Archive of Our Own

The locker room smells like Tiger Balm, duct tape, and anticipation. The good kind. The almost-tangible hum before first whistle. Minhee sits on the bench, lacing up her skates with quick, practiced motions while her teammates crowd around the mirror, streaking war paint and glitter under their eyes.

“Let’s go, Purrsephone!” Yuna hollers from across the room, bumping her shoulder as she passes.

Minhee grins. “Save it for the track.”

“You know I can’t, babe. You’re our golden ticket.”

Minhee doesn’t even bother pretending modesty. The praise sits comfortably on her shoulders, familiar and earned. She has been their jammer for two seasons. She’s quick, slippery, impossible to grab. She moves through a pack with the certainty of someone who’s learned to navigate chaos by instinct. Every bruise, sprint, and fall stitched her into this role.

The others are settling into their routine. Wrists being taped, knee pads tightened, helmets snapped into place. Felicity—the pivot tonight—speaks with their coach near the whiteboard, nodding thoughtfully. Her short hair is tucked behind one ear, exposing a focused frown that Minhee trusts more than most people’s confidence. Felicity is small, quick-minded, all angles and strategy. Too many skaters underestimate her; Felicity collects their ankles in return.

Minhee glances toward the lockers and catches a glimpse of herself in the reflection of a metal door—helmet tucked under her arm, tank top exposing the fresh black “25” stenciled across her bicep. Pride lifts through her chest, steady and warm. She worked for this spot. No one handed it to her.

“Yo, Purrsephone.” Ryunjin leans over from the next bench, grinning. “Guess who’s back on the roster for the Snipers tonight?”

Minhee groans. “Don’t.”

“Oh, I’m gonna. Bambi. The penalty princess herself.”

A collective groan ripples through the room.

“She’s the one who nearly took Minhee’s ankle out last week, right?” Chaeryeong asks.

“Yup. Because she can’t handle a jammer doing her job,” Hyunjin sneers.

Minhee exhales slowly, jaw clenching. She tries to shrug it off, to remind herself that Jisu is just a sloppy player who never learned control. The truth pushes through anyway. Every game, Jisu sets her sights on Minhee specifically. Late hits, elbows shoved a shade too hard, shoulder checks that ride the edge of legality. It is always Minhee she hunts.

This season, though, something changed. Jisu’s fouls are relentless now, her aggression sharper, eyes turning flinty every time Minhee edges past her. The refs know her number by heart. Minhee feels those eyes even during pauses, those moments between jams when she’s catching her breath.

Sometimes she wonders why. What she did to flip that switch inside Jisu. They have barely spoken off the track, yet Jisu moves as though Minhee personally offended her somewhere along the line.

“Don’t let her get in your head,” Felicity says, crouching to tie her own skates beside her. “She’s just mad she isn’t jamming.”

Minhee smirks. “Then she should’ve practiced harder.”

Laughter rolls through the room. The ref’s whistle shrills faintly from the hallway. Five minutes to lineup. Minhee tugs her wrist guards on and rolls her shoulders; the heat of adrenaline starts to bloom in her chest.

The rink waits beyond the door, bright lights and roaring crowd, and the promise of bruises. She’s ready.

Even if a certain little bitch still can’t play clean to save her life.

✄

The track hums under the weak overhead lights, the kind that flicker once before settling. The air smells like rubber, sweat, and the faint sweetness of the concession stand’s ancient popcorn machine. Not a big crowd tonight. Maybe forty people total, scattered across the bleachers, clapping with varying levels of enthusiasm.

Hyunjin’s girlfriend is sitting in the front row, bulky arms crossed over her chest and a stoic expression painted on her face. She sits and watches every game with a critical eye, always seemingly ready to jump the half-wall if need be.

Both teams line up at the edge of the oval, wheels stilling as the refs call for the pre-game handshake. It’s always awkward; two rows of athletes pretending to be civil while trying to gauge who’s taped what, who looks tired, who’s pissed off.

Minhee stands front and center for her team, helmet under her arm, fingers flexing inside her wrist guards. Her pulse picks up the beat of the dull music playing over the PA system.

Across from her: the Snipers. And Jisu.

She’s impossible to miss even in the lineup. Midnight-blue pixie-cut tucked sloppily behind her ears, eye makeup smeared into soft shadows that make her look half wild, a scowl that resembles more of a pout. She and Minhee are practically the same height, but the size difference is there. Jisu’s built narrower. Lean, angry, all sharp lines and restless fingers. Her jaw pops once as she grinds her molars.

Minhee gives her a neutral look. Only enough acknowledgement to say, I see you.

Jisu stares straight through her like Minhee is smoke.

The refs blow the whistle for the handshake.

Both teams roll forward one by one. Slaps of palm against palm echo lightly across the rink—tired little claps, the sound of going through the motions.

Minhee taps hands with a sniper's blocker she recognizes. Another. Then a pivot. She keeps her expression relaxed and professional. It isn’t personal.

Yet.

When it should be Jisu’s turn, Minhee suddenly has empty air in front of her.

Jisu has already cut out of line, pivoting sharply on her wheels and skating off with long, pissed-off strides. No handshake. No eye contact. Not even a token glare.

Minhee mutters under her breath. “Really?”

Her teammates behind her all exchange looks. Some amused. Some annoyed. No one surprised. She’s skipped handshake before, but never this blatantly.

The refs don’t comment. It isn’t worth the breath.

The first whistle shrieks. The skaters move into formation for the opening jam. Minhee settles behind the starting line, body coiled, breath steady, wheels rocking in tiny motions to keep her legs loose.

Across the way, Jisu crouches in the blocker triangle, unable to stay still. She keeps shifting weight from one foot to the other, chewing the inside of her cheek like she’s starving for something to hit.

The whistle cuts the air.

They launch.

Within the first ten seconds, Minhee feels the rhythm of the pack. Tight, messy, predictable. Within thirty seconds, she sees Jisu make a mistake big enough to get written into the gospel of Bad Choices.

The Snipers’ blocker wall rotates to catch Minhee, and Jisu charges in too hot. Wrong angle. Wrong timing. She clips a teammate instead of Minhee, bounces off awkwardly, then throws an elbow to salvage it.

The ref’s arm snaps up immediately.

“Back block! Number 14, report to the box!”

Jisu stiffens, then slams her helmet chinstrap twice like she’s biting back a scream. She pushes off toward the penalty box with jagged strides, every wheel clacking like an accusation. Her team groans, visibly deflated.

One of the Snipers’ blockers actually yells, “Dude, it’s the first fucking jam!”

Minhee doesn’t laugh out loud, but it stings the back of her tongue.

With the Snipers down a player, the pack becomes Swiss cheese. Minhee slices through on her second pass, hearing Felicity shout, “Go, Purrsephone! Open lane! Take it!”

She does. Over and over. It’s almost boring how easy it becomes.

Jisu sits in the penalty box, seething, her knee bouncing like it’s trying to escape her body. The penalty timer is two minutes max, yet she looks like she’s serving a life sentence.

By the time she’s released, Minhee’s already racked up more points than the Snipers can realistically claw back. The rest of the game unfolds with the same rhythm. Messy, frustrated Snipers; composed, sharp Minhee.

When the final whistle blows, it falls into routine. Clockwork. Expected.

Minhee’s team gathers mid-track, offering congratulatory hugs and helmet bumps, the sounds of exhausted joy echoing lightly off the rafters. It isn’t a roaring celebration. Derby crowds don’t roar.

Their coach claps Minhee on the back, telling her she carved through like she had rockets strapped to her skates. Across the rink, the Snipers stand in a loose cluster, visibly annoyed. Two of them are whispering behind their hands. Another is shaking her head emphatically. Their captain’s pacing with her hands on her hips.

Jisu is nowhere near them.

Minhee tracks her just in time to see it: Jisu skating straight past the post-game team huddle without slowing down. She doesn’t even pretend. She barrels past the refs, past the exit gate, past her captain trying to call her name. She shoves the door open with one hand and disappears into the hallway, steps echoing until the door swings shut behind her.

Across the rink, the Snipers stand in a loose, irritated knot. Two blockers are already whispering with their helmets off, voices sharp enough to carry.

“Unbelievable,” one hisses. “She tanked the first jam. First jam! Who does that?”

“Someone who shouldn’t be on the roster,” the other snaps. “Coach only keeps her around because she hits hard, but she can’t skate clean to save her fucking life.”

Their pivot joins in, slamming her mouthguard against her thigh. “She nearly took me out again. I swear to God, if she clips my ankle one more time, I’m switching teams.”

Another blocker scoffs loud enough for half the rink to hear. “She’s a fucking liability. Always has been.”

“And for what?” someone huffs out behind them. “So she can go chase the jammer she’s obsessed with? Pathetic.”

Minhee’s brows lift at that one. The tone isn’t mocking. It’s cutting. Intentionally cruel.

Then their captain adds, voice low and furious, “She’ll never jam. Never. I don’t know why she keeps acting like she’s some star player. She’s dead weight.”

The pivot’s face twists. “Dead weight with an attitude problem.”

They all nod, resentment saturating the air.

Jisu isn’t around to hear any of it. She’s already stormed out, gone before anyone can drag her back to take responsibility.

Minhee watches the door, her jaw tight.

Somehow—to Minhee’s annoyance—it sits wrong with her. A little splinter under the skin. She brushes it off and turns back to her own team, letting the warmth swallow her.

The Snipers can cannibalize themselves all they want.

✄

The team piles into their usual post-game spot—a tiny fusion diner squeezed between a laundromat and a vape shop, the kind of place that smells like frying oil, soy glaze, and end-of-week exhaustion. The booths are mismatched vinyl, the lights hum faintly, and everything is perfectly familiar.

They slide into their corner booth with pads half-removed, helmets tossed into a heap, and hair still damp under beanies. The waitress barely has to ask; she brings over two pitchers of iced water and a tray of metal cups. She knows them too well.

Everyone’s buzzing, still warm with post-game adrenaline. Hyunjin reenacts the whip she gave Minhee in the second half, nearly elbowing Ryunjin’s chin in the process. Felicity is talking about a clean block she landed that she swears should’ve been on a highlight reel. Chris is already halfway through a bowl of noodles, twirling them like a woman possessed.

Bonnie sits beside Hyunjin, completely relaxed now that they’re off the track. Her stoic rink persona is gone; she’s all full-body laughter and loud commentary. She slaps Hyunjin’s thigh every time she exaggerates a move.

“Okay, pause,” Bonnie interrupts, holding up a hand. “You definitely didn’t whirl around her that cleanly. You nearly fell on your ass.”

Hyunjin gasps. “I executed a strategic pivot.”

“You executed a wobble,” Bonnie corrects, tapping her temple. “I saw the panic in your eyes.”

Hyunjin clutches her chest. “Wow. No loyalty.”

Bonnie pats her thigh. “Full loyalty. Zero delusion.”

Minhee stretches her shoulders until something cracks. “Okay, no, listen,” she cuts in, pointing a chopstick for emphasis, “Bambi was glued to me tonight. Fouling nonstop. Elbows, late hits—she made it her personal mission.”

A chorus of annoyed groans rolls around the table.

“She almost took out her own pivot trying to get to you,” Ryunjin snickers. “That was embarrassing.”

“She’s getting worse,” Hyunjin adds. “I swear she gets feral the second she sees your number.”

“Probably keeps a little shrine of you in her locker,” Bonnie jokes.

Minhee snorts. “More like a dartboard with my face on it.”

Chris looks up from her noodles, lips shiny with broth, eyes bright with mischief. “Or,” she drawls, dragging the word out, “she’s got a crush on you.”

Minhee’s eyebrows draw together. “What?”

Felicity perks up instantly, smelling chaos. “Oh, absolutely. It makes perfect sense.”

“She hates me,” Minhee argues.

Chris shrugs, twirling her chopsticks lazily. “Sometimes obsession and hatred are close cousins.”

“Especially when you don’t know how to flirt,” Hyunjin deadpans.

“Flirt?” Minhee echoes, scandalized. “Launching yourself at someone’s ribs is not flirting.”

“Depends on the girl,” Felicity retorts, sipping her soda. “How do you think I bagged Chris?”

“Not like that,” Chris snorts. “She introduced herself to me as my new girlfriend.”

Minhee stares. “And you went with it?”

Chris shrugs. “It was cute.”

The table explodes into laughter, loud enough that the waitress glances over. Minhee tries to play along. Her mind is elsewhere. She focuses on her food.

“Okay, enough of that. Let’s get back to Bambi.” Ryunjin slams her hands on the table.

“Seriously.” Chris leans in, “The way she watches you? She’s not trying to kill you. She’s trying to figure you out.”

Minhee shakes her head. “She stares like she wants to fight me.”

“That’s foreplay in derby,” Felicity quips with a straight face.

“Maybe I should join a team.” Changbin nudges Hyunjin’s shoulder with her own, waggling her eyebrows. Hyunjin rolls her eyes as aggressively as she can and tilts her chin up in pseudo-anger.

Minhee groans into her hands. “You’re all insane.”

“Uh-huh.” Chris nods. “You know what they say. Birds of a feather.”

Minhee doesn’t lift her gaze from her plate. She keeps her attention firmly on her dumplings, ignoring the smirks, the nudges, the knowing looks being exchanged across the table.

Because she refuses—refuses—to give the crush idea even a millimeter of ground.

Even though something flutters in her stomach at the thought.

✄

The kitchen smells like garlic and leftover steam from the pasta they demolished an hour ago. Minhee’s plates are still soaking in the sink. The overhead light hums faintly, buzzing in that way old light bulbs always do when they’re about to die. It’s domestic and familiar; a little messy, a little too warm. Jeongin fits into the space like he always has.

Minhee sits hunched over her skates at the table, thumb digging grease out of the bearings, a small towel draped under everything. Her wheels are scattered in neat little piles. An old habit, the order she falls into when she needs to unwind. Jeongin sits across from her with his legs tucked up on the chair, picking at a box of chocolate puffs he found in her cabinet. Found, not asked for.

She notices him open them and crunch the first one. She decides, mercifully, to ignore it.

For a good while, they work in silence. Minhee wipes down the inside of a wheel; Jeongin taps crumbs off his hoodie sleeve. The TV in the other room plays some rerun of last year’s championship bout, tinny commentary floating into the kitchen.

It’s quiet in the way their shared space always is. Comfortable and lived-in.

Jeongin is the one who breaks the silence.

“So,” he begins, voice flat, casual, the same tone he uses to ask her what cereal they have. “Who pissed you off today?”

Minhee doesn’t even pretend to misunderstand. She huffs once through her nose, eyes still on the wheel she’s polishing.

“Why do you always assume someone pissed me off?”

“Because someone always pisses you off.” He pops another chocolate puff in his mouth and chews with slow, thoughtful boredom. “And because you only bring out the cleaning kit on weekdays when you’re extra irritated.”

“That’s isn’t—” Minhee stops. Because he’s right. She sighs. “Fuck you.”

“Mm.” Jeongin doesn’t look up. The sound is pointed.

Minhee takes a breath and lets the words spill out. “Practice was stupid today. Nobody was focused. Yuna kept drifting off the wall, Felicity kept calling plays and then forgetting them five seconds later. Oh, and then someone decided the perfect time to ram her entire body into my spine was right after the whistle.”

Another hum.

One of Jeongin’s noted hums.

Minhee shoots him a look. He widens his eyes innocently, still chewing.

She turns back to her skate. “It was Jisu,” she mutters. “Obviously.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. She can feel the judgment radiating across the table.

“She’s so fucking reckless,” Minhee continues, the dam now fully broken. “She skates like she’s got nothing to lose. Everyone treats her like she’s some walking tragedy. She’s—she’s just volatile and annoying and—”

Jeongin hums again.

