Hard Going (2)
After roughly five minutes of rallying, the umpire called an end to the warm-up.
"Time!"
Thirty seconds of rest followed.
I didn't head off the court. I just stood there, staring hard at the strings of the racket clenched in my hand.
...The sense of distance was off.
What my eyes saw and the actual distance weren't the same. Even a single centimeter of difference was no small problem.
Thump—
An emotion I hadn't felt until now—not once since I'd first picked up a racket—slipped free of my heart and started needling into my brain.
A sense of crisis.
In other words: tension.
...Me?
In the brief window before my opponent came back onto the court, I thought it over. Why was I tense?
It wasn't nerves about him. It wasn't worry about losing, either.
"Court three, boys' high school singles, Round of 16. On the right, Hwayeon High's Kim Gyeong-tae—"
The umpire's voice was starting to blur.
This is it. That thing.
My eyes and reality were out of sync. The signal my brain was sending in response to that disconnect.
"—Love all, play!"
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, then opened them.
...It's nothing.
Thock—
My opponent was smirking at me, looking down on me—after a mere five minutes of rallying, no less.
"..."
As if to prove the point, he sent over a long serve instead of a short one, lobbing it deep.
He must really think I'm a pushover.
"Tsk."
I watched the shuttle drift lightly over the net. Everything—the shuttle, the whole stretch of time around it—looked slow.
And then.
The instant the shuttle entered my zone of control—
Hitch—
Whoosh—
I checked the arm that had started flying on pure instinct, held it for the barest fraction of a second, then swung.
Thwaang—!
A clean high clear.
I just have to adjust.
Suppress the instinct. Build in a time lag. A tiny click of recalibration. Even if the aim drifts, if I can still hit the same spot, it's as good as a bullseye.
And suppressing instinct was something I already knew how to do.
I've been doing it since I was one.
Sixteen years of refining it.
It takes a lot of focus, sure.
But the fact that I could do it was what mattered, wasn't it? I'd get used to it gradually.
Thooong—!
The shuttle that had sailed high toward my opponent came back stripped of power—a drop shot—and plopped down right in front of the net.
I shifted my weight forward and stretched out my stride.
Squeak—
Tap.
The moment I took my steps, shuffled in, and extended the racket, I realized.
Ah. I overhit it.
The racket had gone in too deep. Because this was the first time I was applying the adjustment to badminton, my arm had flown faster than expected.
Ting—!
The shuttle hung in the air above the opponent's net, floating slow. Anyone could see it was a juicy piece of meat.
And then—
Paaang—!
"..."
The Seongchun High kid didn't let the mistake slide. He slammed it down with a push.
"One, love!"
At the umpire's call, the scoreboard flipped.
Hwayeon High — Kim Gyeong-tae : Seongchun High — Gal Chun-i
1G: 0 – 1
I turned my head and checked the Seongchun kid's face.
Snicker—
The way he was laughing looked exactly like a crow that had just found its meal.
I didn't bother responding. No need to sink to his level.
Just wait a little.
The moment the sync locks in—
From today on, you're Chun-sik.
Thwaang—!
"Service over. Nineteen, eighteen."
A quiet call from Court Three.
"Whoa."
A few people in the Hwayeon High cheering section couldn't hold back their admiration. Their eyes went to the scoreboard.
Kim Gyeong-tae — Gal Chun-i
1G: 21 – 18
2G: 19 – 18
It was a razor-close match—the kind that made your palms sweat.
That first point stolen off the Seongchun player's mocking serve might as well have never happened. For the rest of the first set, Kim Gyeong-tae had torn through his opponent like a warhorse at full gallop.
But—
"Something feels off about him today."
There was one person who couldn't take her eyes off Gyeong-tae, chewing her lip with a worried face.
"What's that on his face…?"
Hana-eun.
The second she'd heard the results of her own match, she'd bolted out and sprinted full tilt toward the neighboring gym. The scoreboard waiting for her when she arrived was something she could barely believe.
2G: 18 – 18.
She'd expected a second set, sure—but not one this dead even.
He won the first set, but it was close.
It wasn't like the usual Gyeong-tae. She didn't know much about badminton, but even Hana-eun knew he wasn't the type to get pushed around by Seongchun High.
"Why so many mistakes?"
And more than that—the way he was playing was completely different from usual. Those clean, free-flowing limbs were nowhere to be found. He looked like he had shackles on, creaking somewhere she couldn't place.
"Man, so Gyeong-tae's still going, huh. You're watching his match, right?"
A voice came from beside her. She looked up, recognized someone who was always around Gyeong-tae, and offered a greeting.
"Hello. I'm Hana-eun."
"Kim Jang-hun. That punk's club senior."
Hana-eun nodded.
"Yes. I know."
Dark skin, a sports cut. Slim overall, but with muscle bulging in places. Anyone could tell he was an athlete. She already knew he was the senior Gyeong-tae was close with—she'd always kept tabs on the people around him.
"Nervous, huh? Worried that kid's gonna lose."
Hana-eun couldn't bring herself to say yes. Words had a way of becoming real, and she was afraid of that.
"But you know what?"
"...?"
When she tilted her head to the right, a curl of hair brushed lightly against her collar.
"That kid—even when he gives up a set in practice matches, he's never once lost a game."
"..."
"He probably doesn't even realize it, but he's a real stubborn bastard, that one."
