Proof of Existence (5)
"Why do you work so hard at it, though?"
"Out of nowhere?"
We'd reserved ahead today, so we'd gotten into the tonkatsu place without trouble. Across the table, Jin Sehee dropped the question on me out of the blue.
Why did I throw myself into figure skating?
"Does there have to be a reason?"
"I mean, honestly—you're pretty, and your mom and dad are loaded."
"You're not exactly struggling either."
"Not as much as you, okay?"
She asked why I worked so hard, and for a moment I had no idea what to say.
The reason I started in the first place…
Because it looked cool.
In my past life I'd been a man, so maybe it sounded strange that I'd taken up figure skating because the skaters looked cool. The sports most guys usually idolized were ball games like soccer, or combat sports. At the very least, something that leaned hard into masculinity—bodybuilding, that kind of thing.
But to my eyes, figure skaters looked cool.
On ice—a surface you could never fully control—they delivered performances more perfect than anyone else's. The effort behind it was almost impossible to measure, and the artistry of skating, beautiful and sharp at once, had been more than enough to seize my attention.
"…Figure skating is sharp?"
The tables seated four, so Sehee's parents had taken another; Sehee, Yerim, and I shared one. Yerim, who had heard the whole of what I'd said, looked at me with an expression of pure disbelief.
"Seolhwa, figure skating is an artistic sport. Why would you think of it that way?"
Yerim's eyes went round. Sehee tilted her head, curious too.
I set down my fork for a moment and lifted my gaze.
"On the surface it's beautiful. But in the end, skaters wreck their own bodies to land jumps and still make it look beautiful."
Yerim's expression shifted into something complicated. She had lived through injuries and pain as a competitor herself.
"You have to keep enduring the pain, and you push your body to its limit for the sake of perfection."
I said it calmly, carrying the weight of a previous life.
"And during a program, not a single mistake is allowed. Everything you've worked for gets judged in a few minutes."
Sehee stared at me with her mouth open. Yerim simply held my eyes in silence.
"So that's why—when other kids were always scrambling to recover from mistakes—you were always chasing perfection."
As if she were only just understanding, Yerim reached out and gently stroked my hair. Not the usual rough ruffling, but a careful touch.
"But… you said skating was fun, didn't you?"
Sehee's voice came carefully.
"Yeah. It's fun now."
I nodded.
I no longer had to prove myself with that same obsessive intensity, so it was fun. The new people in my life were more than enough, too.
"Still, you're weird."
"Om-nyom-nyom."
I was back at the tonkatsu, so I didn't answer—I just kept eating. Pork cutlet this good was meant to be finished before it cooled. That was simple courtesy.
Sehee talked on regardless.
"You do a crazy amount of jump practice and never have problems."
Yerim answered that one for me.
"Seolhwa doesn't jump that much, actually. She works harder on her skating skills."
"I know that, but she still grabs me sometimes and just does jumps."
"Well, that's true."
"People like me can't do that. Jumping for hours straight every day? The next day you wouldn't be able to train at all."
Is that so?
This body of mine was strangely sturdy, that much was certain. I couldn't judge it precisely yet—I wasn't fully grown—but I often thought my physical ability was strong across the board.
"Are you secretly taking some kind of miracle tonic or something?"
"There's no such thing."
When I answered, Sehee pointed her chopsticks at me.
"Suspicious."
"You've never seen it."
"Huh?"
Sehee was young, but she was still a competitor. Even as a joke, what that "miracle tonic" implied was—
"Have you ever actually seen a doping athlete? Women's singles skaters do quads now."
A memory from my past life rose unbidden.
Fifteen years old—a child whose body hadn't even finished growing—forced onto drugs for an international seed. The figure skating world had reeled for a time, and that skater never returned to the ice.
And doping is never just one person's problem.
Figure skating is a relative sport. If you can't do the jumps other people are doing, you can't win. And if a doped athlete lands high-difficulty jumps without getting caught, everyone else starts forcing themselves out of anxiety. The result is always the same vicious cycle: injury.
"So if a woman lands a triple axel or a quad, she automatically gets suspected?"
"Not exactly. The important thing is that if women's singles keep evolving around jumps, careers get shorter."
"Still, I want to be good at jumps…"
"That's why the fundamentals matter. Ballet and weight training build flexibility and muscle—they're good for injury prevention."