Minhee slams the wheel tool down on the table. “Jeongin, I swear to God.”

He blinks. “What.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“What face?”

“The face that means you think you know something about me that I don’t,” she grits out. “Don’t do that face.”

“I’m literally just sitting,” he responds, monotone. “Existing. In my body.”

“You’re judging.”

He shrugs. “I’m allowed to. You said ‘Jisu’ four times in one breath.”

Minhee looks like she might throw the wheel at his forehead.

He holds up his hands. “I’m just making an observation.”

She grumbles and goes back to polishing, hands tense, mouth pressed into a thin line. The storm eventually fizzles—like it always does—and the quiet returns. They both tolerate it because it’s better than talking about feelings.

Then Jeongin speaks again. This time, his tone has shifted. Smaller. More hesitant.

“So, I’ve been talking to someone.”

Minhee pauses mid-scrub. Looks up. “Wait, really?”

He shrugs. The movement is too tight, too careful. “Yeah. A girl.”

Her expression opens in one beat. “What’s her name?”

“Sky.”

Minhee puts the towel down, instantly more alert. The way his voice softens around the name isn’t lost on her. “Sky? That’s—that’s cute.”

“She’s cute,” he says quietly. “We met at the coffee shop near my job.”

Minhee blinks. “The one with the flickering sign and the broken chairs?”

“She has art stickers on her laptop,” Jeongin says, as if that explains everything. “Good ones.”

Minhee smiles despite herself. “Oh my god. You’re impossible.”

He huffs. “We’ve been texting for a few weeks. She asked me out.”

Minhee freezes.

Jeongin toys with the edge of the snack box, refusing to look up. “I said yes.”

There’s a moment where Minhee just watches him. Really looks. Jeongin doesn’t get excited easily, especially about people. So the fact that he’s trying to play it cool? That tells her everything.

She softens. “That’s amazing, Innie.”

His ears are a little pink.

Minhee’s smile fades into something more thoughtful. More careful. There's nagging in the back of her head reminding her that dating isn’t simple for people like Jeongin. It never has been, never will be. Life. Living in the city they do. Existing as someone who doesn’t fit in the box.

Their parents didn’t just “have a hard time with it.” They threw him out the moment he turned eighteen, after years of trying to shame it out of him. Therapy sessions that weren’t really therapy, sermons disguised as advice, rules that tightened around him until he could barely breathe. Minhee remembers all of it. The nights he snuck into her room because he couldn’t stand being in his own. How he winced whenever someone said his old name.

Painfully, she recalls the worst night of all: walking into his room without knocking and finding him kneeling in front of his mirror, shoulders shaking, a roll of duct tape in his hands. His reflection was blotchy from crying, chest wrapped in a way that made her heart stop. He’d looked up at her like he was bracing for more shame, like he expected her to react the same way their parents did.

She’ll never forget the way he recoiled when she reached for him, or the way she held him on the floor while he sobbed until his eyes ran dry.

She’ll never forget the way Jeongin collapsed when she told him she was getting him the fuck out of their horrible house, and the way his eyes shone when she called him by his real name for the first time.

Getting away from their parents was the easy part.

It took years to get to a place where Jeongin felt comfortable enough in his body to live instead of just enduring it. Hormones helped. Real therapy helped. It was also Minhee staying up until sunrise researching binding safety, buying him proper binders, teaching him how to take them off when his ribs ached, and accompanying him to every doctor's appointment. Those little things helped the most, she thinks.

So hearing he’s seeing someone makes something warm bloom in her chest and something tense coil right beside it.

She takes a breath. “Does she… know? About you?”

Jeongin nods once. “Yeah. She knows. She understands. More than most, anyway.”

Minhee’s lip twitches. “Good. I’m glad.”

He nods again, and the quiet settles back around them. A softer one, now that the truth is out.

They talk about Sky for a while. Stuff like her hobbies, her job, and her degree. Minhee listens fully, the way only an older sister can: invested, relieved, quietly proud but also vaguely suspicious.

Eventually, Minhee wanders back into derby talk, hands moving as she explains wheel tension and pivot rotations. It’s normal again. Easy.

Until she circles back to Jisu.

“And then she tried to—like, I swear she seeks out trouble. Every time I turn around, she’s fouling again or glaring at me like—”

Jeongin hums.

Minhee goes still.

He says nothing. Just tilts his head, crunching another chocolate puff.

Minhee pointedly goes back to tightening her wheels like she didn’t hear him. Like he’s just background noise. Like nothing he does has ever gotten under her skin.

✄

The crowd is small enough that Minhee can pick out individual voices. A kid in the third row crunching chips obnoxiously. Someone’s mom talking about gas prices. The soft thunk-thunk-thunk of wheels hitting seams in the flooring. Derby night at this rec center is never loud, never glamorous, never packed. It’s familiar, still. The kind of setting where everything echoes slightly too long and the lights always hum unevenly, on their last thread.

Warmups are halfway done when Minhee feels the burn of a stare on her back.

She doesn’t have to turn to know who it is.

Jisu is cutting slow circles around the inside lane, shoulders up near her ears, jaw tense enough to crack. Her midnight-blue hair is tied too tight, a few strands sticking out. Black eye makeup, already smudged at the corners, gives her an unintentional raccoon look. Or maybe it’s intentional. With Jisu, it’s hard to know.

When the refs call teams to the track, Minhee glides into place and stretches her arms overhead. Her muscles feel good.

Jisu rolls up beside her with a blade-thin smirk.

“Hope you stretched. I plan to lay you out three jams in.”

Minhee gives a slow, deliberate smile.

“You keep saying that every week. Still waiting.”

Jisu straightens, color rising in her cheeks.

“Tonight will be different.”

“Maybe,” Minhee replies lightly. “But not for the reason you want.”

Jisu’s brows pull together, confused and annoyed.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you try entirely too hard when I’m on the track,” Minhee coos, tone warm enough to be insulting. “It’s flattering. You tryin’ to impress me?”

Jisu’s mouth opens, nothing comes out. Her grip tightens on her hips. She looks like someone pulled the rug out from under her, and she is scrambling for balance.

Minhee preens at the tiny spark of victory settling in her chest right as the whistle blows.

The pack launches forward in a tangle of wheels and elbows. Minhee ducks between blockers, following the rhythm in her legs. Jisu comes in immediately, trying to slam into her shoulder, but Minhee slips away with a quick pivot. It throws Jisu off balance.

It keeps happening.

Jisu lunges.

Minhee steps out of reach.

Jisu pushes harder, body tense, jaw set, almost chasing a personal grudge rather than a jammer.

The first penalty comes early. A high hit that sends the ref’s arm up with no hesitation. Jisu reacts with a frustrated shake of her helmet as she skates to the box.

By the time she returns, the score has shifted significantly. Her team is scrambling to hold any kind of formation. Minhee sees the exhaustion in their shoulders, the quick glances they trade every time Jisu leaves her position to chase Minhee rather than staying in the wall.

Another hit. Another penalty.

This time, for a dangerous shove after the whistle.

Her coach yells her number across the track, voice clipped with frustration.

Jisu’s jaw twitches. She skates to the penalty box with the same stiff posture, as if each stride is its own battle. When she comes out again, the wall is already rearranged without her. They obviously aren’t eager to make space for her.

Minhee should be satisfied.

Normally, she would be.

Something coils uncomfortably in her stomach when she glances over and sees Jisu standing alone during a timeout, helmet under her arm, her coach talking sternly while Jisu’s eyes stay down. She looks smaller without the fire, the fight drained out of her all at once.

Minhee turns away quickly.

She tells herself she doesn’t care.

She repeats it again when her chest tightens in spite of her.

The game moves on.

Her team remains solid, running smooth triangles and clean transitions. Minhee falls into the familiar work of weaving through bodies, evaluating angles, predicting openings. Comforting patterns. Reliable chaos.

The tension in the air doesn’t fade. If anything, it thickens.

Near the end of the final quarter, Felicity takes the pivot line. She adjusts her pads, shakes out her arms, and gives Minhee that tiny half smile she uses before things get serious.

The whistle shrills.

Everything accelerates.

The pack tightens. Minhee sees bodies shifting, blockers leaning into pressure, Felicity stepping forward to brace the left side. The opposing blocker behind Felicity is new, someone Minhee doesn’t recognize, skating as if she is trying to impress someone watching.

The new blocker crowds in too close, testing boundaries, shoulders rolling, waiting for someone to give her an excuse. Felicity notices immediately. She shifts her weight, repositions her stance, and lowers her center of gravity with the calm focus she always has before a heavy hit.

The pack surges forward. Minhee tucks into the movement, trying to find the rhythm, watching bodies lean and brace and tighten. The air is dense, almost humid. Every sound seems sharper.

Felicity holds her line on the left, reading the floor, ready. The new blocker mirrors her a little too eagerly.

Minhee threads between two blockers, waiting for a crack in the wall. The pack compresses again. Pressure builds from all sides. Someone’s elbow slides too close to her ribs. Someone else’s wheels scrape hers.

She doesn’t see the hit coming until it’s already started.

The new blocker drops her shoulder and drives it into Felicity’s upper back with far too much force. Uncontrolled. Reckless and impatient and aimed without thought.

Felicity’s body snaps forward. Her skates skid. She loses the angle completely.

She goes down hard.

Her left arm hits first, then her shoulder folds under her, then she rolls onto her side with a sharp, choked sound that hits Minhee harder than it should. Felicity curls around her shoulder, barely breathing through the pain.

A ref blows the whistle so fast it almost overlaps itself. Another calls the jam dead and gestures for medical. The whole rink stutters into silence.

Minhee’s already turning toward Felicity when a ref steps in front of her.

“Stop. Give her space.”

The words are firm, stiff.

Minhee stops. Her heart doesn’t.

Felicity is still curled on the track, eyes shut tight, jaw clenched so hard it looks painful. She tries to take a breath and winces instantly. Her wheels scrape weakly as she shifts, like her body’s trying to pull away from its own pain.

The new blocker stands a few feet back, her expression reading that she didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Her hands hover at her sides, trembling, and she mutters something to her captain that the noise of the building swallows.

Except there isn’t much noise anymore. Only the ringing in Minhee’s ears as she watches.

The medic jogging out.

Felicity holding back tears in front of everyone.

Hyunjin trying to get past the coach so she can check on her downed teammate.

The medic kneels beside Felicity and keeps her voice low. Minhee knows that voice. It’s the one they use when they’re trying to keep someone calm while they check for something serious.

Felicity tries to sit up, freezes halfway, and shakes her head with her eyes squeezed shut.

“It hurts,” she whimpers.

Minhee’s stomach drops.

Her team starts gathering behind her. Hyunjin moves to her side first, jaw set tight, struggling to keep her cool. The others follow, wheels biting lightly against the floor as they ease closer.

Across the track, the Snipers look shaken. One skater runs a hand through her hair, staring at the new blocker with a look that lands somewhere between disbelief and disgust.

Minhee’s eyes flick toward the benches without meaning to. Jisu isn’t on the track. She fouled out long ago, but the thought that she might be watching this makes something twist deeper under Minhee’s ribs, sharp and unexpected.

Felicity tries to move her arm again. The breath she sucks in is thin and broken.

Minhee’s chest pulls tight.

Everything is wrong.

The game, the track, the lights, the noise.

It’s the moment everyone dreads and pretends won’t happen to them.

✄

The second the game ends, the rink doesn’t even have time to breathe before everything blows apart.

Felicity’s on the bench with the medic checking her shoulder, face tight with pain. Her teammates hover close without crowding her, loosely maintaining an air of calmness for her sake. Minhee’s barely processed the injury before she hears raised voices across the track.

Chris is already storming toward the Snipers’ captain, strides sharp and furious, skates hitting the concrete hard enough to echo. Her helmet is in her hand because she ripped it off the moment the whistle sounded. Her ponytail’s falling out. She’s rage on wheels.

“You’re proud of that?” Chris demands before anyone can intercept her. “Your girl sent ours to the ground and you’re acting like it’s nothing.”

The Snipers’ captain lifts her chin, pretending calm she doesn’t have.

“The hit wasn’t intentional.”

“That’s not the point,” Chris fires back, taking another step forward.

People turn at the sound. The small crowd quiets. Benches shift. The whole building seems to lean toward the argument.

Hyunjin reaches Chris first, grabbing her elbow. “Chris, let’s take a second to breathe.”

Chris yanks her arm away. “She’s brushing it off like Felicity’s overreacting.”

“Chris,” Hyunjin warns, voice low. “We can’t do this here. Come on.”

Minhee skates over quickly and hooks her hand around Chris’s other arm. Together, they try to pull her back before the tension breaks into something they can’t control.

The opposing captain crosses her arms, irritation tightening her mouth.

“Felicity fell wrong. It happens. You know derby.”

“She didn’t fall wrong,” Chris snaps. “Your blocker shoved her without control. Her shoulder folded under her. Anyone with eyes saw that.”

The Snipers’ captain shrugs, tired. That tiny gesture makes Chris jolt forward hard enough that Minhee and Hyunjin both have to plant their skates to stop her.

Chris is shaking with anger.

“You don’t get to pretend this is a silly mistake.”

Voices rise behind the Snipers’ captain. Teammates chime in defensively, arguing that the hit was legal, that Felicity braced wrong, that nobody meant anything by it. The sound grows jagged. Someone slams their skate into the boards. Someone else swears under their breath.

The whole rink starts to spike with tension.

Minhee tightens her grip on Chris, guiding her backward inch by inch. Chris keeps talking through clenched teeth, breath coming too fast, shoulders tight with the kind of anger that comes from fear.

Minhee understands it, but she can’t let Chris be the one to explode.

The refs step in, trying to calm things down, getting drowned out by the rising argument. The Snipers’ captain keeps insisting this is routine contact, insisting her team hasn’t done anything wrong.

Chris nearly breaks free again, and Hyunjin has to put both hands on her shoulders. “Chris, she’s not worth getting suspended over.” Hyunjin’s voice is gentle and firm. “Come on.”

While the shouting sharpens around them, Minhee glances across the track to see what the Snipers are doing.

That’s when she sees Jisu.

She’s cornered against her team’s bench, helmet still clutched to her chest. Her teammates are on her in a tight semicircle. Their captain isn’t with them; she’s too busy arguing with Chris. Which means Jisu is taking the full brunt of their frustration.

Hands point at her.

Voices hit her one after the other.

Faces twist with anger.

Someone tells her she always ruins everything, someone else demands to know what’s wrong with her.

Jisu doesn’t argue.

She doesn’t shove back or make a scene.

She stands there, shrinking inch by inch, expression cracking. Her shoulders tremble. Her knee bounces. Her fingers tighten on her helmet, trying to hold herself together.

She looks small.

Small in a way Minhee has never seen. Small in a way that chips at something under Minhee’s ribs.

Minhee hesitates for a moment. Just long enough to feel a tug she doesn’t want to name.

Then Chris jerks forward again and snaps her back to reality. Minhee pulls hard, helping Hyunjin drag her away from the Snipers’ captain before something irreversible happens.

Jisu isn't her responsibility. This isn’t Minhee’s problem. There are lines.

She knows where they are.

Minhee turns away from the mess and heads to the bench.

Felicity sits hunched, the medic holding her arm steady. Her face is pale, lips pressed into a thin line, sweat drying across her temples. She’s trying so hard to look calm. Her breathing gives her away.

Minhee crouches beside her, resting a hand on the bench for balance. “Hey,” she whispers. “I’m here. How bad?”

Felicity gives a weak, humorless laugh. “Pretty bad.”

