Eight Years Old (2)
"Seolhwa!"
"Hey, Cha Seolhwa, come play with us too!"
I was losing my mind.
All I wanted was to lie peacefully face-down on my desk.
Yet somehow, from the day I enrolled, I found myself spending every single lunch period for a full week playing with the other kids.
Mom told me to make friends, so I played along…
Well, I understood. I was pretty, I could act, and I was good at sports—what else were they supposed to do?
Being this capable was my only crime.
"Seolhwa, let's play Rapunzel today!"
"Hey! We already promised to play soccer!"
"You promised to play with us!"
As the argument dragged on, I lifted my head and looked at them.
"I hate it most when friends fight. So today, I'm not playing with anyone."
They stared at me with their mouths hanging open, too flustered to form a reply.
That was why a good justification always mattered.
Having finally driven the interruptions away, I thought I might enjoy my first peaceful lunch—until a familiar voice cut in.
"Seolhwa! You're in the classroom today?"
The speaker was Jin Sehee.
The moment a senior two years older than them appeared in the classroom, the place fell dead silent. Some kids pressed themselves flat against their chairs; others froze with pencils still clutched in their hands.
It was oddly fascinating—this wasn't even middle or high school. Still, it wasn't hard to understand.
Because it's Jin Sehee.
Her family already made her widely known, and in a world where figure skating's popularity had only grown, that was more than enough. Watching kids who couldn't even speak sit frozen in place, I realized that hierarchy existed even at this age.
"I'm sleepy."
I answered flatly and lifted my head from the desk again.
Sehee walked over and lightly took my wrist.
"What."
"I've got something to show you."
"At school?"
"Yeah. Follow me."
I let out a quiet sigh inside and obediently trailed after her.
We crossed the playground, passed the flower bed by the school gate, and headed behind the building. The faint scent of grass hung in the air, and the shaded ground was flat and firm.
If this was what I thought it was, the conditions were better than expected.
Sehee spoke quietly.
"Here—it's good, right? I use this place sometimes when I practice jumps alone."
"You know Coach will scold you if she sees this, right?"
"Then she just doesn't have to see. And my coach doesn't scold me anyway."
With that, Sehee lightly loosened up and launched straight into jump practice.
No skates. No ice to build speed on.
Even so, she brought her feet together, loaded the rebound, and sprang lightly into the air. Her small body rose, spinning once, then twice.
An untwisted axis of rotation. A solid, centered landing.
Even without ice, it was unmistakably the jump of a figure skater.
I folded my arms and watched in silence.
Off-ice practice.
Anyone who had done figure skating had tried this form of training at least once. Thinking of it as nothing more than a substitute when you couldn't get to the rink was a mistake.
Everything changed on the ice. Speed built, the blade slipped, and your center of gravity could easily fall apart. Practice only on the ice, and pinpointing the cause of a mistake became difficult.
But on the ground?
No speed. No slipping. Only the force you applied, the trajectory you created, the rotation you generated remained.
Everything shows up raw.
Even the slightest shift of your center, the tiniest change in angle. Mistakes on the ice came from so many factors—including the landing edge itself—that catching them was never easy. On the ground, only the jump existed, so you could identify the exact point of failure.
I did this often in my past life.
Especially with jumps like the loop or salchow, where the takeoff timing was finicky. Without ground practice, your feel for the technique easily drifted.
In this life, though, I could use the rink almost like I'd rented the whole place out. And until recently I hadn't even been going to school, so there had been no need for off-ice work.
"You try too! Unlike on the ice, you have to use the rebound from your feet to jump!"
She must have thought I'd never done ground practice before. Sehee looked genuinely happy to be able to teach me something.
I stared at her for a moment, then quietly began to warm up. I rolled my neck, shook out my arms, bent and straightened my knees to loosen my legs.
My body felt light. Maybe this was the perfect timing.
The injury risk is low, too.
The absence of the landing edge—the single most injury-prone element in figure skating—was already enough of a merit for ground practice.
"What are you going to do?"
"Triple toe loop."
"A triple? Can you manage that?"
The toe loop scored the lowest among jumps and was considered relatively simple—but a triple was a different story entirely.
Three revolutions is a wall in figure skating.
I had lost count of how many kids quit the sport because they could never get past it.
"I think I can."
"Wait, aren't you not able to do triples yet? Even I only land them sometimes on a good day."
