Chapter Text

Moscow, March 2000

Debt:
Check Total with Mom

Yu Rim knows: Everything in life has a cost.

She has known this for a long time. Looking down at the documents from her Moscow bank that she’d xeroxed, however, that knowledge has just reached a whole new level.

It’s a list of fees and commissions for individual customers of her bank, at her account level - apparently she earns enough to have been offered an account type that is more special than basic accounts. She only has one list in her hands but it still manages to be five pages long.

Two of her dictionaries - Russian to Korean and Russian to English - already have permanently bent covers by now. Her third one, English to Korean, isn’t bent yet given that she uses it less, but it might well end up that way by the end of today. 

Dictionaries to the side on the desk, Yu Rim scribbles translations onto the xeroxed pages directly. She has to check every section header one by one, even though she doesn’t actually need most everything in here, at least until she finds the one she needs. 

There. Finally. Near the start of page 3, under the table “Transfers[15]”:             

Okay. The employee at the bank had explained this to her: every time Yu Rim sends money to another country, she has to pay some extra amount that depends on how much money she is sending. This section tells her how much that extra amount is going to be.

(That bank employee was the first person to explain anything to her patiently since Yu Rim got here. She didn’t even make a face when she learned that not only did Yu Rim not speak Russian, but also needed to speak in English. Neither of their Englishes were perfect, and Yu Rim had to make precious use of her dictionaries at a certain point, but she’d sat with Yu Rim and explained, slowly, how this all even worked.)

(Yu Rim gave her her most heartfelt thank you in Russian - ogromnoe spasibo, even making sure not to mispronounce the start as a full “o” and instead going for something halfway to an “a” - and then even tacked on a have a nice day before leaving - khoroshego dnya, trying not to trip over the mute “d” like always.)

(For once Yu Rim hadn’t walked out of an important place with tears of frustration brimming in her eyes.)

But then, at the end of page 4, item [15] says that “foreign exchange margin is charged on the daily exchange rate”. It doesn’t say how much this something-charge is supposed to be, even though Yu Rim had been told this is where she’d find all costs.

The e-mail she had printed earlier that she has in front of her also says that in order to receive money from a foreign bank in her family’s bank in Korea, the recipient (so, her parents) will be charged: “the current TT buying rate + 0.125% margin rate + interest 10%”. Whatever that means. 

Yu Rim doesn’t want to ask any of this to her parents - and will not - lest they find out how much money she will apparently be bleeding every time she sends money home.

Her head hurts. For a moment she’s sure that if only she’d known that this is what life is like as an adult, she wouldn’t have become an athlete and instead would have actually tried to study in school.

Then again, if Yu Rim hadn’t become an athlete then she probably wouldn’t be here at all. Despite the insistent pounding by her temples, that still would’ve been the worst of the outcomes.

And then: 

Not only does everything in life have a cost, everything in life takes time.

In this case, Yu Rim was informed that because her transfers would be to Респу́блика Коре́я (Korea Republic - she has at least memorized what the Korea part looks like), the processing time would be on the upper side of the range: 2 to 5 business days.

“Business” days. That means “working hours” - normal people working hours. As Yu Rim has unfortunately found out, those only count up until like, four or five in the afternoon, and no weekends. 

No matter how hard Yu Rim tries to remember otherwise, she is pretty sure the only time the snack shop had ever closed back home, consistently, was for Chuseok. Weekends? Business hours? Her hours as an athlete have always been, at minimum, from 6AM to 6PM. Even if she ended up getting home closer to 11PM, she can’t remember a time where there would not have been a single shop opened to get something to eat.

(Two weeks ago she had tried to get groceries on what turned out to be the day before a weekend holiday. Holidays are double special not-business days apparently, and the grocery stores around here close on normal “working hours” the day before. Yu Rim had of course only discovered this when she drew up to closed shop doors at 8PM and had to try to translate the paper sign taped to them with her dictionary.)

(She had to make do with whatever she still had in the fridge for almost three days after that. At one point she’d just thrown the rest of a bunch of ham she had into a pan with some eggs and the rest of her vegetables. It actually didn’t turn out that bad. She also finally finished all the jello she’d bought too much of because she didn’t know how much each pack actually made.)

This month Yu Rim will get her salary by the end of Monday, because that's the last day of the month. Which means, if she does the transfer here on Tuesday, the money will probably only get to her parents on the next Tuesday - no, actually, maybe on Wednesday because of the time difference…

This world is truly something. How can saying five days mean both five and eight days at the same time?

“It’s the world you’re part of now,” Yi Jin-oppa says on the line.

“I’m not a part of anything,” Yu Rim says in frustration. “I didn’t sign up for any of this.”

Yi Jin gives a dry laugh.  “Yeah well, neither did everyone else, Yu Rim-ah.”

He’s right, of course. Her parents certainly never signed up to be taken advantage of, never signed up to have no support and struggle for their entire lives. 

She wonders what they were like when they were young. Did they think life would turn out the way it did? Did it catch them by surprise?

“Oppa… How did you do it?”

She doesn't need to elaborate. He’d never asked for what happened to his family either. He sighs and there is some rustling on the line before he answers.

“I just… did. You just do it, because you have to, because there isn't any other option. You do what you have to do. You know that.”

She does. She knows that very well.

━━━━━

Total Debt: 647.128.250,30 ₩
650 648.000.000 ₩ KRW
450.000 U$D
421.000 EUR? (1 EUR = 36 RUB)
15.156.000 ₽ RUB
︳
︳ Salary: 162.000 RUB
︳ × 12 = 1.944.000 RUB ⇨ year
↳15156000 ÷ ↳1944000 
= 7,96 8 years

━━━━━

“The numbers look OK,” Seung Wan’s e-mail reads. “But what about your bills? And don't you have to pay taxes?”

Yu Rim bursts into angry tears and picks her notebook and pencil back up.

━━━━━

First deposit I got: 486.000 RUB
Amount I left home: 324.000 RUB

Debt: 14.832.000 RUB

Take home pay: 140.940 RUB ?
Send: 140.940 ÷ 4 = 35.235 × 3 = 105.705 RUB per month***
× 12 = 1.268.460 RUB per year
   = 11,69 12 years ????

****How much does Dad actually get after I send???

━━━━━

“Yu Rim-ah, you forgot to take off the transfer fee,” Seung Wan sends this time. “Look, since you don’t know yet how much your parents will receive, why don’t you write down how much money you’ve spent at the end of the month for now, and then for this month just do the transfer like this. Then ask your mom how much they received from the transfer - tell her you want to double check that everything went OK. I know you want to plan it all out already, but in order to do that you’ll need more data. There’s still the bonuses you get as well, right? Hee Do says you guys get paid when you get medals.”

Seung Wan is right like always, of course. That’s why she’s the only person Yu Rim has told any specific numbers to despite how humiliating it is that she has to. She also trusts her not to say anything to anyone else.

The sheer amount of money involved still almost sounds fake when Yu Rim thinks about the numbers.

It doesn’t matter. Yu Rim had come here to fix all of this, and she will. No matter how much her eyes burn. She makes a note in her calendar to go to the bank first thing Tuesday morning.

Then she remembers the bank only opens at 9AM, which is right about the time when she would be halfway through her daily target practice at the Training Center.

━━━━━

Debt: 14.832.000 RUB 14.736.195

Yu Rim has got to learn to speak Russian. 

She’s always known this. It’s just never been clearer than when she notices her interpreter’s expression when trying to translate coach Yushkov’s latest rapid fire admonishments. He’s been having less and less patience to wait for her to translate things for Yu Rim, jumping straight to English if it’s a quick correction, and hurriedly ranting in Russian if it’s not.

It’s not like he’s the only one. The rest of the technical team is clearly not any more thrilled at Yu Rim’s constant ghost companion at the training compound, and her interpreter in turn has started to leave right before they start practice bouts in the early afternoons. It doesn’t truly impact Yu Rim - there’s no language she knows better than fencing itself - but she notices the relief on the woman’s face every time she grabs her bag to leave.

As for the team… Well.

They’d been cordial enough since she got here, but Yu Rim notices their increasingly annoyed expressions whenever she arrives for practice and they have to switch from Russian to English mid-conversation. She’s started being the first to arrive just so she doesn’t have to see that every morning. It’s better that way anyway; Yu Rim gets her morning cardio done early and can get straight to footwork once she gets to the gym, which means she’s usually the first to get individual coaching.

If Yu Rim includes herself, there’s six of them in total for female sabre. Not a big roster.

Yelena is the one with the kindest smiles, maybe because she’s their youngest at just seventeen. She seems to always be orbiting around Yu Rim in that way that fencers that look up to her usually do, only she does it less intrusively. Yu Rim doesn’t mind - she’ll take it as an exchange. She gives the shy blonde posture tips every now and then, and Yelena looks at her without resentment in her eyes. 

It’s a lot better than what Yu Rim gets with the others.

