Program (2)
Three weeks left.
The Junior World Championships were held at the end of February every year. That left roughly three weeks remaining—and at most two of those weeks could actually be spent building the program.
Still, I need at least a week to practice it.
No matter how I turned it over in my head, I knew full well this was completely insane. A routine was a precision assembly of technique and emotion, stamina and rhythm. Getting one into the body took months; refining it to a competitive standard took longer still. Trying to build one from scratch in two weeks was not a reasonable plan.
But I have to do it.
Not the familiarity I had piled up until now. Something that fit the feelings I carried today, the body I inhabited today, the Cha Seolhwa I was today. Not the shell of the past—a choice for the stages still ahead of me.
With that resolve settled, I arrived at the rink again. I greeted the old man at the ticket window the way I always did and stepped inside. About three hours until Yerim came in for work. I figured I might as well get some jump practice in and pulled my skates from my bag.
I was heading for the bench to change when I stopped.
"...?"
I rubbed my eyes once, half convinced they were lying to me. Yerim was still there—half collapsed against the bench, slumped over. Which meant she was real.
At this hour?
Including my previous life, the data I held on Yerim could reasonably be called big data. And in all of that, Yerim was someone who had never once shown up early.
Of course, her condition is a little strange...
A faint smell of alcohol hung in the air, and the expression on her face said she had nothing left to give.
"...I burned it all."
"...?"
"Kidding. Look at this."
Yerim glanced at me and pushed the laptop sitting beside her in my direction. The video playing on the screen was a program set to the music I had chosen yesterday. And the skater—
She skated it herself?
The person moving on the screen was Yerim. When I stared at her in open surprise, she waved a hand as if it were nothing.
"It's been so long that even my triples wouldn't go up. So I just did everything as singles."
The Yerim I knew had never set foot on the ice after retirement. The fact that she had broken that rule to perform the program for me stirred a complicated tangle of feeling in my chest.
"Don't worry about the rest of it. This is what matters."
Yerim hovered the mouse over the two-minute-ten-second mark in the music.
"The atmosphere shifts hard right here, right? This section was always a little awkward."
"...You want me to suppress the emotion?"
"Yeah. Better to just smother the feeling in the first half. The mood's going to change from the middle anyway."
"Then the early scores—"
"You put a spin into the stillness and pull it back up from there."
Yerim's eyes were half bloodshot. She had clearly stayed up all night. But the look in them was clearer than I had ever seen it.
I couldn't take my eyes off the laptop as I spoke quietly.
"But from the middle on... it almost feels like a men's program."
"That's intentional. You've got those weird habits, Seolhwa. Better to use them in the second half."
"Use the habits?"
"Yeah. First half you perform as a woman. Second half you perform as a man. You show them you meant it from the start."
"Meant it..."
What Yerim said next was something I had never even imagined. Show two concepts inside a single program. Package the very habits that appeared in the second half as deliberate choices.
"...Then things like over-edge and weight transfer—"
"All become staging."
A deliberate fraying of form was not a flaw. It was individuality. Expression. Only now did I understand why she had chosen uncertainty as the theme of the program. The story of someone who refused to follow the direction everyone called correct—and forced a path of their own instead.
"The you in the second half has to show that with your whole body."
On the laptop, Yerim came out of a spin and, instead of jumping, opened her arms. There was no more technique in it. Instead of beautiful, refined figure skating, what remained on the ice was pure expression—emotion colliding with itself.
"If you pull this off, honestly..."
Yerim drew a quiet breath.
"A free skate score of 160 alone... we might actually be able to do it. The federation judges are people who love artistry, after all."
"I'll do it."
My lips moved first. My head still hadn't caught up, but my chest already wanted this choice.
"Good."
Yerim slowly pushed herself upright. A fine sheen of sweat had gathered on her forehead from the strain of working through the night.
"Let's start right away. Today we lock in the jump layout."
"Starting today?"
"The sooner we start, the more practice time we get."
With that, Yerim handed me a sheet of paper with the program layout already written out. She had prepared even this in advance. Jumps, non-jump elements, even the acting cues—everything was on the page.
"I left blanks between the jumps. Write in how many revolutions you want for each."
I looked down at the empty spaces and picked up the pen.
...Start with a triple.
