jeon sua
25, unemployed from seoul, south korea
homestay
it will have been a week since sua arrived to jeju when sunyoung stops her in the hall. “y’know. you haven’t left the homestay all week. not to pry, or anything.” sua wants to shrug her off, it’s a calling out she doesn’t really need right now. much less appreciates.
“it’s cold out,” is all sua offers.
“well, there an ice rink that opens every wint–”
“i’m not really into that.” anymore.
“you sure?”
“positive.”
sua knows that sunyoung knows. it’s kind of hard not to, not to brag or anything. it’s simply the truth. sunyoung watches her, dark eyebrows pinch together. it’s a pitiful look, one sua doesn’t appreciate being on the receiving end of.
“i’m taking a sabbatical, of sorts.” sua relents, finally. it’s been weighing on her, the feeling of being here in secret.
“for how long, do you think?” sunyoung begins walking towards the back patio, so it’s only natural that sua follows. sua shrugs her shoulders as an answer, eyes drifting towards something that wasn’t sunyoung.
“i don’t know. things are kind of, y'know, up in the air.”
sunyoung nods, all-knowing and understanding. “if you’re looking for a place, something a little more permanent, someone in the city that i know is renting out a studio.” there’s a pause between them, noises of the early morning outdoors filling the silence. “if you want.”
“i do, i want. i want to, that would be great.”
bio
skating is as natural as breathing, perhaps not as easy but just as innate.
it starts simply, a family vacation at some ski resort in france. her father and brother go skiing, naturally, leaving sua and her mother to their own devices. her mother is still riding a six-year-old miss korea runner-up high, so, no, she can’t risk any blades near the face but she’ll be watching sua from the bleachers. sua doesn’t think much of it, she tumbles and spins, and eventually joins a blond, nordic family as they trail behind their youngest two just to stave off the loneliness.
skating becomes an escape, to some extent. before her mother takes over.
when they return to korea, it is all she can think about. it occupies her thoughts at any moment of the day. she asks, begs, and pleads to be allowed on the rink at any free moment she has. it is her mother that decides that maybe it is time that sua begins officially taking classes. no point in allowing this to continue if it’s not going to amount to anything. she becomes the best because there is no way around it because that’s simply the way things are supposed to be. her mother becomes overbearing, obsessive. but sua has no room to complain when she’s equally such.
there’s a freak accident that happens months prior to her anticipated olympic debut. some spin or another, one that had become so ingrained she was practically running on muscle memory. they tell her it’s her acl, because of course it is. she will need to take a couple of months off after surgery to let it heal fully. she looks to her mother, wid-eyed and lost, suddenly feeling four-years-old all over again. there’s a heavy hand on her shoulder, a weight that should be comforting that instead burns through her clothes. “we have plans, still, sua. don’t forget that.”
so, sua makes her debut. as planned. she ignores the pain and heat in her knee, completely forgets about it once she has silver in her hand. her mother smiles, tight-lipped, and pulls her close. “gold would have been better, sua.”
but the pain never really goes away, instead, it serves as a constant reminder that gold would have been better. and whenever it flares up, perhaps she should do something other than simply train harder. but that’s easier said than done.
then there’s another freak accident. had sua thought about it any harder, she might have begun to believe the universe was trying to tell her something. though it’s not really a freak accident, she knows that well enough, but it’s easier to say that than to admit that it was only a matter of time before her knee finally gave out. the verdict is final. “it pains me to say, i was actually a fan…” sua kind of lets it go through one ear and out the other, her mother hangs on to the doctor’s every word. “she’ll recover, but she won’t have the same range of motion she once had. it’s likely that it’ll be very difficult for it to support her full weight.”
sua mourns the death of her career later, in private, away from the prying eyes of her mother.
she leaves on a monday morning, it’s just past seven a.m. jeju was beautiful in the summer, but now, in the midst of a janurary winter, it feels unusually bleak. she’d made sure to let her father and brother know, just in case. also made it a point to beg them not to let her mother know. her brother holds her close in the airport, cheek pressed to the top of her head. “i wish i could have done more for you.” sua knows, deep down, that no one really could have done anything.
“i wish i could have done more for me, too.”