Foule sentimentale
On a soif d'idéal
Attirée par les étoiles, les voiles
Que des choses pas commerciales
Foule sentimentale
Il faut voir comme on nous parle
alain souchon - foule sentimentale

Sentimental crowd
We are pining for ideals
Attracted to the stars, to sails
Only to non-commercial things
Sentimental crowd that we are
You should see the way they talk to us

The fencing calendar at the Olympics has officially started.

Hee Do has the schedule with her at all times, in her diary, and she has already added the locations and hours of each competition from the sheet they’d been given. She’s also made sure to tuck in the maps of the entire Olympic grounds between her diary pages so that she doesn’t get lost on her own (which she half expects to still do when she eventually tries to explore anything else).

Though Hee Do herself will obviously compete in the women’s solo sabre event, each day of the week has at least one fencing mode medal competition slotted. Unlike other sports, all rounds of each competition mode are done in a single day, which means you either finish the day with a medal or you don’t.

For Korean fencing, they have the men’s individual sabre competition and individual women’s épée today, and then nothing tomorrow. The only other slots they’re competing in are the men’s team foil, which closes the week and the fencing calendar both, and Hee Do’s own women’s individual sabre competition, which is in two days.

They hadn’t been able to classify for team sabre without Yu Rim. Sometimes Hee Do starts to wonder what it would’ve been like if-

No. There’s no room for ifs right now. She has to prepare.

The first floor of the building Korean athletes are placed in at the Olympic Village houses their own Korea Team room. Their athletes are welcome to come in to the Team room to get away from all of the happenings of the Games at any time of the day, grab a snack and enjoy the free little souvenirs.

Hee Do’s already rummaged through the stickers they have there and gotten as many as she thought would be acceptable… and then a few more, just for good measure. Not many people will want them anyway, right? Her favourite is the one with the Madrid mascot holding hands with the tiger mascot from the Seoul Olympic Games from 1989. She’d already even carefully placed it onto the schedule page in her diary.

She plans on making a pit stop by the Team room to grab a shake before she heads to the fencing venue to watch today’s competition, which should take all of two minutes. When she enters, though, there’s a huge circle of athletes with jackets of all colors under the sun talking animatedly all at once.

It’s a lot of people.

She briefly considers turning back around, anxious to get going, but she does need her morning shake lest her caloric intake drops. Plus, she now represents the entirety of Korea through fencing or whatever (no big deal). So she swallows down her shyness, focuses on her curiosity, and steps forward with what she hopes is a convincing grin.

Thankfully she locks eyes with Jun Myeon, one of the Korean male fencers who is standing to the side of the large group of athletes, and promptly heads over to stand next to him.

“What the hell is going on?” she hisses through her teeth still placed into a grin.

He laughs at her obvious discomfort and ruffles her hair. “We’re trading pins,” he says, then shows his open palm containing a few pins of other countries’ flags. “I got a few just now too.”

She does now notice how everyone seems to be exchanging something. Someone with what she recognizes as the Mexico uniform has an entire plastic bag full of little Mexican flag pins that they’re handing out.

Her grin eases into an excited smile. “Oooh! How do I get one?”

Jun Myeon waves her over to the table holding the Korean flag pins she’d gotten some of the other day. “Just take a bunch with you and trade away. People always want to get at least one from each country, so you shouldn’t have a hard time.” He nudges her. “Everyone is super nice about it.”

He nudges her again, stronger this time, and she lets herself step forward shyly. A girl whose uniform is very red - wait, is she from Russia? Oh. No, it’s Switzerland - notices Hee Do standing there and waves her over to the main group of people.

Hee Do feels young and, frankly, somewhat short amid all of these fit Olympic athletes, so she has no clue what to say. She’s barely stepped into the quasi circle of people before the Mexican rower she’d noticed greets her with a near shout and offers her a pin from his bag, and from there… Well.

She barely needs to answer each question thrown at her from all sides because they each go by so fast. When does she compete? Is this your first time? Have you seen Alexei Nemov has his own room? Want a pin?

She “trades” - rather, is gifted - pins from at least ten countries before she’s even able to ask for one. Mexico, Cuba, Sweden, Switzerland, Kenya, South Africa, and then she can’t read the badges fast enough or hear the English well enough, which means she will need to embarrassingly look up which flag is which when she’s by herself some other time. Did the world always have this many countries?

Then someone shouts “let’s go to China!”, and the entire group starts shuffling out of the room in laughter, Hee Do among them after shoving as many Korean flag pins as she could in one of her jacket pockets.

