She had started gymnastics far later than most, came from an orphanage, was poor, and had entered through a special social consideration admission—yet even with all those handicaps, she was brought in with the full backing of the Jiseul High coach.

One couldn’t believe she had only started around the time she finished elementary school. Han Seoryeong’s gymnastics had something different about it. Her performance was like fire to Joo Dae-eun’s water—starkly opposite to the elite textbook form that Dae-eun embodied.

Seoryeong wasn’t cheerful like Joo Dae-eun, nor was she friendly. But once she started moving, she had a strange magnetism that pulled everyone's gaze.

However, her routines were often rough, leading to frequent deductions. She always did what she wasn’t supposed to. She didn’t hesitate with dangerous moves either.

So while Joo Dae-eun swept medals at competitions, Han Seoryeong always exited the mat with point deductions. Not once, during her time in the gymnastics ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) club, did she win a prize.

Even so, Joo Dae-eun gradually began to sideline her in subtle ways.

She couldn’t have missed it—that the moment this emotionless young athlete began dusting her hands with chalk, the entire gym would fall silent.

And then, one night—

In the dead of night, Joo Dae-eun’s leg was completely shattered in the gymnasium, and Han Seoryeong walked out of that place perfectly unharmed.

The woman swallowed dryly before speaking. It had been ten years, but even so...

“Seoryeong... You’re the one who made Joo Dae-eun break her leg.”

“......”

“I-I actually saw it that time. When you did that... the Korbut flip.”

Named after the French word for raven feather, it was a banned gymnastics skill since 1972.

“The coach specifically said never to do that—said you’d destroy your ankles and legs if it went wrong. He warned again and again he wouldn’t be responsible if someone smashed their bones doing it.”

The Korbut flip was a backward-moving skill performed on the uneven bars. It had earned its name from the way a raven hovers and balances in the air.

Using only the elasticity of one’s body, the gymnast had to launch from the low bar to the high bar—sometimes even backward in flight.

But the International Gymnastics Federation had banned it, deeming it too dangerous.

“But you... after you nailed that move, you provoked Joo Dae-eun.”

It was a memory like a nightmare.

A mere seventeen-year-old had flawlessly pulled off a long-abandoned skill—and on top of that, the sight of someone’s leg twisted completely from knee to ankle was nothing short of horrific.

In the end, Joo Dae-eun screamed and passed out from the pain.

But did Han Seoryeong really not know what she was doing when she provoked her?

“...Ah. So the little rat hiding in the dark back then was you, sunbae.”

Her cool, steady gaze turned toward the coach, and the woman froze up, her words faltering.

“No, I-I just...”

“How amusing.”

“...!”

“So this is why people go to reunions. To exchange stories this fun.”

That’s... that feels like a completely different thing, though... The coach awkwardly averted her eyes.

At that moment, Seoryeong was watching the girls training, her gaze empty.

“I hated gymnastics.”

“What?”

“The floor was too narrow, the bars too thin, the horizontal bar too low...”

“...!”

“It felt suffocating.”

Looking down at her arm in a cast, Seoryeong slipped off the shoulder brace.

“So I did it. Even after the coach said he wouldn’t take responsibility.”

“......”

“Is something being dangerous really a good enough reason not to do it? I still think that line’s ridiculous. How else can you know what your body can withstand?”

“......”

“So you have to try.”

This dangerous streak in Han Seoryeong was what kept her from ever becoming a true athlete.

Gymnastics was the foundation, the root of all sports. The sport emphasized power and flexibility—but Han Seoryeong had always remained a reckless technician.

That was the fundamental difference between her and Joo Dae-eun.

Like a knot that had been tied wrong from the start.

“If that girl copied me, that’s not my fault.”

“But... you did it right in front of Joo Dae-eun—”

The coach suddenly bit her lip, unsure why she was even defending Joo Dae-eun.

After the incident, Dae-eun quit gymnastics. Seoryeong, just for being present at the scene, was arbitrarily branded the perpetrator and expelled.

Yet no one ever spoke of the fact that Han Seoryeong had performed a successful Korbut flip that day.

