"i just want to experience– no, enjoy life first."

tl;dr a kid stuck between growing up or wanting to cling tight to the last of his youth as his family pressures him to do the former. easy going but quite a natural in the water, despite his talent having spent most of his years without a team he's still trying to get used to the idea of working with others. in the end, he just wants to swim freely with no worries in mind. he just wants to live, you know? but life has other plans and maybe it's better to just go with the flow.

 

name nathan taeil park

he'd rather be called nathan, it's the name he's always been called and it's the name he feels most comfortable in. but moving to korea meant he had to respond to 'taeil' even if he introduced himself as 'nathan'. as long as they learnt of his korean name, they quickly reverted to using that as if forgetting his other name entirely. he's never understood why they did that, is it hard to pronounce or something? nathan never really bothered to correct them anymore though. but upon joining the swim team, the only other thing he feels at home with, he knows that he's going to make the swim team call him by his name, nathan, and nothing else.
 

ethnicity australian-korean

date of birth april 18, 2000 (16)

place of birth perth, australia

current residence seoul, south korea

 

appearance at sixteen years old, nathan stands tall at one hundred eighty cm and weighs at around sixty two kilograms and still growing. most people don't realise how much of a kid he is until they get a good look at his face, a handsome face he has but you'd still notice how his baby fat hasn't melted entirely. just like how he's still holding onto his youth perhaps. in his opinion there isn't much else to say about how he looks, although his fellow classmates would beg to differ. plain black hair he prefers to push back or keep in place with a snapback, a small face, tanned skin from years under the sun, and toned muscles from constant exercise, that's all there is to him really.

[M CLASSMATE #1] nathan? who– oh, you mean taeil? yeah, no one really calls him nathan by the way. he's pretty decent, the girls of our class seem to think he's cute. although honestly i think they're just into him because of his height, something about the 'perfect height gap' or whatever they have stuck in their head. 

[F CLASSMATE #1] taeil oppa? oh oh, he's so handsome like, seriously. you should see him in the flesh. i honestly get too embarrassed when i see him in class... she fans her face. sometimes i catch his gaze and he smiles at me and and and she pauses, face extremely red. e-excuse me i think i need to go get some air.
 

face claim mark lee of nct

backup face claim kim hyunjong of romeo / lee chan of seventeen 

 

traits 
THE STUDENT, ALL SMILES. playful, talkative, relaxed, amiable, quick-witted. 
THE SWIMMER, JUST HIM. eloquent, sentimental, inquisitive, observant, arbitrary, emotional.
THE SON, GROW UP. tight-lipped, distant, indifferent, aimless.
THE MISC. emotionally tongue tied, brilliant but lazy, enfp, neutral good (?)

 

the tale
childhood is associated with sunshine and the salty scent of the sea in nathan's memories. he remembers running along the shore line with a golden retriever tailing after him, it's all laughter and glee. then it moves onto a memory of him and his brothers, flying kites and learning to surf. marcus, his eldest brother, has him on his shoulders as they go off to get ice cream by the stands while darren walks beside them. all a's on his report card and his mother smiles and gives him a kiss on the forehead, his father pats his head and promises a reward. he's young and full of enthusiasm, nathan is ten years old and his life couldn't get any better.

nathan is twelve years old when his mother is diagnosed with cancer. lung cancer, they said, stage 3a. he's old enough to understand some things, but not yet enough to understand why everyone seems so far away when they should be hanging onto each other for support. they move back to seoul and nathan is torn from his friends, from the sunny beach he practically grew up on, and the feeling of happiness. it's better for your mother here, his father explained. a nod, he couldn't yet form the words to question the events that had happened to them.

life in korea is bitter to say the least. everyone calls him taeil now, his korean name that's remained unused for a greater part of his life. even his brothers and father call him that, it'll help you get used to it was their reason. everyone calls him taeil except for his mother, and he clings onto that last bit of home in this strange country that he's suddenly forced to call 'home'. korean he may be but he's never once seen this country as his home, half of his heritage but never has he stepped foot on this other half. it's a bitter taste, he wants to go back home.

the new school is different,  he still has trouble remembering to answer defaultly in korean, a language he learnt from his parents but never quite used. it takes a bit of practice but soon enough he's conversing well with others. everyone likes him, for the most part at least. the others all call him taeil but he just it up and smiles and tells a story about something hilarious he witnessed on the way to school.

he drops his backpack in his room and the mask he's worn all day. collapsing into bed he wonders why it's so different here and there. he goes to sit on his desk, attempt to do some homework maybe, but staring at the lines and lines of hangul gives him a headache. he can do this, he knows that but he doesn't feel the need to. but he tries, he answers all the numbers for his math homework even if he hates math with a burning passion. somehow he gets it done and now it's break time. he pulls out his laptop and goes through a few different choices before finally settling on one. bad timing, it's always bad timing. his father enters his room and asks him if he's even done his homework, i have– he gets cut off. you spend too much time on your laptop, you need to study more not waste time surfing the web. you've been slipping, your grades aren't the same as before and you haven't been getting much sleep either have you? nathan feels like he's choking.

breakfast, lunch, dinner. he hates them the most when he has to sit with his family. his brothers sit across him with his father at the head of the table and the seat to his left is empty, mom's place. suddenly his father wants to talk to them about things. college, their future, growing up. he hates this. he's barely a teenager and he feels like he's being forced into a skin that doesn't belong to him.

one thing his father never tells them is the financial strain that his mother's treatment and inability to work due to her ailment brings. he doesn't say it but nathan notices, he notices how he comes home from work with darker eyes and slouching as if the world was on his shoulders. his brothers also seem farther away, they still try to joke around but it's never been the same since they've come to korea. they're coping.

