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
 

"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.

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 , and looks outside. She's in Madrid.

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