off the ice | l.mh

chapter 1.3

One year ago

The only sound that could be heard is the scraping of the ice under your skates and the pounding of your heart echoing through your body.

This is your world: the cold and the quiet enveloping you as you danced across the smooth, white ice.

Bringing your arms in tight towards your body to increase the speed of your spin, you shut your eyes and let the symphony of scuffing ice and shallow breaths consume you. Getting ready for the challenging move you've come here to practice, you slow your movement by extending your arms out gracefully, grabbing the blade and lifting your right leg up above your head carefully in a Biellmann spin.

Your entire body aches at the strength it requires to hold your legs in a near-full split, so you could have never noticed the boy watching in the stands.

It is past midnight at this point and the soft moonlight fluttering down through the glass ceiling panels illuminate the ice just enough to give you an ethereal glow.

You've always preferred to practice alone at night, the quiet and isolation helping you focus. After all, figure skating is an incredibly judgmental sport; your coaches and teammates constantly watching and critiquing every little thing. At every competition, there are a line of judges sitting and watching for your every mistake. And you're okay with it because that's just how the sport goes.

But being by yourself on the ice gives you the freedom to escape from the their eyes and explore new possibilities by letting your passion for the art fully express itself.

You truly love figure skating-it's like you can tell a story about yourself, a better version of yourself, to show to everyone. You can be bold or soft, graceful or playful, happy or sad. In a whole world of problems, insecurity, and confusion, you can control the 17,000 square feet of ice and dominate it. Here, there is no such thing as student debt or homework assignments or the global environmental crisis.

When you're on the ice, it's like everything is okay.

"Holy shit...," Mark breathes to himself as he stands behind a row of bleachers, witnessing your unintentional show with his jaw on the floor and eyes locked on your balletic dance. His heart pounds with such intensity that he is afraid it might echo throughout the whole stadium and you would hear.

Hoping to get in some extra drill sets in before the next game, the sophomore boy had come out to the rink that night, not expecting someone to already be there and definitely, definitely, not expecting to fall in love at first sight.

So he stands there frozen in the dark behind the bleachers like some sort of fool, mesmerized by you.

"Who are you?," he wonders to himself.

Mark had seen the figure skaters before as they entered and exited the rink around hockey practices. Usually he didn't pay them any attention because he was focused on his own sport, but the skating he's seen before didn't ever look like this.

This is raw beauty. Captivating- the way you control your body and glide around the ice effortlessly like gravity isn't here to pull you down.

The way the pieces of your hair fell slightly out of your bun and frame your face perfectly. The way the tip of your nose tints pink with cold. The way those yoga pants hug your-

Mark turns his face away, cheeks burning as he realizes how creepy he's being, spying on you from behind the bleachers like a peeping pervert.

Now, Mr. Popular Lee #2 usually did not have trouble with girls. In fact, they flock to him like pigeons to stale pringles and he's faced an overwhelming amount of confessions and love letters since moving to Korea just last year.