Eight Years Old (1)
"Of course, not right away."
At Yerim's follow-up, Jin Sehee's disappointment was plain to see.
"Then when can we take the test!?"
"Hmm...probably next year at the earliest?"
"Whaaat!?"
Sehee made no effort to hide how crushed she was, but there was nothing to be done about it. From the Level 5 exam onward, the federation didn't hold tests every month in each region the way they did for the lower ranks. They ran them only a few times a year on a fixed schedule, which meant coordinating the dates was a headache—and you might even have to travel to another region entirely. It was never simple.
And on top of that...
I was still only Level 2. Sehee was Level 3. Before either of us could even sit for Level 5, we both had to pass Level 4 first. So if Yerim was bringing this up now, it wasn't because she expected us to take the test tomorrow.
"Anyway, the point is that both of you are skating well enough now that you could compete as real athletes."
Not a call to rush the exam—just encouragement, plain and simple. Sehee listened all the way through, then clenched her fist as if she'd made up her mind.
"Then first thing's first—I'm getting Level 4!"
"But Sehee, you still can't do the loop combined cleanly, can you?"
"Uh...well, I've been practicing..."
Loop combined outside change. A skating skill that incorporated the loop position—and one of the walls skaters routinely hit on the Level 4 exam.
Most people just don't practice their skating enough.
Kids who started figure skating young, the way Sehee and I had, were almost always drawn in by the flashy stuff. Of course they gravitated toward jumps. Skating was fun at the beginning, but the further you went, the harder it got—and the less it looked impressive, the less cool it seemed.
And then later they all regret it.
That was why, in this life, I treated skating practice as seriously as jumps. How clean and stable your transitions looked between those spectacular jumps mattered just as much. The decimal points you earned there were often what decided a win or a loss.
"All right, that wraps up today's lesson—"
"Coach!"
Sehee called out urgently, stopping Yerim just as she was about to end the session.
"Hm? What is it, Sehee?"
"Can Seolhwa and I practice a little longer before we go!?"
"Practice? The older girls will be here any minute."
"We'll stay on the outside!"
"Well...I guess that's fine."
Outside of the early-morning hours, even competitive skaters couldn't monopolize the whole rink. The usual arrangement was that athletes practiced in the center while the general public skated along the outer lane. In other words, Sehee was volunteering to practice mixed in with the recreational skaters.
"And why do I have to do it with you?"
"Caught me?"
"I don't need skating practice. I don't want to."
"Come on, just do it with me!"
"No."
"I'll give you my jelly!"
"Still no."
After enough refusals, Sehee's face crumpled into a look that said she was about to cry. Mhm. Teasing her really never got old.
"Fine. I guess I'll make a special exception and practice with you."
"Really!?"
Sehee bounced on the ice, beaming.
"But only thirty minutes, then we go home. Your parents are waiting."
"Okaaay."
"And absolutely no jumps. You know you can't do that among the regular customers."
"Got it!"
Sehee nodded along to every word as if she couldn't wait another second to get out there with me. Yerim finished up.
"That's it for today's lesson, then. I'll be watching to make sure you don't try anything dangerous."
"Yes!"
Sehee was already pushing off as she answered. I fell in behind her, and together we drifted out toward the outer lane, where ordinary skaters were beginning to filter in. A few curious glances found us, but I was used to that by now and paid them no mind.
"What do you want to start with?"
I asked first.
"Combined!"
Just as expected. Sehee was brimming with determination.
"Then you'd better get the loop solid first, right?"
"Yeah!"
Sehee took a small breath, then pushed out across the ice. She drew a half-circle and dropped into the loop position. Her center was still floating—she was tipping her body, but her weight wasn't fully settling onto one edge. You could see she'd been practicing, but the details were still a little rough around the edges.
"Your free foot is rotating before the step. Your upper body needs to hold longer."
I offered the correction calmly. Sehee nodded.
"Like this?"
After a few tries, she found the feel of it and landed the move cleanly. From there I broke the rest of the sequence down for her piece by piece, and before long—
"Wait—did I just land that?"
"Yeah."
"Yes!"
Sehee threw her arms around me in pure delight. Was it really that exciting?
A moment later, though—
"..."
—her face crumpled again, and she looked like she was about to cry. I asked what the problem was when she'd just nailed a skill she couldn't do before.
"Now I have to wait until next week again."
"For what?"
"To see you."
"So wait."