The medic looks up, voice steady and quiet. “She needs an X-ray tonight. The joint’s swollen, and she can’t lift her arm without pain. It isn’t something she should try to skate through.”

Felicity nods once, eyes fixed on the floor.

Minhee stays right beside her, steady and present, focusing on the teammate who needs her.

Behind them, the shouting keeps going. Footsteps stomp. Someone slams a door. The Snipers continue arguing among themselves. Chris mumbles threats. The rink feels like a storm trapped inside an old building.

Minhee blocks it out.

Felicity is what matters.

Jisu will have to burn on her own.

✄

The air outside the rink hits Minhee like a slap—cold, dry, sharp enough to cut through the ringing still sitting in her ears after the mess on the track. She pushes open the back door with her shoulder and steps into the alley behind the building, exhaling hard as the door thuds shut behind her.

Out here, it’s just distant traffic, a humming streetlight, and the sound of her own heartbeat still pounding too fast.

She drags a hand through her hair and tries to breathe. Felicity getting hurt always does something to her—drops her stomach straight to the floor, sends panic buzzing under her skin. She hates that feeling. Hates what it pulls out of her.

She takes a few steps forward and stops.

Someone’s sitting on the curb near the back exit. Alone. Helmet still on, chin strap dangling loosely, elbows resting on her knees.

Jisu.

She isn’t pacing. No stomping around the locker room, no gear slamming against metal benches, no muttered curses simmering under her breath. She just sits there, utterly still, staring at the concrete as if it’s murmuring something only she can hear.

Minhee catches herself freezing before she’s fully aware of it. She hangs back, far enough that Jisu’s peripheral vision won’t pick her up. Honestly, the last thing she wants right now is to draw those eyes.

It’s strange seeing Jisu like this; quiet, deflated. Not defeated exactly. Something close. Like someone turned the volume down on her and forgot to turn it back up.

Minhee should look away. She tells herself to look away.

Her eyes don’t listen.

She watches the subtle rise and fall of Jisu’s shoulders. She watches her pick at the velcro strap of her wrist guard. She watches the way her boot taps the pavement, soft and restless. The restlessness isn’t angry, and it isn’t the kind that comes from leftover adrenaline.

It’s exhaustion.

The ache in Minhee’s chest is immediate and unwanted.

She frowns, irritated with herself. Jisu being sad or quiet or anything other than an annoying menace on wheels has nothing to do with her. She has no reason to care. She definitely shouldn’t be standing here staring at her like this.

Minhee shifts her weight, ready to turn away, and that’s when she hears Chris’s voice from across the parking lot.

“Purrsephone! C’mon, coach wants to go over what happened.”

Minhee flinches at the volume, at how it snaps whatever weird moment she’d fallen into. She looks back at Jisu one last time.

Jisu’s eyes are on her, set in a deep glare, cheeks puffed out in anger.

A cold rush zips down Minhee’s spine.

She turns away before Jisu can open her mouth to start bitching, jogging toward her team, letting the door swing shut behind her without checking if Jisu heard it.

✄

Chris’s living room reeks of microwave popcorn, Tiger Balm, and someone’s lavender foot soak. The sectional’s overflowing with bodies, limbs tangled in shared blankets, pads, and skates shoved off to the side. Someone turned on a movie. It’s mostly background noise. The audio’s low, the subtitles are on, and nobody’s paying attention.

Felicity’s curled up against a stack of pillows, her arm cradled in a sling. Her hair’s damp from a shower, one knee drawn up to her chest. Her face is a little less pale than it was earlier, but the stiffness hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s clearly hurting. She’s also clearly determined to pretend she isn’t.

Chris sits next to her on the floor, half-leaning against the couch, arms crossed. She hasn’t moved more than two feet from Felicity all night.

Felicity rolls her eyes and tips her head toward the group.

“You should’ve seen her after we got home the other night,” she smirks. “Took me thirty minutes to calm her down. I had to sit on her face to shut her up.”

The room erupts.

Hyunjin drops her drink, Bonnie narrowly catches it before it spills all over the fur rug. Ryunjin screams into a throw pillow. Chaeryeong kicks a foot against the coffee table. Chris’s entire body locks up. She’s buffering.

Minhee claps a hand over her mouth, choking on laughter.

Chris glares at her girlfriend. “I’m going to go to Home Depot and buy a rope, Felicity. I swear to god.”

“Oh, for kinky stuff?”

“No, to hang myself.”

The group dissolves into another wave of cackling.

Ryunjin falls sideways off the cushion she’s sitting on. Hyunjin’s wheezing into Bonnie’s chest—which feels purposeful and strategic somehow. Someone knocks over an empty Gatorade bottle, and it rolls loudly across the hardwood before hitting a shoe.

Chris doesn’t even look up. She just exhales sharply and says, “I’m in hell.”

“You’re in love,” Felicity chirps, looking entirely too pleased with herself for someone in a sling.

Chris cuts her a look. “With someone whose mouth should come with a warning label.”

Felicity nudges her ankle. “Still helped me brush my teeth this morning.”

“You have one usable arm.”

“That’s your excuse?”

Chris opens her mouth, then closes it again, jaw tight.

“Admit it,” Felicity taunts, leaning in a little. “You like it when I need you.”

Chris hesitates for half a second too long.

Felicity lights up. “That’s what I thought.”

Chaeryeong snorts. Ryunjin’s still on the floor. Hyunjin’s wiping tears.

Bonnie raises a brow. “You two done?”

Chris groans. “Are we ever?”

Felicity loops her good arm around Chris’s and rests her head on her shoulder. “She pretends to suffer.”

“I do suffer,” Chris mutters. She’s already tilting her head so Felicity can get more comfortable. “Constantly.”

Felicity smiles, satisfied. “And you love me anyway.”

“God help me,”

The energy simmers back down into warm exhaustion. The movie flickers across the screen, casting pale light over everyone slouched on the floor and couch. The chaos mellows into slow chatter, quiet giggles, hands reaching for snacks without looking.

Minhee’s nestled into the corner of the sectional, half under a weighted blanket, one sock slipping off her heel. Her muscles are starting to ache in that post-game way, slow and deep. She likes it. It usually means the night’s over, and she can finally stop thinking.

She doesn’t.

Felicity’s still on the other side of the couch, surrounded by pillows, her injured arm braced carefully in its sling. Chris hasn’t moved from the floor beside her. She’s leaning against the couch now, head tilted back, eyelids low, legs stretched out over the carpet.

They’re all tired. They’re all pretending they’re not still carrying the weight of the game.

Minhee chews absently on a piece of ice from her drink. Then, without really planning to, she says:

“They were brutal to her. After the game.”

The conversation hiccups.

Chris turns her head. “Who?”

“Bambi.” Minhee shifts her glass in her hand. “Her team. They tore into her like she’d ruined their lives.”

Hyunjin groans from where she’s curled up on the floor. “Ugh, this again.”

“I’m serious,” Minhee frowns. “They went after her. Hard.”

“She fouled out,” Ryunjin points out. “That’s on her.”

“I know,” Minhee huffs. “I’m not defending her. I—” She hesitates. “It felt ugly. The way they turned on her. Like they’ve been waiting to do it.”

Chris doesn’t say anything.

Felicity raises an eyebrow. “Why do you care? She spends every game trying to make you eat floor.”

Minhee shrugs, uncomfortable. “I don’t care.”

“You’re bringing it up.”

“I’m just saying it was messed up,” Minhee insists. “She’s a dick, sure, but she’s still a skater. That kind of public shaming is shitty no matter who it happens to.”

There’s a pause. Then, inevitably, Hyunjin opens her mouth.

“Minhee’s in love.”

“I am going to scream,” Minhee replies.

“Tell me you wouldn’t absolutely rail her if she showed up at your door and apologized through gritted teeth.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“She’d call you a slur, and you’d have to change your panties.”

Minhee tosses a balled-up napkin at her. “You all suck.”

“You know we’re right,” Felicity shoots back, eyes gleaming.

Chris finally speaks. “This really what we’re doing now?”

Hyunjin nods resolutely. “Yes, it’s funny.”

“She has a type,” Ryunjin adds. “Hot girls who hate themselves.”

Minhee groans. “You’re all exhausting.”

Felicity grins. “That’s why you love us.”

Minhee pulls the blanket over her head. She knows Chris’s eyes are still on her.

When she peeks out, Chris is still watching—quiet, serious, thoughtful in a way that makes Minhee’s skin crawl a little. As if Chris is figuring her out before Minhee’s even figured herself out.

Minhee looks away first.

The room tilts back into laughter. Someone restarts the movie, someone else turns the lights lower, the air’s shifted slightly. Something’s been recognized but not acknowledged.

Minhee knows better than to say anything else.

✄

After practice the next day, Minhee doesn’t bother lingering. She tosses her gear into her trunk and drives home with the windows cracked, the wind making her eyes sting. Her body aches from every direction—hips sore, wrist scraped raw under the tape, thighs pulsing with heat from drills. It’s the kind of tired she likes. The kind she’s earned. The kind that drowns out everything else.

Still, she takes the stairs two at a time, keys already in hand, and locks the door behind her like she’s sealing something out. Maybe herself.

The blistering shower comes next.

She strips down in the hallway, silently praying Jeongin isn’t home yet or is playing video games in his room. Her sports bra hits the floor with a damp slap, followed by the rest of her clothes, peeled off like another layer of frustration.

Steam fills the room in seconds.

She steps under the spray and tilts her head back, letting scalding water pound the base of her skull. It hurts. It helps. Her fingers find the shampoo and start working it through on autopilot. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It should be enough to shut her brain up.

It isn’t.

Somewhere between rinsing her hair and grabbing the conditioner, it hits her. Out of nowhere, like a hit she didn’t see coming.

Jisu.

It isn’t the whole Jisu situation, messy as that already is. It’s a pinpoint in time. The first real impact they ever shared on the track. No easy bump, no half-hearted contact. A full-body crash, sharp and fast and violent.

Minhee had gone in hot, taking the outside lane. Jisu lunged across to cut her off. The collision knocked both of them sideways, but Minhee had the momentum, the balance, the raw force. She stayed up. Jisu didn’t.

Minhee had landed on top of her.

The memory unfurls in high definition: the squeal of wheels, the heat of the fall, the hard stop when their bodies hit the floor. Minhee remembers bracing her hands on either side of Jisu’s shoulders. Knees pressed into the ground, one leg slotted between Jisu’s. Their faces were too close. Their breathing out of sync. Everything frozen for a half-beat.

Jisu didn’t move. Her helmet had tilted back slightly, chin strap loose, mouth parted. Eyes wide and somehow shimmering.

Minhee hadn’t noticed then. She’d been too full of adrenaline to name the look on Jisu’s face. Now, standing in her shower with hot water fogging up the tile, she remembers it differently.

Remembers how warm Jisu’s stomach felt under her palm when she’d pushed herself back up. How Jisu’s breath hitched, the way she didn’t shove her off immediately.

Minhee squeezes her eyes shut and mutters, “Oh my god,” to no one.

The soap slips from her hand and hits the tub with a loud clatter. Minhee doesn’t pick it up. Her heart is pounding too fast, and her face is hot, not from the water. She rubs her scalp hard and tries to think about literally anything else.

It’s a stupid memory. It shouldn’t mean anything. They’ve hit each other a thousand times since then. Jisu has slammed her into the wall harder than anyone. Minhee has more bruises than she can count from her elbow. None of that has ever made her flustered in the shower before.

Her thighs shift. Heat coils low in her stomach, stubborn and impossible to ignore. She tells herself it’s leftover adrenaline. Or stress. Or exhaustion. Anything except the truth she can feel blooming under her skin.

Minhee drags a hand over her face, groaning. She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. Her fingers drift anyway. Just enough to ease the ache she refuses to think too hard about, to pretend she isn’t thinking of Jisu at all. Her pillow muffles all the noises she didn’t want to make in the first place.

♪

The whistle slices across the track, sharp enough that Jisu feels it in her teeth.

She’s already moving before the echo fades, muscle memory firing faster than instruction. She slips into formation, plants her stance, braces her shoulder. The drill is familiar, one they’ve run a hundred times, but even as she settles into it, her mind runs ahead of the group. She can see a cleaner version of it forming in her head: a shifted angle, a staggered wall, a momentary window that would let their jammer slip through the outside lane three seconds earlier.

She keeps it to herself.

She learned weeks ago what happens when she shares ideas.

They work through the drill again. And again. Someone in the wall misjudges the timing, sending the entire shape wobbling. Someone else reaches too far and leaves a gap wide enough to drive a Zamboni through. Jisu adjusts, tries to compensate, shoulders into the space that’s opening. Her timing is perfect, but her shoulder clips the wrong person on the reset, and the pivot shoots her a glare sharp enough to mark.

“Watch your positioning,” the pivot snaps over her shoulder.

Jisu bites back the reply that flares up instantly—that she was in position, that she was the only one in position—and swallows it whole. There’s no point in defending herself. No one hears her when she’s right, and no one forgets when she’s wrong.

They reset the formation.

During water break, she tries again anyway. Carefully. Quietly. Approaching as if she’s walking barefoot across glass.

“What if we ran the sweep through the inside wall instead?” she asks, keeping her tone casual. “It would pull their pivot out faster, and the jammer could—”

Their captain lets out a snort without even looking up. “Yeah, if our pivot was seven feet tall.”

“It’s not about height,” Jisu says. “It’s the angle. If we stack—”

“Bambi,” someone cuts in, voice already tired. “Just focus on the drill.”

She nods, jaw tight, chewing the inside of her cheek until she tastes iron. She doesn’t try again. The conversation folds over itself and disappears the moment she goes quiet.

They haven’t let her jam in three games. They won’t put her in pivot rotation. They say she’s too small. Too reckless. Too emotional. Too likely to get herself hurt or get someone else hurt or make the team look bad. There’s always some bullshit reason.

Someone jokes under their breath, “We don’t need another Felicity situation.”

Jisu pretends she doesn’t hear it. Pretends it doesn’t sting down to the bone.

Line drills start next. The pack splits into rotating formations, blocking against different angles, working through controlled chaos. Jisu stays on the outside lane, her muscles pulled tight, eyes locked forward. She hates how heavy she feels today. Not tired, heavy. Everything she hasn’t said is pulling her spine toward the floor.

Minhee keeps slipping into her concentration. It isn’t deliberate, and it isn’t even a clear stream of thoughts. It’s brief flashes: the sound of Minhee’s voice hurling an insult across the lineup; the angle of her head mid-jam; the sharp glint in her eyes right before she breaks through a wall. Last week, Minhee said something that cut too deep, and Jisu hasn’t been able to let it fade.

You gonna talk all night, or are you finally gonna land one clean?

Jisu wants to punch the memory until it stops moving.

Instead, she throws herself into the drill harder. Faster. She leads with her shoulder, drives herself into the blocker in front of her, pushes until her wheels screech against the track. It feels good for a second. Grounding, almost. Until she overcorrects and the contact sends her spinning sideways.

Another skater comes around wide and clips her hard in the thigh. Jisu’s legs tangle. The fall knocks the breath out of her. Elbow first, then hip, the world tilting in a blur of ceiling beams and fluorescent lights.

No one stops.

No one curses.

No one checks if she’s okay.

The drill keeps moving without her, wheels and bodies sliding around her, treating her as nothing more than an obstacle in the way.

She lies there just long enough to feel the cold track seeping through her pads, staring up at the rafters with her teeth clenched so tightly her jaw aches. Sweat runs into her eye, turning everything blurry. Her mouth carries the sharp taste of metal. Old frustration, new shame.

She pulls herself up without a sound and gets back into formation.

