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generalfringsAuthor:
generalfrings Rating: R
Fandom: 스물다섯 스물하나 (Twenty-Five Twenty-One)
Pairing/Characters: Na Hee Do/Go Yu Rim
Length: 59k words
Summary:
Hee Do had rehearsed this answer. "I don't think about touring when I go abroad for a competition,” she tells her mother, just like she’d practiced. “I just want to sleep once it's over."
Which, to be fair, isn't not true.
Author's note: Set during the 2001 Madrid Olympic Games. This story was written as soon as Episode 15 went on air (before the show was over). I translated the lyric excerpts quoted, so any mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: The TV show Twenty-Five Twenty-One was written by Kwon Do Eun and is owned by Hwa&Dam Pictures. I do not own or purport to own Twenty-Five Twenty-One or any of its characters. All rights to Twenty-Five Twenty-One are owned by Hwa&Dam, tVN, and Netflix. The lyrics to the songs quoted, Twenty-Three and Shoes, were written by IU, and all rights to the songs are owned by IU and Kakao Entertainment. This work is a piece of fanfiction written under fair use and for entertainment only; as its author I earn no compensation in any form, including monetary, from its creation or publication.
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
인사하는 저 여자 모퉁이를 돌고도
아직 웃고 있을까 늘 불안해요
난, 영원히 아이로 남고 싶어요
아니, 아니 물기 있는 여자가 될래요
아 정했어요 난 죽은 듯이 살래요
아냐, 다 뒤집어 볼래
맞혀봐
IU - twenty three
That woman saying hello,
I get anxious wondering whether she’s still smiling once she turns the corner
I wanna be a child forever
No no, I want to be a woman with a bite
Ah I’ve made up my mind, I will live like I’m dead
No, I want to turn everything inside out
Take a guess
August 4th 2001
"Did you tour Madrid at all?" her mother asks over dinner once Hee Do is back from the Games.
Hee Do had rehearsed this answer. "I don't think about touring when I go abroad for a competition,” she tells her mother. Just like she’d practiced. “I just want to sleep once it's over."
Which, to be fair, isn't not true.
It’s just not the whole truth.
July 22nd
This is everything she's worked so hard for, people tell Hee Do.
Hah. Tell.
They shout it into mics. They post it in forums, tell her during practice, debate it next to her at restaurants, and remind her before her trip. They're almost feral about it: like nothing Hee Do has achieved so far could measure up to what's coming. Like she's not aware of the stakes of competing at the Olympic Games - no, at these Olympic Games.
She's sick of it.
The media presence at the airport is heavy and overwhelming as soon as the athlete buses arrive to drop them all off. Hee Do can't even see over the piles of mics and cameras and shouting heads forming a seemingly never-ending corridor around and ahead of them, and then can see even less when all of the camera flashes start. The brightness stings her eyes and all she can do is follow the body mass of the athletes around her blindly, trying not to trip over her feet until they reach the security gates.
She had really hoped the presence of the basketball and volleyball teams would take away the bulk of the attention from her. Hell, maybe even the archery competitors - the nation's favourite winners - but she still could make out way too many questions thrown at her instead.
Does she think she has what it takes for the Olympics?
What does she think of Go Yu Rim's chances?
When was the last time they'd spoken?
What will she do if she wins?
She wryly wishes she could believe that all of this attention on her is because of her talent and not… everything else.
Now she's seething and temporarily blind from all the bright spots in her vision every time she blinks. Great.
Her vision still swims by the time they're all boarding (into economy class, of course - the nation is invested in them, but not first class levels of invested), and she's starting to feel queasy with anxiety. She's really not looking forward to spending fourteen hours in planes.
Of course, Korea doesn’t have enough Olympic athletes and sporting staff to fill an entire airplane, so there are already other people in the plane when they get in. More people than she’d have expected. People who mortifyingly deem it necessary to clap for the athletes as they file in and try to crowd themselves into their assigned seats.
As soon as the clapping starts, Hee Do sticks a grin on her face and lets it freeze there until her cheeks hurt. She’s keenly aware of all of these people in the plane watching her and the rest of the athletes as they split off into their booked seats, grouped per sport, then promptly begin switching spots to sit next to friends instead anyway.
She's never felt as awkward in her life as she does when she's lifting her bag into the overhead locker of her aisle, all while being stared at by two elderly ahjummas a couple of aisles over. They look her over with open interest and loudly comment that she's not as tall as they thought she'd be, but still keep clapping.
Hee Do is pretty sure she was supposed to sit next to the épée fencing girls, but she ends up next to Coach instead. It works all the better for her anyway: she can sit by the window and have Coach act as a protective wall with the intimidating way she instantly dons sunglasses and crosses her arms to sleep (or "enter into controlled hibernation", Hee Do thinks she'd called it).
