Found—My Disciple
"And put your gloves on before you go out."
"Honey, the helmet too."
Before I could set foot on the rink, my parents sat me down and armored me up like I was heading into battle.
I hadn't wanted to skate at first. Still, after everything they'd done to bring me here, I decided I could give it an hour.
"Ugh…"
Once my skates were laced, they forced a helmet onto my head. I made no secret of how uncomfortable I found the whole production.
In my past life I'd trained for decades without a helmet, under conditions that weren't far from actual competition. If anything, the thing only threw off my balance.
"No arguments! What if you get hurt?"
I wanted to push back, but it wasn't worth the effort, so I just put the thing on. Once it was on my head it wasn't that bad, and after a quick warm-up I stepped onto the ice.
"Want to hold Daddy's hand for the first bit?"
"I'll do it myself."
"What if you fall?"
"I won't fall."
Who did they think I was?
I'd started years later than everyone else and still ended up a medalist. The ice was more familiar to me than solid ground—
"…"
The moment my blades touched the surface, I went down hard on my backside with a solid thud.
I felt the eyes around the rink snap toward me—but falling on the ice was common enough that the interest faded almost at once.
"That's exactly why I offered to hold on to you."
"Help me up."
Dad was already there. I took his hand and stood.
It wasn't that the feel for it had vanished. The reason I'd fallen was simpler.
The balance is different.
At this age the differences between a boy's body and a girl's weren't that dramatic. What I was dealing with was pure physical development—an oversized head, a short torso and legs, and the baby fat that still clung to me, all of it getting in the way of every movement.
But that was all it was. Interference, nothing more.
I shifted my weight, found my center, and settled into the feel of it.
Left foot planted.
The foundation of moving forward on skates is the push. You lock the supporting leg, hold your balance, and drive off with the free foot—
"Whoa, is our girl a genius? She's skating already?"
A soft hiss of steel on ice carried me forward as the blade carved through the surface. Speed, freedom—both of them hit me at once.
The day I'd realized I had been reborn, I'd sworn I would never set foot on the ice again. Figure skating had been the reason I lived, and it had been a curse. I'd been sure this life would never give me this feeling back.
…It feels good.
Honestly, it felt good.
A body that moved the way I told it to. Legs that didn't scream the moment I stepped onto the ice. Those two things alone were enough.
One lap wasn't nearly enough. I took another full circuit of the rink before I finally skated back to my parents.
"…I think our daughter's a genius."
"Yeah. I'm starting to think so too."
Both of them wore deadly serious faces as they conferred. I knew full well it was their usual WWE theatrics, staged to make me feel good, so I let it slide.
A few days later:
"Seolhwa, this is the teacher who's going to teach you how to skate starting today."
"…Huh?"
Shin Yerim, twenty-four years old, let out another sigh as she clocked in at the ice rink.
For most women, twenty-four meant freshly graduated and bracing for the working world. Yerim's situation was a little different.
As a ladies' singles figure skater, she had taken silver at the World Championships and climbed as high as fourth at the Olympics—never quite on the podium, but still. It was a glittering career by most measures. And yet right now—
…Just unemployed.
She had retired after her last competition not long ago, and these days she was a thoroughly ordinary freeloader. With Olympic experience under her belt she could have stepped into coaching without much trouble, but the idea hadn't appealed.
Teaching only gets fun when the kid is actually good.
For Yerim, "good" meant talent on her own level at the absolute minimum. And anyone with that kind of talent—
Wouldn't need to learn here.
Korea's figure skating pipeline ran through ice rinks. Coaches were attached to specific rinks and taught there. The big facilities drew swarms of coaches and kids who were serious about going pro. Yerim's rink was different—a place her parents ran, built around hobby lessons. It was not where Olympic hopefuls came to train.
"Haa… I can't exactly stay unemployed forever, though."
In her competitive years Yerim had always preferred building rock-solid fundamentals over flashy jumps and spins, refining every element until it was airtight. Maybe that was why skaters with thinner résumés but more spectacular technique had pulled ahead in popularity—while the woman who actually won medals got almost no endorsement deals or media offers.