They don’t notice she fell. They don’t notice she’s back.

Practice ends without ceremony. The coach calls time, and the others spill off the track with relieved chatter, swapping snacks, teasing each other, shoving things into their bags. Jisu slips out early, moving quickly enough to avoid cooldown, to avoid being asked to stay longer, to avoid the judgment that always settles on her when the team gets tired enough to stop pretending.

She heads straight for the locker room without turning back even once.

When the door clicks shut behind her, Jisu’s shoulders drop so fast it makes her lightheaded. The quiet that follows feels hollow, the kind that settles only after a long practice, stale and echoing in the fluorescent hum overhead. Her wheels make a soft, uneven rhythm as she glides toward the far bench and lets herself roll to a stop.

She sits down and pulls off her helmet, setting it beside her with care she doesn’t feel. Her hands won’t stay still; they tremble so violently she has to brace them against her knee pads just to keep hold of anything. For a moment, there’s no warning of what’s coming. No tightening in her chest, no heat behind her eyes. Just the heavy lingering of everything she swallowed. Words she didn’t say, ideas she let die in her throat, drills she pushed through without complaint, the hit that took her down, and Minhee’s voice still threading through the back of her mind.

The pressure gathers all at once, a quiet collapse under too much weight.

Her breath snags. Her throat aches. She bends forward, elbows braced on her knees, pressing her palms into her eyes and trying to breathe her way out of it. The effort only makes her chest draw tighter, like something inside refuses to let go.

The tears break through fast. Hot. Uncontrolled. They slip through the cracks of her fingers, run down her wrists, soak into the wraps she never bothered to take off. She bites her lip hard, trying to swallow the sounds she can feel rising and every sign of how easily she’s come undone.

No one is here to see it. No one stayed long enough to hear it. If she’s going to break, this is the only way she knows how.

Quiet. Alone.

Exactly the way they made her feel.

♪

The skate tech doesn’t say much when she walks in. He takes her boots, checks the wheels, mentions the looseness in her left plate, unaware she already caught it days ago. She nods along anyway, hands pushed deep into her pockets, eyes fixed on the wall behind him.

“Left plate’s loose again,” he says, running his thumb along the metal. “Didn’t you get it tightened last month?”

She shrugs, hands tucked into the pockets of her hoodie. “Guess it didn’t hold.”

He nods, doesn’t push, and carries the skates into the back room. The door swings shut behind him, leaving her alone with the soft drone of the shop’s mini-fridge and the faint scrape of wheels being tested on concrete somewhere out of sight.

There’s a row of stools near the window—chrome legs, torn cushions—but she doesn’t sit. Her legs won’t let her; they’re keyed up and jittery under her skin, carrying the leftover charge of last practice. Her back stays stiff, shoulders pulled tight. She leans against the edge of a display rack, not enough to rest, only enough to keep herself upright.

She stares at the scuff marks on the concrete, thin arcs pressed into the floor by whoever came through last. Each mark is a reminder of people who walked in with simple problems, people who didn’t have to stand here grinding a month of frustration into the back of their teeth.

The idea arrives quietly. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that feels like a revelation. It feels more like something she’d already understood without knowing why. Something simple. Something waiting.

A loose left plate.

A tool.

Five seconds alone.

Minhee’s bag always under the same bench near the locker room doors.

The early call time before every game.

She doesn’t breathe differently. Doesn’t shift or fidget. Her mind simply clicks into place, the way a wheel settles onto its axle after weeks of grinding wrong. As she stands there, the plan takes shape piece by piece; what she’ll need, where she’ll go, how long she has before someone returns to the locker hallway. Who she might pass. Who she must avoid. How to move through the space with the quiet certainty of someone who belongs there, because technically, she does.

She runs through the risk. It barely skims the surface of her thoughts. It’s nowhere near enough to stop her, though. The tiny ember of guilt flickers once, somewhere low in her chest. It’s faint, distant. The kind of guilt you can ignore as long as you don't look directly at it. She doesn’t. She has no room for guilt. Not when she’s been benched half the season, not when every game has been a reminder of how easily she’s erased.

Wanting to win doesn’t feel reckless.

It feels overdue.

When the tech comes back, her skates are polished, wheels aligned, bearings replaced. He sets them on the counter with a half-smile, as if he’s handing her a small kindness. She nods and thanks him quietly, still avoiding eye contact. He doesn’t try to make conversation. He never does.

She slings the boots over her shoulder, the weight settling familiarly against her back, and pushes open the door to the parking lot. The air outside hits colder than she expected. She exhales once, steady and even, and starts the walk home.

The idea trails after her. A shadow she’s finally learned how to acknowledge. It stays with her the entire way, growing clearer, firmer, steadier with each step she takes.

By the time she reaches her apartment, it’s no longer an idea at all. It’s a plan.

♪

Jisu gets to the rink twenty minutes early.

No one else is here yet, which is probably for the best. She stands in the lobby with a cardboard drink carrier balanced in both hands, fighting the urge to set it down and walk straight back out the door.

Twelve iced coffees. All different orders. She memorized them off overheard conversations and half-jokes made during stretching. She even googled how to keep the ice from melting too fast. It took her three trips to bring them all into the rink from her car.

The total made her wince, but she told herself it was worth it. Team bonding. A peace offering. Something. Something that might make her teammates look at her without the usual annoyance.

She sits on the bench near the lockers and waits, tapping the sides of the cups with restless fingers. The condensation starts to bead. Her palms go damp. She wipes them on her leggings and forces her shoulders back.

When the first pair of teammates walk in, Jisu stands too quickly.

“Uh, hey,” she greets, holding out two cups. “I grabbed coffees for everyone. If you want.”

They blink at her. Their eyes flick from the drinks to her face, then back down.

One takes the cup with a quiet “thanks,” barely audible, and walks past without another word.

The other hesitates, then pushes hers gently back into Jisu’s hands.

“I don’t do sugar.”

Jisu nods, swallowing around the small lump that forms in her throat. “Right. Sorry.”

She sinks back onto the bench. Her fingers tighten around the cardboard carrier. More teammates trickle in. Jisu repeats the process each time, her voice getting smaller and flatter as she goes.

A few mumbled thanks. No eye contact. No curiosity. No warmth.

One girl leaves her iced coffee on the bench beside her gear and doesn’t touch it again. It sits there with the condensation pooling into a tiny ring on the wood. Jisu stares at it until her chest starts to ache.

No one asks why she brought them.

No one asks anything at all.

During warm-ups, Jisu is sitting alone on the far end of the mat, sipping her own drink far too fast. The cold hits her stomach like a rock. At least it gives her hands something to do. Anything is better than keeping them still and letting everyone else see the way they shake.

Her teammates talk among themselves as they stretch. Laughing and gossiping. None of it includes her. She watches their circles form and reform, fluid and effortless, like she’s standing behind a glass pane.

She keeps her gaze trained on her shoes and pretends she doesn’t care.

When practice officially starts, the iced coffee sits half-empty beside her. She tosses it into the trash on her way to the track, jaw clenched.

The embarrassment settles low. Then it shifts. Hardens. Sharpens.

She runs laps with her teeth gritted. She drills blocks until her shoulders burn. She keeps her head down, follows directions, takes the hits. No one cheers her on. No one gives her a nod of approval. No one even seems to notice she’s trying.

That absence carves something deep.

By the third drill rotation, a grim sort of clarity starts to bloom in her chest. If anything is going to change for the final game, it won’t be because this team suddenly decides to treat her like a teammate. They won’t support her. They won’t help her win. They won’t help her at all.

So she’ll do it herself.

The bitterness stays with her for the rest of practice, simmering under every sprint, every shove, every frustrated breath she doesn’t let out. It sits at the base of her ribs as she watches her teammates laugh together at the water break.

It sits behind her eyes when she stares at her skates afterward, mind inching—slowly, quietly—toward a plan she still refuses to name.

No one is going to save her chances but her.

Fine.

She’ll make sure Minhee doesn’t skate clean in the final game.

Someone will notice her, one way or another.

♪

That night, long after her muscles have cooled and the ache starts settling into her joints, Jisu unlocks her phone without thinking. Minhee’s profile opens before she can stop herself. It happens so easily now it barely registers as a choice.

Minhee posts constantly.

Her feed is full of polished snapshots: game clips, mirror selfies, team dinners, all wrapped in captions pretending she doesn’t care. In every photo, her teammates look settled, connected, a family she earned on the track. In every video, she’s laughing with the ease of someone who has never once wondered whether she belongs.

Jisu scrolls with careful, controlled motions, her thumb drifting down the screen as if she is reading something important. She calls it research. League awareness. Scouting.

Envy warms under her ribs in a slow, spiraling way she has learned to ignore.

The first photo that catches her is one of Minhee crouched at the jammer line. Her eyeliner is smeared. Her fingers are taped. Her expression is focused and cocky at the same time. She knows exactly who is watching her and exactly why they should be impressed. Jisu studies the tiny crease at the corner of her mouth longer than she means to.

She scrolls again.

A practice video loads next. Minhee laughs while dodging a teammate, sweat shining along the curve of her neck. She wipes her face with her jersey, and when she glances at the camera halfway through, her grin brightens. She points, teasing someone just out of frame. The sight hits Jisu’s chest in a strange, uncomfortable way.

Her breath stutters.

She scrolls again, faster this time, as if speed might smooth something inside her back into place. She hits the workout post.

Minhee is in the training room, hair tied up, sports bra and shorts, holding a pair of free weights. The caption is something ridiculous about off-season conditioning. Jisu barely reads it. Her attention hooks on the line of Minhee’s waist, the way her stomach flexes as she lowers the weights, the unfocused concentration in her face.

Heat rushes up the back of Jisu’s neck so fast she has to look away from the phone altogether.

She drags her palm over her mouth, hoping for a moment of composure. It only makes her more aware of the tightness in her chest. She scrolls past the post even though she barely saw half of it, pretending she didn’t react at all.

She scrolls right into something worse: Minhee and Felicity squeezed into a diner booth, shoulders touching, cheeks nearly pressed together. Both of them are laughing, eyes closed, completely at ease. Minhee leans in with casual familiarity, the kind that comes from being wanted everywhere she goes.

Jisu stares at the photo until something inside her twists in a slow, painful knot.

She locks her phone and sets it beside her on the bed, screen facedown. The room feels too quiet once the glow disappears. She presses her thumb into the blankets, trying to shake the faint buzzing under her skin, the leftover heat from that stupid workout video she barely even looked at.

It’s ridiculous that something so small could get to her.

She wants to believe it’s nothing. A fluke. Just a reaction to the long day. Anyone would get annoyed after hours of drills and criticism. Anyone would scroll out of habit. Anyone would slip and stare a little too long at a post that didn’t mean anything.

She sits up straighter, trying to pull herself back together. The tightness in her chest doesn’t ease. It lingers, warm and unsettled.

This isn’t about Minhee.

She repeats that quietly inside her head, hoping the repetition will make it true. She’s just irritated with the Snipers. Frustrated with herself. Sick of being benched. Sick of being ignored. Sick of feeling small in a room full of people who never let her be anything else.

Whatever just happened with her phone has nothing to do with Minhee.

She reaches for the hoodie at the foot of her bed and pulls it over her head, more to give her hands something to do than because she’s cold. The fabric muffles the room, softens the edges of the silence. She clicks off the lamp, letting darkness settle in around her.

Lying back, she tries to run through the plan again. The timing, the access, the steps she’ll need to take. She recites the sequence in her head the way she does footwork drills, one clean motion after another.

Her thoughts drift anyway, sliding back toward the image she didn’t mean to memorize: Minhee lifting weights, sweat catching the light along her ribs, concentration tightening her mouth.

Jisu exhales sharply and drags the hood down over her eyes like it might block out the memory too.

It doesn’t.

The ceiling stays blurry.

Sleep stays far away.

♪

Game day moves slowly in a way that almost feels deliberate, as if the universe is stretching out the hours just to see whether Jisu will crack.

She doesn’t.

She keeps her expression flat, her shoulders loose, and her voice low whenever she has to speak. She moves through warmups the same way she always does—gear check, stretching, a few steady laps around the track—and she doesn’t drift toward conversations or throw out any sarcastic comments. She doesn’t roll her eyes when someone complains about their pads or when the captain barks the same instructions for the fifth time. She behaves the way they always beg her to.

Her teammates are too caught up in last-minute planning to notice the difference anyway. They’re deep in strategy talk, trying to decide who will run the first wall, who covers the inside line, who shifts on the second pass. Jisu listens from the edge of the group without saying anything. No one asks for her input. They never do. They haven’t trusted her judgment in months, and today she’s grateful for that. Silence is the safest place to be.

She keeps her arms folded across her ribs during the pre-game huddle, head dipped in a posture that reads as focus even if she isn’t feeling any. The coach goes on about grit and teamwork, the same speech she’s heard every game this season. Someone mutters something about keeping hits clean, and another player immediately twists it into a jab about how some teammates never quite manage that.

Jisu doesn’t rise to it. No flicker of irritation. No sharp retort. Not today. She keeps her breathing slow, even, measured, letting the noise blur around her until it’s just another layer of background sound.

She waits.

As the circle tightens around the coach, bodies pressing closer, she edges away. The transition is smooth enough to look intentional, the sort of adjustment players make when they reposition themselves or give someone space. Her fingers skim the zipper of her hoodie in a small, steadying motion.

No one notices her leave.

She crosses the hallway at an easy pace, blending into the mix of referees, volunteers, and skaters drifting between rooms. The other team is meeting down the hall, and she can hear their coach’s voice echoing off the concrete. The whole group is clustered together, focused, hands on hips or on knees, listening intently. Not a single head turns when she walks by.

Perfect.

She moves toward the edge of the prep area, where gear bags cluster against the wall in a row of stiff, sagging shapes. The smell of tape residue and dried sweat hangs close. Minhee’s bag catches her eye at once. The black canvas, the red stitching, and the familiar patch with its frayed corner. It sits under the bench, casually shoved out of the walkway, the zipper half-open in Minhee’s usual hurry.

Jisu crouches smoothly, letting her body shield the bag from view. Her fingers slip into the narrow opening without hesitation. She finds the skates by feel, the familiar weight of leather and metal. The laces are wound tight in the way Minhee prefers—practical, efficient.

Jisu’s tools are already tucked into her sleeve pocket. A small wrench, a quick-adjust key. She practiced this part. Timed it. Memorized the motions until she could do them blind.

Her hands don’t shake.

She loosens what she needs to loosen. Just enough imbalance in the left plate to throw Minhee’s stride off when it matters. Enough slack in the toe-stop threading to make it shift mid-jam. The kind of thing that can be written off as a maintenance oversight, a pre-game rush, a simple mistake.

She isn’t here to break bones.

She isn’t here to ruin someone’s career.

She just wants Minhee off her rhythm. Off her game.

She checks the work twice, making sure it’s subtle and consistent with normal wear. When she’s done, she rewinds the laces exactly how she found them, nestles the skates back into the bag, and tugs the zipper to the precise spot it was before. Then she nudges the bag back under the bench with the heel of her palm, leaving it angled exactly as it was.

Still, no one looks her way.

She stands, straightens her sleeves, and walks out of the prep room with the same steady pace she came in with. By the time she rejoins her team, the coach is closing out the huddle with the usual shout. She slips into the circle seamlessly. Same posture, same expression, same everything.

When her teammates yell on three, Jisu adds her voice to theirs, matching the volume, matching the smile, matching the innocent excitement.

♪

During lineup, Jisu narrows herself down to the essentials. Not physically. In presence. She keeps her shoulders relaxed, avoids the casual bumps and jabs she normally can’t resist. Her chin stays slightly raised, the closest she can get to looking steady. It’s enough to blend in; none of her teammates bother to look at her.