Kim Jang-hun said it like he was badmouthing Gyeong-tae, but the corner of his mouth was lifted, and there was pride in the way he said it.
"Ah, well—I wouldn't know about elementary or middle school. I went to a different middle school."
"...He wouldn't have lost then either. Probably."
She didn't know the details. Maybe he'd lost a few times in elementary school. But at the very least, in every match she'd ever watched, he hadn't. Which was exactly why seeing him this shaken was so hard to believe.
"Haha. Right? You know all that—childhood friends, after all."
"Childhood friends…"
Hana-eun rolled the word around, then swallowed it. It left her with a double-edged feeling—good and bad at once.
Then—
Paaang—!
Waaaaaah—!
A hit cracked through the arena like a gunshot.
"Match point! Twenty, eighteen!"
In that short span, Gyeong-tae had pulled ahead by another point.
"He just threw a jump smash from there."
Kim Jang-hun shook his head. If it had been him—safety-first type that he was—he never would have gone for that.
Then, remembering that she was also childhood friends with Park Jung-hoon, he turned and spoke again.
"But are you sure you don't need to watch Jung-hoon's match? He's right two courts over."
"He's fine."
Hana-eun answered without a second of hesitation. Whether that guy won or lost was none of her business. In old terms: she couldn't care less. In modern slang: not her problem.
Thwaang—!
"Ah…!"
In the middle of talking with Jang-hun, the opponent's motion drop buried itself in Gyeong-tae's court.
"Service over! Nineteen, twenty!"
The match was sliding somewhere no one could predict.
"Hoo…"
Just now, my eyes hadn't reacted to his motion drop. It wasn't that my muscles were tired.
It was just—
My focus is tanking hard.
The problem was that I'd never had to concentrate this hard before. Suppressing instinct was burning through more focus than I'd expected.
And on top of that—
I've never been this desperate, either.
So I'd walked onto the court without knowing my own threshold. And right now, in this moment, I understood that threshold perfectly.
I cannot go to a third set.
If I did, I might actually lose. And as if that weren't enough, one more problem was stacking on top.
...I'm sleepy.
I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before—unintentionally. Every time a bead of sweat the glasses band hadn't fully absorbed skimmed past my eyelashes, my vision blurred.
I shook my head roughly to fling the sweat off and looked at my opponent, who was lining up to serve.
Of course I had to hand the serve back over.
Gal Chun-i. Aside from that first long serve, the bastard had stuck exclusively to short serves and flick serves. I used them plenty myself, so I couldn't exactly trash-talk the strategy—but every single flick still made my blood boil. That part was unavoidable.
"This is fun."
It was hard. And at the same time, the whole situation was so absurd it was almost funny.
Thooong—!
His flick serve came flying again. He was desperate too. One more point from me and it was over.
You son of a bitch.
Flicks piss me off. And still, I can't help smiling.
I spun around like I was running some kind of dog drill, adjusted the distance, and switched to a backhand grip.
Squeak—
Tang!
I sent a backhand clear, turned, reset—and there was his smash setup. Drop, smash, drive. Any of them would have made sense. Fake motions were his specialty.
And right as I was thinking that—
Paaang—!
Out of nowhere, he floated up a half-hearted clear. Like he was trying to create space and drain my strength.
Aha.
I looked up at the shuttle climbing high and pulled the corner of my mouth all the way to my ear.
"You're tired, aren't you."
Squeak—!
Tadatak.
I hop-stepped to the landing point first, ran in, and bent both knees.
Crrrack—
Then I launched myself like a frog with everything I had, twisted my body midair, and swung the racket.
No instinct suppression this time. I could feel that my body had adapted.
I can see it now.
The falling shuttle—
Whoosh—!
And the point where my racket would meet it.
Paaaang—!
They connected.
"..."
The shuttle, planted dead-center on the strings, crossed his net in a straight line and drove into the floor.
Thook—
"..."
For a moment the whole place went quiet. Everyone's eyes locked on the umpire's mouth.
And then—
Beeeeeep—!
"Game!"
Waaaaah—!
At the umpire's firm call, cheers erupted from our side's stands.
Plop—
Sweat ran down Gal Chun-i's—no, Gal Chun-sik's—arm, slid along the racket, and dripped onto the floor. It kept dripping right up through the handshake at the net.
See? Who told you to start trash-talking.
Idiot.
On the way back to my seat after the match, I spotted someone who absolutely should not have been there.
"Hey, Hana-eun. What are you doing here? What about your match?"
It was the next gym over, sure, but even running it should have taken a good ten minutes. I peeled the tape off my sideburns and tilted my head.
"Mine already finished, okay?! Maybe show a little interest?"
"Huh. That so."
Riiip—
The sweat-soaked tape came off way too easily. And the second I reached up to take off the glasses that had started to feel wrong—
Grab—
"...?"
"..."
"What are you doing."
Hana-eun had clamped onto my wrist.
I really want to get these off.
The warped vision was unbearable.
Then Hana-eun—who'd been holding her mouth shut tight like a clam—opened it. And with a look that was somehow extremely resolute.
"Don't you dare take those glasses off."
Has this girl gotten heatstroke?
"Absolutely not!"
And so I was stuck standing there for a while, wrist held hostage, staring blankly—while half-listening to Jang-hun hyung's loaded muttering.
"...Bullshit. What the hell is this nonsense…"
Another hard stretch of going was waiting for me.