"Aah, is the sky ever going to drop a talent freak on me or what."
She scanned the rink the way she always did, half-hoping for a raw gem who would somehow wander into a place this small—and then her eyes locked on one child.
Still round-cheeked. Five years old, maybe. Even so, the face was striking: sharp around the eyes in a way that only made her more interesting. A face that was already nearly finished at that age. Once the baby fat melted off, Yerim thought, more than a few boys were going to cry over her.
If I'd looked like that, would things have been different?
Looks had been part of the gap between Yerim and those more marketable skaters whose careers couldn't touch hers. Objectively she was pretty enough—just not the kind of pretty that made a star.
That. That is star quality.
She watched the child with open fondness—the kind of face that could make even skaters who lived on their looks look ordinary by comparison.
The girl stepped carefully onto the ice… and went down in a heap.
Most kids cried at that point. Falling was embarrassing, and it hurt. Against every expectation—
She's just getting back up?
The child stood as if nothing had happened, tapped her blades against the ice to check something, and then—
Fast?
—caught the feel of it in an instant and accelerated, working her edges with complete freedom. Yerim's brain short-circuited.
Whether it was figure or speed skating, the biggest problem for kids just starting out was fear. Fear of falling, fear of speed—every single movement on the ice wrapped in a vague, formless dread. That was normal.
From her age and that first reaction, she's a complete beginner… doesn't look like she's ever taken a lesson, either.
No matter how she looked at it, the child was a genius. Yerim was sure of it. Handling blades that freely wasn't something even a trained kid could do easily—and then the clean deceleration, edges brushing the ice to bleed off speed. Look at that.
"…Found her. My disciple."
Figuring the girl would be out there for at least another couple of hours at that pace, Yerim stepped outside, found a vending machine, and knocked back her usual zero-calorie drink. Then she went looking for the child's parents—
…Where did they go?
The girl and her whole family had vanished. The thought of losing them for good sent Yerim once around the rink; still nothing. Panic lasted only a second. She bolted outside and sprinted for the parking lot at full speed.
They hadn't been inside, so they had to be heading home—and a family outing meant a car. The guess paid off. She spotted the parents in the parking lot.
"…Understood. Let's wrap that deal tomorrow, then. I'll see you tomorrow."
The man who looked like the father was on a call, so she waited for it to end and then pounced.
"E-excuse me!"
"Yes? Ah—we're not taking any child-actor casting offers, I'm afraid."
The refusal landed before she could even get a word out, delivered with the practiced ease of someone who had said it more than once.
"Ah, no, that's not—here. This is who I am."
Flustered, Yerim dug a business card out of her pocket and held it out.
"Yerim Ice Rink… so you work here?"
"Not as regular staff—I'm working as a coach, for now!"
"And what can we do for you?"
"Would you ever consider putting your daughter into figure skating!?"
Even Yerim knew she didn't sound entirely sane. She said it anyway.
I have to lock her down. No matter what.
The talent she'd just watched was the real thing. Money was always the biggest problem in figure skating—but if that was the issue, she was ready to cover it herself to raise a kid like this.
"You're saying you want our daughter to become a competitive skater?"
"Yes. Figure skating has a short competitive lifespan and no shortage of variables, I know that, but—the talent I saw in your daughter just now, I can personally guarantee it."
"Our daughter's gifted in a lot of areas, but… competitive sports might be a bit much, don't you think…?"
"No! She will succeed—no question! I've only done it once, but I've stood on a World Championship podium for silver—second place. Your daughter can go higher than that!"
After a full-throated pitch, she walked away with an agreement: an orientation next week, and if the child showed interest, they would try it. The delay was because the girl had already fallen asleep. Yerim peered into the car and found her breathing soft and even.
An angel. An actual angel.
Then the weekend she'd been waiting for arrived. Yerim had spent the entire week buried in theory for beginners—and what unfolded in front of her was this:
Direction changes, and simple jumps, sure, but she's throwing them without a shred of fear?
A genius.
She felt like she'd said it too many times already. There simply wasn't another word for it.