Lashyn is the one Yu Rim had thought would maybe be easiest for her to get closer to. She was probably stupid for thinking that just because they look the most alike to each other, sharing some Asian traits amid all of the others. Sure, she knows that now. 

(When Yu Rim had looked Lashyn’s profile up, not remembering her by name or face, her profile said she’s from Siberia.)

(When Yu Rim looked that up, she was faced with just how big Russia actually is. Just to get to Siberia from Moscow it would take her a 6 hours flight, and she still would have never left Russia’s borders.)

So those are the two extremes for Yu Rim in the team: Yelena, always quick to translate everyday things for Yu Rim and tell her good morning, and Lashyn, always quick to lash out if Yu Rim breathes her way. 

It’s nothing Yu Rim can’t handle. The seniors when she first became a national athlete back home would have her knuckles bleeding from tending to equipment or threatening to slap her long before any annoyed retort could make her lose her composure here, nevermind lose her bouts - she doesn’t lose those at all. 

Most of the girls here are not at her or Hee Do’s level, even though they’re very good. It makes sense why Russia was willing to scout and pay so much to build up their sabre team.

One of the girls, the redhead called Darya, Yu Rim thinks would probably win in competition against a couple of the other Korean fencers back home. Another girl, Anna, wastes her talent by being too quick to lose her temper whenever she starts to lose. She’d once exploded and kicked her helmet so hard across the gym after a loss that the noise had hurt Yu Rim’s eardrums.

(Yu Rim doesn’t know if or how Anna was punished for that. It’d been after a loss against their oldest fencer, Olga, who’d switched from a career in foil to sabre once sabre became an Olympic sport. If that had happened back home, Anna would’ve been lucky to be caught by a coach instead of by the most senior fencer.)

(Anna wasn’t in practice for the next three days, and when she came back she didn’t seem any less angry - quite the opposite. Her attacks have been much more aggressive since, but as long as she scores she doesn’t get admonished for hitting too hard. Yu Rim has one bottle of arnica gel in each of her bags for bruises.)

Sometimes when Yu Rim is training by herself at night, her target practice hits will echo through the empty gym, almost sounding like someone else is training with her. It makes her chest hurt deeper than any overly aggressive hit of a sabre could.

It makes her miss late night training with Hee Do.

She doesn’t need to be reminded that having Hee Do by her side had been the best time of Yu Rim’s career.

Sure, Yu Rim is the first female Olympic gold medalist in the history of sabre fencing. She’d won that, at seventeen, for Korea. That’s obviously still the climax of her career for now, and it’s that title that will follow Yu Rim for life - even if she never gets another medal like that again, even if she were to retire right now.

But the best time of her career has been all the times Hee Do had matched her stroke for stroke, point for point, be it at the NTC, Tae Yang, or the competition floor. All of them. Regardless of whether Yu Rim lost or won, as long as they were both invested, and as long as Hee Do grinned at her afterwards the way she always did, all of them were the most fun Yu Rim’s ever had with fencing. 

Fun isn’t the reason Yu Rim fences though.

She doesn’t fence to be happy. She cares about fencing, obviously, and she still remembers her passion for it, but… 

Hee Do’s joy with it inspired something different altogether.

That night, when Yu Rim is done pressing post-its with the Russian name, transliteration, and Korean name of every object she uses on the daily to them, she clutches her phone to her hand.

Every minute of every call she makes to Korea costs her 15,66 roubles. Plus her monthly international maintenance rate fee. Her nail catches on the edge of the sticker on the back of her phone. 

There’s no reason for her to get emotional right now. Absolutely no reason for tears to be welling up in her eyes.

She looks at the pictures she’d taped to her wall by her computer desk. She can’t make any holes on the walls to put up portraits, so masking tape was her solution.

A picture with Ji Woong is by her computer, and on the wall directly to her side she has the picture of all of them at the beach. Next to it, Hee Do grins at her with the sea behind her. Ji Woong had given Yu Rim this picture after having apparently forgotten to add it to the ones he’d given the group.

She’s glad she’s kept it. Of course she kept it.

Hee Do had a small bruise on her arm that day, nothing much: it shows clearly on the picture as she poses with arms wide open. There was another bruise though, uglier, big and angry red and purple, hidden by her shirt on the left side of her torso. It had been Yu Rim’s fault during a bout two days earlier, but when Yu Rim had frowned when Hee Do was rubbing cream onto it that night before bed, Hee Do just laughed at her. 

“You’ll make it up to me,” Hee Do had said confidently with a silly grin.

But has she?

━━━━━

She remembers she hasn’t talked to Ji Woong in over a week when she’s in line at the pharmacy to buy more bandaging tape.

“Damn it,” she hisses to herself in annoyance. She only realizes she’d done so, in Korean, when the old man in front of her turns around to look at her suspiciously. “Izvinite menya,” Yu Rim excuses herself with an awkward smile, figuring it’s best to apologize promptly and just about stopping herself from bowing. 

He frowns but nods after a second and turns back around once he’s done looking her up and down. She's used to that.

Yu Rim’s never known what exactly she’s supposed to do as a girlfriend. 

It was easier back in Seoul - they could spend time together, obviously, and Ji Woong didn’t mind taking the lead. It was simpler if he did, and he usually tried to have them do things that they would both enjoy every so often, which was nice even if he sometimes misread a comment of hers as way more meaningful than it was meant to be.

(She still doesn’t quite know what had made him think that she wanted to learn how to blow glass. The ahjussi who taught them had seemed just as bewildered to see her there, and Ji Woong had nervously sweated his way through the entire lesson. His hands were shaking so much whenever he had to take the molten glass out that Yu Rim had had to hold the heavy rod for him every time.)

(Hee Do had laughed so hard at the droopy glass turtle on Yu Rim’s desk a couple days later that she’d fallen straight off of Yu Rim’s computer chair, gasping for breath and crying through laughter even after hitting the floor.)

She struggles to e-mail him once she’s done eating the re-heated leftovers from her last dinner. She doesn’t know what to say.

Her days are spent training - both fencing and Russian - and invariably being forced to do math. She still doesn’t understand why she needs to pay for everything with cash. She has to figure out where to spend all the coins of change that keep piling up where she leaves them on the small table by the entrance of the apartment.

She figures she should start off with an apology. That much a girlfriend should do, she knows that. And she shouldn’t lie. Her fingers hover over the keyboard as she stares at the picture of them at the beach. It feels like a lifetime ago.

The words “I miss you” disappear one after the other as she taps the backspace key.

━━━━━

“You can stop calling me out of guilt, you know?” Yu Rim says into her phone as she checks the time. He should still be at work right now. “I told you not to apologize to me.”

“That’s not why I call you,” Yi Jin-oppa says. Yu Rim rolls her eyes - sure it’s not. Hee Do’s stubbornness is rubbing off on him. “You know Yi Hyun misses you? He asked me to tell you.”

Yu Rim smiles at once. “Aw,” she coos. She’d taken Yi Hyun with her to practice more than once back when they were younger and Yi Jin wanted some privacy to go off and date. Hyun would always be good, and would clap excitedly any time she scored during a bout. As far as she’s concerned, Hyun has always been the cutest of the two brothers. “Is Hyunie doing well?”

Oppa laughs. “You’re probably the only one he’d still let call him that. He’s a whole teenager now.” He makes his voice rougher. “’Hyung, I’m not a kid anymore. Stop treating me like one!’ That’s all I hear now.”

“Well, do you?” Yu Rim asks, waiting for her inbox to load. “Treat him like a kid?”

“He is one,” he says. “But I’m trying.”

(It reminds her. There’s been a time before she ever became a national athlete - before the possibility was ever even a shadow of a thought in anyone’s minds. He was there for it.)

(Their summers back then involved a lot of sitting in front of the snack shop, popsicles dripping down their hands. Hyunie would swing his feet beside her and Oppa would stand around. Her biggest annoyance back then was how lame Yi Jin-oppa looked whenever girls would walk by and he attempted his latest cool teenager pose. As if his fingers weren't sticky from popsicles too. He wasn't even a teenager yet anyway, but he used to get upset whenever she said it.)

(Nothing will ever feel as simple as those days. It’s not sad, it’s just the truth.)

“How are you?” Oppa asks then. 

She really wishes he’d stop asking her that. 

“Is your job really fine with you using your work phone for these calls?” she asks. No matter how much Yi Jin might be able to justify a few international calls here and there, she has a pretty good idea of what his bills probably look like at the end of the month.

“You don’t have to worry about that.” He somehow manages to sound both amused and sad. “I have to go. Take care, yeah? I think Hee Do would have an aneurysm if you get injured again.“

Yu Rim sighs. “That’s just a rumour someone started in the fencing forums. Bye, Oppa. Give Hee--Hyunie a hug.”

Hee Do had hugged her so tight at the airport. Yu Rim has to give her her hug herself. 