Coach Yang was apparently waiting just outside the room, because as soon as Hee Do steps out, she grabs her by the collar of her non-competing uniform jacket and brings Hee Do to a screeching halt.

“I was coming to meet you!” Hee Do instantly defends herself as she tries to recover from her ungracious stumble backwards.

Coach just gives her a knowing look and hands her her shake before leading the way to the fencing venue.

They are there to watch the women’s épée competition and support So Jin-unnie, who’s rooming with Hee Do, but that doesn’t end up taking much of their time because So Jin gets disqualified early in the preliminaries.

Hee Do’s stomach goes a little queasy as she watches from the stands and notices So Jin-unnie crying on the benches after she steps off the piste. Whatever other thoughts she could manage are interrupted by Coach pulling her away and briskly telling her they have to go sit elsewhere so they can watch the men’s sabre competition.

Hee Do thinks Coach Yang is trying to distract her from realizing that she might well fail too before she even gets to the finals; that Hee Do isn’t guaranteed a win and that this is competition at a whole other level. Maybe she thinks Hee Do will be impacted by seeing Korea so easily lose.

She appreciates the thought, but she has no intention of losing like that.

The men’s individual sabre competition starts without delay, and she watches it avidly, pen ready to take notes. They might be separated by gender, but it’s still the same sport - still the same sword.

Men’s bouts are much more explosive than the ones Hee Do would encounter when competing among female fencers, and she enjoys watching them. She’s found that guys don’t change directions as much since they are able to fence across a wider distance granted by their height. This means they also take slightly longer than she personally would to engage into each next decisive action.

She’s always briefly envious that these guys don’t have to deal with s - not only does having them make your chest automatically a closer target, but it hurts when you get hit right on the s, even with padding.

Some of these fencers’ attacks are needlessly aggressive, which makes Hee Do scoff. They seem to think they can brute force their way to a win, but that thankfully peters out as the preliminaries end and the quarter finals start.

Korea is still in the run for the semifinals, and Hee Do scribbles furiously in her diary as she considers things to try to add to her training routine. She really likes the lunges she starts seeing as they get closer to the semifinals. These competitors’ added height versus the female fencer average means that crossing the distance in the piste is much more about speed and strength than the careful strategy employed in her circles sometimes. It’s the type of lunge she loves doing and loves hitting, but that can be disastrous if it’s predicted by her opponent.

The Korean fencer, Ji Hoo, loses the bronze medal to France.

“,” Hee Do lets out, melting back onto her seat with her hands on her head.

She watches incredulously as they start preparing the stage for the final match between Italy and Japan then looks up at the ceiling of the stadium in despair. “Shiiiiiiiit,” she whines again, kicking her feet against the floor petulantly.

Coach Yang steps back over from where she’d been standing and gives Hee Do a knowing look. “It’s on you now, kid.”

If Korea wants to take home a medal for individual fencing, they only have Hee Do to count on.

The Olympic Village houses all nations’ athletes, and it’s always distributed by geographic borders. Hee Do loves being in it.

Even taking the elevator to her floor feels like being at a truly international event - athletes of all types are constantly around speaking in all manner of languages, and she always tries to figure out which one it is before she looks at their badges to confirm her guesses.

Korea has an entire two floors of apartments reserved for their athletes and staff in this building, which they share with China (who has a whopping four floors for themselves), Japan, and many more Southeast Asian nations like Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore.

This distribution means Team Russia should be in the building right next to theirs.

That fact is not not in the back of Hee Do’s mind.

She wonders if Russia has four floors for themselves too, or maybe even more. She’s heard from the volleyball team that the United States sometimes gets an entire building to themselves depending on how many sports they classify in, but these buildings are so large she doubts them or Russia had gotten that benefit this time. That means that if she paid attention, she would most definitely see Russian athletes walking around.

Athletes have to wear their uniform at all times when inside Olympic grounds, so she could recognize them at a glance. Korea’s is quite nice, actually: the nylon feels familiar by now, and it’s saved her more than once from getting lost among a huge crowd making their way to a venue - she could spot other athletes by a glance, and generally hurried over to follow them instead of trying to trust her decidedly less than confident reading of the Olympic ground maps.

Her favourite part is probably the absurdly comfortable sponsored sneakers though. Sponsored. Sneakers! They’re sponsoring team Korea, not her, obviously, which means the shoes are customized with the Korean flag colors. Which means she has a new pair of running shoes for as long as these last her, because they’re awesome.

Given that today there’s no fencing competition that she must watch, she finally gets some time to open the