Program (1)
Who wins?
Look how clean that Biellmann spin is
Other girls are always out here catching core and looking humiliating in their spins, but she's just sitting there with that same deadpan face as always lmao
1. Chloe Charlotte
Half-Korean, and the more she grows the more she looks like some elf princess. Her programs are bright and lively, just like her blonde hair. Triple Axel is no issue, and her performance quality is god-tier. Weakness is her skating skills — a little soft. Probably coached by someone obsessed with jumps.
2. Honda Reina
Probably the tallest skater in juniors. 175cm at sixteen… already past the average height of most figure skaters. Strengths: the athletic build to throw quads, and the sheer presence that comes with height. Weakness: her Axel is painfully weak — she even takes deductions on doubles a lot. Performance quality is a bit lacking too? That said, she knows how to use that frame, so she's worth watching going forward.
3. Cha Seolhwa
If you're Korean, cheer for Cha Seolhwa. Pretty sure she's the youngest in this entry. Insane talent landing quad combinations at thirteen. And her performance quality — she knows exactly what the judges love. Eye contact, hand gestures, all of it. Weakness: she's got some weird little habits. Sending the free leg back on the Axel, riding over-edges… kind of those veteran quirks? No idea why a thirteen-year-old has them. Still, if she's throwing clean quad combos without getting hurt, she's got a real shot at the title yeah.
4. Kayano Akane
Do I even need to say it? She's just a god, yeah. She crushed a stacked field and took the win — that says everything. Probably the only junior who can put a quad Lutz in combination. She pulls off tech even men's singles can't always do, and the proof is that solo free skate breaking 160. Weakness: her short program is kind of boring. Like she already knows she'll win on the free, so the short is seriously dull. But then you look at the free's difficulty and it's just awe-inspiring. Oh, one more weakness — the doom-parrots come out every year. The second she misses anything it's "she's in a slump," "she's getting old." And then she nails it at the international meet at the end and it's over. She's been doing this for four years straight.
5. That country's doping girls
No long speech.
If you dope and still lose, you deserve the beatdown… right?
…
…
…
"…Ugh."
What was the point of reading any more of this?
I flung the phone I'd been holding toward the far side of the bed. It sank into a pillow with a soft thud, the screen went dark, and silence settled over the room.
I'd only gone on for the first time in a while hoping there might be something about Akane. Instead I'd lost track of time drowning in ego-searching.
Weakness: she's got some weird little habits.
Sending the free leg back on the Axel, riding over-edges.
No idea why a thirteen-year-old has them.
Even if I told them, they wouldn't understand.
I let out a breath and covered my face with the back of my hand.
The rotation axis from the last competition still turned, vivid, behind my eyes. Me on the ice. Moving without thinking — and yet with every calculation already finished.
…Strength and weakness at once.
My strength was that the foundational base of everything people call "technique" was already complete. But the further I went, the more that same point was bound to become a liability.
If I had performed the way Chloe or Jin Sehee did — calculating every gesture — it wouldn't have mattered. But my skating moved the way actors do, swept by feeling. I sank into the current of the program, got carried off by the music. And I built programs so that the jump rose at the exact moment emotion hit its peak.
So what if the emotion crested first?
Of course the habits would show. The way past memories and old sensations leaked out even unconsciously was a problem I couldn't avoid. Like they say about beginnings mattering most — carrying a past life's memories made skating in this body anything but simple.
Until now I'd thought it was enough to simply polish my skating and performance quality on top of that old technical foundation. The technique from my past life was still alive inside me, and I pulled it out as if it were only natural…
Natural.
I finally understood the real reason.
The problem was that very sense of naturalness.
"…That's the trap."
The body remembered, and I reproduced it. Jump timing, takeoff angle, the reaction of rotation in the air. But in this body, the things I'd been so used to in my past life had started to go wrong. The deeper I sank into emotion, the more that familiar method came out like instinct. The result was an over-edge that looked like a bad habit.
Not leaning on memory.
I had to carve it into this body from scratch. Performance for the feeling I had now, the body I had now, and the Cha Seolhwa I was now. Question the familiar. Take it apart. Put it back together.
I needed a new program.
"You want to change the program?"
"Yes…"
The moment Yerim arrived at the rink, I went to her and laid out what I was thinking. On any other day I would have said it with confidence, but today my voice couldn't help but shrink as it came out.
"Uh… we leave the country in three weeks?"
"I know that, but…"
"You know programs are usually built over half a year, off-season included, right?"
"…I know."
Even so, I had to do it. Not wanted to. Had to.
"If you're putting it that strongly, it's not like we can't, but."
"I felt like I needed it. Akane's going to be there, so if I want to win—"
"…Akane? Kayano Akane? The 160-point one?"
"Yes."
…Even for me, getting looked at with a face like that was a bit of a shock. Still, I was her only student — shouldn't she at least tell me I could win?
"I can win."
At my declaration of victory, Yerim pressed one hand to her forehead and let out a short laugh.
"Seolhwa, sometimes you really scare me."
"Why?"
"Most kids say, 'I want to do well.' You just go, 'I'm going to win.'"
"…I can. Not with the program I have now, though."
"So that's why you want to change it?"
I nodded.
"A 160 is possible with what you've got right now, you know? An all-clean, no-miss skate and we might even beat her."
"We won't."
I'd learned that by skating the last competition. To take full marks on the component scores, I needed a program that was mine. Not Cha Yunsung's program — Cha Seolhwa's.
"Music?"
"I was going to look once you gave the okay."
"Choreography?"
"I want to ease the jump difficulty a little and put more spins in."
Yerim kept her hand on her forehead and studied my face. She was reading in my eyes that I wasn't joking around.
"All right. Let's change it."
For a second, something like a heartbeat rang through my chest.
"But there's a condition."
"Yes?"
"Even if this program falls apart at the competition, even if the result is bad — don't regret it."
"I won't."
"I mean don't give up. You've been winning this whole time."
A bitter second place and a silver medal. Or missing the podium entirely, failing to advance, getting cut from selection. Yerim had no idea how many times I'd lived through those things.
"Right, you're not the kind of person who'd hate skating just because you failed to win once."
Yerim raked a hand through her hair and dropped into a chair. She watched me in silence for a long while, then spoke again, quietly.
"Then let's start by picking the music."
That evening.
After locking up the rink and coming home, Yerim sat down at her computer and put on a new piece of music.
"I have to build this… in two weeks?"
She sighed — and still, the corner of her mouth slowly climbed. She was one of the people who'd gone crazy for figure skating, too. Even retired from competition, building a new program still counted as fun.
She really is terrifying.
There was something in that child's skating. A kind of primitive pull that dragged you in before you noticed. It was a different grain from polished, refined performance.
Can she do it?
A piece built on irregular waves of feeling, and the uneasy certainty that erupted from inside them. Midway through, the mood of the song even shifted. And in figure skating, a program's music was a landmark. A change in atmosphere meant you had to deliver two different performances inside a single program.
Or maybe better…
Yerim put her earphones back in and rewound the track to the beginning. She measured the beat with precision, tracing the ridges of rhythm and melody with her fingertips.
How many hours passed like that? Outside the window, the sun was already starting to rise.
"…Done."
Let's try it, Seolhwa.
Yerim scooped up her laptop and stood from the chair.