Gold | Park Sunghoon

8

Pressure

"Jangmi, your landing is incomplete!" her coach called out to her. The athlete looked at the owner of the voice and nodded. She agreed with her coach; the landing was a little incomplete and weird. There was a weird landing in her ankle, and she was well aware of it. 

It had been four to five months since Jangmi officially became part of the team; to be honest, she wasn't even sure how many exactly. Between balancing academics and athletics, everything was a blur to her as it almost seemed the same: doing homework during lunch, going to training with Sunghoon after class, training, and then going home with Jay. What now seemed to differentiate her days was how Sunoo was acting in school and how many fans ("Or admirers! You'll never know," he told her as she huffed) approached her. 

Her days in cheerleading were differentiated too—not just by the schedule, but by how much body pain she was had to bear. As much as she enjoyed the sport very much, the fatigue became too much at times. She was getting body pain in different places every day and she hated it. 

Jangmi shook the weird feeling away before doing her running tumbling. The adrenaline carried her forward, making her forget about everything for just a few seconds and focus on her tumbling pass. She was able to land properly this time. 

As she stuck her landing, she heard her teammates and coach clapping for her. She smiled awkwardly and waved her hand in an attempt to get her teammates to stop as she jogged to her coach to ask for her comments. Her coach greeted her with a high five.

"Good job, Jangmi," she smiled at the athlete. Jangmi smiled back at her before the air between them became serious again. "Remember what you just did. We can't have your technique get worse, so you really need to focus." Jangmi nodded at her coach, feeling the pressure on her shoulders. Not wanting it to look obvious, she gave a slight smile.

"You were told right?"

"Told what, coach?"

The coach sighed and placed her hand on Jangmi's shoulder softly, as if it was something bad. "I'll talk to you about it later. But for now, rejoin the rest of the group for conditioning."

She walked back to her group on her coach's order and found her mind flying back to the conversation whilst she was doing hollow rocks. What could her coach be wanting to talk to her about? Jangmi had only been there for months, and she hadn't done anything bad— to her knowledge, at least.

When training ended for the team, the girl rushed back to her coach. The older woman looked around them before speaking. "Jangmi," she started. The seriousness in her voice scared the young girl. "You're a very talented athlete, Jangmi. In fact, you have the most difficult skills in the whole team. This doesn't mean that you have the right to play around. You have to focus and make those skills the best they can be."

Jangmi gulped at what she heard. All she could do was nod out of nervousness; dry swallow as she felt her mouth go dry. "I know it's a lot of pressure, but just try not to let it get to you. Okay?" Her coach added as she tried to reassure her.