Mr Mermaid | LK Adaptation

Chapter 17

Lisa then asked her, "How are you planning to clear Jungkook's name?"

"Ah, this will have to wait till after tomorrow's competition ends. The plan of action will depend on the actual results. Don't worry, the stars have all kinds of ideas to manipulate the media and promote themselves — this sister has seen and experienced much. Leave it to me."

Lisa did not know whether Rosé was reliable or not — she only knew that this fool had become very proficient at bullshitting ever since she had started working the entertainment industry.

The next day, the Winter Championships began under this air of anticipation. Jungkook's 100-metre swim was arranged for the first day; the preliminaries and the semi-finals would be in the morning, while the finals would be that afternoon itself. Jaehyun's 100-metre freestyle results were also pretty good — if Jungkook could not manage to outswim Jaehyun this time, or even if he did but his results were not better than his previous 48.52 seconds, then it could be imagined what kind of mockery and ridicule would await him.

Lisa was silently sweating on behalf of Jungkook.

Even Jaehyun had cottoned on to the difficulty of Jungkook's situation. Before the competition, he almost spoke up a few times, but in the end, Jungkook ran out of patience first and asked him, "What exactly is it that you're trying to say?"

"You cannot lose," Jaehyun said worriedly.

"So? You want to withdraw from the competition? Take it easy on me?"

Jaehyun did not reply; he had really considered those options. It's not to say that he was certain of his victory over Jungkook — there was no such absolute guarantees when it came to competition, but similarly, there was also no guarantee that Jungkook would beat him.

Jungkook shook his head, his expression solemn. "Jaehyun, you should know, giving it your all in the arena is the greatest respect you can grant your opponent."

Jaehyun nodded. What Jungkook said was always right.

And so, Jaehyun went into the competition with the determination to do his best.

The event was very exciting.

The men's 100-metre freestyle finals that day would later on be described by swimming fans as a match 'for the history records'. In this 'not all that important' competition, Jaehyun performed outstandingly, creating his personal best of his professional career in the event by achieving a final result of 48.27 seconds.

What did 48.27 mean in context? The previous Asian record was 48.35 seconds, set by a Japanese athlete — this result of Jaehyun had already broken the Asian record.

However, his name would not appear on the updated name list of the Asian records. Because, 0.23 seconds before he broke the record, someone else had already beaten him to the punch.

Jungkook, 48.04 seconds!

In these times where records were broken by milliseconds, he had exceeded the Asian record by 0.3 seconds and domineeringly became champion of the event. When this result was announced, the entire venue was stunned!

It was too unbelievable — this young man ... this was only his second competition since his return to the scene, and in just a short two months, he had improved his time by a whole 0.5 seconds! 0.5 seconds! For a speedy event like the 100-metre freestyle which ended pretty much in the blink of an eye, this number was truly staggering!

It was a result narrowing in on 48 seconds, a world-class standard, created in such an inconspicuous competition, by a young man recently besieged by criticism.