━━━━━

Debt: 14.832.000 RUB 14.736.195 14.640.390

Ji Woong really is too nice. And she is going to hurt him. He seems to know it as well as she does, because she is still trying to get the words out when he speaks: 

“You're not even going to wait to do it to my face?” he asks her over the phone. 

She's using one of the few calls she makes a month with him instead of her parents. Each minute is just too expensive to do much more than that, and her mother has always told her you have to be honest with the person you’re with.

So here she is.

“Ji Woong-ah…” Doing it to his face would be even worse than doing it over e-mail. Making him come all the way to Russia for that? “It's too much money,” she says quietly.

“Too much money for me to spend on dating you, or too much money for me to spend on you breaking up with me?”

He is trying to sound tough.

“Both,” Yu Rim admits, chest feeling tight.

He cries on the phone then, and Yu Rim sits there and listens quietly with tear brimmed eyes, because at least that she owes him.

“I don’t care about money,” he says, clearly trying to get himself back together. “We’re not doing this over the phone.”

Yu Rim presses her eyes shut. She’d expected this.

“You can’t decide this like this. And I already have my hotel booked,” he adds. “We’ll talk about this when I’m there.”

“Please don’t make me do that to you,” Yu Rim asks, voice hinging on desperate. The numbers echo in her mind. He has no idea how much they build up.

“I’m not the one making you do anything,” he says. It’s the first time she’s heard him sound angry like this at her. No one could blame him - Yu Rim doesn’t. “If you want to make this decision, then you need to face everything. Face me.”

She can’t force him to do what she wants, of course. That much he has in common with Hee Do. It would be easier if she could, but it definitely wouldn't be fair. 

Not that any of this is fair as it is.

“Yu Rim, listen to me,” Ji Woong calls. “Don't feel guilty. If you actually give me a chance, if you just let me go once to see, there's nothing to feel guilty about. But we have to actually try.”

Yu Rim has tried. So hard. She can't manage to push the words out: she's tired of just trying. She can't deal with another thing she's always trying at. “I don't want to give you hope,” she tells him instead. She can’t give him much else, either. “If you come…”

“Give me hope? Well, no worries then because you’ve just done the opposite.”

She hates the sarcasm, and for a hot second her temper flares up and she's tempted to hang up on him. But they wouldn't be here if she had been stronger before leaving, so out of the two of them he probably gets the right to be snippy. 

“I'm sorry,” Yu Rim says instead once the moment of anger eases.

“I’ll see you soon,” he replies, softer now. “No matter what, I still just want to see you.”

━━━━━

Yu Rim-ah,
It’s so damn hot in Seoul right now!!!!! ㅇㅈㄴ
Is Russia cold??? Would you take me in??
I’M GOING TO MELT SAVE ME ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

Yu Rim can’t help laughing. She can hear Hee Do’s desperate pleas in her head just from reading her e-mail.

Tragically however, Moscow’s weather isn’t actually that different from Seoul’s most of the time.

Hee Do-yah,
It’s actually super hot here right now too ㅎㅎ I have the fan turned on all day because if I leave the windows open a bunch of flies get in…
Maybe try Siberia? I heard it’s supposed to be cold.
Stop by the shop though, Omma always stocks up on Melona for summer. It’s on me ^ ^

━━━━━

The doorbell rings.

Her stomach twists itself in knots, and when she opens the door there he is.

“Moon Ji Woong in the flesh,” Yu Rim says. She blinks rapidly to try to keep her eyes from watering too much, and when she smiles, he offers her flowers.

He’s there, handsome and smiling at her, having flown all the way here just for her, and all she feels in her gut is guilt.

“It felt like the world was ending every day I didn't get to see you,” he tells her in his boyish charming way, just like back home - except transplanted into the hallway of an old Soviet apartment building.

She lets him in, and he looks at her with clearly conflicting emotions in his eyes. She can relate.

When he hugs her, wrapping his arms securely around her and sighing, he smells and feels so familiar. It's comforting. It's the first time Yu Rim hugs anyone in months.

“It's okay,” he hushes when she bursts into tears against his shoulder at the realization. “It’ll be okay, Yu Rim-ah.”

━━━━━

Both their eyes are rimmed red and puffy by the time they step out of her apartment to do some touristing. Ji Woong holds her hand as she takes them towards the city center.

“So this is what your neighbourhood is like,” he comments, looking around curiously.

He looks extremely out of place. His clothes are bright and colorful, stylish in their cut, standing out among most everyone around with their muted tones and everyday clothes.

The streets closest to her apartment are mostly empty at this time of day, and they only pass a few elderly people who look at them with open curiosity. Once they make it closer to the main streets however, the bust of activity around them increases.

Ji Woong stands tall amid most people when they get on the bus, and Yu Rim catches more than one girl looking at him with badly disguised interest. He definitely notices too, but doesn't react in any way other than squeezing Yu Rim’s hand and smiling down at her like he thinks it's hilarious.

It is pretty amusing when a group of young girls clearly whispering back and forth about him ends up catching Yu Rim’s eyes. They startle and hurry off to the back of the bus as if Yu Rim was about to scold them.

Yu Rim chuckles at the notion. “You seem to be popular everywhere, Moon Ji Woong.”

It feels weird to speak in Korean out in the city like this.

He gives her a look and fixes his hair with a flick of his fingers. “That's what these looks do, Go Yu Rim. Don't you forget it.”

When Yu Rim laughs, his fake-serious expression breaks into a boyish grin. She hopes to at least have him enjoy his days here. She doesn't deserve to feel as light as she does because of his familiar presence here, but she does regardless.

Once they reach the Red Square, it’s easy to take him around to a few of the tourist sights nearby.

His open curiosity and befuddlement at how different things are from home is kind of amusing - Yu Rim had felt like that on her first week or two as well. Everything, from the sidewalks to the cars to the streetlights, people’s faces and haircuts, the color of the buildings… everything is different. 

Some of it - maybe most of it, compared to him - she’s gotten used to. But as Yu Rim looks over at the Moscow Kremlin from across the river, she’s hit again by how weird it is to be all the way here.

She’d never seen anything like this in all her time back home, that’s for sure. This river that crosses the city isn’t the Han in Seoul, but every other Sunday Yu Rim runs alongside its banks as easily as if it was. 

She’d never expected to be living halfway across the world by herself, getting called Julia more than she gets called Yu Rim, and knowing that the bread from the convenience store at the corner near the Training Center is better than the ones from any of the big bakeries around here.

She can allow herself a moment of being proud. The only reason she’s here is because of her hard work after all. How many other people can say they’ve done something like this? How many would ever even have the chance to try?

When she looks back at Ji Woong next to her, he’s looking down at her with open admiration and sadness.

“What?” Yu Rim asks, a bit rattled by the look.

He shakes his head and looks back across the river. “Sometimes I feel like you can do anything,” he says.

She’s not sure if he means it in a good or bad way.

She pays for both of their food when they sit at a restaurant and notices afterwards that he doesn’t take her hand again.

━━━━━

“I thought I could do this,” Ji Woong comments that night as they walk back from the bus stop to her apartment.

His hands are shoved in his pockets now. Yu Rim runs a nail over her thumb nervously.

“Maybe when she sees me, I thought,” he says, not looking at her at all and staring straight ahead. “Maybe she’ll see how much she still means to me. Maybe she'll realize she still wants me.”

This is exactly what Yu Rim didn't want to let happen. She presses her lips together. 

She lets it happen.

“I thought if I visited you enough, maybe you wouldn't forget.” His voice is choked up now, and Yu Rim’s lips tremble. “I still feel the same way I did before- no, even more than I did. But you really don't, do you?”

She can't cry. She's the one doing this to him. “I’m sorry,” is all she can manage to say.

There’s a panic rising in her chest. Ji Woong sniffles next to her and wipes at his nose with his sleeve but keeps walking beside her. He stops in his tracks when they’re by the entrance of her apartment building, and she stops too.

“Is there anything I could have done?” Ji Woong asks. “Anything I didn’t do?”

No is the word that rings clearly in Yu Rim’s mind as soon as he asks the first question. It feels heavy and stuck in her throat, nudged next to the panicked feeling choking her up now. She chews at her lip, desperately trying not to tear up further, and after a few moments of silence he lowers his head.

“Okay,” he says, voice wet. 

“I'm sorry,” Yu Rim manages to rasp out. She is, for so much.

“I'm not,” Ji Woong says, his voice still wet but clearly trying to recompose himself as he wipes at his face without looking at her. “My first love was Go Yu Rim, the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.” He takes a deep breath and looks back up with a tremulous smile. “Wow, my kids will be jealous of me one day when they see the pictures.”

Yu Rim chuckles wetly. “And I will get to tell mine that I dated Moon Ji Woong, the prettiest boy in school,” she says. “And the nicest.”

He sighs again, looking around them and up at the moon.

