“Hyun!” Coach barks from across the studio. I groan and sit myself up from where I’d been lying on my back.

In my defense: I wasn’t lying there by choice.

“Yes, Coach,” I say, standing at respectful attention. The back of my head still throbs from where it hit the mat; U-re caught me in a nasty sweep that I didn’t even see coming.

“You don’t look too well,” he says, giving me a once-over. “Are you sick?”

“No, Coach,” I answer. It’s true: I’m not sick, though ever since I met that strange girl as I left campus for the day, my stomach has been in uncomfortable knots. But that squeamish hollowness that’s carved out my guts isn’t hunger.

It’s fear.

Sure, the girl had been weird, but what I’d seen behind her had been terrifying. An older man, hair tied half-up as the rest curled about his shoulders, had looked at me the way I’d imagine a tiger looks at its prey. His lip had tilted up in a knife-like smirk, and his eyes had burned a bright gold.

There was no way he had been real, especially since U-re had come out to surprise me from behind and hadn’t noticed the strange-looking man that gave the very distinct impression that he would eat me for lunch and probably enjoy it. I’d popped a dose of my meds as soon as we’d gotten into the studio’s locker room. I probably could have taken it while U-re and I had made our way there, but I didn’t want him to ask what I was taking; nobody besides my family and my doctor know about my prescription, and my parents haven’t been around to share that kind of information for years since their...accident.

So as it stands now, only my doctor and I know that, sometimes, I see things that aren’t actually there.

According to said doctor, I’m a lucky case: save for the hallucinations and delusions, I’m otherwise asymptomatic. I don’t suffer from paranoia and, in general, I’m not a danger to myself or society. Well, at least, I haven’t been a danger to myself since I was a young kid and nearly died after wandering out of the house in the middle of the night and somehow making it all the way to Wolji Pond in the Donggung Palace complex.

That night was the start of everything – of diagnosis, treatment, pills upon pills upon pills, and a lot of cognitive psychotherapy. It was also the start of my aversion to that place; I’d only ever been back on mandatory school trips, and every second had made my skin crawl and palms sweat. Guess who was told they also have PTSD from, ya know, nearly dying?

I’m still not entirely sure how a child-me managed to get that far from home and into a major historical sight unnoticed considering I’m pretty sure Gyeongju National Park closes at 10pm...but I digress.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

It was a long story, and one that ultimately outed me as being adopted as opposed to my parents’ ‘real son,’ because it’s hard to talk about a family’s mental health history when my birth family is unknown. As for that whole debacle, I don’t remember too much about it, save for the strange memory-laden dreams that often recur, teasing me with potential clues and information. And said dream has been reoccurring even more frequently as of late -- ever since I’d hallucinated that scary horse and its equally intimidating rider outside of the studio.

Coincidence? Probably.

“Go home,” Coach says without warning.

“Eh?”

“I said go home, Hyun. Or at least go to a convenience store and get some ramyeon or kimbap; you look half-ready to faint.”

“No, I’m--”

Coach sets his jaw, “Don’t make me bench you from the next tournament.”

I shut my mouth immediately. I can’t afford to be benched, not when my fraying thread of a dream to attempt a transfer to Korea National Sport University would fully snap, obliterating that fate entirely. I’ve worked too hard upon my dead parents’ wish for so long, while always clinging to the hope that I might change everything. I guess we need hope to keep ourselves living; I was alive when I did everything my parents’ would have wanted, but I sure as hell wasn’t really living. I was a ghost in the shell of a human being, floating around on autopilot.

Now, when it's too late, I tell myself that I probably could have worked even harder here at becoming a better athlete and done my best to go to Korea National Sport University, but I knew that Coach would never leave his studio in Gyeongju...and I didn’t want to leave Coach, especially not back then when all those vital years during which I should have made my bid for greatness were spent in a grey forever rain thanks to my world crashing down. I’m also humble enough to know that, without him, I wouldn’t have become the athlete that I am today. He’s the closest thing I’ve had to family since my parents, even if I’ve never admitted it aloud.

Without him and U-re, I’d still be listless and lifeless. It took one good session of prodding from the latter, which in turn led to a really nasty fight in the studio that wrecked more than a few things and left us both pissed off and bleeding. But the anger was better than grief, better than tears, and far, far better than guilt. Anger fuelled me into a frenzy of looking so far forward and studying so hard and so well, that I became more than a top student: I became desirable for collegiate institutions. Anger got me through the College Entrance Exam with superior marks. Anger got me into the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology one of the top ten schools in the country, even if it meant commuting an hour or more with U-re as my ride to get to campus, since I refused to move.

Yeah, anger kept me going, until, eventually, it faded out into a dull ache of acceptance that my life was forever changed…but at least I had hwarangdo. At least I had Coach.

Which makes it suck all the more that he’s threatening to bench me and is sending me home. There’s no way that I can refuse. At least this means I get to eat sooner rather than later, I suppose, though that gnawing anxiety still hasn’t left my stomach, and I have a bad feeling it’s not going away any time soon.