They have a short layover in Qatar (Qatar! her brain screeches at her in disbelief) before they board for Madrid, which gives Hee Do at least one break from the whirlwind in her brain for the sake of the whirlwind around her.
She’d always thought Incheon airport was huge - though it couldn’t compare to Charles de Gaulle in Paris - but neither can begin to compare to this: just the walk from their airplane to the transfer area takes them over twenty minutes across seemingly endless halls of polished floors. The ample corridors they cross look too fancy to belong to an airport, as do the increasingly fancier stores that start appearing the farther they go, but the amount of people around them makes it seem less surreal.
There’s not enough time to do or see much of anything there, sadly, and there’s too many people (likely also making their way to the Olympics) to be able to comfortably sit around. Though Hee Do does manage to convince Coach to let her and the épée fencing girls stop for pictures in front of the gigantic, four-stories-high golden teddy bear that sits in the middle of the terminals.
She would have taken more pictures if this were any other time, but their uniforms clearly make it obvious to the seas of people around them that they’re Olympic athletes, which starts to draw more and more curious eyes to them. Turns out she’s actually glad to escape the attention and be hurried along into the airplane for the final leg of the journey.
The curious whispers and eyes around them at the airport manage to throw Hee Do right back to the awful feeling that had crawled along her skin as they escaped the reporters at Incheon. The only word she has for it is icky. The feeling brings with it way too many questions she’d rather not have shoved at her, and she’s still trying to shake it all off by the time she sits by an airplane window again.
She shoves the earphones she'd brought with her disc player into her ears and tries and fails not to ruminate.
It’s real after all. She’s not here on vacation. She's on her way to her first Olympic Games ever, just hours away. She fully expects to spend the entire way to Madrid on edge: what will actually being at the Olympics be like? What about the Olympic Village? And the opening ceremony! Would she even get to see Madrid? Is the food there good?
(At that, her stomach grumbles. She couldn’t manage to eat well last night despite her mother's orders.)
There are more than enough questions to make sure Hee Do’s mind has no space left to think about anything other than competing and the Games themselves. There's only three days to go until she competes after all.
She reaches into the backpack she’d shoved under the seat in front of her for the almost mint-fresh diary she'd been preparing to use specifically for the Games. She cracks open the cover and gets ready to spend the next foreseeable time going over her notes and preparing.
She double checks her equipment list.
She checks the fencing schedule she'd taped to a page while the plane goes into taxiing.
She duly refuses the offer from the flight attendant to check their drink menu under Coach's watchful eyes, and dates a new page so she can get to writing.
Coach slaps her on the head with a magazine. Hard.
Hee Do jolts upright, suddenly awake. "Hwuh?!"
"You're drooling," Coach tells her irritably. "And we're here."
Hee Do rubs her eyes with her wrist, wipes her mouth, and looks outside. She's in Madrid.
July 23rd
근사한 음악소리 빠라밤
심장은 리듬이 돼요 빠담
우리랑 같이 춤춰요 마담
한 바퀴 사뿐히 빙그르르
들뜬 기분으로 아니마토
여기선 좀 더 빨리 가볼까 알레그로
특별히 신경 써서 아첸토
IU – shoes
A marvelous sound, parabam
The heart becomes our rhythm, padam
Dance along with us madam
Let’s twirl around gently one time
With raised spirits, animato
Should we go a little faster, allegro
Pay close attention to the accento
Having slept so much is both a blessing and a curse.
In the one hand, Hee Do is technically rested and ready for the Games.
In the other... She's technically rested and ready for the Games.
Coach isn't interested in her marveling at the modern buildings of the Village in the Campo de Las Naciones rolling up a green hill. She allows Hee Do maybe half an hour of awe staring up at the green-themed buildings full of artistically placed ivies , then another half an hour of looking around at all of the people in different countries' uniforms making their way about, before she hauls Hee Do's ass to drop her things off at a room in a flash. Hee Do doesn’t even get to look at the welcome goodies bag they'd all each been given.
There's no downtime to be had, Coach says.
She’s right: the Opening Ceremony is today, and all athletes participating are supposed to get ready for rehearsals. And Hee Do will be participating. Because Hee Do is a Republic of Korea athlete. At the Olympic Games .
She can't wipe the grin off her face. A real one this time, even as Coach hurries her along and tells her she can worry later about taking a picture of the Olympic Arches that are set up in a plaza amid the main residential buildings of the Village where her room was.
Terrifyingly, Hee Do had been told a couple of weeks back that they'd considered her to be a flag bearer for the Opening Ceremony.
Her ?
Waving Korea's flag for the whole world to see?
How was she even supposed to know where she was supposed to walk, never mind lead their delegation?