“Well, at least Hee Do will enjoy this and stop being jealous, so I guess one person's tragedy really is someone else’s…” He pauses. “How do they say it?”

There's a pang in Yu Rim’s chest.

What?

“Hee Do?” But she's- Hee Do is dating Yi Jin. And she- it's not like-

“I always had to fight her for your attention,” Ji Woong says, cutting through the whirlwind he’d just dropped on Yu Rim. “I guess I can stop now. I should. Ugh, I can't believe she wins. Can I say you broke up with me because you couldn't stand the thought of me being around other girls without you?”

“No,” Yu Rim says without really knowing what she's saying no to. “What- I, I’m sorry, Ji Woong.”

“I really wanted to show my mother that I could do it, you know,” he says, more seriously now. “That I could make it in something if I tried hard enough. She’s never left Korea her whole life, but I was going to go to Europe and make this work.”

Guilt rises in Yu Rim’s chest so hard it almost makes her nauseous. She should never have let this come this far. “You still can prove all of that, Ji Woong-ah. This isn’t… It’s not…” It’s not his fault. How could it be? 

“But not to you. I wanted to show you I could do it too.”

━━━━━

It’s a miserable two weeks after Ji Woong goes back home.

A lot of things go wrong:

First, the water goes out in her apartment for over three days. Fixing it involves a lot of back-and-forth calls with the person from the Federation responsible for subsidized athlete residences. 

Yu Rim couldn’t talk directly to whoever would fix her water because, one, she has no idea who that would even be or how to find out, and two, because she’s not allowed to, only the Federation is. And three, even if she could, her Russian is nowhere near good enough yet.

But she’s the one who has to run from the Training Center to the apartment during her lunch break, two days in a row, so that she can let in an older Russian man - who she can only assume is the guy they’d said would be there - to fix it. He gruffly says a lot of words at her in heavy Russian that she only almost sometimes understands while he opens his toolbox and checks the valves and pipes in her bathroom and kitchen.

It’s on the second day of her staring anxiously at the clock that he flicks on her shower and water finally comes out. He does seem a bit amused by her relief and overly enthusiastic thank yous and have a nice days before she locks the door behind both of them and runs off back to the Center.

It’s the worst possible time for her to need to leave during the day. Something has Coach Yushkov extremely stressed out lately, which makes him much more demanding. Yu Rim has no idea what’s caused it, and Yelena had just given her a clueless shrug at Yu Rim’s questioning look the third day it’d happened in a row. 

It doesn’t matter why he’s like that anyway, and it’s probably not any of Yu Rim’s business. But she’s felt from his expression every time he came in for coaching whether or not it would be a hard day, and she’s usually turned out to be right. 

She’s left relatively unscathed since she makes sure to be on her best behavior and technique, making sure not to cower, but that almost makes it worse when the others get the end of his wrath and she doesn’t. It makes every hour at the Center that bit more tense as they all brace for him to blow up when someone messes up, and Yu Rim braces for the looks when she doesn’t.

There is something else, though, worse than all of that. It makes it literally impossible for her to relax.

Something is up with her parents. She knows.

Usually when they have their calls, they’ll both talk to her. Dad is still not back to driving, so he’s actually home for an extended period of time, and it’s become a little ritual for them to pass the phone to the other after they each talk to Yu Rim a little bit.

But that’s not how it’s gone recently.

Instead, Yu Rim’s talked to each one of them individually in her last calls. According to Mom, Dad was “resting” during her call. According to Dad, Mom was at the restaurant during his. 

She knows they’re both lying. That’s the whole reason they have a scheduled time for these calls - so that they can all be there. Just as Yu Rim wouldn’t miss it for the world, neither of them would either unless something was wrong.

It weighs on her. They must have fought again. Over what? Over Yu Rim? Money again? The debt? Mom says there’s nothing new with the accident case, that the victim is recovering. If - and Yu Rim doesn't know how big that if is - Mom is telling her the truth, then it must be one of the other options.

Yu Rim calls after a grueling day of practice where they’d all been told to train their point work until nightfall, over and over, no breaks. 

(She’s pretty sure Olga had to do something with her kid that night, but whatever she’d said to Coach had not been enough. After what had sounded like a very heated phone call for Olga, they were all in there until way past the sun had gone down.)

(Their Second Coach, Stanislav, a quiet man with hair buzzed short who helps balance them out more than Yu Rim thinks people realize, eventually walked in to announce the end. He gave them each a sports drink and told them to do thirty minutes of footwork and go home.)

Yu Rim sits exhausted by the phone. It's still early enough in Korea, and she can't stand not doing it anymore.

They haven't scheduled this call, and it will probably cost her at least another 100 roubles. It doesn’t matter for once.

“Yu Rim-ah,” her mother says in surprise when she picks up. “Are you okay? Why are you calling suddenly?”

“Don’t fight,” Yu Rim says at once, and keeps talking before her mother can try to comfort her or try to make her believe nothing had happened. “I know, okay? I can tell. You don’t have to. Please, the two of you, just don’t worry.”

“Yu Rim-”

“The European championship is in a little over a month.” It’s a five thousand euros reward if - no, when she gets the gold on the individuals. That’s at least 150 000 roubles even after taxes. “The reward money is good. I’ll send more this time.”

Her mother starts crying.

“Mom…” Yu Rim closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her voice can’t shake. “It’s okay. I promise everything is fine. You both don’t have to worry, it’ll be okay. Is Dad there?”

“He just went out,” her mother says, tears in her voice, and this time Yu Rim believes her.

“Tell him when he gets back, okay?” Yu Rim hopes he’s been drinking less. She’ll try to find out later. “I chose this, mom.” She remembers the guilt in their eyes when she’d first told them, hates it. “I made this choice because I wanted to. If that’s what this is about, please don’t. I’ll fix this, and we’ll be okay.” 

Her mother cries more, and Yu Rim can’t do anything about it but listen and try to reassure her from afar. Her mother also tries to apologize, but Yu Rim won’t let her. None of this is her fault, none of it has ever been her fault. Her and Dad have both done much more for Yu Rim than Yu Rim has even started doing for them.

Once she hangs up, Yu Rim drops her head and lets it hit the kitchen table she’s sat at. Her ragged breaths hit the wood and heat up her face.

━━━━━

Debt: 14.832.000 RUB 14.832.000 14.736.195 14.640.390 14.544.585

The European Fencing Championship for 2000 is held in Belgium.

The Sheremetyevo airport looks the same as it did when Yu Rim first got to Moscow, of course. The sweets shop she stops at with a couple of the girls is the same type that they have three blocks from the Training Center, and she easily orders some plushki for herself to eat while they wait for their flight. She’s grown a bit fond of the heart-shaped pastries.

(Everything had been so unfamiliar that first time in this airport - so much so that it had been dizzying. She remembers clearly how it’d been the written Russian on every sign that made her realize not where she was, but where she would be from now on. The alphabet might as well have been fictional to her eyes back then. She can sound out words in her head now if she stops to read them, even if she doesn’t know what they mean once she does.)

(As soon as she’d stepped out of the arrivals gate, she’d been welcomed by a man in a business suit who held up a piece of paper with her name: Julia Ko. He’d introduced himself in heavily accented English as her driver, taking all of her bags then silently leading her to Coach Yushkov, who shook her hand with a smile as she approached.)

(At the time she had only ever seen Coach Yushkov on tapes of competitions that Coach Yang had helped her find - he used to be a great fencer. The more recent clips of him she’d found online showed a different man from the fiercely celebrating athlete he’d seemed to be: much, much more somber. She doesn't know if that's exactly who he is right now still.)

The competition lasts for five days, but they only compete on the first and fourth, so they have a free day before the male sabre team competition closes off the event and they hold the medaling ceremony. 

For once Yu Rim is actually thankful that the men are considered the bigger attraction - she could do with some alone time away from any piste and away from any Russian. Even if she just ends up sitting two blocks away from their hotel to drink coffee, which is the most she can come up with to do, it sounds perfect.

They’re split up by alphabetical order into triple hotel rooms: Anna, Darya and Julia in one; Lashyn, Olga and Yelena in another. 

Yu Rim isn’t sure if her rooming with Anna is better than rooming with Lashyn, who still seems to hate her guts but is much more stable. Yelena seems a bit dejected when they’re all checking in, but they all get back together for training soon after anyway.

This Championship, unlike most, doesn’t exempt the global Top 16 nor National Team members from participating in the direct elimination preliminaries. That means Yu Rim has to participate in everything from the start just like everyone else - even though she’s still ranked first globally, and even once she surely places high in the competition ranking after finishing the initial pools. 

It’ll be good practice. She has carefully added new approaches into her sword language under Coach Yushkov and Stanislav’s guidance. No matter how much she practices, it’s only during competition that they’ll get to see the results of it - good or bad.

For once there will actually be something new from what Yu Rim is used to: she’s never fenced against most of the people who will be present, unlike what it’d be like if she were to fence at the Asian Championship.