That strange, dreamlike moment was buried and forgotten.

“You should’ve just said something. That it was Joo Dae-eun who harassed you first. Or if you’d at least explained what happened in the gym that night—you wouldn’t have been expelled. If that hadn’t happened, you could’ve won medals by now.”

“Did you really want that, sunbae?”

“What?”

“Then why didn’t you say anything? You were hiding, watching the whole thing.”

“...!”

At that, the woman turned pale. Her trembling gaze looked almost pitiful.

But whether it was fear, guilt, or insecurity—Seoryeong didn’t seem to care in the slightest. She turned her head as if bored.

“Back then, I thought it might actually be fun to get kicked out of the gym. But I was just a kid. No parents, no money—and then even the last thread I had snapped. Once I was out in the world...”

She simply watched the girls training with a detached air.

“So that’s how it was. Sunbae, I’ve lived a very boring life.”

Always beside pain and dying people. Quiet like a bystander.

Now a woman, ten years later, she had become far calmer and more composed than she’d been in her youth. Yet that deep, hollow air about her remained the same.

“Until just recently.”

The coach couldn’t look away from her profile. As if trying to wash away her shame, she asked brightly:

“I-is that so? Then do you have something you like now?”

Seoryeong’s lips lifted ever so slightly. Even that tiny change added color to a face that had seemed blank like paper.

“I did. Something I loved more than anything in the world.”

“......”

“The only thing I ever had to call mine.”

But the faint smile disappeared in a blink. Her expression dried out, leaving behind nothing.

The coach fidgeted, growing anxious, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“...Do you want to try the horizontal bar again, just for old times’ sake?”

At that, laughter burst from right in front of her. A clear, unexpected laugh.

Seoryeong made no attempt to hide her lifted lips as she raised her casted arm.

The coach looked disappointed, but nodded reluctantly.

Then—Seoryeong’s face froze.

She stared at the blue mat as if struck in the head, her gaze unyielding, almost obsessive.

In those eyes burned a strange thrill.

“W-what is it?”

The coach, a little unnerved, asked.

But Seoryeong simply stretched, like a burden had been lifted. Her face looked refreshed—like she’d finally solved a riddle.

“Can I get on the mat for a second?”

“Of course...!”

At the coach’s permission, she instantly removed her shoes and socks. Then she walked forward without a hint of hesitation—like she was walking into the sea.

The feeling of the blue mat beneath her bare feet felt as comforting as coming home.

In that moment, Seoryeong understood why she had swum upstream like a salmon to get back here.

Maybe... what she needed was a new stage to stand on.

Was that why her heart had pounded like that?

It had been a brief season in her life—but this place had been her field of survival.

Clumsy, foolish, and all the more fierce and wild because of it—those days suddenly—

Overlapped with Thailand.

“――.”

Yeah... there was a time I threw myself at something with everything I had.

Seoryeong stayed on the mat for quite a while.

But even as she stood there again, the image that came to mind wasn’t applause or cheers.

Bang—! Bang—! Bang-bang—!

Gunshots that rang in her ears like a drumbeat.

The moment one man fell, blood-soaked.

Not the rehearsed movements performed on a stage.

Not holding herself on a bar, not tumbling across a floor, not balancing on a beam.

She wanted to see the chaos—the collapse, the rupture, the destruction—once more.

Maybe Director Jeong had been right.

Now, the place she had to go was an entirely different mat.

***

In the time it took her body to recover, two months had flown by.

As the final month of the year arrived, Seoryeong bought a cheap bottle of wine at the convenience store and drank it alone.

She was back at square one.

After visiting her old school, she’d realized something:

You have to grab the bar yourself.

Once you're on the mat, no one else will jump or tumble for you.

Gymnastics was a solo sport. You had to fill the stage with your own strength alone.

Had I been trying to rely on someone else’s hand?

Maybe unconsciously, she had. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

A dangerous skill, a person with no conscience. A personality full of resentment and complaints.

That was me, wasn’t it...?

So she was back at square one.

No—

It was the true starting point.