"If you're scared to lose rather than excited to win, then that's the wrong way to approach a race"
- Cate Campbell
That night was the first time in her life Emily heard a different approach to swimming.
All her life, she has been taught to win and win and win, to the point the fear of loosing a race started to bear down on her life rather than focusing and celebrating her wins. So what if she won this race? There is no given guarantee she will win the next one.
Nothing is ever enough. You have to always continue to try harder and harder and harder till your soul starts to bleed out and your brain begins to fry.
Win one race? Train twice as hard for the next one.
Win another race? Increase your protein intake and focus on abs training.
Win second place the next time? No one cares about second place. Only winners write history. Double the hours you swim in a week.
Loose another race? You're as good as the kindergartner living next door to you.
It's a cruel and a competitive world but this is the way it has been for hundreds of years and there is nothing Emily nor anyone else can do to change this. Winners write history and losers remain forgotten, no matter how great they were.
And Emily is determined to stay a winner.
Which is why she even made the bold decision of giving up everything she has worked for in America and coming to Korea to pursue her swimming career once again.
Albeit, the fact remains that America has a much larger population and thus far more competition for her to compete with where South Korea has a much smaller pool of swimmers, which makes reaching to the top a much easier process. Not to mention swimming is already a very common sport in the States whereas in South Korea is it on the lesser popular side.
Then of course, the xenophobia did not help her situation better either.
Emily considered quitting more than a dozen times. The amount of times she wondered if all this pain is even worth it, is uncountable. But she has devoted her entire life to swimming and won't let go without putting up a good fight. Her parents have trusted her, supported her and pushed her and she could not imagine letting them down any further than she already has done.
Coming to Korea is her last and final chance.
If this doesn't work out, then she isn't sure what else will.
Of course it isn't easy. Before moving here for University, she has only visited the country three times and her Korean is still quite broken and unnatural. Not to mention giving up her American citizenship and permanently altering the course of her life. The culture shock, the language, the food, the people, her family, her friends. Everything is different. Everything.
But now that she is here, Emily knows she isn't going back anymore.
It's either now or never.
But when she met him, when he heard her story, when she begin to confide in him, for the first time her output on life started to change.
Of course, winning is still important to her, but the lengths she has to go for it, is that justified?
Does winning still matter if you have to shatter everything else in your life for it?
Emily never found out the answer thought.
Because he betrayed her before she could.