as ever. All of her crosses come off easily. All of her runs cut incisively into dangerous areas. On the defensive end, each time Suwon come forward down their left-hand side, Kyujin is in the right spot to cover off a run or cut off a pass. Conversely, each time she's faced up against Jiwoo, it's like Jiwoo is forced into a game that isn't her own. Kyujin presses high, aggressive in cover and right on Jiwoo's heels each time she gets the ball. Instead of turning to run at Kyujin head-on, like she would usually do, Jiwoo just takes a few tentative touches and then cuts back, plays a safe pass to her center backs or center midfielders as the crowd voices their outrage.
Some of it is preparation, Kyujin being in the right place in the right time because she's studied up intensely, because she knows the kinds of sets Incheon will try to run in attack against a defense like theirs.
But sometimes, there's a moment where Kyujin knows she's going to be a step late in rotating over, knows there's a channel down the left for Jiwoo to dart into, nothing but open green ahead of her. In these moments, Kyujin grits her teeth and forces herself to try to catch Jiwoo, but there's nothing to catch up to at all. Jiwoo takes a hesitant touch or a heavy one; Kyujin is right there to cover it off, as if the danger was never even there.
When the final whistle blows, they've scored two goals to Incheon's one. The home crowd erupts; from the far side of the field, Kyujin lets out a breath.
She turns, waving to the crowd and trying to catch as many faces as she can when Jiwoo walks up to her. Her pace is uncharacteristically slow, feet dragging against the grass in a way Kyujin has never seen before.
"Good game," Jiwoo says when she's within earshot. There's a tight smile on her face, one that doesn't reach anywhere near her eyes. Her hand hovers in the air, half-reaching in Kyujin's direction before it falls limp at her side.
Kyujin searches, but she cannot find the words. Instead, she meets Jiwoo's gaze for a moment and nods once, curt, before they both turn and walk past each other, Kyujin to the next section of the home stands and Jiwoo the opposite way.
24 July, MD 17
Suwon WFC at Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels WFC; 2 - 3
When the second half of the season comes around, their situations could not be more different. Incheon have won five matches in a row. They sit in first place in the league standings, in the lead by four points and well on their way to what would be their record-extending twelfth league title. Suwon, by contrast, are right in the middle of the table, not close enough to the top to challenge for the title and in danger of slowly sliding into the bottom half of the league. They lost their their last match against Hwacheon KSPO and drew the two matches before that. Coming in to Incheon, they desperately need a win.
Kyujin can tell the match is going to be tense even before it gets underway. As she warms up, rolling out her ankles and getting the blood flowing through her body, she looks first up to the crowd filling in the stadium, screaming their lungs out even before kickoff. Amidst the sea, it is like there are no Suwon fans in the building at all. Kyujin looks away. She looks next across the halfway line to where Incheon's squad are warming up and regrets this too. There's an obvious ease in the way the Incheon players carry themselves; their heads are held high and they move through their warmups with a lightness that can only mean they're exceedingly confident. As if this isn't a rivalry. As if this is just another match as league leaders, playing at home against a mid-table team they're almost certainly going to beat.
Her eyes find Jiwoo. She's at the end of the warm up line, bouncing between the balls of her feet as her teammates start the drill ahead of her. She's talking with a teammate Kyujin can't quite make out, a teammate who has her back turned and is facing Jiwoo directly, gesticulating wildly with her hands. Jiwoo laughs at whatever she's saying with her whole body, a bright and lively thing.
Kyujin watches Jiwoo's smile for a long moment and then looks away, frowning, intense familiarity washing over her in a nauseating wave. She clenches her jaw hard to force it down. She locks her eyes on the back of the person in front of her—Jinsol, the little number 9 on her training kit staring her in the face. She launches into the next round of leg swings with entirely too much force for a warm up.
"We are going to win," Kyujin says in the locker room before they head to the tunnel, the words spilling out during a random lull in the team talk. They're fierce and abrupt. She's not sure what she interrupted—and she definitely interrupted, based on how all of her teammates are staring at her—but the warm up and the words are the only things running clearly through her mind.