Minhee lines up across from her.

Their eyes catch for half a heartbeat. Just enough time to notice, too quick to count as a choice. Jisu lets a small, restrained smile form. No edge, no teasing curve. It could pass for professional politeness in the right light.

Minhee’s eyebrows lift in a brief flicker of surprise. Then she breaks eye contact and turns her focus toward her own team.

The pre-game standoff dissolves. The whistle blows sharp across the gym, and the first jam begins.

Jisu plays clean. She tracks her line. Holds her walls. Watches the pack with sharp eyes and doesn’t make a single risky move. She doesn’t need to today.

Minhee’s skates are already working against her.

At first it’s almost unnoticeable. Just a faint glitch in Minhee’s stride during the second jam, a hesitation at the apex where she normally bursts through without breaking form. Her crossovers look fine from the stands, but Jisu sees the tiny corrections in her ankles, the micro-adjustments she shouldn’t have to make. Whenever Minhee plants her toe stop, there’s a split-second lag that throws off her balance just enough to matter.

Other people wouldn’t see it.

Jisu does.

By the third jam, she isn’t the only one.

Minhee goes for a tight juke along the outside. Her toe stop slips a fraction—barely a shift, barely anything—and her weight pitches forward at the wrong angle. The fall hits fast and hard, sending her shoulder sliding across the track with a raw, scraping sound that pulls a collective gasp from the benches.

The gym falls into a brief, stunned hush.

Then Minhee’s teammates are moving before she can even breathe through the shock. Chris drops into a crouch beside her, one hand on her back. Ryunjin shouts something toward the refs about calling a timeout. Hyunjin stands nearby gripping her helmet so tightly the straps creak.

Minhee shakes them off.

She gets up on her own, palms stinging, jaw clenched so hard her cheek twitches. She refuses Chris’s hand, refuses everyone’s hands, brushing away every attempt to help like being seen struggling is an insult. She storms off the track without looking at anyone, boots thudding hard against the floor as she heads toward the bench.

Watching her walk away hits Jisu in a place she isn’t prepared for.

She expected a rush. Maybe relief, or triumph, or the sharp satisfaction of seeing a plan unfold exactly how she intended. Instead, the moment sits in her stomach. A stone dropped into water, too heavy and too sudden to ignore.

This isn’t how it was supposed to feel.

The break is short. The refs call it to give Minhee time to fix her skates. Someone hands her a small tool kit. She kneels beside the bench, shoulders tight, hair stuck damply to her forehead. Her hands move quickly, almost violently precise, undoing and redoing her laces with the kind of focus that makes her look more furious than hurt.

Jisu turns her head away. She doesn’t want to watch the anger. Doesn’t want to watch the hurt either.

When the game resumes, something inside Minhee snaps back into place. It isn’t grace, and it isn’t calm. It’s something tougher. A kind of unspoken promise that she refuses to go down a second time. Her movements sharpen. Her hits land with more precision. Every stride carries a new force.

Her team surges with her the moment she pulls herself together. Their formations tighten, their voices fall perfectly in line, and the scoreboard begins to tilt their way. Pass by pass, they move up. Nothing owed to luck or circumstance. Everything driven by momentum.

The final quarter hits, and the lead is firm enough to sting. The Snipers begin to break apart. The walls start slipping, gaps start widening, and the pack is losing its center. Communication collapses into late shouts and missed cues. Jisu braces herself and holds her line, but every push forward meets resistance that shifts and slides away before she can catch it.

When the whistle marks the end of the game, Minhee’s team doesn’t cheer. They just fold together, exhausted and scraped and glowing with the kind of quiet pride that comes after clawing a win back from the edge. Jisu stands in the middle of the track, the noise around her a muffled pressure in her chest.

No one looks at her.

No one suspects her.

She keeps her face neutral. Her breathing steady.

She can’t stop thinking about the moment Minhee hit the floor. About the sound it made. About the way her body folded, more shock than pain. About how Jisu’s stomach twisted, cold and wrong, instead of lighting up the way she thought it would.

As she wheels herself off the track, the thought she can’t shake is the one she doesn’t want to examine too closely: She would’ve rather beaten Minhee clean.

She adjusts the strap on her elbow pad and skates off slowly, trying not to think about it.

Trying not to wonder what it would’ve felt like to win clean.

♪

The locker room is almost silent when Jisu steps inside. The echo of the game—sneakers scuffing, voices raised, the last whistle—still lingers faintly in her bones, the room itself feels emptied out, hollowed. Most of her team bolted the second they were dismissed. No one wanted to dissect the loss. No one wanted to hear explanations, and definitely no one wanted to hear them from her. They’re probably already at the pizza shop down the street, texting in the second group chat she isn’t part of, ordering pitchers and pepperoni and laughing at all the wrong things.

Jisu just wants her bag and a shower.

She rounds the corner and stops dead.

Minhee is still here.

She’s leaning against the lockers, settled enough that it’s clear she’s been there for a while. Her jersey hangs open, a tank top visible underneath, and her hair is still damp from a quick rinse, dark strands clinging to her cheeks. The tape on her fingers is half-peeled, as though she started to take it off and then lost the thread. Her posture is easy, almost casual, but her eyes are sharp and unblinking in a way that makes Jisung’s stomach jerk unpleasantly.

Minhee doesn’t look smug or furious. She looks like she knows something Jisu doesn’t want her to.

Jisu inhales once through her nose, keeps walking, ignoring her pulse that’s jumping under her skin.

“What do you want.”

Minhee doesn’t shift. “You messed with my skates.”

Jisu drops her gym bag onto the bench harder than she means to. The thud echoes off the tile. “You fucked up a turn and now you’re blaming me?”

“I didn’t fuck up a turn.” Minhee’s voice stays calm. “And you know that.”

“I didn’t touch your gear.”

“Don’t lie.” Minhee narrows her eyes. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Jisu laughs under her breath, the sound comes out thin, brittle at the edges. “You’re delusional.”

Minhee pushes off the lockers with one hand and steps toward her. Just one step, but it changes the entire air between them. Jisu straightens instinctively, her body tensing before she can help it.

“You’ve had it out for me all season.” Minhee’s tone doesn’t rise, doesn’t sharpen. If anything, it smooths out. “I let it slide. I figured it was rivalry, or you needing to prove something.”

Jisu scoffs. “You think I need to prove anything to you?”

Minhee studies her face for a few seconds, long enough for Jisu to feel it, really feel it. The assessment. The clarity. The lack of judgment. When Minhee speaks again, her voice drops low.

“No,” she murmurs. “I think you need me to see you.”

Something pulls tight inside Jisu’s chest, that ugly, twisting pressure she never lets anyone notice. She opens her mouth, and the words spill out before she can choke them back.

“You’re a fucking cunt with a massive ego.”

Minhee doesn’t react—no flinch, not even a blink. She steps in, closing the distance at a slow, deliberate pace that gives Jisu every possible chance to retreat. When she’s close enough, Jisu catches the faint scent of her shampoo. Cheap floral, the kind tossed into a gear bag and ignored until it leaks.

Jisu swallows. “You don’t scare me.”

It would land better if her voice weren’t shaking at the edges.

Minhee’s eyes drift down, not in a belittling way. More so she’s considering something. “You think I’m trying to?”

The room settles around them, heavy and warm with leftover steam from the showers. The fluorescent lights flicker softly. Jisu’s pulse thuds in the hollow of her throat. She knows anger. She knows how to throw elbows and insults and walk away without looking back.

This is different. This—this silence, this closeness, this strange, suffocating clarity—she has no script for.

Then Minhee leans in close enough that when she speaks, her breath grazes the edge of Jisu’s jaw.

“You wanted my attention,” she says, voice low and sure. “Now you’ve got it.”

Jisu’s shoulders stiffen.

Her fingers curl against her thighs, nails pressing into the damp fabric of her leggings. Her eyes stay fixed somewhere over Minhee’s shoulder, because looking directly at her feels impossible.

Minhee doesn’t push anything further. She doesn’t pick a fight. She doesn’t demand an explanation. She just straightens, reaching for her bag as if she came here only to deliver the truth and nothing else. She turns toward the door and leaves without another word.

For some reason, a pang of disappointment stabs Jisu’s gut.

Something in her reacts before her brain catches up; a sharp, sickening jolt low in her stomach that definitely isn’t anger. It hits so hard she has to grip the edge of the bench to steady herself.

She tells herself it’s frustration.

She tells herself she wanted to win the argument.

Except that isn’t true.

What she wants—what she suddenly aches for—is Minhee turning back. Stepping toward her again. Closing that last foot of space between them the way she did a second ago, all fire and certainty and sharp edges. Jisu’s body remembers the closeness before her thoughts do: the heat of it, the charge in the air, the exact angle of Minhee’s jaw when she’s furious.

She squeezes her eyes shut. It doesn’t help. The image only sharpens. Minhee pinning her in place, Minhee’s voice low and unyielding, Minhee crowding her back against the lockers until Jisu can’t move or think or run. A hand on her throat, another tangled in her hair, yanking her head back.

Heat surges up her neck so quickly she feels dizzy.

What the hell was that? Why would she even think that? Why would her body react to Minhee of all people?

Her heartbeat stutters, quick and uneven, completely out of sync with her reasoning.

She paces once, twice, trying to shake it off, but the thought clings to her skin. She can still feel the ghost of Minhee’s breath near her cheek, even though Minhee never actually got that close. Her mind twisted the moment into something else. Something dangerous and warm and deeply, painfully unwanted.

Her breathing feels uneven, her skin hot in one place and cold in another. The room feels too big around her, and her body feels too small inside it.

Her fists clench once, hard. Not at Minhee. At herself.

She stares at the empty space where Minhee stood, the echo of her voice still pressed somewhere under her ribs.

And for the first time all season, the thing she’s been avoiding, the thing she’s shoved down deep enough to bruise. finally reaches her clearly:

She wanted Minhee to see her. She really did. Now that Minhee has, Jisu’s spiraling and she doesn’t know what the fuck to do with herself.

♪

The booth’s too warm, too loud, too full of voices she wishes she could tune out. Someone’s fries spill onto the sticky tabletop, and nobody bothers picking them up. Condensation from a pitcher of Coke drips steadily onto a stack of damp napkins.

They lost. Again.

You wouldn’t know it from the way her teammates are talking.

“She fucking ate it,” Hana cackles, slapping the table like it’s the best part of her night. “Face-first. Full-on cartoon fall.”

“Bet she cracked a tooth,” someone else snorts. “Shame she didn’t break her ass.”

They’re talking about Minhee, obviously. They go over the fall again and again, treating it as entertainment instead of a mistake someone had to stand up from. One of them even pulls up the footage on her phone, rewinding the clip to show the exact second Minhee’s wheels slide out and her body jolts sideways on the track.

They laugh harder every time they watch it.

Jisu doesn’t.

She doesn’t say anything, picking at the corner of a sugar packet and tries to keep her face still. She can still hear the sharp sound of the fall, the way Minhee had gritted her teeth and shoved her teammates off when they tried to help her up. She can picture the tension in her shoulders. The heat behind her eyes.

She shouldn’t care. She tells herself that again. It doesn’t help.

“She deserved worse,” Soojin mutters, leaning back with her arms crossed. “Fucking smug all season, like she’s untouchable.”

Jisu suppresses the urge to roll her eyes.

The conversation turns after that—faster than she expects—and suddenly the target shifts.

“Hey, at least Bambi didn’t get benched this time,” Hana says, grinning as if it’s a compliment. “That’s gotta be a record.”

“Yeah, maybe she finally figured out how to stay out of the fucking box.”

Someone whistles. “Dead weight can still roll, I guess.”

Jisu doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t argue, either. She stares at the soda in front of her until the ice starts to melt. Her fingers curl tight around the edge of the table, out of sight.

It’s always the same. No matter how hard she skates. No matter how many clean hits she lands. It’s never enough to be good. Or wanted. Only ever tolerated.

Another pizza arrives and no one passes her a plate.

The conversation drifts to other topics, but the image of Minhee hitting the track won’t leave Jisu’s chest. It sits there, lodged and uncomfortable, something she can’t swallow past. She doesn’t understand why it lingers. She doesn’t want to understand. All she knows is that each new comment from her teammates feels sharp against her nerves, and none of it stings in the way she expects.

♪

It happens on a weekday afternoon, the kind of dull stretch of time where nothing important is supposed to happen. Jisu checks her phone without thinking and sees a screenshot sitting in the team chat, dropped between a video of someone’s dog and a question about practice times. It takes her brain a moment to make sense of it. The cropped window of another chat, same usernames, same icons. Minus hers.

She stares at it long enough for her stomach to go tight. Before she can decide what to say, the screenshot disappears. Deleted. Someone else immediately sends a link to a winter gear sale, and another teammate asks who’s going to the rink that night. The chat scrolls on like nothing happened, like no one saw anything.

Jisu locks her phone. Leaves it on the counter. Walks away from it with the same numb instinct she’s learned to use whenever something hits too hard, too directly. This isn’t the first time she’s been in this situation.

A few days pass before the next blow lands.

She’s scrolling half-awake in the morning when she sees a photo of her team squeezed into a booth at their usual pizza shop. Their sweaters match. They’re wearing glittery antler headbands. Someone’s holding a peppermint milkshake. Everyone’s grinning. Shoulders touching. Some inside joke captured mid-laugh.

She scrolls past it immediately, then finds herself going back to it, slower this time. She studies the details. Who showed up, who’s next to who, how comfortable they all look without her. She doesn’t tap like. Doesn’t comment. Just closes the app and leaves her phone facedown on the table longer than she realizes.

She stops checking the group chat after that.

Not in a dramatic, uninstall-the-app way. She just drifts away from it. By the end of the week, opening it feels pointless.

Around the same time, she starts going to the rink alone.

It isn’t a decision at first. She shows up one night out of habit, expecting to see at least a few teammates, and finds the place mostly empty. A couple kids practicing spins near the wall. A dad teaching his son how to stop without crashing. Then they all leave, and she’s the only one left, the rink lights dimmed to evening levels.

The quiet wraps around her, a softness she didn’t realize she’d been missing until it arrived.

She skates without thinking. Long, fast laps that blur the edges of her vision, sharp turns that pull at her thighs, bursts of speed that make the cold air sting across her face. She doesn’t run drills. Doesn’t practice strategy. She just moves. Forward. Around. Again. And again. And again.

It becomes routine. Midnight at the rink, her reflection sliding alongside her in the glass panels, the hum of the vending machine in the corner filling any silence she can’t outrun. Her legs burn by the time she stops, trembling slightly as she unlatches her pads.

No one texts to ask where she is, or wonders why she’s not at team nights, or even seems to notice she’s gone.

It’s hard to pretend it doesn’t hurt.

Some nights, when she’s bent over trying to catch her breath and sweat is cooling too quickly on her back, the thought rings dull and unconvincing. She knows the truth, even if she won’t say it out loud:

If it didn’t matter, she wouldn’t still be here this late, circling an empty track trying to fill something she can’t name.

The hardest part is realizing she’s not filling it at all.

Just skating around the edges.

Alone.

♪

The display is messier than she remembers.

Jisu stands in the middle of the aisle with two sets of skate wheels balanced in her hands, elbows locked, shoulders tense. One set is soft, built for endurance, stable and forgiving. The other is harder, meant for speed and sharp turns, the kind that demand precision or punish you for getting lazy. She knows every detail already. She’s read these same labels a hundred times.

She still reads them again.

She still can’t choose.

Nothing feels right.