My previous program had opened with a quad for a strong first impression. But the first half of this one was the section where I would be performing as a woman, so I deliberately lowered the difficulty.
This way...
When I entered the section where I performed as a man, the contrast would cut clean and sharp.
"If you want to save stamina, just throwing in a double axel wouldn't be so bad, would it?"
"...A double is a little much."
There was still base value to think about, after all.
"Then what about from the lutz on?"
After the first three jumps, the mid-program timing—where the male performance began. Soft at the start, but from here I had to drive forward.
"I'll do this section like this."
I moved my hand and carved the numbers into the page.
"The competition's less than a month away and you're changing the program? What's wrong with you."
"This one has a better chance of winning."
"You've finally lost it. I knew you weren't right in the head from the moment you said you were going to beat Akane."
I wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead and turned my head. Jin Sehee stood at the edge of the rink with her arms crossed, leaning against the boards.
"Did you even watch Akane's programs before you said that? You need a clean 160 just to have a shot at beating her."
"This one can hit 160 too."
"Looking like that? If you skate like that you won't even get full base value. Not under-rotated—you'll get downgraded across the board."
The reason Sehee was talking like that was simple enough. My calves had gone limp. My ankles could barely hold a center. My lungs were dragging in ragged breath after ragged breath. Anyone who saw me right now would have said the same thing.
Even so, I kept driving myself. The reason was one: because I had to.
Strangely, it doesn't feel that hard.
In my previous life this would already have been overtraining. Now it barely registered as a problem. I wasn't growing any taller—having at least this going for me made it a little less unfair.
"Seriously, who else but you would do something this crazy."
"Coach was happy when I said I was changing the program."
"That's a coach. I'm a friend, so I get to tell you you've lost your mind."
I smiled without answering. It was less a deliberate smile than the corners of my mouth lifting on their own.
"I know. That's why I'm doing it."
So what if it was crazy? Practicing right now was fun, and I was certain I would win. That was enough.
Sehee watched the smile on my face for a moment, then slowly looked away. She nudged a cone sitting in the middle of the ice with her toe.
"No regrets?"
"Regrets?"
"Honestly, if you didn't change anything and just went with what you had, you'd still make top three. And you're giving that up."
"How would you know that?"
"Obviously I've watched the programs of the people going to Worlds!"
My teasing jab made Sehee bark a loud protest.
"Anyway—if you change it, miss elements, and fail, you're still not going to regret it?"
"I won't."
I said it firmly. I put a little extra force into the words so no hesitation could slip through. I had made a choice, and I would take responsibility for it. That was all.
"Regret is for people who never chose."
As I said it, I checked the clock—five minutes had passed. Rest time was over. Time to practice again. The moment I started pulling my gloves back on, Sehee shook her head.
"Then I'll watch and catch the parts where you miss."
"Me? I'm a champion, you know."
"Hey!"
I soothed her with the claim that it was a joke and headed for center ice. When I started the music, an unfamiliar melody spilled out across the rink. What I needed was experience. I had to burn this layout into my body even a little more.
I cut across the ice and began the first glide. Arms open, gaze low. Jump, spin, step sequence, and the finish pose.
"...You're actually insane."
I had fallen a few times in the middle, but when I finished the entire performance, the voice that came back was edged with something like awe.
"You said you were lowering the difficulty, and then you just dump everything into the second half? Do you even know what 'lowering' means?"
"But the quality of the jumps I did in the second half was good, right?"
"What kind of—wait. Hold on."
At my words, Sehee froze as if something had just clicked into place.
"So you deliberately put two roles into the program?"
"You could tell?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
I hadn't even told her there were two roles yet. The thought crossed my mind that this girl wasn't entirely normal either.
"If we can pick up composition points with this..."
"I told you I'd win, didn't I?"
"Finish jump—use the form that feels comfortable!"
I folded my right leg up behind me. Then I drove it down with my body still facing forward. On the landing timing, I stamped the free foot still remaining on the other side and launched into the jump.
"Nice! Seolhwa, I think you can do it without falling now!"
Three days before departure.
Today's program run-throughs: five attempts, five clean skates.
This is enough.
The preparation was finished. All that remained was to show them my stage—not someone else's shell.
It was time to prove Cha Seolhwa's real stage.