(Her and Hee Do had easily carried Korea through the team brackets at the last Asian Championship. Her solo gold medal against Hee Do’s solo silver was good and satisfying, but winning with her was better. Their medals, two around each of their necks, had clinked together when Hee Do had pulled her into a hug on the podium, shaking her happily from side to side.)

The actual important thing about this Championship is pinned to the notice boards at the venue:

Either they’d sent them the wrong list earlier or they have lowered the reward prize for the team medals.

It doesn't bother her too much. Her focus is on the individual podium.

She doesn’t need to do the math. That’s 180.000 roubles for a gold. Two months’ worth of debt - next month she would be able to send three times the usual amount home, plus a potential bonus from the Russian Federation.

She’s never competed in this Zone, and she doesn’t know a lot of these fencers beyond tape studies and technique analysis. First-hand experience is always the best - but she doesn’t need it.

Her own performance is the only thing ever under her control. It’s all she needs.

━━━━━

A surprise:

Yu Rim is the most spontaneous fencer around for once.

Whenever Hee Do is present at an event, she will invariably be the one with the most athletic style, the biggest lunges, the highest risk and highest reward decisions: unprecedentedly unpredictable. Next to her Yu Rim would be the one who’s mastered the classics, who makes use of precise synchronization and structured technique.

That traditional style is what she’d been originally taught. Coach Yang had further introduced her to it, and Coach Yushkov has helped her hone and enhance it. Clean, precise angles. Tighter synchronization still. He calls it staccato: over and over, staccato, clapping his hands shortly for the rhythm, timing her footwork.

Tradition is only one part of her arsenal though - and here in Europe, it’s the one they expect.

Hee Do never did seem to care about tradition. She cares about landing hits, not about looking the part.

The lower ranking fencers here, at least a quarter of them, aren’t at all experienced to fencing against Koreans - especially not Koreans since Hee Do’s rise in the ranks. They don't seem to be prepared for Yu Rim to be in any way like her.

Yu Rim remembers Hee Do’s old teasing prods at her during loose training bouts: ‘What, can’t reach me?’ while laughing. Then a silly shrug, smug. ‘Just lunge further then. Ooh, oop! Almost!’ 

These people are predictable in comparison. Yu Rim doesn’t even need to lunge that far.

Whether he considers it deviating from their plan or not, Coach Yushkov doesn’t say anything. Bout after bout, at each of her one minute breaks, he hands her her towel and her water, and lets her catch her breath. He only starts giving her notes on the other fencers when she’s close to making it to top 16. Pointed ones here and there: she’ll try to bait your attacks, and, watch for the riposte with this one.

Anna gets surprisingly eliminated in the pool of 64 - the very first. Yelena’s victories almost takes her past 32, but not quite - neither does Olga’s. Lashyn and Darya, however, both make it to top 16 after Juli-- after Yu Rim.

So now the organizers might have to rearrange the rankings to try and separate all the athletes of the same nationality so that they don't fence against themselves for as long as possible.

The top 16 ends up being three Russians, three French, three Hungarians, and four Italians - the remaining three are from individual countries: Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Switzerland.

Yu Rim already knows that there is no way to separate all of them perfectly before Stanislav tells the three of them that their rankings might get changed. She just eats her high energy bars and waits.

Yu Rim’s ranking doesn’t end up getting touched. She’s still rank 1. Darya is at rank 15, and they don’t touch hers either.

Lashyn, however, gets pushed from 9 to 10 - presumably to separate the Italian fencers from each other’s brackets and to keep her from ending up in Yu Rim’s bracket too soon if she wins.

Lashyn doesn’t win, though. She probably would have if she’d fenced against the Czech fencer in her original ranking instead of being put against Hungary so soon.

Yu Rim takes note of it at the board and proceeds to the quarter-finals.

━━━━━

She makes it to the finals.

Yu Rim already knows the fencer fighting her for the gold: Federica Alberti from Italy. They've fenced multiple times before at World Cups, and Yu Rim’s win rate over her is a good bit higher. She's not worried, but she dutifully listens anyway as Stanislav sits next to her and reviews his notes for Federica with her.

The other Italian fencer who’d just faced her at the semi-finals, however, was new, and pretty memorable.

Evelina Cavalcante, from Italy, is a few years older than Yu Rim but still a newcomer. She does not keep a low stance like the other Italians tend to, instead taking up space with confidence. Her skin is a warm golden and her brown curly hair lies in waves tied up under her helmet. 

None of that was what had caught Yu Rim’s attention however.

It was how happy she was.

She vibrated with every score she managed to eek out, but also let out bright interjections when Yu Rim would land a hit she apparently didn’t expect. Whenever she took her helmet off for their breaks, she’d be grinning with excitement. She’d watch Yu Rim that way too, vibrant green eyes on her with no trace of animosity, jealousy, or fear. 

(She hasn’t seen a grin like that while fencing in…) 

“Focus, Julia,” is the only thing Coach Yushkov told her during their third break.

She’d nodded and proceeded to win. Evelina was still smiling when they shook hands.

Ten minutes later, the announcement call for the start of the final rings out:

“The Gold Medalist at the 1997 Summer Olympic Games in Singapore and Silver Medalist at the 1999 Asian Games, from Russia, Julia Ko!”

That’s her. 

She salutes. Thinks of her mother’s tears on the phone.

The scream that rips out from her when she lands the final hit is so raw it scratches viciously at her throat.

Three months’ worth of deposits. 

Stanislav comes over to clap her shoulder with a wide smile, shaking her slightly with his grip in celebration and leading her to Coach Yushkov, who gives a pleased nod and shakes her hand. Too many fencers glower at her to even count, not that she tries to - it doesn’t matter.

━━━━━

Despite being abroad, there’s no stop on training and reviews until the day of their team competition.

63.000 roubles each is at stake. That’s kind of almost a fourth deposit - not quite, but now that Yu Rim’s secured her gold, she can vie for the rest. She still needs it after all. 

But now it’s not just her performance that matters.

Team Russia is composed of Julia, Daryn, and Lashyn. Yelena is their alternate, ready to replace one of them if needed as they take turns for bouts of 5 points each, until one of the team wins with 30 points or time runs out.

Juli- Yu Rim cannot win by herself. Even if she wins every single one of her bouts at an advantage, securing them five hits at a time, she simply cannot. Their scores are combined; what matters is which team reaches the total winning score first. Yu Rim can at most get them 20 of 30, and she can't quite control when, since their turns are fixed. She might only be able to fight for 15 if the other team gets off to a good enough start and wins before she gets to go in for a fourth round.

She keeps her calm though and helps ensure that they make it up the brackets. And they do, slowly but surely.

Her calm only lasts so long. 

This is not good. If they lose their current match-up against Poland, they won’t be able to even try for the bronze. She’s already won two bouts as the first one in their rotation: 5-1 and 5-2 each. Darya has won one of her two, getting a score of 5-4 and 3-5 respectively.

They only need 9 hits in three bouts to win and proceed. Just nine.

But Lashyn’s just lost her second bout 5 to 1. Her first loss had been 5 to 2 - she's completely lost them their advantage all by herself.

Poland is now leading: 22 to their 21. 

Yu Rim’s temper flares. 

She’s furious. Furious that she has to be here. Furious for what she had to let go of to do so. Furious that she has to care about this prize. Absolutely livid that Lashyn is fencing like she doesn’t care: sloppy, reckless. Embarrassing. 

Yes, Yu Rim is furious; her decision is still rational. 

Yu Rim was elected team captain this time after their individual results, so it’s her call. She walks over to the referee and subs Yelena in Lashyn’s place before he calls for the next bout, which is Yu Rim’s.

Lashyn is on her before she makes it back to the bench for her sabre and helmet. Her face is flushed and furious near hers.

“Get out of my way,” Yu Rim says quietly through her teeth, in English. She pauses only enough not to end up shoving the girl aside with her body when Lashyn pushes herself against her side. 

She doesn’t need or want to make a scene and embarrass Team Russia even more than Lashyn already has. She definitely does not want or need the referee to issue them any cards.

“Who do you think you-”

“Sit down,” Yu Rim hisses, in Russian now, cutting her off. Lashyn glowers at her, eyes brimming with tears.

(Let's go for it, Hee Do used to say. 

Just go for it? Yu Rim would ask.

Yeah! Heedo would laugh. Just go for it!)

Yu Rim sidesteps her, grabs her sabre and helmet, and gets back on the piste to try and salvage this mess.

━━━━━

Yu Rim gets them another 5 points, but they still don’t make it.

Yelena bursts into tears before she even finishes her salute after losing the last bout. 

It’s not her fault. She would’ve had to win 5 to a maximum of 2 hits from her opponent; with her experience compared to the other fencer’s, it would’ve been a downright miracle. And still she'd managed a 3 - 3.