"We are," their manager says, with an acknowledging nod in Kyujin's direction. She then turns back to the drawing board to impress upon them another round of tactics. Kyujin stares at what's going up on the board and tries her best to ignore the pressing of Jinsol's fingers against her wrist.
Later, in the tunnel, Jinsol walks up to Kyujin first, hand twitching like she's going to reach for Kyujin's wrist again. She doesn't. "You good?" She asks instead. Kyujin reads her face like a book and knows instantly that Jinsol wants to pry.
Kyujin nods once, tight, fiercely affirmative. She's good. She's great, even. She wills Jinsol to believe, and ahead of them the front of the line is moving and there is no time and Kyujin is moving too. There's nothing Jinsol can do but nod and form up in her spot at the end of the line. Kyujin keeps her head firmly forward even as Jinsol's eyes bore into the back of her neck.
The whole first half is tense and cagey, both teams trading big moments. It's Incheon who score first, thirteen minutes in, off of a corner that takes a few unfortunate ricochets off of the many bodies in the box before it creeps into the net. It's an unlucky goal to concede, if you believe in luck. Kyujin doesn't. When the ball rolls into the back of the net, Kyujin whispers a few choice words and resets back to her spot and resolves to get one back, no matter what it takes. Eight minutes later, she gets the ball in her own half and plays a cross-field through ball right into Jinsol's path. Jinsol takes two touches and rockets the ball into the back of the net for 1-1. She lopes over to the thin section of away fans and stretches her arms out and grins before Kyujin and the others swarm her, the Suwon badge shining on her chest.
In the whole first half, when Kyujin faces off against Jiwoo, the two are evenly matched. Whenever Kyujin pushes forward, Jiwoo is there; whenever Jiwoo pushes forward, Kyujin is there. Anticipating a long ball, Jiwoo urges herself up the pitch; Kyujin, knowing what Jiwoo's momentum looks like when she's about to go on the run, steps into the passing lane and cuts off the pass before Jiwoo can do anything with it. Receiving a pass in space, Kyujin immediately turns to attack, shoulder-feinting, two feet dancing around the ball; Jiwoo, knowing the patterns of Kyujin's feints like the back of her hand, keeps her balance steady and her feet moving and forces Kyujin to play the ball back instead of forward.
Sixty minutes in, Incheon cycle the ball over to their left side and it falls at Jiwoo's feet again. Again, Kyujin closes down quickly, setting her balance and keeping her feet moving. Jiwoo, left-footed and playing on the left side of the pitch, is as pure of an attacking left back as they come. Each time she gets the ball in this position, Kyujin knows she wants to take it down the sideline, feet dancing, and put a wicked cross into the box with her left foot. So, sixty minutes in, when Jiwoo puts her shoulder down and makes to go left, Kyujin bites. She knows what's coming. She shifts all of her weight to her right, planting her leg so she can spring off of it and mirror Jiwoo stride-for-stride.
Except Jiwoo does not go left.
Jiwoo shifts her weight and turns on a dime and cuts inside onto her weaker right foot. By the time Kyujin shifts her weight back, half-staggering, Jiwoo is already darting forward with the ball at her feet, into the acres of space Kyujin leaves behind. With the center backs a step late to close her down, Jiwoo takes a shot from long range, whipping her left foot through the ball with ferocity. Kyujin can only watch as the ball dips and swerves in the air and everything hangs in the balance. In the end, it curls too far, zipping past the wrong side of the post and out for a Suwon goal kick.
There is a hush over the Incheon crowd before they roar, full-bodied and appreciative. On the faces of Kyujin's fellow Suwon defenders, there's nothing but relief. Jiwoo runs a hand through her hair; she can't do anything but grin, head shaking slightly, rueing just how close she came to a goal.
Kyujin feels the air leave her in a cruel rush. Once, she would have known what Jiwoo was going to do there. She would have shadowed Jiwoo all the way, the both of them grinning, their bodies in perfect tandem.