She'd had many sweaty nightmares about it. She could picture them clearly still: Hee Do would carry the flag for the female athletes, and for some reason, her dreams always had Cutie Pie carrying the other flag even though he hadn't even qualified for the Games.
Everyone would be watching them as they made their way across this dark and seemingly endless corridor of yelling crowds, and when she tripped, he'd laugh. The camera would be on her and no one would catch her. No one could prevent her from falling on her face even if she tried to shout.
When she'd sit up from her fall with a fake grin and tears brimming in her eyes, she'd realize her flag was torn, and there was no one on her side.
In the crowd formed around her, though, Yu Rim would always be there. She’d stare down at Hee Do, disappointed.
Shudder.
Thank God someone had come to their senses and remembered there's way more respectable athletes representing Korea than Hee Do. The three-times medalist female archer would be carrying one flag, and the other would be carried obviously not by Cutie Pie but by the captain of the male basketball team.
That meant Hee Do could stop having nightmares about it and have nightmares about other things instead. Like when she had that dream where her shoes had turned into marshmallows, or that one nightmare where she threw up during an interview with Yi Jin for Korean TV. She couldn't look at him for a day after that one or she'd get queasy.
Being merely part of the Korean delegation thankfully means that rehearsals for her are much less involved too. She’s told that she should basically follow the line of people ahead, smile, and wave. And definitely make sure not to trip.
They'd make their entrance as a nation into the stadium in alphabetical order, in Spanish, which meant they'd be in between Colombia and Costa Rica, but not far from China which Hee Do at least recognizes a couple of fencers from and exchanges waves with.
H er first experience of the Olympic Games ends up being hours of standing around and being directed here and there, having her athlete badge checked, then re-checked, then lots of being told to wait. She even manages to get sick of marveling at the gigantic stadium the ceremony would be in, no matter how cool the honeycomb-like structure of the open ceiling was. Once boredom sets in, she mostly fidgets in place and tries to keep her foot from going numb.
She'll have to tell Ji Woong that the preparations really weren't as amazing as he'd been thinking. She can’t even see anything of the opening act practice over the sea of bored athletes. At one point she does hear a lot of guitars getting tuned and then playing something really fast for a bit, which she thinks is pretty cool.
Maybe it was for the best. Rehearsals had dulled her enough to the shocking reality of being at the Olympics that she goes through the meals they get handed at the stadium stands mechanically, no time for anxious stomach nerves. She's joined by the girls competing for the épée as usual, as well as the male fencers competing as a team that surround them. They all share the sentiment of just being thankful to be able to sit and eat something for a bit instead of getting nervous.
And it was, indeed, for the best. Because once practice has been completed and they’re all taken back off the stadium for the crowd to be let in so the actual Opening Ceremony can start, Hee Do is keenly reminded of what a show this is all supposed to be.
The Korean delegation isn’t even technically out on the stadium yet: they’re hidden away inside an underground corridor to the stadium, waiting for their starting point in the parade, but they can already feel the walls starting to vibrate with the hum of people in the stadium. Lots and lots of people.
A couple of girls competing for them in Gymnastics go around offering other athletes to do their make-up before they go in, which Hee Do shyly accepts. For a little while she sits down on the floor, cross legged, next to some volleyball players so tall that they all laugh at how the Gymnasts are barely taller than them despite still standing.
"There you go," the gymnast finishing to put lipstick on Hee Do says. "Pretty."
She must be fourteen years old at most, Hee Do thinks. "Thanks," she tells her, looking at the mirror the girl - Eun Hye, the name tag says - was holding up for her. "You're way better at that than me."
"We have to be," Eun Hye laughs. "We don't get the benefit of hiding our faces under a helmet while competing."
Hee Do cringes into a smile even though the comment had been good natured. She can't imagine being that young and having to already be used to all of this attention. "It gets very sweaty," is all she can offer in response before they all turn quiet to look up at the ceiling.
The stadium speakers had evidently come on, and an official-sounding voice starts speaking in Spanish. In response, the whole stadium roars in excitement: the sound echoes down through the walls and rattles along them. The very ground seems to shake from all of the applause that follows.
Hee Do's heart goes into overdrive, repeating the vibration around them. When she looks back at Eun Hye again, she sees exactly she’s feeling staring right back at her: trepidation, overwhelmed by pure excitement.
What had felt like hours at rehearsal for the parade to get going seems to suddenly fly by now that it’s the real thing.
They all emerge into the stadium soon enough, as cued, and get greeted by a wave of sound that hits Hee Do's chest so hard she loses her breath. The sudden lights blind her for a second, and music plays from seemingly every speaker in existence, but nothing can drown out the sound of all the cheering.
Hee Do doesn't have to try and smile: she can't manage not to.