The air in the shop smells faintly of rubber, oil, and something sugary from the front counter. An indie song hums overhead, all soft drums and mumbled lyrics. No one else is in the aisle. No one to watch her hesitate.

Until there is.

Footsteps scuff somewhere behind her. Jisu stiffens. She doesn’t turn at first, dread crawling slow up her spine. When she finally forces her head up, she sees Chris rounding the end of the row, a pair of elbow pads hooked loosely through her fingers. Hoodie, running shoes, hair tucked behind her ears. Someone who genuinely just came here for gear.

Her gaze sweeps the aisle, casual, until it stops—firmly—on Jisu.

Jisu’s grip tightens on the wheels. Her stomach drops. Her mind leaps straight to the worst: Minhee told her. She knows. She’s here to call me out.

The guilt spikes so fast it makes her throat burn.

Chris says nothing about the game, about the fall, or anything that hints at the sabotage Jisu keeps replaying in the dark when she can’t sleep.

She steps up beside her, eyes flicking between the wheel sets.

“If you’re practicing a lot,” Chris says, “go with the yellow ones. They last longer. Less wear.”

Jisu stares at her.

Chris taps the other set lightly. “Those are better for sharp corners. They keep their edge, even on rough floors. They’re loud, though. You’ll hear every turn.”

The words settle into the space between them. Jisu looks back at the wheels, pretending the information is new. The normalcy of the moment is jarring. Her pulse won’t slow.

Chris doesn’t push. Doesn’t hover. She steps back just enough that Jisu could walk away if she wanted. The gesture is gentle in a way that unsettles her more than confrontation would have.

Jisu exhales through her nose, returns the yellow wheels to the hook, and holds the remaining set with a grip that borders on defensive.

A choice made for the sake of choosing.

Chris shifts her weight, shoulder brushing the edge of the shelf. Her voice drops a notch.

“You’re always by yourself lately.”

It isn’t accusation. It still hits something raw.

Jisu’s jaw tightens.

A dozen excuses scramble in her chest. She’s busy, she’s tired, she has a new schedule, whatever. They tangle together and die before reaching her mouth. Speaking would make something real. Speaking would open her up.

Chris waits a beat. When Jisu doesn’t respond, she only nods—a small, private acknowledgment—and turns toward the counter. The elbow pads swing from her fingers in an easy rhythm.

Jisu stays frozen long after she’s gone.

The aisle feels too big now, too quiet, her own breath loud in her ears. She stares at the wheels in her hands until the edges blur, until the pressure behind her ribs spreads into something sharp and nauseating.

She should leave. She doesn’t move.

The moment holds her there, suspended in the strange weight of being seen for the first time in weeks and having no idea what to do with it.

♪

It comes back in pieces. Brief flickers of it.

The dull clack of the loose wheel. The angle of Minhee’s body when it gave out. The sound she made when she hit the floor. Real. Too real.

Jisu’s heard worse falls. She’s taken worse. This one won’t leave her alone, though.

All week, the memory claws its way back into her head. While she’s brushing her teeth. While she’s standing in line at the corner store. While she’s unlacing her skates after another solo session that ends in silence and sweat.

She’d told herself it was strategic. Tactical. A smart play. Minhee was cocky. Untouchable. Someone needed to knock her down. It wasn’t personal.

Except it was.

Jisu had chosen her. Out of everyone, she’d picked Minhee. Thought about it. Planned it. Watched it work.

Now she couldn’t stop seeing the moment her hand turned the bolt.

Her stomach turns with a feeling she doesn’t recognize. No flash of panic, no tight fear of exposure. This sensation drags from deeper places, slow and low, like something forgotten breaking the surface.

She’d wanted Minhee off her game. She thought she wouldn’t care how it happened.

Then Minhee had gone down hard, and something in Jisu had flinched. There’s guilt, but also more. Something deeper. She remembers the way Minhee shoved her teammates away. The way she got up on her own, jaw set, refusing to show how bad it hurt.

Jisu still sees it when she closes her eyes.

She tries to outrun the feeling—skates longer, harder, until her legs ache and her lungs burn—but even the track won’t let her forget now. It used to help. Now it gives her too much space to think.

It sits with her, quiet and persistent, curling under her ribs like it belongs there. She knows.

If it really hadn’t been personal, she wouldn’t feel this way at all.

✄

Jeongin brings Sky over on a Thursday evening, which immediately tips Minhee off that he’s nervous. He only picks weekdays when he wants something to seem casual. He hovers in the doorway for a moment too long, shifting his weight like he’s waiting for permission to exist.

“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “Um, this is Sky.”

Sky steps in behind him, tall and soft-shouldered in a way that immediately disarms Minhee. She’s wearing one of Jeongin’s hoodies—the dark green one that hangs a little loose on him—and on her, it looks borrowed in the comfortable, intimate way that makes Minhee’s eyebrows narrow on instinct. Her jeans are cuffed at the ankles, her sneakers clean, her hair tucked behind a pair of wire-frame glasses. Minimal makeup. Calm expression.

She’s pretty in a gentle, straightforward way. Pretty in a way that makes Minhee suspicious.

Minhee crosses her arms over her chest and stays seated on the couch, ankles crossed, posture deliberately intimidating. “Sky,” she says coolly.

Sky nods. “Minhee.”

She sits on the edge of the loveseat without being asked, hands folded lightly in her lap, posture relaxed. Jeongin hovers beside her, not quite touching her, but standing close enough that Minhee notices. He keeps pushing his sleeves up like his body doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Minhee watches them both. Hard.

“So,” she says, leaning forward slightly, “how did you two meet?”

Jeongin starts to answer, but Sky beats him to it. “Coffee shop near his job,” she explains simply. “He came in every morning and ordered an iced Americano with half the ice, so I learned his name off the cup and used it.”

Jeongin looks mortified. “Sky—”

“It worked,” she adds, expression deadpan.

Minhee squints. This girl is either very honest or very prepared. Both options concern her.

The conversation drifts for a few minutes—work, school, favorite movies—until Minhee decides to stop tiptoeing around it. She sits up straighter, folds her arms tighter, and levels Sky with the classic big-sister glare she’s perfected over years of necessary use.

“What do you want with my brother?”

Jeongin clears his throat. “Minhee!”

Sky doesn’t falter. “A long-term relationship, probably.”

The words hit the room like a grenade.

Minhee’s inhale goes sideways. She coughs. Jeongin jolts so hard the couch squeaks. Sky blinks behind her glasses, head tilted, expression unchanged.

“Was that too much?” she adds calmly.

Minhee can barely form words. “I—That’s—You can’t just—”

“Oh.” Sky adjusts her glasses with one finger. “Should I have lied?”

Jeongin makes a strangled whining noise Minhee hasn’t heard since he was sixteen.

Minhee tries to recover, tries to reassemble her intimidation, but Sky’s sincerity is like a brick to the face. She has no defense prepared for someone who bypasses every layer of bullshit and tells the truth like she knows nothing bad will happen.

So Minhee goes harder.

She grills Sky on everything. How long she’s known Jeongin, how she handles conflict, what her job schedule is like, what her intentions truly are, whether she’s ever hurt someone she cared about. It’s excessive. It’s bordering on rude. Minhee knows it. She does it anyway.

Sky answers all of it. Calmly. Evenly. Without breaking eye contact.

Until Minhee asks one question too sharply. Something edged and protective, something she didn’t mean to sound that harsh.

“You’re awfully confident for someone who barely knows my brother. Are you even taking this seriously?”

Sky stops. Her fingers tighten slightly in the sleeves of Jeongin’s hoodie. The first crack in her composure.

“I—I promise I am. I’m just nervous,” she admits, voice soft. “I want you to like me.”

It lands like a gut punch.

Jeongin’s face erupts into a shade of crimson usually reserved for heatstroke. Sky looks down for a moment, embarrassed now, thumb brushing the seam of the hoodie sleeve, but she still meets Minhee’s gaze again when she finishes.

“I like him,” she states. “A lot. So I want you to like me.”

Minhee doesn’t know what to do with that level of honesty. Intimidation evaporates. Her chest softens against her will. She clears her throat, looks away, and mutters, “Yeah. Okay. That’s—I mean, good. That’s good.”

Jeongin stares at her like she just handed him the moon.

Sky gives a tiny, relieved smile. The first one all evening that looks shy instead of steady.

The room shifts instantly, tension dissolving into something warmer.

“So, uhm—” Sky clears her throat. “How’s that thing with Bambi going?”

Minhee’s head snaps toward her little brother, whose face lights up with a shit-eating grin.

“You mother fucker.”

✄

The rink is different in the off-season.

No whistles. No echo of skate wheels slamming into floor tape. The overhead lights glow above them, broken only by the soft thud of gear landing in bins. Chris is crouched near the benches, separating helmets from the pile of junk they’ve been meaning to deal with for months. Minhee kneels by a crate of elbow pads, sorting them by smell alone at this point. Some of them are beyond saving.

It’s mundane. Easy. A good excuse to move her body without thinking too hard.

Then Chris speaks.

“Saw Jisu at the skate shop a few days ago,” she says, tone offhand. “She looked tired.”

Minhee doesn’t look up.

Her hands keep moving through the pile. Velcro, sweat-stiffened foam, a cracked strap she immediately tosses into the discard bin.

“Tired how?” she asks, voice as neutral as she can make it.

Chris shrugs. “Tired. Didn’t say much. We looked at wheels for a minute. She didn’t even give me a dirty look, so you know she’s spiraling.”

Minhee huffs through her nose. “And that’s my problem because…?”

Chris snorts. “I didn’t say it was your problem. Just weird seeing her like that.”

Minhee nods as if the conversation’s over and the comment doesn’t matter.

Something about it burrows in, though.

She doesn’t think about Jisu much these days. Ever since the confrontation, ever since she cornered her in the locker room and walked away, leaving her speechless with nothing but her own guilt, it was meant to be over. Finished. Settled.

Now, she can’t stop hearing the word tired. It doesn’t match the version of Jisu she’s carried around all season. That Jisu was all heat and sharp edges. Fire in her stride, elbows everywhere, a constant source of friction. She skated with something clenched behind her ribs, fouled with the recklessness of someone who didn’t care who she clipped on the way forward. She was always pushing, always biting.

Except maybe she wasn’t.

Minhee finds herself zoning out as Chris rattles off a list of broken gear they’ll need to replace. She nods where appropriate, throws out a few pads, but her mind is somewhere else entirely.

Minhee thinks about that too long. She imagines how Jisu must have looked, standing alone in the shop, deliberating over skate wheels. No teammates around her. No friends at her side. Nothing filling her days except off-season skating, which Minhee knows only because she asked around once or twice, casually and from a distance.

It isn’t her business. She tells herself that. She repeats it in her head.

After Chris drops her off and she’s showered and changed and lying in bed, the thought is still there. The mental image of Jisu in a skate aisle, exhausted. The memory of her hesitation in the locker room, the way she froze when Minhee leaned in close. There’d been something there. Fear, sure, but something else, too. Minhee had seen it. She didn’t want to name it.

Now she keeps turning it over in her head. It’s a splinter she can’t dig out.

The skate sabotage should’ve made everything simple. Villain, victim, game over. It doesn’t feel that way anymore.

✄

Open skate is usually noisy.

Kids weave between adults, music bouncing off every wall, rental skates grinding across the floor with every uneven turn. Minhee doesn’t usually skate during public hours—too much noise, too many unpredictable bodies. Her apartment felt cramped tonight, though, her muscles too restless to ignore. She needed to loosen up her ankles, and this was the only place with open space.

She’s lacing her boots on the bench when she sees them.

The Snipers.

A cluster of them near the far end of the rink, all wearing mismatched practice clothes. They’re laughing, tossing a ball back and forth, doing lazy blocking drills, as if they haven’t spent a whole season chewing each other apart.

The first thing she feels is annoyance. The second is curiosity.

She scans the group out of habit.

Hana’s there, loud as ever. Soyeon’s wearing a beanie indoors for no reason. Their pivot is in the middle of explaining something using dramatic hand motions.

One person is missing.

Minhee waits a minute. Then two more. She tells herself Jisu’s probably getting water, or tying a lace somewhere out of sight. The girl’s chaotic enough to wander off without telling anyone. Maybe she’s in the restroom. Maybe she’s late.

The Snipers start moving through formation drills without her. They rotate skaters in and out with ease, altering their wall lines, swapping positions, laughing whenever someone trips.

No one looks around for Jisu. No one asks where she is. No one saves her a place.

Minhee keeps skating slow laps, circling near the outer edge, hoping it isn’t obvious that she’s watching. Her eyes keep drifting back to them, the same question forming in her chest over and over.

Why isn’t she there?

It shouldn’t matter.

It really, really shouldn’t.

But Jisu had been everywhere during the season. Loud. Defiant. Always pushing someone’s buttons. Usually Minhee’s. Even when she fouled out, she still hovered at the edge of the bench, waiting for someone to call her in.

Minhee slows to a stop near the barrier and pretends to tighten her wrist guard while she listens. The Snipers don’t acknowledge the fact that they practically dropped a teammate overnight.

It gets under Minhee’s skin.

Because she remembers Jisu’s face during the season. How her jaw tightened whenever her team criticized her, how defensive she got whenever Minhee mentioned them. Minhee used to write it off as attitude. As Jisu being dramatic, angry, spiteful. That was the easy explanation then.

Now, watching the Snipers skate without even a flicker of concern, the memory hits differently.

Maybe Jisu wasn’t being dramatic.

Minhee shakes her head quickly, pushing off the barrier to start skating again. She picks up speed, telling herself she doesn’t care. That Jisu had something else to do. Practice somewhere else. Friends elsewhere.

The thought doesn’t hold.

She keeps seeing the locker room. Jisu standing rigid and cornered, all that fire suddenly drained out of her the moment Minhee leaned close. She remembers Jisu’s hesitation, the way her mask cracked for one breath, one second, before she forced it back into place.

Minhee skates three more laps, faster each time, trying to burn the tight feeling out of her ribs.

It doesn’t go away.

The Snipers keep laughing across the rink.

Minhee keeps searching for a face that doesn’t appear.

She wonders if Jisu’s absence isn’t temporary.

✄

Minhee only came to the rink to grab a roll of tape.

She’d forgotten hers at home, and she likes having a fresh one in her bag before drills. She isn’t here to socialize. She isn’t here to think about Jisu. She definitely isn’t here to deal with anyone from the Snipers.

The lobby is quiet this time of day. Fluorescent lights humming overhead, a vending machine rattling every few seconds, the faint rubber smell drifting in from the track. The front desk girl hands her a roll of tape without looking up from her phone.

Minhee shoves it into her hoodie pocket and turns toward the exit—

—right as someone strides through the lobby doors.

Soojin. The Sniper’s captain.

She’s got her skates clipped to her backpack, helmet dangling from two fingers, stride confident in the way people walk when they don’t expect to be stopped. Her blond hair is tucked under a backwards baseball cap, and she has that permanent, smug little tilt to her mouth that Minhee vaguely remembers hating during scrimmages.

Minhee shouldn’t say anything.

“Hey,” she calls out before she can stop herself. “Is Jisu coming to practice today?”

Soojin doesn’t slow immediately—maybe half a step. Her eyes flick to Minhee’s face, and the corner of her mouth inches upward into a sharp, unpleasant smirk.

“Why?” Soojin drawls. “You miss her fouling you?”

The tone isn’t playful.

It isn’t teasing, or even annoyed. It’s cruel. Thoughtless.

Full of something Minhee can’t name.

Before Minhee can react, Sniper’s already at the door. She pushes it open with her shoulder and walks out without waiting for an answer, without even looking back.

