Paradise was the world Soojung was born into. It was also a figment of her youthful imagination. She had a mother that was ever present, doting and full of prideful care for her two daughters. She also had a father who was a busy but respectable man, a warm and steady presence in her life. Most of all she had an older sister, a Big Sister - capitalized for the idolitary importance that title carried in young Soojung's life. Jessica would be the only part of her paradise that proved to be true and real. She would always be home - always be simple comforts, laughter and unfaltering kinship no matter the silly arguments that may come.

The Jung's were what they would call comfortable and most would call rich. Her father was a man of position in the Korean embassy, slowly making his way up, and her mother had forged herself into a woman of suburban society, quickly rising in it's ranks. They lived among the slopping hills of San Francisco, hers was a childhood spent in the badly arranged puzzle of the city. The first few years of her life were pastel colors and passing oddities that didn't detract from the love she thought drew it all together.

Yet paradise on earth is regularly just a momentary mirage. The well crafted illusion began to fall apart as the weight of years gained piled on steadily until rupturing her visions of family. Extra curricular classes became less smiling suggestions and instead were shrill demands for an unfound potential awaiting to be discovered. She grew aware that her fathers absence wasn't just a tranquil night to long summer days. It was a lack of the sun and moon itself. It meant there was nothing and no one to reign her mother back from ever growing tides of demands against daughters that proved to be lackluster.

Jessica wasn't free of her mother's nagging hold but she stood independent from it. She was both pride and dissapointment. At a young age she had refused all physical activities, never having the gift or interest in it the way Soojung could at least maintain for comfort's sake. Jessica rebelled - preferring magazines, the companionship of her peers and the sprawlings of her imaginative mind. She had a gift of her own - body blessed with eyes and hands a mind meant for fashion instead of sports. Although the promise of a career from a young age was the kind of excellence their mother expected, since it wasn't what she expected, it was always seen as lacking by her. Yet her father saw charm in seeing his eldest daughter chase promise with a passion he believed they all valued, so he allowed it and father's word was always law.

Initially her mother goaded Soojung into any kind of gymnastics. An enterprise she would upkeep from her toddler years to early into her elementary school days. Soojung never found much attraction to the sport, knowing herself to be better than her peers but bored because of it. She was more than ready to quit when her father suggested it but her clever mother suggested any other alternative to keep her star child on the sure path to celebrity. Yet when she began to skate it was not thanks to her mother's suggestion. It was a family friend - he had seen Soojung playing by herself, as she often did in her quiet moments alone, never one to seek company outside of her sister's - saw how she combine gymnastic tricks while roller blading in front of the gentle slope of his house. Ice skating, he said to Lisa, a whole kingdom that could be wholly Soojung's own.

Soojung received her first pair of ice skates at the tender age of 8. A gift from her father who was more than happy to hear his younger speak with thrill in her usual quiet and reserved voice. Her mother resisted the change at first, despite it being exactly what she wanted it was nothing how she expected it. Yet as time went by and every trainer who watched her glide graceful over the ice commented on Soojung's natural genius - Lisa found herself aboard with it all.

Ice skating soon meant also taking dance classes, it meant working out when not even on the ice, it meant team meetings with too many adults whose voices were too loud to allow any room for her own. Soojung didn't mind it all - she had her escapes, had Jessica and had the ice and the task of mastering it. She could see the value of going along with the long hours of endless programming her mother had in mind for her. Her rebellion was never loud, her dissatisfaction never overwhelming - the shy child slowly grew coldly determined. Within her mothers focus, she found a focus of her own, dreams that burnt brilliant blues within her very soul. She would become great, yes, until that was the loudest thing about and around her.