Truthfully, triples were impossible for me in this body as well. On the ice, my rotational power was weak to begin with, and my landing rate was close to total failure.
But this was the ground. Off the ice, there was nothing to fear.
"We're not at the rink."
I spoke casually even as I loaded force into the tips of my feet. I steadied my breath for a moment, drew my right foot slightly back, spread both arms for balance, bent my knees—and jumped.
My small toes pushed off the earth. My body rebounded from the solid ground and shot straight into the sky.
One revolution. Then two.
Ordinarily I would have stopped there—but from the moment I left the ground, I drove my body into a harder spin.
The final third revolution.
Then my toes brushed the dirt. My knees flexed slightly, but my center held firm.
"…?"
Sehee stared at me as if she couldn't believe it. Her mouth fell open.
I exhaled softly and tilted my chin up a fraction.
"You saw it."
"…You actually did it?"
She took a step closer and looked me over as if searching for some hidden device on my body. Then she muttered,
"What the hell even are you?"
I smiled faintly.
"A genius."
At that, Sehee clutched her head. Her expression said she couldn't believe what she was hearing—but something else was clearly stirring beneath it.
Not jealousy.
Challenge.
It was the look of someone who wanted to climb the wall I had just cleared. That feeling would only make Jin Sehee stronger.
Watching her, I thought,
…How long is this going to last?
My rivalry with Sehee was going to run for quite a while.
"Axel into a loop!"
Following Yerim's call, I drove hard off my edge. Two-and-a-half revolutions in the air, then straight into a double. I landed cleanly and carried the skating through, and Yerim's face softened with satisfaction.
"Good. At this level, maybe Seolhwa should try the Level 5 test?"
"When?"
"Hmm…"
Yerim pulled out her phone and checked the schedule.
"There's one in two weeks. Think you can make it?"
"Yes."
"Whoa—then you could enter the May competition with me!"
Before I could even finish answering, Sehee—who had been listening from the side—bounced in place and cut in.
"Competition?"
"Right, Sehee said she was entering that one."
"Yes! The Association President's Cup Comprehensive!"
The Association President's Cup Comprehensive Figure Skating Competition. Eligible ages started from elementary school, ranks from Level 5 and up. It was a nationwide all-around event, though not a ranking competition that granted advancement to higher tiers based on results.
"Even the elementary division has a ten-million-won prize for first place!"
Among figure skating competitions, it was rare for the elementary prize money to be that generous, and because it wasn't a ranking event, you could enter without much pressure.
"I'm still only Level 4, though?"
"Registration is open through April! If you pass Level 5 and apply right away, you're good!"
So she wants to compete against me.
Until now I hadn't planned on entering competitions, and the age and rank gap had kept Sehee and me from skating the same events. The first competition I ever entered had also been the last one we shared.
"If I pass Level 5, can I enter that competition?"
"Didn't Seolhwa say you weren't thinking about competitions?"
"I think it's fine to start now. And that one doesn't seem like it would put much pressure on me."
Yerim pressed her fingers to her forehead, thinking it over.
"Seolhwa should start competing soon anyway. Wait too long and you'll lose the feel you built up from going out early."
"Yes!"
Sehee celebrated even harder than I did at Yerim's answer. Looking at her, I asked dryly,
"You want to compete with me that badly?"
"Yeah! We haven't been able to go out together until now."
"If I enter, you'll come in second."
"Huh?"
Sehee needed a moment to process what I'd said.
"This time I'm going to win! After I beat you last time and then you stopped competing, I've been waiting for years!"
She huffed and puffed through the declaration, then finally regained her composure.
"Anyway—don't fail Level 5. Make sure you pass."
"I was going to pass either way."
"Tons of kids fail Level 5, so I'm telling you to be careful, okay? The day I took the test, only three out of ten passed."
That was true enough. Fail even one element and the Level 5 test was over. A single mistake decided elimination, with no second chances. You had to execute every prepared skill perfectly in the span of a few minutes. Depending on the person, it could easily be more nerve-wracking than an actual competition.
But who was I?
In my past life I had cleanly earned even the Level 8 badge.
I firmly assured the endlessly fretting Sehee that nothing of the sort would happen. A few days later—
"Competitor number five, Cha Seolhwa. Double Axel landing—failed."
"Huh?"