When she walks over to them, face red from the tears, Yu Rim rubs her arm and whispers a good job in Russian. She means it. 

Darya stands exhausted beside them, guzzling down a bottle of Gatorade. Lashyn sits at the bench, looking pale and somber as one of their team techs talks to her. The others all watch silently with the rest of the tech team.

Stanislav sighs and corrals them all out to sign out of the competition.

━━━━━

Once she’s done with her regular drug test sample collection afterwards, Yu Rim walks back to her hotel room.

As soon as she steps inside, Anna barges by her and storms out with a slam of the door, clearly fuming about something. Maybe about Yu Rim. Not unlikely, though Yu Rim can't think of a reason why. She doesn't think Anna is that close to Lashyn.

Darya meets Yu Rim’s gaze and rolls her eyes from her bed, clearly not caring for the outburst either.

Yu Rim smiles despite herself. 

“There's celebration tomorrow,” Darya says without taking her eyes from the magazine she's reading in bed. “You should be there.” She glances up at her for a moment, appraising. “Since you won.”

Yu Rim doesn't want to. She still yearns for some quiet in non-Russian surroundings, somewhere she can forget in for a little bit and just be Yu Rim.

But she recognizes an offered hand when she sees one, and she knows she could use those - if not now, then maybe later. She takes it.

━━━━━

First thing next morning, they’re told to all gather in the room Anna, Darya and Yu Rim are staying in.

There isn’t really much space on the little floor available between the three beds, so Yu Rim gestures Yelena over from the door to sit on the edge of Yu Rim’s bed next to her. She does feel for the girl - for the position she was put in on the competition yesterday. Yelena clearly still feels terrible about losing. 

Meanwhile, Lashyn perches on the edge of Darya’s bed, expression closed off, and Olga stands by the door looking tired. They all wait quietly.

Coach Yushkov and Stanislav enter soon after. Stanislav pulls the only chair in the room to himself and sits behind Coach Yushkov, who stands in the middle of the room.

All Coach is doing is standing in that ram-rod soldier stance that he always carries like it’s second nature. He still commands attention. His expression doesn’t give anything away, at least until he rubs one hand over his face.

That’s either frustration or impatience.

“I do not care,” Coach Yushkov starts saying, voice neutral as he brings his hand back down, “about your feelings for each other.”

Yu Rim makes a concerted effort not to tense up. She knows she wasn’t wrong yesterday - she’s sure of it. If anything, she should’ve replaced Lashyn earlier, immediately after her first bout. 

But Yu Rim also knows that all of their tech team, including Coach, had seen everything.  Even a camera might have - though at what angle? For how long?

Coach Yushkov doesn't strike her as the type of coach to not put it to her straight, though. He definitely has not been like that so far, so she wonders what else has happened.

Coach crosses his arms and looks over them all. He doesn’t seem to appreciate needing to say this. “You are all here to do a job. Yes?”

In Korea, he would’ve expected low gazes and loud respectful replies; the absence of either would be a downright affront. Yu Rim feels extremely incorrect to remain seated, but he only looks at them seriously as they keep quiet.

“If you do not do your job,” Coach Yushkov continues, “you leave my team.” Stanislav is quiet behind him as well, but he’s looking over each of them. Yu Rim can feel him trying to get a read on their emotions. “If you do not want your job,” Coach adds, “you leave my team.”

Coach puts his hands in his pockets. “I am in charge of Team Russia. You work for Team Russia. Your fencing,” his eyes meet Yu Rim’s for a moment, “is for Russia.”

It doesn’t impact her, because it’s the truth. He looks at the others.

“In my gym, on the piste, you do what it takes.” He glances at his wrist watch before nodding at Stanislav then looking back at them all. “Fix it,” he says simply, then walks out of the room.

Stanislav’s voice is a lot lighter than Coach’s had been when he speaks up, but he’s still serious when he asks: “Any questions?”

Despite that, it’s only once he leaves that things happen.

Anna starts it off with a snide comment in Russian that Yu Rim doesn’t get and that gets Anna a look from Olga and Darya, but she doesn’t seem to pay it any mind. “How does it feel to fuck up that bad, Lashyn?” she says in English now, apparently wanting to make sure they all understand it.

Yu Rim knows as soon as Anna says it that she herself is not going to be able to walk out of here without being put in a confrontation.

“You tell me, you didn’t even make it past the first elimination,” Lashyn hisses. “Not surprising you didn’t get picked for Teams.”

Darya cringes.

Olga, bless her heart, tries: “Look, let’s all sit. We can mediate-”

Anna’s face is already red though, and she doesn’t stop. “Yeah? How does it feel to get pushed down rankings and lose the entire team the competition?”

Lashyn fumes, but Anna isn’t done.

“You had Julia to carry you to finals and you couldn’t even manage to let her do that?” 

Yu Rim holds back a sigh.

“That’s not fair, Anna,” Yelena says quietly.

“Bullshit! We all saw it!” Anna hisses. “Too bad she couldn’t carry you in solo too, huh?”

“Shut up,” Lashyn gritts out, starting to step up to her.

Oh no. Yu Rim and Darya are already moving, but Anna laughs and steps forward, pushing Lashyn’s shoulders. “What, you wanna hit me? Do it, blyat’.”

Darya gets to Anna and pulls her back before they can get at each other, and Yu Rim pulls Lashyn’s arm to get her to step back too.

“Don’t touch me,” Lashyn hisses, shoving her hand off. “This is all your fault.”

“Me?” Yu Rim says. Oh, she has got to be kidding her.

“You took my fucking spot!” Lashyn spits. “I ranked lower because of you!”

“Your spot?” Yu Rim scoffs, really having to try not to laugh. “Really? So you would have won at your solos if I weren’t there?”

Lashyn doesn’t answer, but her face could not get redder if she tried.

Yu Rim had held back her words until now, but not anymore. Lashyn clearly needs to be brought to her senses.

“Tell me, what’s the difference between losing to Hungary one match before or one after? You think you would’ve managed to medal if you just avoided them?” Yu Rim asks, fuming with her fists by her side but really trying to reign it in. “I was ranked number one,” she adds with a hiss. “You were nine!”

“She’s right, Lashyn,” Olga says from the side. 

“Fignya!” Lashyn spits, getting in Yu Rim’s face now.

Yu Rim stands her ground, feeling herself get flushed with anger. She can’t believe she has to put up with this bullshit. “If you were good enough you would’ve fenced against me at the finals,” she says lowly.

“You’re an egotistical cyka.”

“Lashyn, stop it, please!” Yelena calls from behind them.

“No,” Yu Rim says, stepping so close to Lashyn their chests touch. “You know I’m right,” she tells her menacingly, face inches from hers. “And I should’ve subbed you out earlier.”

This time Darya pulls Lashyn away before Lashyn gets to react. “Can you all stop?” she grunts in annoyance as she refuses to get shoved aside by Lashyn. “No one here got medals other than Julia, and we were not good enough in team. Clearly.”

Yu Rim lets out a steadying breath. She can’t afford this - she is the odd one out, and if things get bad between a native and a foreigner, she has no doubt that when it comes down to it the Federation - any Federation - would stick with a native.

She refuses to apologize for this though. For being too good. If that’s what it takes, Lashyn can go burn in hell for all Yu Rim cares.

“We need to become a team,” Olga says. “Everyone will go to the party tonight, yes?”

“Otvali,” Lashyn hisses, shaking. That one Yu Rim at least understands - leave me the hell alone. She storms out of the room.

Anna rolls her eyes when they look at her and leaves too.

“Guess that’s a no to party,” Darya says wryly.

━━━━━

Yu Rim still doesn’t understand quite whose house this gigantic manor in Ghent is supposed to be. An épeeist’s brother’s famous something? Or was it a referee? Regardless, every fencing team seems to have been invited into it, male and female both, because she recognizes face after face as she follows Darya through rooms and hallways until they reach a large open room filled with loud music and loud people.

Yu Rim has never done this before. Hee Do had told her about going to a club once, and at the time Yu Rim could barely believe her bravery - she still can't sometimes. This doesn’t seem that far from what a club must be like.

People are dancing. They find the other Russian girls by the edge of the largest mass of people, a few of them from foil and épee. They pull them both into their small circle and push drinks into their hands, and Yu Rim drinks immediately out of reflex. Whatever she’d just been handed, it’s sweet on her tongue.

They mostly stand there and drink, moving a bit as they talk and laugh. It's not too bad. The girls are already flushed in the face, and Darya somehow materializes two more drinks in Yu Rim’s hand before Yu Rim even realizes she’s done with each one.

“That hot French foilist won’t stop looking over,” Yelena leans over to tell Yu Rim loudly. Her cheeks are extremely red. Is it even legal for her to drink? “He’s definitely looking at you.”

Yu Rim had already noticed, so she just laughs in response and drains the rest of her latest cup.