"That's a relief. I've been working hard at ballet and training lately!"
I answered her and went back to the tonkatsu. With the competition over, I'd ordered the jumbo size—one and a half times the usual portion. I'd worried I wouldn't finish it, but after eating almost nothing right before the meet, I managed nearly all of it.
"The more I look at you, the weirder you get. You just eat whatever and barely gain weight."
"Do I?"
"Yeah. During competition season I don't even touch snacks, trying to manage my weight. But you eat whenever you feel like it."
"Well, I do skate for a long time instead."
"Is that it? Does skating burn more calories than jumping?"
Whatever Sehee had just said slipped past me without much thought—the tonkatsu in my mouth was too good.
"Leaving already? The federation people are doing a wrap-up dinner after this."
"…Yeah. I should probably get going."
Once again, Han Jinsung had been roped in as a judge by the federation president, and the moment the competition ended he had planned his escape. The person who blocked that plan was—
Of all people…
Yu Hyungyeong, the legend of Korean women's singles. Even as an Olympic medalist and the current peak of men's singles, she was not someone you could treat casually.
Which was why Han Jinsung preferred not to get tangled up with her.
Her personality's a little eccentric, too.
If Han Jinsung chased enjoyment and victory in figure skating, Yu Hyungyeong wanted both honor and the widest possible popularization of the sport. Han Jinsung, who saw figure skating as something only a chosen few could truly enjoy, could neither understand her nor wanted to.
"Then I'll be going—"
"Just a moment. I have a question."
"Yes? What is it…?"
"Which skater stood out most to you?"
They had judged together, and she was asking that? The question was so sudden that Han Jinsung momentarily lost his words.
Is there something she wants to hear?
If he had to name skaters who stood out at this meet—Chloe in the elementary division, Jin Sehee, whom the federation had been pushing. Or in juniors, Yoo Sera and Kim Siwoo, roughly. All of them were the sort people casually called geniuses.
But the spotlight of this competition had been stolen by an eight-year-old girl.
"…The skater named Cha Seolhwa."
After a brief hesitation, Han Jinsung answered honestly. From Yu Hyungyeong's perspective—a woman who had given her life to the federation—she would rather have heard Jin Sehee or Chloe. But what could he do? That was the truth.
At the same time, Yu Hyungyeong's eyebrow lifted faintly. Arms folded, she waited quietly for him to go on.
"It's not rare for young skaters to catch the eye, but that child looked different."
"In what way?"
"Her program construction and technical elements were excellent, but the quality of her steps and transitions went beyond junior level. Her balance was good, and the flow of her performance felt natural."
Han Jinsung paused. The performance from that moment rose again in his mind.
That small body crossing the ice, creating a quiet tension. That wasn't simply the level of someone executing skills.
To put it bluntly, to a top-tier skater's eye, the completeness was almost nauseating. He couldn't even guess how hard she must have ground herself down over three years to produce skating like that.
"That child performs with the audience in mind. At that age, it's easy to fall into self-satisfaction."
"So you liked her?"
"…I found her intriguing."
That was the precise word. Less admiration than a kind of questioning. A performance that felt utterly alien, and at the same time unnervingly familiar.
"You're thinking along the same lines I am."
"Is that so. It's been a while since I heard something welcome."
Relieved that he had chosen the right answer, Han Jinsung tried once more to take his leave.
"I think that child will fit the path I'm trying to take."
"Pardon?"
"Is there a more perfect skater than her for promoting figure skating? She's beautiful, she doesn't get discouraged, and her performance quality is excellent."
Han Jinsung could not agree with that.
If you show people something like that…
Newcomers might flood in, but everyone who already loved the sport would only end up discouraged. He didn't bother saying it out loud.
"Still, she's a young skater. For now we should just watch. I don't think there's any need to push her too hard too soon."
"That's true enough."
Yu Hyungyeong nodded lightly.
"But perhaps that child has already been running for a long time."
"She's only eight."
"Didn't Chloe and Jin Sehee both start around four? Of course, that was more like playing at the rink than real training."
Yu Hyungyeong smiled faintly and added one last thing.
"So… for now, let's be content to watch from the sidelines."
Instead of answering, Han Jinsung simply nodded once.
He had no interest in popularizing the sport—but if it was that child—
Maybe she could do it.
Become the first woman to land a quadruple jump without doping.
The thought brushed through his mind, sudden and unbidden.