I'll See You in First Place
Kang Jae-young. Forty years old. The big brother of Korean archery — a living history of the compound national team.
He was South Korea's first compound archery Asian Games bronze medalist. After that, though, the international stage had given him nothing worth mentioning. Age had something to do with it. So did the reality of a discipline forever eclipsed by recurve.
...This is a first.
It wasn't even an international competition, and still he had never seen a selection trial draw this many reporters, this many people. Word was that compound archery had climbed the search rankings, and that the live-broadcast numbers were still climbing. And at the center of it all stood a single man.
A professional Go player... Kim In-ha.
Kang Jae-young's gaze quietly traced over him. He still looked more like a Go player than a compound archer. But he was not a man you could afford to take lightly. Overall first in the opening round of trials. Overwhelming numbers — and the most X-10s on top of that. A record even Kang Jae-young had never touched.
...The skill is real.
Compound was a discipline where talent alone could carry you to the top. Even the junior who'd taken the first mixed-team medal had come up from a civilian background. Elite-trained athletes, in other words, did not hold an absolute monopoly.
Standing beside Kim In-ha on the same shooting line, Kang Jae-young checked the flag above the target. Crosswind. Gusts. Intermittent headwind. Nothing about these conditions was kind.
Still better than the sea wind at Namhae.
Kang Jae-young was a veteran who had survived dozens of international stages. He had endured training at the edge of what a body could take, and today, as always, he trusted himself and drew the bow.
Thock. Thock. Thock.
Three consecutive 10s. Not X-10s — but given how the wind was shifting, it was more than satisfactory. Kang Jae-young lowered his bow and walked to the target with the judge.
From the second round of trials onward, after each End the athletes themselves confirmed the target and retrieved their own arrows. A hundred meters round trip. Not a short walk. It could wear on stamina and, more dangerously, on focus, so he managed even this stretch the way he managed every other piece of his routine.
When he reached his own target, he checked the arrows first.
Drifted a little left. I'll tweak the setup.
He pulled the arrows and, without thinking, turned his head. His gaze landed on Kim In-ha's target right beside his own.
...N-no way.
Three arrows were buried in Kim In-ha's target. But something was wrong. They weren't three arrows planted separately. Two of them were stacked dead in the center X-10. And the last one...
had split the shaft of the arrow already sitting there, and driven itself straight through. The shaft was snapped in two, the second arrow lodged inside the wreckage.
...A Robin Hood Shot? In this wind?
Kang Jae-young was speechless for a moment. Splitting an arrow wasn't unheard of. It happened from time to time in compound. But this wind was no joke. If you could wait it out, you would take the extra seconds and hunt for a cleaner release. Accuracy like this, in wind like this, could not be explained as luck.
He quietly drew a breath and returned to the shooting line. Keeping his own routine mattered more than dwelling on what he had just seen.
Don't think about it. Chasing high scores is smarter than chasing X-10s.
Second End. Erratic wind. He did not waver. Ten. Ten. X-10.
Next.
Third End, fourth End — perfect scores. His pace was clearly solid. Then the final fifth End. Two 10s in the teeth of a howling gale.
Snap!
The last arrow, a slight push. It drifted just outside — a 9. Total: 149.
That's a top-tier score.
Kang Jae-young lowered his bow and, almost without meaning to, looked toward Kim In-ha's target. A moment later, the scoreboard beneath it changed.
150. Fifteen arrows. Every one a 10. The last three of them — every one an X-10.
Kang Jae-young swallowed, wordless.
...This is no joke.
It was a first. In more than ten years of wearing the Taeguk Mark, Kang Jae-young had always turned the blade on himself. Today, before the self-reproach could even form, he had caught himself hoping that someone else would not shoot better than he did.
Compound national team second-round selection trials, day two. The last rotation.
Fifth End, third arrow. I drew the string.
Focus.
I breathed in, then let it out slowly. It had been a long day. Fatigue stacked from day one was starting to weigh on both body and mind — the kind of moment when the pressure sat heavier than it should. Times like this, you went back to basics.
I reset my breathing and adjusted my stance. Found my center. Held it. The aiming point settled into my field of view, trembling by a hair. Even that, my senses held in check.
Now.
Release.
Snap!
The arrow left the string with a crack of air and flew. The point cut the wind's resistance and drove itself in a straight line into the face of the target. I didn't need to look. My senses told me.
X-10.
I lowered the bow. The last score went down on the record sheet, and the judge's whistle sounded the end of the round. I gathered my gear and walked back to the booth.
A large wall poster had gone up with the scores and the standings.
Good.
I had taken first across the ranking rounds of days one and two, with the maximum allocation of ranking points. But there was no room to get comfortable. Tomorrow's day-three tournament had another twenty-four ranking points on the line.
...The Archery Association's system really is precise.
It was a finely built machine. They had judged that ranking rounds alone didn't differentiate well enough, and so they used tournament points to measure focus under live pressure as well. Maybe it was this kind of meticulous structure that kept Korean archery the strongest in the world.
I packed my gear and left the venue. Outside was quiet. Not a single one of the reporters who had been swarming the place was in sight.