Moving countries was not a huge issue for Soojung. She had never been gifted with social skills her sister had so she had spent her childhood content with a single bond made with a young girl her age at her ballet classes. That and the life line that had become her bond with her sister. But Jessica had agreed to move to Korea with the family - wishing to learn about Korean fashion and begin making her mark on the world there. And Julia, well, Soojung knew she would see her again soon enough - her mother had a single thing in mind when finally agreeing to follow her husbands career back to the country she felt she had outgrown. Soojung could start her career there. A career that would take her around the world, thought would see her competing and training in the very door step she left behind. And Julia had promise and ambitions of her own - at the tender age of 13, both girls knew their bond would last thanks to shared sheer determination.

And they were not wrong. Her year training abroad was more difficult yet she found herself more prized in a country a stranger to the sport. They valued her, talked in mostly foreign tongues of her promise as though she were more machine than person. Soojung was fine with it. Almost happy as the tournaments began and she proved herself steadily the way another young girl before her time was in a much larger way. Her second and last year competing in the Junior's programs saw her breaking world records and launching in a small fame she had wanted but never expected. Fame in her sport was one thing, but the fame her mother was haggling for her to have was another.

Soojung took to minor celebrity awkwardly. Following clumsily the steps set before her by Kim Yuna but craving to be her own person, following her own path. Jessica was never one to let her sister struggle in the determined silence she prefered. Early in 2011, just before her first senior season was coming to a close and Soojung had done well but not well enough to earn gold in competitions or in the eyes of her mother, Jessica decided they needed a break. She was travelling to China to see if she could expand her label to their market and brought her little sister along. Shanghai was a beautiful city - one she had visited but never gotten to enjoy like most places she had reached in her travels. Jessica chose against staying at a conventional hotel, instead got them a home of their own to play house in together, live out fantasies of a life without their mother, just two girls in a merciless city they thought they could swallow whole.

But that fairytale didn't come true, the way they usually didn't. Paradise was once again short lived as the city shifted itself monster and instead did it's best to swallow them both. It succeeded only half way - the thieves that broke into the house in the middle of the knife were armed and nervous to be confronted. Soojung says to most that know and dare to ask that she doesn't remember anything in full details. But she does - she'll always remember the echoing shattering that happened that night and how it'd forever follow her.

If she closes her eyes she can see their faces lit by Jessica's phone light, fragmented and moving instantly closer until there was darkness. The kind that is unforgiving enough to let you see through it. Soojung remembers the knife that was held as a threat but in their shared struggle came down with misguided intention. It didn't glint in the moon light the way blood did, the way her own desperation shot so high and grew so pointed that she could see it before her, feel it heavy yet light in her grasp - a blade that nearly shimmered the way all things too good to be true do.

She remembers what breaking through skin and muscle and sinking into organs felt like for the first time. Her yells and tears blurring details but it's all still there. The warm and then cold feeling of life being drained all around her. The horror. The way she sunk to her knees, screaming helpless beause even if the dozens of blades that now sprung and twirled around her hurricane quick had saved her, they had failed to protect the one person who really mattered.

What she doesn't remember as well is the aftermath. She knows there was a funeral. Knows her parents were there and showed the appropriate amount of mournfulness that everyone saw lacking in her. Her father actually torn and her mother moving quickly from grieving to annoyed at the blow this could take on Soojung's promising career. She knows she competed regardless. Knows the season ended and she kept practicing, kept on like she hadn't lost most of the good and warmth in her life and replaced it with a heat that was all anger. Soojung can't remember what training was first like - she had been told that she was found by the Chinese Safe Haven, that it had taken a team of three to stop her and her blades fiercly protecting a life that no longer was. They had given her some time before approaching her about the changes in her life and the help they could offer.

Help - she does remember that. Remembers it being offered by countless of people yet finding it in no source made available to her. No one had information they could give her that was of use. Knowledge was only useful if it translated into something physical she could take onto herself and make useful. And help, well, no one could offer her that. No one but herself.

The year went on and she rose steadily - dubbed Korea's princess to Kim Yuna's title as Queen as she claimed silver in every competition and beat each of her personal scores. Soojung worked tirelessly, going from ice rinks to training rooms with infinite targets and hundreds of blades for her to test, summon and master. Then there were commercials to film, photoshoots to attend, interviews to have - anything her mother could do to plaster her face throughout the whole of Korea. Enamoured by her Romeo and Juliet performance and her sweetly shy, hard working nature, she won them all over.