His name is Borel. Yu Rim knows because he’s in the top ten in the leaderboards - that, and girls have been swooning over him for years. His skintone is a warm and deep tan, and his brown hair and short beard always come out perfect in pictures. Apparently he’s just as popular now as he was during the last Olympic Games when Yu Rim would not stop hearing his name in hushed gossiping.

“I’m going to go get something else to drink,” she tells the others loudly before excusing herself and starting to make her way over to a table nearby filled with bottles and ice coolers.

She doesn't plan on getting drunk tonight, but getting a little happy is fine, right? Hee Do’s always said Yu Rim’s too good at drinking for their age. She’s supposed to be celebrating with her teammates, or bonding, or something. Nothing better than alcohol for that, Yu Rim’s found - that much Russia and Korea have in common. And apparently Belgium too, if everything going on around her is any indication.

“Can I get some of that?” a breathy voice says right by her ear, and Yu Rim startles enough to dribble liquor out of the cup and all over her hand.

When she looks to her side, she’s met with a  curly haired woman that her brain takes a second to place. It's the Italian bronze medalist she’d beaten earlier, right there grinning at her. She is extremely close to Yu Rim. 

“Sorry,” she - Evelina, Yu Rim remembers - tells her with a laugh, not seeming to mind the lack of personal space as she leans in closer still to talk by her ear again. “Didn't mean to get you wet.”

Her breath on her ear makes Yu Rim break out in shivers. Yu Rim’s reflexes are the only thing keeping her from dropping her cup. Why is she still so close to Yu Rim? Is that an Italian thing? Yu Rim can’t keep up with each place’s notions of personal boundaries.

She might have already drunk more than she’d thought because Evelina’s hand moves in slow motion as Yu Rim watches. All she can do is keep watching until that hand lands on top of her own on the cup, pulling and pulling until Yu Rim is watching Evelina sip from Yu Rim’s cup right there close to her, her green eyes still on hers.

“Come on, let's dance,” she tells Yu Rim after draining her drink and taking the bottle from Yu Rim’s other hand as well.

Yu Rim doesn't remember agreeing, but Evelina is tugging her wrist - the scar-free one - and then they’re being pushed closer together by people bumping into them all around.

Evelina is laughing as she pulls Yu Rim’s hands up and jumps happily to a song everyone else there seems to know as they chant along with it. Her grin is wide and she keeps looking at Yu Rim.

It’s getting hard to breathe properly, and Yu Rim is starting to sweat in the heat of all of these people bumping and jumping and hollering. Is this what it had been like for Hee Do in the club? Did she fit in as easily as she always does nearly anywhere? Or did she feel out of place like Yu Rim does?

Evelina’s hands are on her hips now, moving her. Yu Rim’s used to moving in rhythm, it's her life on the piste, but this is different. She laughs breathlessly, nervously, but she can't seem to pull away. Evelina keeps getting closer for no reason, and Yu Rim’s hands twitch by her sides, unsure what to do with them.

“You’re really pretty,” Evelina tells her, right by her ear again.

Yu Rim’s heard that a lot. This time it's different though - there’s long curly hair brushing her skin and the hint of a sweet perfume hitting her nose. Evelina’s chest brushes against hers from how close she is, making the heat almost unbearable as she keeps her grip on Yu Rim’s hips.

It's weird, so Yu Rim laughs awkwardly. It comes off shaky. Evelina pulls back but doesn't really, so Yu Rim is the one who has to do it after an endless moment. “Sorry,” Yu Rim tells her with another chuckle, trying to squirm away because her chest is feeling tight all of a sudden. She needs to get some air. “Bathroom,” she adds as an excuse, giving her the best smile she can pull off right now before ducking aside.

She can breathe better as soon as she manages to step out from within the throng of people. Her heart is racing when she puts her hand to her chest. She realizes out of nowhere that she feels really alone. 

The bathroom is a blissfully quiet escape as soon as she locks the door behind herself.

“Breathe,” Yu Rim orders herself. Her eyes are blown as she grips the edge of the sink and stares at herself in the mirror. The tiles of the bathroom sway at the corners of her vision.

She notices she’s flushed too. The splash of cold water against her face is instantly soothing. She presses water to the back of her neck as well, washing away the sweat gathering under her hair and cooling her off considerably.

If she could, she’d be calling Hee Do right about now. Hee Do would definitely laugh at the entire situation - Yu Rim drunk and dancing at some party to western pop electronic? Yu Rim can hear her bright laugh in her mind as clearly as if she was here.

If Hee Do were actually here, though, this would be a lot more fun. She might have even danced with Yu Rim. Would she? She gets shy sometimes, but if Yu Rim pulled her close, if it was the two of them, then maybe…

This has to stop. Thinking about those things only ever makes it harder to try to enjoy what she's supposed to be experiencing. 

It's just Yu Rim here.

She’s making her way back to try to find the other Russian girls again when Borel tries and manages to get her attention.

“Hello,” he says simply, giving her a crooked smile as he pushes off the wall he’d been leaning against.

He’s tall, but not tall enough to tower over her completely, and he is very clearly aware that he is handsome - Yu Rim can tell that much. She can also tell that he definitely thinks she looks good. More than good. Guys have looked at her that way before.

It doesn't not stroke her ego to have a handsome European man clearly interested in her.

“Do you want to not dance?” he asks, French accent barely coming through, smiling wider now.

It's dumb. It's dumb, but there's a nagging at the back of Yu Rim’s mind. Why not? Why shouldn't she?

When he kisses her against the wall of the hallway, his soft beard tickles her face. His chest is broad and his hands are large and heavy on her hips - a lot larger than Evelina’s. 

It's nothing like any kiss she’s had before while dating. Ji Woong and her didn’t kiss that much - when they did, it was always tender and soft, and he had certainly never pushed his tongue into her mouth like this.

They must call it French kissing for a reason.

She doesn't know what she’d expected, but it's fine. It doesn't taste of much of anything but a hint of liquor. After a tentative couple of moments, she thinks she has the hang of it, because his hand slides to the low of her back and he kisses her again eagerly as soon as their mouths part.

She responds to the next kiss much more confidently, hands on his broad shoulders for stability. When he pulls back slightly, she can tell he's affected by all of this: he looks at her dazedly with blown pupils and light brown eyes, and his breathing is ragged. There’s a spike of pleased satisfaction in her chest: she’d done that. He clearly wants her.

He glances at the staircase further up the hallway then back at her, taking her hand. He squeezes it in his hold, tilting his head to the side and asking her a clear question with his intense look.

She doesn't have to think about it. “I have to go back,” she says. She doesn't, but it's the best she can come up with to soften the resolute no.

He looks at her for another second. “Okay,” he says, thankfully, and the sudden tension in her shoulders relaxes slightly. “Sorry,” he adds, then smiles again. “And thank you, beautiful.”

He leans in and presses a kiss to her cheek, his soft beard brushing her skin again and almost tickling. 

With another squeeze to her hand, he tugs her gently ahead of him before letting go and letting her walk out first.

“No fucking way,” Darya half-shouts as soon as Yu Rim steps back between the Russian team. “You just walked in here with Borel right behind you.”

“You guys hooked up?” Yelena asks, eyes wide.

Yu Rim laughs and shakes her head. When she looks to the side, her eyes land on Evelina’s across the room. She’s looking right at her. Something squirms in Yu Rim’s stomach and she breaks their gaze, turning back towards the Russian girls.

━━━━━

There are hands on her hips and Yu Rim feels hot. Everything is pulsing around her, thrumming, echoing against her chest. 

“Dance with me,” Hee Do says. Her hair is messy and her eyes are so dark, so intense. So close. She can feel her heat just a breath away.

Yu Rim jolts up and out of bed. She’s alone and clammy and the sweaty sheets trip her up - she stumbles her way into the bathroom just in time to lift the toilet seat and throw up into the bowl.

━━━━━

Debt: 14.832.000 RUB 14.832.000 14.736.195 14.640.390 14.544.585
14.448.780 RUB 14.248.780 RUB

They’re going over their exercise routines for the fencing World Championship with the physical coaches and the medical assistant when Coach Yushkov barges into the meeting room, his face so red it shines.

Yu Rim’s seen her fair share of irate coaches, but this one might be well up there. The door slams against the wall as he storms over, angrier than she’s ever seen him.

They all flinch: he slaps a pile of papers onto the table with an unintelligible roar. He has to pause to catch his breath before he speaks.

“None of you,” he spits out in Russian, stabbing at the papers with his finger and looking between them with furious wide blue eyes. “None of you leave until you’re tested.”

Yu Rim doesn’t dare look at anyone else despite the shock. His fist slams onto the table then, and she jumps in her seat.

“Get the drug kits,” he hisses to the physical coaches. When they don’t move immediately, he roars: “NOW.”

━━━━━

Yu Rim’s hands shake as she pees in front of one of the female techs.

She’s never failed a doping test in her life. It would make no sense for this one to be any different. 