Kyujin's mind races. She can't be so sure anymore.
On Incheon's next attacking sequence, Jiwoo gets the ball again. This time, from even her first touch, Jiwoo explodes down the touchline, charging forward. Kyujin closes a step behind, and when she reaches in for the tackle, she knows she's arriving late.
Still, Kyujin sweeps for the ball with her left leg and gets none of it—Jiwoo's touch sends it rolling forward and Jiwoo's stride sends her right into Kyujin, Kyujin's thigh crashing into Jiwoo's knee. Jiwoo yelps and hits the ground hard.
The referee immediately blows for a foul. Kyujin's thigh stings where it made contact with Jiwoo, but she grits her teeth and does nothing as the yellow card is shown her way.
Kyujin's memory holds countless times where Jiwoo was fouled when they played together. In each of them, there was always one constant: Jiwoo popping up with all of the elasticity of a spring no matter how hard she fell, back on her two feet, as if they were never meant to leave the ground in the first place. Now, as Kyujin walks away from the spot of the foul, she watches Jiwoo pick herself up slowly from the grass, her face pulled tight, wincing. There is the getting up; there is not the spring.
The match gets worse after that. Incheon score twice in a row, two goals within the span of four minutes, and suddenly the game opens from a tense 1-1 draw to a commanding 3-1 lead. Jinsol gets her second goal in the dying moments, but it's not enough. The referee blows her whistle; Incheon's winning streak extends to six in a row and Suwon continue to slide.
"That wasn't like you."
The voice at Kyujin's back is achingly familiar. She turns and finds Jiwoo, eyes unreadable.
Kyujin bites back immediately, still hot, the words right at the tip of her tongue. "You don't know what I'm like anymore."
It's well into the night when there's a knock on Kyujin's door. It's late and the post-match adrenaline rush has long since worn off, but Kyujin is still wide awake and alternating between staring at the blank white of her ceiling and the blank white of her walls, her mind running at a thousand miles a minute.
She doesn't want to open the door; she'll probably regret it the moment after she does. She opens it anyway, because it's late and she isn't thinking straight and some things she just can't run away from.
Jiwoo stands on the other side. She's bare-faced, in sweats and a hoodie despite the warm, sticky midsummer heat. Kyujin leans to glance out of her window and finds the front end of Jiwoo's car on the street three floors down. She works it out in her head, the time between when their match ended and now, the time it would have taken for Jiwoo to make it down from Incheon.
"You drove all the way here for this?"
"You weren't answering your phone."
"I wonder why."
Jiwoo breathes out, the air heavy and swirling between them. It's flat. She looks angry, maybe, and also something else that Kyujin can't quite place. "That tackle was stupid."
Kyujin scoffs. "There it is. You came all this way to tell me off for getting a yellow card." There's a pounding in her ears, loud and rapid.
Incomprehensibly, Jiwoo shakes her head. "No," she says. "I came because I know why you did it."
Jiwoo's eyes flicker, first locked on Kyujin's and then tracking farther down, taking in the rest of Kyujin in pieces. She's in the threshold of the apartment, nearly fully in nor fully out. She would have walked through once, years ago, without a moment's hesitation.
The rush in Kyujin's ears grows louder and louder until it's impossible to ignore.
Jiwoo is as close as ever now, barely an arm's length away if Kyujin reaches out, and then suddenly she's closer still. Jiwoo steps into the apartment just as Kyujin steps towards her; the dam breaks and their bodies crash together for the second time, Kyujin's shirt against Jiwoo's hoodie, Kyujin's skin against Jiwoo's skin, Kyujin's lips against Jiwoo's lips.
"You've been playing so angry," Jiwoo breathes in a moment when they're separated, the words rushed and punctuated and more air than anything else.
"How could I not have been?" Kyujin whispers the words onto Jiwoo's skin in the moment before her lips meet Jiwoo's again and they are both robbed of breath. "You left," she murmurs, "and suddenly all I could think about was you." In between, she ghosts her lips across the hollow of Jiwoo's cheek and then further down, following the curve of Jiwoo's jawline.