 

grandeur 
nathan spends a lot of time remembering, looking back into the past. his memory warps and the next thing he remembers is his brothers splashing water at him in the twenty five meter pool, he's maybe five or six and he's much too short for this side of the pool but he jumps in anyway. he doesn't know how to swim, his brothers remember, but he manages to kick and stay afloat until he gets to his brother darren who's just an arm's distance away. they ruffle his hair and call him a natural. his parents, spectators by the side of the pool, decide it's time for nathan to take lessons.

he's six years old when he begins his first lessons. it's fun at first,  and unlike the other kids who bawled and kicked asking for mommy to come back he smiles widely at his coach. he learns to hold his breath under water first, then they move him to the side of the pool and he practices his kick. by the end of the summer he's learnt the basics although he hasn't quite learnt how to do freestyle or any other yet. we'll learn them next time his coach had promised. so they did.

he returns every summer, increasingly better each time. he coach notes how his always seem effortless and graceful, she pats nathan's head and tells him he's doing a good job. by this time he's learnt all four , freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and stroke. his most favourite would be freestyle, the he's the fastest and best at. afterwards he'd list the order to be butterfly, back and lastly . he describes the butterfly to be like flying, it's an interesting feeling and even if it takes a lot of energy out of him it's the other besides free that he's most proud of his form. he's trained in all of them, but the one he never truly mastered was the . awkward flopping and the lack of movement from his spot is all he remembers from the times his coach would try to teach him. he's never quite bothered to practice that because of it.

he's ten years old and his coach starts timing him, and he sets a record amongst the other students even those older than him. each meet up his coach tries to get him to beat his record, even by a millisecond, and he does. she asks him if he'd like to join some competitions with his other classmates, he decides to give it a go even if he's nervous enough to throw up in the bathroom when they're there. he's in position on the starting block, freestyle first, he's trying to even his breathing and relax his heart the tinges of adrenaline already creeping into his system. he can do this. the whistle blows and he's in the water and the rest is a blur. the situation repeats for butterfly and back until he gets to where everything becomes crystal clear along with the mistakes he makes starting from the accidental flop into the pool rather than a refined dive. but he pushes through it, or rather he swims through it and even if embarrassment flows in his veins he's excited and proud of himself for trying his best.

three medals, all second place with the exception of one bronze in back , he placed seventh in but he didn't mind so much now. he almost cries in surprise, his family runs to hug him despite his still soaked suit and his coach gives him a hug herself and a word of congratulations. he's grown a lot, she thinks.

he's eleven when his coach coaxes him into joining a proper swim team. you're already better than the entire class she said, why not join a swim team where you can compete with others and improve your skills there? i'm sure you'd be great at it, i'm the one who's trained you all these years after all, she joked. and he considered it for a while, he remembered his first competition and the feeling of pride and adrenaline. as exhilarating as it sounded he wasn't sure if he could balance his time between school and swim team practices, hence it being a summer thing. but before he could give her an answer he had turned twelve and suddenly he had to say good bye to one of his most favourite people on earth.

in korea he still swims, he still maintained that subtle beauty in his , he still managed to maintain his record but that was it. every summer he'd join lessons, just like before, but the teacher would just leave him to his own devices once he realised nathan was more than capable of taking care of himself. instead of swimming for that thrilling rush, he swam for peace of mind. swimming was the only other thing he had left that was home, so he swam while holding his breath for as long as he could. he swam because his mother would have wanted him to keep swimming, he swam because that was where he felt the most at home now, in the water.

he's fifteen and his father finally tells him not to waste his time. if he loved swimming so much, why not join a team? he has the skills, he's reminded for the nth time, use it then. it takes him another year before he finally joins the swim team, tired of the constant reprimandation and being put down by his father. the constant comparison and the lack of belief that nathan does anything else other than play on his computer. he wants to seeth out that he must be doing something if he's still getting good grades, instead he keeps his mouth shut and submits the form to the nice lady at the desk. 

honestly he's not sure what he was expecting, he knew the team in the previous years was a team that everyone was proud of. the glass case of trophies filled to the brim from years past until the more recent years. there are no trophies from last year and he wonders if he should still bother then, but he remembers his mother's smile when he finally told her he was joining a team and he decides that he might as well continue. he's going to finally join a team and dammit he's going to try his very best to make sure they come out the top, if not for him then for his mother.

 

connections 

his dear mother, far away in the hospital because of her treatment. he visits her every weekend, bikes and takes the train there if he doesn't feel like going with anybody else. call him a momma's boy but he's always wanted to do his very best for his mom. he's always wondered why out of all the people in the world it had to be his mother who got the short end of the stick, it's a selfish thought but one he can't help. she's the only one that reminds him of home now, the only one who still calls him nathan. he'd do anything for her, or anything to make her proud of him. he doesn't tell her how he is at home anymore, how he's grown apart from their once close family but instead he tells her stories about his day or things he witness or read online. he tells her stories about the world outside that she can't see right now, but he knows she'll be able to get out of that hospital some day, he holds onto that belief so strongly. for now he'll try to live for her, live a life she would have wanted him to live.