I did tell them not to come.
I had given advance notice that I wouldn't be taking interviews today. They had all understood, and no one had tried to force the issue.
I reached the hotel nearby as the sun was starting to lean. I rode the elevator in silence and stepped into my room. A familiar quiet was waiting. I started with a light stretch. After the shower, some simple resistance-band work in the room — core, mostly — and then I gave myself over to the hydrotherapy pool in the hotel fitness center. I wanted the tension out of the muscles, even a little.
...Never thought I'd be the type to look after all this.
There had been a time when I believed that shooting well was enough. Not anymore. Sleep, breathing, stretching, meals, hydration, even the hour I woke up — all of it decided the number that landed on the target face.
Raw talent isn't enough. If you want to win all the way through, systematic management is mandatory.
I headed for the restaurant to grab a light dinner. I stepped off the elevator and was crossing the lobby when a voice caught me from behind.
"Excuse me... you're Kim In-ha, right?"
I turned. Two familiar faces — a young man and a young woman I remembered from the compound range. They stood there awkwardly, fidgeting, and held out a slip of paper.
"Um, could we maybe get an autograph...?"
I smiled and nodded.
"Of course. Want a photo, too?"
"...Huh? Yes!"
I signed the paper, stood with them, and took the picture. I was turning away in a good mood, their thanks still in my ears, when both of them flinched to a stop.
Their eyes had met someone standing by the vending machine on the far side of the lobby.
Lee Chung-myung?
Currently fifth overall in the trials. Last year's compound national team. Like the two kids, he would be with Yeongheung City Hall. I could feel his gaze from across the room. There was no expression on his face. But there was something in the eyes. Clear wariness. Or, more precisely, discomfort.
The juniors approached him, reading the air. He snapped something at them and vanished somewhere. The two of them followed with their faces fallen in, flustered and small.
He really can't stand me, huh.
Reasons not to like me were not in short supply. I hadn't come up through the elite track. I had no record, no career anyone in this world would recognize. A stone that had rolled in out of nowhere — and that stone was currently running first in the national team trials. Of the four spots on the team, I was all but locking one down. And he was fifth. The one being pushed out of that spot.
That was why he was wary. That was why he was uncomfortable. That was why he couldn't accept it.
But.
...I have no intention of losing.
That would be an insult to everyone who had spent years drawing a bow and holding on.
Compound national team second-round selection trials, day three.
Today, the final national team would be decided. Three names, to be precise. The remaining one would go to the reserve squad — two weeks of winter training camp and the pre-Olympic camp, run together as a last check. Barring some major upset, the top three became the official national team.
...Next year is an Olympic year.
Which meant today's results were tied, directly, to who wore the Taeguk Mark.
I slung my gear and walked into the venue. The sun wasn't high yet, but dozens of reporters had already dug in. Articles had gone out after I took first on days one and two, naming me the leading candidate for the national team, and the press had followed. There were clearly more of them than on the first day.
Team Leader Jeong Soo-yeon's words surfaced without being asked for. From here on, the gazes that followed me would treat me less like an athlete and more like a newsworthy phenomenon.
I walked toward the photo wall the Association had set up. Cameras on tripods swung onto me in a single motion, and the reporters stood in a line. Their eyes were easy to read. Upset. Buzz. Drama. A former bank security guard turned professional Go player, climbing onto the national team in an elite sport like compound — they were waiting for that rare kind of spectacle.
And I was ready to give them what they wanted.
The emcee came over with a microphone.
"Kim In-ha, you're currently sitting in first place. Could we have a word on your mindset going into today's matches?"
A short answer. But the air in the hall tightened for a beat. This was not a seat reached by a lucky shot or two. They could feel it — that I was genuinely ready to take the place for good.
I finished the interview quickly and stepped off the photo wall. Gear check, final setup. Stabilizer end-weight. Release tension. Scope brightness and lens angle. All of it was perfect.
From here, it's a fight of focus.
Today's tournament was double-elimination. You could survive through the losers' bracket, but the ranking points would drop if you did. I had no interest in manufacturing variables. This was the stretch where skill stopped being everything. Mentality, stamina, luck, and the sensation of a single instant — you had to pour all of it in.
The PA came on.
We will now begin the second round of the compound national team selection trials. Participants, please take your assigned shooting lines.
I gathered my gear and walked toward the line. Before I stepped up, I felt a gaze off to one side of my vision.
Lee Chung-myung. The one who had looked at me with such discomfort in the hotel yesterday. He was watching me, quietly. An expressionless face. But the eyes were still sharp. Wariness. Discomfort. And the resolve to step on me and climb. The desperation for the Taeguk Mark was laid out in the open, with nothing held back.
I met his eyes for a moment, then turned away.
...Interesting.
A look like that might have weighed on me, once. I might have flinched, might have taken it personally. Not now. Combined first across days one and two. I was no longer the one doing the challenging.
I was the one being challenged.
The fact of it was a little funny. And, at the same time, I rather liked it.
Sincerity for sincerity.
The resolve of a man staking everything on the Taeguk Mark. I intended to meet that resolve head-on.
Because I was just as sincere.