Proof of Existence (1)
"Sweetheart, do you have a favorite color?"
"Pardon?"
"I heard Seolhwa's entering a new competition this time. We'll have to make a fresh costume. You've grown taller, after all."
I had just finished another grueling figure skating lesson and was waiting for dinner when Mom, ferrying side dishes to the table one by one, asked me out of the blue.
A favorite color?
...Color, huh.
To be honest, I didn't really have one. I had never given it any thought, never chosen one. In art class at school, when picking out things to buy—I always put practicality first. I had never once asked myself what a "good color" even was.
I was about to say I didn't have one when my mouth moved on its own.
"...Black."
Mom paused for a beat, then tilted her head slightly.
"Black? That's unexpected. Any particular reason?"
"Just because. It's clean... and it doesn't show dirt."
Black.
Black had been Cha Yunsung's color. In his programs, his costumes, even the decorations custom-made to match his skates—everything had been black, and black again. A black that seemed ready to swallow light whole. Even the moments I had considered light had lived inside me like shadow.
So why had I said black now?
I set down the spoon I had been using to scoop rice and thought it over carefully.
...My essence. Performance.
Even if the person I am now—Cha Seolhwa—had become a girl and transformed into someone who shone, I was still someone who found comfort in cold, dark colors.
"Well, your last costume was black too."
Mom nodded and flicked open her phone to make a note.
"With black we can make it look luxurious. Maybe velvet for the fabric... or layer chiffon over it..."
The words trailed on like she was talking to herself, and already she was sketching the design in her mind.
...Did I inherit this from her?
That personality that, once it latched onto something, couldn't rest until it saw it through to the end. That drive to push herself to the limit until the result was in hand. That refusal to send out anything she had made unless she had given it everything she had.
To some people it was exhausting obsession. To others, it was called affection. A kind of fixation that the word "love" alone couldn't quite explain.
...Because nothing less would do.
For me that thing was figure skating. For Mom, it was making clothes.
There were times I wondered why I pushed myself this far. No one had ordered me to, and yet the desire to do well—more precisely, the pressure that I had to be perfect—would crash over me without leaving room to breathe. Every time, I had asked myself why only I suffered like this.
Looking at Mom now, I understood.
It's not only me.
People who couldn't rein in their greed in the face of something they loved, who learned satisfaction far too late. Personalities that dragged themselves forward until they could touch completion with their fingertips. Maybe it was something planted like a gene.
Thinking that, I remembered the things Dad used to say to her from time to time.
Take it easy. Do you really have to go that far?
Even to a man who ran his own business, her craftsmanship looked extreme. And every time, Mom would answer, "Yes. I do."
And that was exactly like me.
If a single jump went wrong, I couldn't sleep. On the ice, even a fingertip that wavered for half a second was enough to turn my stomach. Some people called it excessive. Others said it must be hard. But I was fine with it.
Because that was who I was.
And because that was the way of living I had learned from Mom.
She always said it while she worked on a costume.
I'm not just selling clothes. I'm selling the life the person who buys them will live while wearing them.
I had grown up watching those hands of hers. In my past life I had simply watched my mother and learned the capacity to obsess over something. This time was different. From the very start I had my parents' recognition, and I could stand on the stage wearing costumes made by the mother I was proud of.
...It's fun.
Fun. A word I had never once brought to mind in my previous life.
I had always had to win. Always had to fill something in. Always stood on the ice as if I were proving something. Starting later than everyone else, proof had come before joy.
But now—
...It's different.
A little different. Of course it still hurt the same, I still obsessed the same, and I still wanted perfection so badly it drove me crazy. But inside that obsession, I could feel the emotion called enjoyment.
If the stages of my past life had felt like battlefields of victory and defeat, the stages now were places where I could prove my existence.
"Mom."
"What is it?"
"This time... make the costume so it shines brightest on the ice."
It might have sounded like a child's whim, but it was my honest heart. Whether she sensed that or not, Mom smiled faintly and answered.
"Of course. Whose daughter is wearing it? You think I'd make it half-heartedly?"