She might as well have the World Anti-Doping Association's prohibited substances list memorized - she’ll probably never take a diuretic in her life even if she needs to after retiring. 

One of the first things she’d gotten before even arriving was a list from the Federation with examples of approved medications for common issues, their brand names in Russia, and a contact person in case of doubts. She uses the list religiously if she ever stops by the pharmacy, which she rarely if ever does.

But if anyone else fails the test…

She has to get her blood drawn next. The tech tells her she can relax her hand as her blood fills up the first vial steadily, but she keeps her fist clutched tight anyway.

Pretty much every Federation and Committee in the world has a zero tolerance policy for doping. If anyone in the team tests positive, and they’ve competed in the past six months… 

All of the team’s tests and competition results this year will be looked at. “Reviewed”.

But Yu Rim’s individual medals are safe. All of her individual rewards are safe. She's clean. She just has to remember that.

She repeats it over and over in her head - I’m clean, my medals are safe - and sits in the same meeting room from earlier, arms on her knees. Coach had meant it when he’d said none of them could leave.

Yelena comes into the room and sits down quietly on the chair next to Yu Rim. She looks scared out of her mind, and younger than ever. Yu Rim reaches over and pats her knee, but pulls her hand back when she realizes she has no clue if the girl would do this. Was she that ambitious, that stupid? Yu Rim has no way of knowing.

Darya is the only other team member in the room with them for what feels like ages. She’s sitting to the side, arms crossed and head pressed against the wall behind her, staring straight up at the ceiling.

They can all hear Coach Yushkov yelling indistinguishably in another room nearby. Eventually all the team members file back in, one by one, except for Olga.

The Second Coach, Stanislav, stops by the room with techs in tow after a while and silently hands them all each a tray of food. When he sits on the chair closest to the door, Yu Rim notices how dark the circles under his eyes are. He crosses his hands on the table and stares at nothing.

━━━━━

Team Russia: Ineligible - status under review.

None of them can compete at World’s. 

━━━━━

It’s Saturday. No, Sunday? Technically.

Yu Rim is drunk. Very drunk.

She is. And she’s by herself. She has been.

The line rings and rings and rings. 15,66 one, 15,66 two. 

“Hello?”

Yu Rim’s heart forgets to beat for a moment. She presses a hand to her chest. Checks to make sure it beats again.

“… Hello?”

Her voice is the best thing Yu Rim’s heard in forever. The absolute best. Until:

“Yu Rim-ah? Is that you?”

Hee Do says her name. It’s even better. She’s whispering.

Yu Rim’s eyes well up. She knows she shouldn’t have called her. For so many reasons.

How much has it cost her already? Five minutes is 46,98. Has it been less? More? 70? It feels like a lot more. More than 250.000 roubles in medal rewards she won't be trying for.

“Yu Rimie, if this is you…” Hee Do is still whispering. The way it sounds over the phone doesn’t let Yu Rim pretend she’s there even with her eyes closed. It's just not the same as in person. “Hang in there. Okay? It’s going to be alright.”

How could she know Yu Rim needs to hear that? She can’t have known. And Yu Rim can’t say anything. She can't tell anyone. Hell, she can’t talk without crying. 

So she just cries. Quietly, though - so Hee Do can’t hear her. She cannot hear Yu Rim cry.

“I know it’s hard. I’m sorry. You can do it,” Hee Do adds, still in a whisper. 

There are however many moments where Yu Rim just sits there breathing raggedly. Where Hee Do stays on the other side of the line. Quiet. But there. All the way there.

Hee Do does eventually speak again:

“Um, if this is not Yu Rim though… Er. Nevermind all that,” she sounds awkward now. Embarrassed. Sweet. Yu Rim draws in a stuttered breath. “Um. Well then. Bye?”

Another couple of moments. Yu Rim could say something. Could she?

She can't.

She doesn’t. 

Someone seems to shout something in the background of the line, but it gets cut off by a click.

The dial tone doesn’t cost anything, so Yu Rim sits there and listens to it.

━━━━━

Alcohol had done nothing but give her another ache to deal with, one that lasts a full extra day.

“Diving,” Hee Do had said. “Don't do that again.”

The words echo in Yu Rim’s head. She veers straight past the path that would take her to the water sports compound. She leaves the Training Center instead.

‘I didn't break my promise.’

She needs to leave. She needs to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

Her head pounds, too full. Everything else is numb.

She has nowhere to go.

The dullness of the night outside the bus is broken by lights, stronger by the city center and blurry until Yu Rim blinks the tears away. She doesn't want to be here either. She steps off the bus.

She’s all by herself.

The Bolshoi theatre is lit up bright and beautiful. It stands tall and majestic, almost out of place in its surroundings with its ornate columns and ivory structure.

She feels small as she steps up closer. There are banners put up along the path, and people keep heading inside. 

The sheer magnitude of the building dwarfs her as she takes one step after the other up the stairs to the entrance. She can't crane her head up high enough to still be able to see the statues at the top of the entrance arch.

There's a ticket office. Yu Rim waits behind well dressed couples and buys a ticket for whatever is going on when she draws up to the window. It doesn't matter. She recognizes the word ballet.

The inside is all ivory too, the walls high and the arched ceilings even higher. The red carpet lining the path, bright as blood, is the only aggressive color around. She follows it up ornate stairs and under gold and glass chandeliers. 

Someone looks her up and down and checks her ticket. When she just stares at them dully when they say something, they look at her uniform again and bow slightly, gesturing with an arm and walking down the stairs she’d just come from. She’s meant to follow. She does.

Her pace lags when they walk through a set of double doors.

An amphitheater spreads before, above, and all around them, a stage at the very end, drawing closer as they walk in. White and gold and bright bright red wraps around everything. Up and up and up she looks, across ivory levels with red seats and curtains, gold details everywhere.

Everything is so intricate. The ceiling is gold too, with paintings surrounding a phantasy chandelier. Her head spins as she stares.

Her steps come to a halt when she's pointed to a cushioned red seat in a row. The worker looks at her expectantly, so she sits. They hand her a booklet, bow again, and leave.

She’s the only person here who isn't dressed up as the theater fills up. Her hair is still in a ponytail, messily sticking to her sweaty forehead, and she feels clammy. Any looks she gets are stopped when they take in her uniform.

She looks like she feels, then: like she doesn't belong, yet has carved enough of a space to shove herself into, fitting somehow, ragged at the edges.

The lights go down. Absolute darkness sets in, welcoming her, the sudden silence feeling on the edge of something. Like her.

━━━━━

Yu Rim has never heard music so loud, so clear and crisp in her entire life.

The violins fill up the spaces taken by her thoughts, push out anything and everything that would not allow for their swell of emotions. The horns ring notes out, hit her with the sharpness of a sabre. Every instrument descends into beats, drumming in rhythm, hitting her chest with the force of a hammer. Her ears ring. She's completely transported.

Dancers glide across the stage, elegant, ornately dressed. The set is otherworldly - incomprehensibly regal at times, then somber in hues of blue; dark, like her mood, then aggressively bright. The people there twirl, around and around, then fly across spaces. A princely man feels and feels and feels and Yu Rim feels through him.

The ballerina takes her breath away.

Something so delicate cannot have ever existed before. So feminine - not effortlessly, but inherent. Bright white amid eerie blue darkness. Her elegance is clearly innate, calm. Surer than any ornately decorated person or thing could ever try to be.

The prince watches, taken. Feeling. The ballerina unfurls through each of her motions, grace sliding from each bow of her arms, white feathers spreading with her every step.

She's in pain. Bright, sad, clearly agonizing. Deep, tainting her every move. The violins lull as she bows under the weight of the sadness that sits. 

The prince tries and tries. A presence looms above them, dark, making Yu Rim’s heart stagger on edge.

But black feathers move sharply, stabbing at the ends of every point as their ballerina takes up space. Dark as night, trying to replace the lingering cold warmth from before. The opposite of everything the grace had been.

Hope, so tender in the air until then, clinging at the edge of the notes as it was placed by the slow harps, gets torn apart. The prince doesn't seem to see it. It's despairing. But the presence does - it sees as it looms larger. It grows, deeper than any black feather, victorious as the strings tense darker and darker notes and make Yu Rim shake.

White feathers fall, further and further now. Dark red seeps into blue backgrounds. Nothing breaks as delicately as porcelain, and when the ballerina does, she doesn't need to say a word. The whole world can feel it. She shatters. What had the prince done?

The music carries Yu Rim through it. She doesn't understand any of it, any of this, but she forgets and feels. The tears on her cheeks are cold to the touch, but she wipes them away in the dark and watches. Feeling, still.

The prince and delicate white clutch to each other as they disappear together.

The presence is gone too.

Sharp applause breaks the surface suddenly and Yu Rim takes in a huge gulping breath as the curtains draw closed and bright lights blind her. She's brought back.

It's over.