It stiffled her. The unending expectation of this created character, what her mother had chosen to do with her and her platform. None of it interested her. Only perfection did - the one thing she could chase and do that would consume her entirely. And girls like Soojung usually get what they want.

Tireless work gave her the reward of gold medals, first places and Olympic nominations when Yuna's empire collapsed thanks to the unsatiable hunger of her mother. Soojung knew it all too well, saw the storytale warning before her yet knew she could not escape her own just yet. All she could do was push her mother out slowly. The success that had been mounted so high finally came in her favor as the team around her grew and Lisa became an obselete part of it.

The people around her were more than professionals. Old friendships and new came and grew in her life that was no longer just toil but also reward. It was strange for her, knowing too well just how to fight against and for everything and not how to embrace any of it. Since Jessica there had been no one who could or would tell her to stop, to rest, to be a girl if only for a moment. She only knew how to do it clumsily - pretending to be a champion who took the world in strides when off the ice she too often felt like the child who still wished to hide when spoken to so often. It was easy with only the few who managed to gain her trust, let her remember for a moment she was more than just tool finely sharpened to perfection and purpose. And it became harder with others, like Julia who grew strange towards Soojung's fame and her own lack of it.

Winning the Olympics felt as good as she had expected it to. Felt better. Felt like perfection was finally in her grasp and for one moment, she could stop and be happy. It was during that high that she met Jonghyun during Sochi. She knew he wasn't competing but little else about him but the details didn't matter. What mattered was that he made her laugh, made it easy to be herself, to care and not even realize it. Nothing got easier after the Olympics - if anything her life seemed to look down on her achievements and knew a blade only sharpened on a rough surface. Yet Jonghyun was a singular point of ease and stability she would quickly lose everywhere else.

All the strain from battle to victory resulted in injury once everything had been won. The soft ache in her knee she had spent so long ignoring grew loud enough to scream pain even without movement. As her body betrayed her so did the rest of the world. Her short fling with a boy she had met at the start of the year dissolved during her most vulnerable. Daniel shrugged her off unimportant, made a joke about shared bonds as though it could help keep friendship alive. Her pride drove her to keep trying, never one to quit and never one the few that had managed to matter. Yet Daniel valued her only enough to whine at her dissapointed anger in him until he took the cowards way out and left entirely. Just as Julia would. And despite her explosive fame, her injury brought whispers of worry as she only claimed silver titles to her name.

Yet she no longer only had herself and her anger. Determination. Whatever word suited it best. Her father's affections through the years had mostly been felt in soft congratulations and the demand that she had a bodyguard to protect her. Sweet at best and patronizing at worst, Soojung had gone through her own personal army of men so easily dismissed as incompetent. Until fate brought Jonghyun much closer than their frequent email exchanges. Fate brought him directly to her side. Suddenly a bodyguard wasn't a trivial mockery of her capabilities but it meant having someone reliable always by her side. His company made it possible for her not to lose herself to the worst of things.

Relying on him for her own strength became a pattern in their lives. Secrets shared and truths told in scattered fragments over days that rolled into weeks and months spent together. They came to know each other, through necessary pretense, endless walls and shields put up. It was a bond she thought had died as a possibility within her the day she lost Jessica. The warmth it took, the simple humanity. It wasn't a natural for them but it became it. Comfortable was not a thing Soojung felt often in her life outside of the ice and yet being with Jonghyun and dating him had always been just that.

Everything after their coming together wasn't easy. Life was still more demand than give but she was able to prove herself consitently - 11 world records to her name, a streak of first place wins and the culmination of her career with another Olympic competition soon coming. Soojung had moments of joy she knew how to recognize fully and celebrate. Her mother's control was still difficult to shake but easier to use in her favor as her own voice grew louder. Nothing was perfect but her life was promising to someday fully become her own.