The door swings shut.

Minhee stands there, the roll of tape suddenly heavy in her pocket. She expected irritation. She expected a jab about rivalry or bruises or the usual derby trash talk. She’s heard worse on and off the track. None of that phases her.

This is different.

The comment lands wrong, sits wrong, coils wrong beneath her ribs. A pull, low and unwelcome, tugging at something she doesn’t want to examine. She tells herself it’s just annoyance, but the feeling doesn’t fit. It feels—

off.

Twisted. Personal in a way that makes no sense.

She watches the door for a moment, replaying the expression on Sniper’s face. That smirk. The casual dismissal. The total lack of concern about where Jisu even is.

Minhee frowns.

Soojin didn’t answer the question at all.

She didn’t look confused by it, either. She didn’t say, “Yeah, she’s running late,” or, “No clue,” or even a shrug. She didn’t act surprised that Minhee was asking. She just went straight for cruelty.

Like talking about Jisu that way was normal. Like that’s the tone they use for her all the time.

Minhee should walk away. She should go back to her car and forget this entire interaction. Jisu is barely her acquaintance outside of bruises and penalties. Who cares?

Except she can’t shake the way Sniper said it. She stands there for a long moment, jaw tight, fingers tapping restlessly against the roll of tape in her pocket.

✄

The drive home should shake it off. Usually the wind through her cracked window, the hum of her playlist, and the ache in her thighs are enough to reset her brain after anything derby-related.

Not today.

The whole way back, Soojin’s voice loops in her head. The bite of it, the weird amusement behind it, and the total lack of concern. Minhee keeps telling herself she’s being dramatic, that she misread it, that she’s tired. Her grip on the steering wheel only tightens.

She unlocks her apartment door, and her chest feels tight.

She drops her bag by the couch, toes her shoes off, and sits heavily at the edge of her bed, staring at the wall for a few seconds before giving in to the itch under her skin.

Grabbing her phone, she pulls up Jisu’s team page. She’s expecting normal stuff like photos from practice, blurry videos of drills, or stupid memes.

What she finds instead makes her go still.

Every team photo from the last month has Jisu shoved to the edge. Sometimes half cut off, sometimes barely visible behind someone taller. There are posts where every player is tagged except her. One has a caption that makes Minhee’s jaw clench: Snipers After Practice <3—and Jisu isn’t even in the frame, though Minhee can see her skates in the corner, like the image had been cropped intentionally.

She scrolls more. A lunch outing where Jisu’s name isn’t mentioned. A birthday post where Jisu is nowhere in sight. A group selfie in the locker room with Jisu in the background, looking almost startled to be caught in the shot at all.

Minhee exhales through her nose, slow and shaky.

She taps Felicity’s name before she can stop herself.

The screen rings three times before Felicity answers, hair messy, sling visible, glasses sliding down her nose.

“You look pissed,” Felicity says cheerfully. “What’d I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Minhee mutters, flipping her camera to show her ceiling for a second while she gets comfortable. “I just—something weird happened at the rink.”

“Do I need to beat someone with my good arm?” Felicity asks, adjusting her sling with her teeth.

Minhee huffs out a laugh she doesn’t feel. “No. I mean—maybe. I don’t know.”

Felicity squints. “Spit it out.”

Minhee hesitates, thumb tracing the edge of her phone. “I ran into one of the Snipers. Soojin—blonde one, elbow their captain.”

“Oh, her,” Felicity says flatly. “Yeah. What about it?”

“I asked if Jisu was coming to practice.” Minhee tries to sound casual. She fails. “And she said, ‘Why? You miss her fouling you?’ Then walked off.”

Felicity raises a brow. “That’s rude, sure. Not surprising, though. They’re all rude.”

“It wasn’t just rude,” Minhee says. She shifts on the bed, legs tense. “It was… I don’t know. It didn’t sound like trash talk. More like—”

She trails off, searching for the word she doesn’t want to use.

“Contempt.”

Felicity tilts her head, the serious kind of curious. “Contempt for you? Or for Jisu?”

Minhee swallows. “Both? Maybe?” Her voice drops. “Mostly Jisu.”

“Okay, that’s weird,” Felicity admits. “Did you see her? Jisu?”

“No.” Minhee rubs her jaw. “I checked their team page when I got home.”

Felicity’s eyebrows shoot up. “You what?”

“It’s not—I wasn’t—” Minhee groans and flops backwards onto her bed. “I just wanted to check something.”

“And?”

Minhee taps around on her phone and sends Felicity a couple of the posts. Jisu cut off, unmentioned, disappearing into the edges of every photo.

Felicity reads it over, and her face hardens. “That’s deliberate.”

“I know.”

“Like, really deliberate.”

“I know.”

Felicity squints closer, then leans back. “She’s in none of these posts. That’s not normal.”

Minhee lets the silence sit for a moment, staring at the thumbnails, at the way Jisu barely exists in any of them.

“I think her team hates her,” Minhee says quietly.

Felicity doesn’t argue. She just sighs.

“So,” she says. “What are you gonna do?”

Minhee stares at her phone, heart beating unevenly. “I don’t know.”

✄

The rink is colder than usual today.

The kind of cold that hangs in the air and settles into the concrete. Minhee’s been circling the track for twenty minutes, working half-hearted drills while trying not to think about anything that isn’t her footwork.

During the break, she coasts to the side to check her wheels. The bench area is mostly empty, a few stragglers refilling water or wiping down their skates. She finds a spot near the end, drops onto the edge of the low wall, and starts loosening a stubborn strap.

She doesn’t realize Jisu’s here until she hears the familiar click of a buckle next to her.

They’re barely a foot apart. Close enough to feel each other’s body heat even in the cold. Jisu is bent over her skate, jaw tight, hair falling forward in a curtain of blue. It would be weird to get up and move. It would look intentional.

So Minhee stays where she is.

There’s this incessant urge to say something. To reach out, ask how she’s doing, and why she’s never with her team anymore.

Minhee keeps her voice low. Neutral.

“Rink’s freezing today,” she offers, a lousy attempt at opening a conversation.

Jisu’s reaction is immediate.

She stiffens, a wall snapping into place. Her shoulders rise. Her mouth presses into a thin line. She barely turns her head, and Minhee can see the tension in her profile.

“Why are you talking to me?” Jisu says, barely above a whisper, but sharp, bracing for impact.

Minhee blinks, taken aback. The words hit harder than they should. Not because they’re cruel—Jisu’s always been prickly—but because of the way she says them. Quiet. Defensive. Minhee’s presence alone is a threat.

Minhee answers before she can swallow it down.

“Relax. I was making a comment.”

Jisu doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t even move. She mutters something under her breath. Too soft to make out, but the tone is unmistakable. Dismissive. Closed off.

The silence that follows is tight enough to choke on.

Minhee feels her own jaw clench. She finishes arranging her gear, stands, and gets back on the track without another word. Her strides are longer than before, sharper, frustration simmering under her skin. She wasn’t trying to start anything. She wasn’t even thinking about anything. It was one sentence. One neutral sentence.

Apparently that’s all it takes.

She pushes through another set of sprints. The irritation stays lodged in her chest. Every time she catches a glimpse of Jisu on the opposite side of the rink—small, focused, alone—it presses a little deeper.

✄

The argument should have ended hours ago.

It wasn’t even an argument. Simply a tense moment, a snap, a crack.

Minhee can’t let it go. Something keeps tugging at her that isn’t anger, or even irritation. It’s the sense that something shifted and she didn’t catch it in time.

Jisu didn’t fight back.

That’s the part she keeps circling in her mind. She didn’t throw anything sharp. Didn’t snarl. Didn’t push. She folded. Quiet. Tired. She couldn’t hold the fire anymore.

It bothers Minhee. Different than the way insults might, rather in the way unanswered questions do. Nagging, unfinished, a game paused mid-jam.

When the break ends, Minhee’s adrenaline is tapering into something restless and unsatisfied. She sits with her skates half-laced, staring at the wall of the rink, and suddenly the decision clicks into place. She’s going to figure this out.

✄

The locker room is dim and quiet when she pushes the door open. The overhead bulbs give off a pale, tired glow. The air smells of sweat and disinfectant, warm from the earlier crowd, cooling quickly. Minhee hears someone rustling near the back, and when she steps around the corner, she finds Jisu shoving gear into her duffel bag with a kind of frantic, mechanical efficiency.

“We need to talk about earlier,” Minhee begins, keeping her voice steady. “You bit my head off for no reason, Bambi.”

Jisu doesn’t turn around right away. She lets out a short, rough laugh, the kind that sounds cracked under pressure long before it ever reaches the surface.

“Oh, right. Because you’ve always been so nice to me.”

The sarcasm lands differently today. It lacks sharpness and carries none of its usual bite. It feels like a blade worn down from overuse, tired and brittle. Minhee feels something pinch tight in her chest.

“I wasn’t attacking you,” Minhee snaps back, irritation rising almost on instinct. “I made a comment. You acted like I spit in your face.”

Jisu whips around at that, anger flashing only for a moment. Her eyes are rimmed red, exhaustion carved into the corners of her expression. “Yeah? Well, sorry I didn’t respond the way you wanted.”

Minhee’s jaw ticks. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” Jisu fires back. “Because anytime you open your mouth around me, you’re either talking shit or looking at me like I’m some kind of joke.”

Minhee steps closer, heat rising under her skin. “You’re the one who turned a comment about the rink temperature into a personal attack.”

“You don’t get to act innocent,” Jisu says, voice tight. “You’ve hated me since the first time I stepped onto the track.”

The reason Mingee came in here is forgotten. To hell with figuring out what’s actually wrong with Jisu.

“Oh, please,” Minhee scoffs. “You’ve been on my ass every game. Fouling me, shoving me, starting shit for no goddamn reason. What the fuck, dude?”

“And you weren’t doing the same thing?” Jisu challenges. “Don’t act all fucking high and mighty, Purrsephone.”

Minhee huffs out something between a laugh and a growl. “You tried to cripple me, Bambi.”

Jisu flinches at that, shame flickering behind her eyes.

“I know what I did,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to remind me.”

Something about that softness, unexpected and raw, throws Minhee off balance. She steps closer before she’s made the decision, closing half the distance between them.

“You claim to hate me. Despise me, even,” she says. “Yet you haven’t been able to keep your eyes off me all season.”

Jisu’s mouth opens as if to argue. Her breath stutters, eyes flickering away for the first time. Minhee watches her posture shift, her shoulders tightening and chin tucking slightly. Jisu’s gaze lifts for a moment, then drops, barely a second long but unmistakably to Minhee’s mouth.

The air between them changes. Charged.

Minhee sees everything Jisu has been choking down all season. The anger. The shame and resentment and something else that’s too tangled to make sense of. Maybe something Jisu hasn’t admitted even to herself.

“What are you staring at?” Jisu mutters. Her voice is unsteady, betraying her before she can pull the armor back on.

Minhee doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.

She closes the rest of the distance in a single step and grabs the front of Jisu’s hoodie, pulling her in and kissing her before the girl can overthink it or run from it.

The contact slams through both of them.

Jisu goes stiff in surprise, breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat. Then her hands shove into Minhee’s hoodie, gripping as if she doesn’t know what she wants or how to want it but not shoving her away. The kiss turns hot quickly, too hot, Jisu’s mouth opening against Minhee’s with a mix of fury and something close to desperation.

Minhee crowds her back into the lockers, one hand bracing beside Jisu’s head, the other gripping her waist hard enough to draw a soft, startled sound from her. Jisu bites Minhee’s bottom lip hard—challenging, testing—and Minhee growls into her mouth before kissing her deeper, matching her intensity.

“You’re sick,” Jisu says against her mouth when they pull apart for a breath. She’s trembling, eyes bright and angry and wet.

“And what does that make you?” Minhee murmurs, voice low and steady, lips brushing Jisu’s as she speaks.

Jisu doesn’t move. She doesn’t push her away. She doesn’t look at her either—she shuts her eyes, waiting for something. Her hands stay tangled in Minhee’s hoodie, knuckles white.

Minhee leans in, foreheads almost touching. “Say it,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Say you want me to stop.”

Jisu swallows hard. Her jaw works. Her breath shakes.

She doesn’t speak.

Instead, her fingers tighten, a small tug pulling Minhee back in.

That’s enough for Minhee.

She kisses Jisu again. This time, she slows down, learning Jisu by feel. Their mouths move together in uneven sync, the push-pull still there but melting, reshaping into something warmer. Jisu softens under her hands.

She lets her hands move now, running them up Jisu’s sides, slow enough to let her shiver under the touch. Skin brushes skin as they ease out of their shirts. Jisu’s first, then Minhee’s. The fabric falls to the floor and neither of them looks away. Jisu is flushed everywhere, her chest rising and falling with each breath. Her bra’s still on, her arms are bare, and Minhee wants to kiss every inch of them.

So she does.

She kisses Jisu’s shoulder first, then the space below her collarbone. When she reaches for the clasp behind her back, Jisu makes a small noise, almost startled. She doesn’t stop her, though. The bra falls away and Jisu’s arms twitch, as if she’s deciding whether to cover herself. Minhee leans in and kisses her again before she can.

“You’re gorgeous,” she murmurs, and Jisu exhales, it physically knocks something loose in her.

Minhee kisses her one more time, just to feel the way her mouth is still trembling, and then shifts slightly, pulling Jisu’s hips to meet hers. She lets her hands wander now, slow and certain, easing down to the waistband of Jisu’s leggings.

“Can I?” she asks.

Jisu nods, not quite looking at her.

So Minhee goes slow. She drags the fabric down carefully, peeling it off inch by inch. Jisu lifts her hips to help her, silent, shaking slightly, until her leggings and underwear are pooled at her ankles. She steps out of them with a little clumsiness, her legs unsteady, her hands bracing against Minhee’s shoulders like she needs something to anchor to.

Minhee urges her back toward the bench, gentle, guiding. Jisu sits, then leans back on her hands, legs parted without needing to be told. Her hair’s a mess, her chest still bare, lips bitten pink. She looks both nervous and unreal. Like she’s never let someone see her like this.

Minhee presses a kiss to her knuckles and feels her shiver.

Then she drops to her knees.

Jisu is flushed down to her stomach. Her legs are tense, her hands gripping the wooden bench behind her so hard that Minhee sees her fingertips whiten.

“You okay?” Minhee murmurs.

Jisu nods. “I don’t— I’ve never...”

“It’s okay.” Minhee strokes her hip. “I’ll go slow.”

She kisses the inside of Jisu’s thigh first, soft and teasing. She feels the way her muscles twitch under the touch. Then her mouth moves higher, closer, until her tongue traces the seam of her cunt—warm, slick, already trembling. Jisu gasps like she’s never been touched there before. Maybe she hasn’t.

Minhee licks her again, a little firmer, circling slow over her clit. She keeps one hand on Jisu’s thigh to hold her open, the other resting gently on her hip. Jisu whimpers and tips her head back. She’s not quiet. Every gasp, every breathy curse spills out without filter.

She works her tongue in slow, steady circles, building gradually. She wraps her lips around Jisu’s clit and sucks, gentle, sure. Jisu moans so loud she claps a hand over her mouth. Her hips jerk and Minhee follows the motion, grounding her with her palm and licking deeper.

“F–fuck,” Jisu stutters. “Minhee—I—”

Minhee hums in response, tongue still moving. She can feel Jisu getting close, thighs trembling, her whole body curling in on itself. She tastes so fucking good.

Jisu’s shaking already, legs twitching under her hands. Every time Minhee flicks her tongue just right, Jisu gasps like she doesn’t know what to do with the feeling.