In this life, I didn't want to simply leave records. I wanted to become someone who achieved something on the ice. Not merely skilled—something beautiful enough to remain in someone's memory. My past self had called that "performance." Mom called it a "work of art."
"Seolhwa, let's go with the program as planned."
Yerim approached with a deeply thoughtful look and spoke. Judging by that expression and manner—
She wants to raise the difficulty a little more, doesn't she?
It was true that, instead of drilling every technique under the sun, using only the elements the music required produced movement that felt natural, as if my body had already memorized it. Point elements that linked perfectly between jumps, and the performance that tied it all together. Even to my own eye, bumping the program construction up a notch wouldn't have been a problem.
"Hmm... well, it's not a ranking event, so there's no real need to force it... though having a win under your belt does matter... ah, but if that blond kid shows up, winning won't be easy."
Yerim seemed to have fallen into her own tangle of thoughts; she clutched her head and started muttering. It looked like this would take a while, so I pushed off onto the ice again and began to practice.
Triple Lutz.
Right now it was my greatest weapon—and a double-edged sword. Among geniuses my age, a triple jump usually topped out around a Salchow. If I could turn the triple Lutz into a combination jump, I could settle securely into medal contention.
If it's a triple, a triple-triple connection would be ideal.
Of course there was no rule that said you had to jump a triple after a triple. But a combination jump wasn't simply two jumps strung together. Depending on the takeoff foot of the first and second jumps, you sometimes added transitional movement in between, and the construction that made it look more beautiful mattered just as much.
If the rotation count drops, the impact looks weaker.
On top of that, stringing high-rotation jumps together earned extra points in program component scores. That was why, if I could manage it, matching the rotation numbers put my mind at ease.
The landing has to be perfect.
Even if it was only a toe loop after, for me to chain triples right now the first jump was critical. But the triple Lutz was my finisher; I couldn't completely rule out even a small chance of failure in competition. The moment the first jump failed, the second would fail with it. In that case, a massive deduction was inevitable.
What would be best...
With Yerim fretting like that, my own head started to feel cluttered. If only I were taller, I could still jump high the way I used to and fill out the rotations. I swallowed the regret as I looked down at my small body, then decided to try it anyway and prepared a combination: triple Lutz into toe loop.
3Lz+3T
My left foot glided across the ice, drawing a straight line; my right foot drove hard. Because I pushed off stronger than usual, I rose higher. With the extra airtime, the rotations came easily enough. All that remained was bracing for the heavier landing that would follow.
I tilted my body, found my balance, and with a sharp hiss the blade carved into the ice as I landed. Without letting half a beat slip by, I set up for the next jump.
Too low.
Had I let the power go too soon? It was a little low. Still, I tilted and found my balance again; the rotation never broke. Three turns—then the landing.
Success... sort of. A bit shaky.
The Lutz itself had been perfect, but the toe loop that followed was unstable. It was simply that my body still couldn't fully absorb the impact of the first landing. I made a mental note to work harder at the ballet class I took once a week.
I was still weighing whether to put it in the program when—
"...Wait, just now."
"Yes?"
"Did you just do a triple as a combo?"
"Uh... I think the toe loop kind of failed."
"No! You can even jump again after a Lutz!?"
Yerim came flying over, face lit with excitement, and fired questions at me.
"If you can do that, I've been fretting like an idiot."
"It's still too unstable to chain them properly."
"It's fine, it's fine. As long as you rotate, you get base value even if you fall, you know? And for high-difficulty elements the deduction for failure isn't that big either."
She was right. I had been so buried in perfectionism that I had forgotten: in figure skating, as long as you jumped and rotated, you scored points.
"Seolhwa, then let's do it this way."
"How?"
"Triple Lutz plus triple toe loop. We'll use it as the main combo for now."
"All right. Let's do that."
At my answer Yerim clapped her hands once and shouted,
"Great! Let's win this competition too! Target: triple Lutz–toe loop!"
At the sound of her voice, a smile rose to my face before I could stop it.