Apparently that was too much of a Thinker answer, because Sehee squinted at me through her pout.
"If you want to get better, it's good to learn from different places."
"Is it?"
"Meeting once a week just makes it more special."
In truth, Sehee's regular coach was already excellent. In my past life, she'd climbed high with that same coach, so there was no need to drag her over here permanently.
And honestly, having the rink to myself most of the time is more comfortable.
There was no real reason to stretch out the time we spent together.
"Once we start going to Worlds or the Olympics, we'll be stuck traveling together all the time anyway."
"Oh, right! Then we definitely have to go together later, okay?"
"Yeah."
Worlds. The Olympics. And the first gate standing between us and either of those was Level 5.
And then three years passed.
Two and a half, to be precise. I was an eight-year-old elementary schooler now. One thing that had changed: every regular at the rink knew who I was.
And another—
"Clean landing again, Seolhwa."
—I could now chain every kind of double jump freely, without restriction.
Maybe it's time to start pushing the jumps a little harder.
For the past two years, I'd focused less on jumping and more on skating quality, performance, and building flexibility. There was one reason for that.
My height...doesn't seem to be growing.
In my past life, this was exactly when I'd started shooting up—right as I entered elementary school. And for a figure skater, training hard during a growth spurt was absolutely off-limits. Growing bones were fragile; load them with constant jump impact and you could end up never jumping again.
But this life was different.
...I'm just small.
My physical ability seemed solid enough, but I wasn't getting any taller. People said girls hit their real growth spurt in middle school, but still.
"Seolhwa! Look at this—I didn't do the Axel stepwise this time, I took off like the guys do!"
Sehee, now ten, shoved her phone at me with footage from a recent competition. But my eyes never made it to the screen.
"Huh? Is there something on my face?"
In two years Sehee had shot up, and she was already pushing close to 145 centimeters. For figure skating, smaller was generally better unless you were overwhelmingly tall the way I'd been in my past life—but still.
This feels...weird.
In my previous life, Sehee had been the one looking up at me. This time around, I had the distinct feeling I'd be looking up at her for the rest of my life.
"Well then, Seolhwa, since you're starting elementary school, maybe it's time we go for Level 5?"
Yerim said it lightly, and Sehee jumped in with a grin.
"Heh. My badge already came in the mail."
Having passed the exam a few months ahead of me, Sehee opened her case and showed off her Level 5 badge with pride. It wasn't some game achievement you unlocked by beating a gym leader—did she really need to carry it around?
I thought it, but I didn't say it out loud. Not when she looked that happy.
...Elementary school.
Honestly, the mention of elementary school bothered me more than the Level 5 talk. I'd managed to talk my parents out of kindergarten, but elementary school was compulsory. Whether I wanted to go or not, I had to.
.
.
.
"Mom."
"Hm? What is it? Want some ice cream?"
After practice, walking home with my hand in hers, I called out to her. Usually when I used that tone it meant I wanted something to eat. Today was different.
"I don't want to go to elementary school."
"Why not all of a sudden? Seolhwa should go make some friends."
"I already have a friend."
"You made a friend at the rink?"
"Yeah. Her name's Jin Sehee."
"Hey! Mom told you not to call Sehee unnie by her full name like that."
Mom stopped walking and pinched my cheek. But there were reasons I treated Sehee so casually—beyond the fact that Sehee herself had suggested we drop the formalities.
Because that's how she treated me in my past life.
By past-life reckoning I'd been older, and yet she'd still spoken to me without honorifics. Her reasoning had been that she'd started figure skating first, so she was the senior. At the time I'd been too busy to care, but looking back on it now, it was a little annoying.
Anyway, that wasn't the important part.
"Do I really have to go to elementary school?"
I deployed my specialty—eight years of practice at looking as cute and as sad as possible—and turned it on Mom.
"No."
"I hate Mom."
"Too bad. If I don't send Seolhwa to school, Mom goes to prison."
I'd already looked it up. It was a fine, not prison. But when she put it like that, refusing felt awkward. More than anything, one of my goals in this life was to keep a good relationship with my parents. I wasn't about to wreck that over not wanting to go to elementary school.
And so, a few days later—
"Seolhwa, let's play Snow White! You be the princess."
"Then I'll be the prince!"
"Boys, get out!"
"Why? We're friends with Cha Seolhwa too!"
...Maybe I should have let things go a little sour after all.
For the first time in this life, I realized I had made a terrible mistake.