“God, you’re so easy,” Minhee murmurs against her, licking slow and steady. “You’re gonna come already, huh?”

Jisu makes a desperate sound, half gasp, half plea. Her hips roll again, needy and erratic.

Minhee tightens her grip on her thigh and keeps going, mouth slick and warm. “So responsive,” she says, breath hot against her. “You’re such a good girl for me.”

Jisu moans—loud and open—and Minhee feels her thighs clench, her whole body trembling like a wire pulled too tight.

“Bet you’ve never felt this good before,” Minhee says, her voice dropping lower, rougher. “Bet no one’s ever touched you like this. Poor thing.”

She kisses the inside of Jisu’s thigh between licks, soothing her, then dives back in.

“Such a pretty cunt,” she murmurs. “So wet for me.”

Jisu lets out a sharp whimper and grabs the back of her head like she’s going to come undone right there.

Minhee grins into her. “Yeah, that’s it. Be good and come for me, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

When she comes, it’s with a sharp cry, one hand in Minhee’s hair and the other gripping the bench. Her legs shake, her whole body trembling with tension that’s been wound too tight for too long.

Minhee stays with her through it. She doesn’t rush the come-down. She kisses her thigh, her stomach, her hip, then finally climbs up beside her.

Jisu’s eyes are still glazed. Her cheeks are flushed. “Holy shit.”

Minhee grins and kisses her gently. “Feel good?”

“I’m—yeah.” Jisu laughs, breathless. She covers her face for a second with both hands, muffling a groan. “That was—god. I didn’t know it could feel like that.”

Minhee lets out a soft laugh, nudging her knee. “No one’s ever gone down on you before?”

Jisu shakes her head, still hiding behind her hands. “No. I mean—kind of? Not like that.”

Minhee tugs one of her hands down and kisses her knuckles. “You were loud,” she teases.

Jisu groans louder, burying her face in Minhee’s shoulder instead. “Shut up.”

“I liked it,” Minhee says, and she means it. “You sound pretty when you come.”

That gets a strangled noise out of Jisu, part whimper, part half-hearted punch to Minhee’s arm.

Minhee catches her wrist and kisses it too. She can’t stop touching her. Soft little reassurances.

Which is insane. Because fifteen minutes ago, they wanted to kill each other. Minhee had her backed into a corner ready to throw knives. Jisu had looked ready to bite back just as hard. They were practically spitting at each other. Clenched teeth, flared nostrils, the whole locker room humming with whatever ugly thing lived between them. And now—

Now Jisu’s flushed and breathless in her arms, looking at her in a way she’s never been seen before.

Not a rival. Not a threat.

Someone who could touch her without hurting her.

Minhee blinks, trying to make sense of the heat still thrumming through her spine. Her knees hurt from kneeling. Her mouth is slick and her lips are swollen. Her heart hasn’t stopped racing. Everything about this should feel wild, stupid, out of control.

It doesn’t.

Because Jisu’s eyes are soft. She isn’t pulling away. All her bravado, all the tension they’ve spent months building scaffolding around them. This part feels quiet. Fragile. Something Minhee could shatter if she isn’t careful.

She brushes her thumb along Jisu’s cheekbone and watches her lean into it.

“You okay?” she asks, voice gentler.

Jisu pulls back enough to look at her. Her expression is softer now. “Yeah. A little overwhelmed, maybe.”

Minhee nods, brushing a thumb across her cheek. “Good overwhelmed or bad overwhelmed?”

“Good,” Jisu says immediately. “Really fucking good.”

Minhee tilts her head. “You want to stop here?”

Jisu hesitates. “No. I want to try.”

Minhee raises her eyebrows. “You want to?”

Jisu nods, visibly nervous. “I do but I don’t—I’ve never done anything. Like that.”

Minhee smiles, soft and honest. “You can try. I’ll tell you what feels good.”

Jisu shifts closer, knees brushing Minhee’s thigh. She hesitates, fingers hovering like she wants to touch but is scared she’ll shatter something delicate.

Minhee lies back and spreads her legs a little wider. An invitation, an opening.

Jisu inhales sharply. Her hands flutter uselessly in the air.

“It’s just me,” Minhee murmurs. “You don’t have to be scared of touching me.”

“I’m not scared,” Jisu whispers. Her shaking hands give her away, though.

“You’re adorable when you lie.”

Jisu glares at her.

She hovers awkwardly at first, kneeled between her legs. Her hands twitch like she doesn’t know where to put them, eyes darting from Minhee’s thighs to her chest to her face. Minhee can tell she’s overthinking it.

“Hey.” She reaches out and hooks her pinky around Jisu’s. “Relax, sweet girl.”

“I—” Jisu licks her lips. “What if I mess it up?”

“You won’t.” Minhee squeezes her hand, then guides it down between her legs, slow and steady. “Start with your fingers. Just feel.”

Jisu moves cautiously. Her hand slips between Minhee’s thighs, touch too light at first, unsure. Minhee closes her eyes and breathes through it, giving her space to figure it out. When Jisu finally makes contact—real contact—her fingers slide along slick skin, and she wasn’t prepared for it to feel so—

Minhee moans, then chuckles. “See? You’re doing fine.”

Jisu focuses harder, fingertips stroking gently, clumsily, missing the mark a few times yet never pulling back. She keeps glancing up, checking for a reaction, eyes wide and dark. Minhee lets out a soft breath when she gets closer to her clit, hips shifting toward the touch.

“Here,” she murmurs, covering Jisu’s hand with her own, guiding her fingers into a slow circle. “Like that. Yeah.”

Jisu follows her lead, gaining confidence with each soft gasp she pulls from Minhee’s lips. Her movements are still uneven. Pressing too hard, then too soft, then just right, and the sincerity behind it makes it feel more intimate than anything Minhee’s had in a long time.

Then Jisu leans in.

Minhee opens her eyes in time to see her hesitate, then lower her head and press a shaky kiss to her inner thigh. It’s a little clumsy, a little off-center. Her mouth is warm and eager, and Minhee’s whole body tenses in anticipation.

Jisu kisses her again, closer this time, then draws her tongue along Minhee’s center. Slow and cautious, as if reading a map she’s never seen before.

Minhee exhales hard, fingers curling into the bench.

Jisu’s first few licks are unsure. She doesn’t go deep enough, or consistent enough, but she keeps trying. Her tongue flicks gently, experimentally, as if she’s trying to decode every sound Minhee makes.

“Slower,” Minhee breathes. “You can be firmer.”

Jisu hums in acknowledgement—Minhee feels it more than hears it—and flattens her tongue with more pressure this time, dragging it upward in a careful line. When she closes her lips around Minhee’s clit, Minhee’s breath catches. Her hips stutter. It’s messy and imperfect and so real.

Jisu’s hands slide up Minhee’s thighs, holding her open with more certainty now. She licks again, more confident, tongue curling slightly on the upstroke. Minhee gasps, loud, one hand flying to Jisu’s hair.

“Fuck, just like that,” she pants. “Right there—don’t stop.”

Jisu doesn’t. She finds a rhythm—still hesitant, still not perfect—but it’s enough. Minhee feels it coil hot and tight in her stomach, the tension climbing with every wet flick of Jisu’s tongue. She feels herself getting close embarrassingly fast. Maybe it’s the novelty of it. Jisu trying so hard. Or the way she keeps glancing up with those wide, focused eyes, waiting for approval. It’s hot in a way that catches her completely off-guard.

“So good. Doing so good, baby. K-Keep going.” Minhee whines out, head tilting back as her eyes roll up into her head. She’s hurdling towards the edge.

Jisu whimpers against her clit, and Minhee can feel her fingers digging into the fat of her thighs. Somehow, that's what throws Minhee over.

Her whole body tightens as she comes, a sharp cry spilling from her lips, thighs trembling around Jisu’s head. She rides it out slowly, hips rocking against her mouth until the overstimulation makes her twitch.

Jisu freezes a little at first—unsure what to do—but she figures it out after a moment. Licking through it. Holding her still. Letting her fall apart.

After, Minhee pulls her up by the shoulders and kisses her hard.

Jisu melts into it instantly. Messy and eager, her mouth still warm, her cheeks still flushed with effort and adrenaline. Minhee meets her with a fierce pull, a kiss driven by the need to find her balance, her breathing uneven as she drags Jisu closer.

When they finally part, their foreheads press together. Jisu’s breathing is still shaky. Her lips are red. Her eyes won’t meet Minhee’s.

There’s a beat of silence. Jisu goes still, uncertainty flashing across her face before she can hide it.

“Jesus,” she mutters. “I think I blacked out.”

An attempt at humor.

Minhee snorts, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You didn’t. At least, I hope not.”

Jisu covers her face with both hands. “Oh my god. That was so bad.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I literally had no idea what I was doing. I almost bit you.”

Minhee grins. “Honestly, hot.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” Minhee says. She flops back onto the bench and drapes an arm over her eyes. “Do you know how many girls think they know what they’re doing and then treat my clit like a Wii-mote nunchuck joystick?”

That gets a choked laugh out of Jisu. “Okay, that’s horrible.”

“It’s true.”

Jisu pulls her hands away from her face. She’s still blushing, the panic is fading. “So, you aren’t mad? Or freaked out?”

Minhee opens one eye. “You think I’d be mad about head?”

“We started screaming at each other and then—did that,” Jisu gestures vaguely at the air, “and now I don’t know what’s happening.”

Minhee props herself up on one elbow. “What’s happening is: you made me come, and I want to buy you a smoothie.”

Jisu stares at her.

Minhee shrugs. “What? It’s polite.”

“You’re such a freak.”

“And yet,” Minhee purrs, crawling closer, “you let me hump your face.”

“Regretfully,” Jisu sighs, even as she leans in.

They both laugh. It bubbles up between them—nervous and giddy and stupid—and Minhee realizes, in a weird, almost dizzy way, that this is the least tense she’s felt around Jisu in months.

There’s still heat between them. Still tension. It’s changed shape, though. Softer around the edges. Like maybe they can breathe, now that they’ve stopped pretending this wasn’t going to happen.

After a minute, Jisu mumbles, “Do you still think I’m obsessed with you?”

Minhee smirks faintly, her hand stroking up and down Jisu’s back.

“Yeah,” she says. “But I don’t mind it as much now.”

That earns a reluctant laugh, muffled into her shoulder.

“I hate you,” Jisu whispers, not meaning it at all.

“No you don’t.”

No next steps, no labels, no plan. Only heartbeats and heat and the quiet understanding that something irreversible has happened. Neither of them wants to undo it.

Outside, the locker room is silent.

Just kidding.

“Are you guys done fucking yet? I need to change!” Felicity yells.

✄

The rink is mostly empty when Minhee returns two evenings later. Open skate is wrapping up, the music low, a few teenagers lingering by the rental counter. She skates a handful of laps, her heart isn’t in it. Every turn feels softer than it should. Every straightaway feels too long.

She isn’t here to practice.

When she sees Jisu enter the rink, she feels a shift in pressure. A quiet, subtle change in the air. Jisu hesitates at the doorway, her skates slung over her shoulder. She scans the rink lazily, then freezes when her eyes land on Minhee.

Minhee coasts to a stop, one foot braced against the barrier.

For a moment, neither moves.

Then Jisu walks over, slow steps, gaze flicking between the floor, the wall, Minhee’s face. She stops two feet away, close enough that Minhee can see the faint shadows of exhaustion under her eyes.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Jisu says quietly.

Minhee shrugs. “Didn’t know you would be either.”

It settles into a fragile, uncertain quiet. Jisu keeps shifting her weight like she’s waiting to be pushed or dismissed or called out again. Minhee suddenly hates that Jisu expects that from her.

“About the other day,” Jisu starts, voice low enough that Minhee has to tilt her head to hear. “I’m not—I wasn’t—I don’t know what that was.”

“Me neither,” Minhee admits. She doesn’t dress it up. She doesn’t soften it.

Jisu nods like she expected that answer but still needed to hear it.

They stand there for another long moment until Minhee exhales and drags a hand through her hair. “Your team wasn’t here tonight.”

Jisu tenses. “They stopped inviting me weeks ago.”

Minhee already knew. Chris saying Jisu looked tired. The empty space beside the Snipers at open skate. The way Jisu kept skating alone, afraid of being seen.

Hearing it aloud hits different.

Minhee wets her lips, choosing her next words with unusual care. “Jisu, they treat you like shit.”

Jisu laughs without humor. “Nothing new.”

“No,” Minhee says sharply. “I mean really like shit.”

Jisu goes quiet.

Minhee steps a little closer, needing to make sure Jisu hears her fully. “You don’t deserve to be benched every game. Or blamed for every loss. Or ignored off-season. I watched them at open skate. They didn’t even notice you were gone.”

Jisu’s throat works. She looks somewhere past Minhee’s shoulder, failing to school her expression.

Minhee lowers her voice. “You should leave them.”

Jisu’s breath catches, so small Minhee might’ve missed it if she weren’t standing close.

“What?” Jisu asks, voice thin.

“Leave the Snipers,” Minhee says, firmer now. “You don’t belong there anymore. Hell, I’m not sure you ever did.”

Jisu swallows, blinking rapidly, eyes shifting between Minhee’s and the floor. “And go where?”

Minhee hesitates for only a second.

“Come to my team.”

Jisu freezes completely.

“No,” she says automatically, and her voice cracks halfway through the word. “I can’t—I mean—I’m not—”

“You’re good,” Minhee interrupts. “You’re small, yeah—so are half the girls on my team—but you’re fast. You read the pack well. You hit hard for your size. And when you’re not spiraling, you’re actually disciplined.”

Jisu looks like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“You’re only saying that because—”

Minhee cuts her off and steps closer. Close enough that their knees almost brush. “I’m saying it because it’s true. You deserve a team that actually wants you there.”

Jisu breathes out slowly. “Your team hates me.”

“They don’t,” Minhee says. “They hate how you played. That’s different. You show up. You work. You skate clean. They’ll come around.” She pauses, softer now. “Felicity already asked about you once.”

Jisu’s eyebrows lift, stunned.

Minhee keeps going. “We can talk to the coach. Get you a tryout. You don’t have to decide right now. Take some time to think about it.”

Another beat.

Another shift in the air.

This time, it’s Jisu who steps closer.

Jisu’s voice barely rises above the buzz of the rink lights. “Why are you even saying this to me?”

Minhee inhales slowly, then lets it go. She’s tired of dodging things that are already sitting between them.

“Because your team treats you like shit and you act like that’s normal. You sit there and take it,” She answers, voice low. “It bothers me.”

Jisu looks down, scuffing her sneaker against the floor. “And if I joined yours, then what?”

Minhee feels the question hit somewhere deep and struggles to keep her tone steady. “Then you’d have people who actually want you there. That’s all I’m offering.”

Jisu looks up, searching her face. Something flickers—curiosity, fear, something else. “And everything else that happened?”

Minhee shakes her head gently. “We don’t have to sort that out tonight. One thing at a time.”

Jisu nods, eyes shining with something she’s trying very hard to hide. She reaches for her skates, gripping them too tightly, the tremble in her hands is smaller than before.

She isn’t suddenly fixed or confident or whole.

She isn’t walking away, either.

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

Minhee exhales, something warm moving through her ribs. “Good.”

Another quiet passes between them, It’s different this time. Warmer, settled. Jisu looks at her, finally letting herself see something she’s been avoiding all season.

“Can I skate with you, Minhee?” she asks.

It’s such a small question.

Minhee’s chest flutters.

“Yeah,” she says, stepping back and offering a space beside her on the floor. “Yeah, you can.”

Jisu sits down. Their shoulders brush, barely, just enough to feel intentional. Just enough to be a beginning.