Kyujin reaches the tip of Jiwoo's chin and the next place to go is further down, and it takes everything in her to stop for a moment, hands balling into fists around the hem of Jiwoo's hoodie. At the sudden loss of pressure, Jiwoo lets out a breath that sounds like a hiss. Kyujin pulls back, murmurs the question into the air and waits, and the waiting is only a moment but feels to Kyujin like an eternity.
Jiwoo nods, the 'yes' instantaneous; immediately, her hands are under Kyujin's shirt, fingers scrabbling against bare skin. Kyujin gasps against the sudden chill and then she finds Jiwoo again, lips on lips, continuing her path down the inside of Jiwoo's neck.
The path back to Kyujin's bedroom is known intimately in both of their bodies. By the time they get there, Kyujin's shirt is already off. Jiwoo's hoodie is quick to follow; she stands by the foot of the bed and pulls it off, all lithe and smooth movements, and Kyujin traces her eyes down the expanse of Jiwoo's bare skin. They land on Jiwoo's arms, dotted with words and stars and flowers and other patterns made obscure by the night and the lowlight.
"When did you get these?" Kyujin traces a few fingers over the tattoos, studying each one.
Under her touch, Jiwoo shivers ever so slightly. "Over this past year." Meaning, in the time since she left Suwon. Her eyes are dark and hang heavy over Kyujin's frame. "Do you like them?"
Kyujin considers, and then she hums. Gently, she pushes Jiwoo down onto the bed, hands firm around Jiwoo's torso. She searches for the first tattoo she can find—on Jiwoo's wrist, right where the tendon meets bone, a small set of four-pointed stars. Kyujin leans in, her lips gentle against the soft skin and Jiwoo's breath hitches again.
She moves slowly and methodically, covering the span of tattooed skin across both of Jiwoo's arms. Kyujin kisses her way along Jiwoo's body and Jiwoo comes alive under her touch.
Afterwards, the night air is still warm and sticky but the weight in Kyujin's chest is loosening.
"After you left, I thought I didn't know you at all."
There's a beat. Then Jiwoo laughs, voice spent and raspy but still bright all the same. The sound stirs inside Kyujin, familiar. "That could never be true."
Kyujin considers this. She considers the feeling now, Jiwoo's warmth against her, the ease with which their bodies are fitted together. She considers, too, the ease with which she knows Jiwoo on the field: how dueling Jiwoo is like settling back into habit, into years of practice at Suwon and in the ranks of the national team. "It isn't," Kyujin says. "It never was."
Jiwoo hums. She looks up at the ceiling and then directly at Kyujin. "You still put your head down before you go in for a tackle." She smiles.
Kyujin smiles back, small but there. "You still drag your feet when you're feinting inside." And then, after a moment, softer: "Will we be okay?"
"We will."
8 September, MD 24
Suwon WFC vs. Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels WFC
In the lead-up to their last match against each other, there are still things to play for. With a win, Incheon can clinch first place in the regular season, and even a draw would give them enough points to at least secure a second place finish. Suwon aren't in contention for the postseason, but they sit comfortably in fourth and, more importantly, they can play spoiler for their biggest rivals, holding off their title chase for at least one more game.
As both teams walk out onto the pitch, the Suwon crowd is rocking. The sections nearest Jiwoo still whistle when she walks by them; instead of putting her head down, Jiwoo raises it. She holds her hands up and claps to them and waves, sincere, appreciative. The ire lessens. Some of them wave back, even still.
Before kickoff, Kyujin trains her eyes on the pitch ahead. She scans for the open spaces, finds those she's supposed to mark and those she's supposed to take on. She looks down the line and Jiwoo looks back at her. Kyujin's heart races in her chest, ready for a good fight.
Suwon starts with the ball. From Jinsol in the center circle, it cycles through their midfield and out to the right side of the pitch, where Kyujin controls it and looks up. Jiwoo is right there, keeping her center of gravity low as she closes down, smiling.