The stadium is filled as far as the eye can see. Every spot is filled, and there is no end to all of the cheering, waving, and jumping people. All Hee Do can make out as she looks farther and farther away in the stands are little lights waving around - camera flashes? Cheering lights? She doesn't know what they are, she just knows that there’s more of them than she can begin to process. Her chest feels full: the very night air is filled to the brim with excitement, joy, and anticipation, and for once the shouting of the faceless crowd feels welcoming rather than intimidating.
It feels like everyone is cheering for them, and she reckons they are . There are flags of all types everywhere she looks, and they are all vibrating as they’re announced. It's the Olympic spirit of competition after all: everyone roots for all nations because that's what makes the Games special. Hee Do thinks of being younger and watching the Opening Ceremony on TV with her dad: he'd always point out to her famous athletes from all sorts of different countries.
And now she’s here, among them.
She laughs when the guys from fencing grab both of her arms to have her wave higher as they make the circuit around the stadium. They follow their flags being waved ahead, and go crazy waving at any Korean flag they manage to spot in the nearest stands. Hee Do jumps and hops along with the épée fencing girls around her, and she sings at the top of her lungs with the archers behind them when the stadium cues up a Korean trot song during their walk.
She can't stop laughing in incredulous joy, even as cameras come up to them, because every person recording them seems to be grinning as hard as they are, beckoning with their hands for them to wave at the lenses. And that they do, flocking like kids towards the lenses and sending off kisses and waves and “hello mom”s.
It's exhausting and overwhelming and beyond anything Hee Do had ever expected. Their energy barely settles by the time they’re standing and waiting for all of the nations to finish the parade - the stadium makes sure of it. A lot of athletes from other nations come up to greet them as time goes on, every one of them looking as excited as they are.
Hee Do can't see the Russian delegation enter or walk the stadium from where she stands with the Korean delegation, but when Russia is announced in three languages over the speakers she cheers as hard as she can. She lets herself pretend that if she shouts hard enough, maybe Yu Rim will hear her and will know that Hee Do still cheers for her just like she always has.
In her haze of excitement she lets herself wonder if Yu Rim is enjoying this as much as Hee Do is. If she's having fun with her team mates, if she's excited to compete with Hee Do again. She wonders if she could somehow bump into Yu Rim and hug the hell out of her while the fireworks above go off.
The thoughts go as easily as they come as the celebration continues.
Her neck will ache tomorrow from all the craning she does to look up and watch the show through the big screens set up in the stadium, but she doesn’t care. Madrid has gone all out, and the ceremony includes an entire traditional dance section that Hee Do watches slaw jacked, impressed by all of the couples twirling in synchronization, and even more impressed still by the aerial view shown of the patterns they form as they go.
The guitars she'd heard practicing before come out in full force, and she claps excitedly along with the entire stadium as they transition into each act of their performance, leading to a final number where each nation joins the song with a traditional instrument of their own. She can't explain the feeling she gets when she sees a Korean performer being showed joining in the string sections with a gayageum: surely she's only tearing up because of the music swelling.
The performance ends, and there's a moment of silence that sits and stills over everyone.
The night air feels cool to her cheeks.
Then, the stadium explodes into cheers.
Hee Do's ears ring. The Olympic Torch starts being brought in, and she joins the cheering with all of her energy. She hadn't gotten to see it during rehearsals as it was still being brought to the stadium, but now that she does, her heart almost beats out of her chest.
The last stretch of the run across continents to bring the flame alive in Madrid is done by a local athlete. He’s introduced as a legend of Spanish sailing by the announcer, and Hee Do watches breathlessly. She can see in his face broadcast on the screens the same emotions she feels, the same she can see in the face of any athlete surrounding her: breathless elation and honor.
It’s the flame that is the actual symbol of the Olympics. The flame represents each of them, Olympians, and Hee Do feels in her heart that that now applies to her too.
As much as she hadn't wanted to carry the Korean delegation flag, she can't deny dreaming of bearing the Olympic Torch one day. Imagining getting to a point in her efforts where she's granted the honor of carrying the very symbol of the Olympics, of maybe even lighting the torch to signify a new beginning… being cheered by her colleagues, her fellow Olympians, moreso than anyone else... Motivated by the people who have gone through what she has, who know what goes into getting here...
When the torch touches the cauldron and the gigantic flames burst awake, Hee Do is warmed to the core. The fireworks show that starts soon after can't begin to compare to witnessing the cauldron come alive and feel the shared whisper of awe from the athletes around her.
She never wants to forget this feeling.
She wishes she was sharing it, right now, with the only other person who knows exactly what it is like for her. She at least relishes in the knowledge that, in a way, she is .
Somewhere not far from her, right here in this stadium, Yu Rim is looking at that very same flame.
She hopes Yu Rim knows that that flame is not unlike the one Hee Do carries inside herself.
When she meets Yu Rim on the piste, Hee Do will make sure Yu Rim can see it burning in her eyes.
