The K-Pop Idol on the Han River

Part One — Acute

At five in the morning the river was black.

Yunseul came down the steps and out onto the path. It was February. Her breath went white in front of her and cleared, and along the bank a skin of ice clung, thin as paper. The streetlamps stood at even intervals and dropped orange onto the water. The light broke the instant it touched, and shook. The river had no light of its own. It only took what fell from above and shook it.

She rolled her ankles twice and gave the Achilles a short stretch. The left was a little stiffer than the right. It had been for five years. The stiffness wasn’t pain anymore, just a kind of weather, so Yunseul spent three seconds confirming it and started to run.

There was nothing on her wrist.

She hadn’t worn a watch in five years. People generally took it as a good sign. You run for the pleasure of it now. It’s a hobby. Yunseul didn’t correct them. The truth was that her body was still counting. Three breaths every ten strides, how far it was from the first streetlamp to the thirty-second, that today it was running a little slow — she knew all of it. She just didn’t write the numbers anywhere. The moment you write it down it becomes a record, and once it’s a record it’s something you’ve staked again.

What she didn’t measure, she couldn’t lose.

The path was empty. From half past four until six there was nowhere in this city with fewer people in it. A few bicycles went by without sound, and one man fishing made a cigarette glow and vanish in the dark. Nobody looked at anybody. It was the rule of the early morning. Out here it was good manners to take no interest in other people, and Yunseul liked those manners.

It was twenty-five minutes to the turnaround. She knew without measuring.

Past the underside of that bridge there were three benches, and about ten strides past the third bench the bike path made a bend. Yunseul had been turning there for five years. She could have gone farther. Her body could go. But if you fix the point, the day’s plan ends there, and once the plan ends there’s nothing left to decide. The turnaround wasn’t a goal. It was a fence.

That morning there was someone at the second bench.

Yunseul didn’t look at people as a rule. But the man was standing, and the way he was standing was wrong.

All of his weight was on the right. The left foot was only touching the ground and doing nothing. When he shifted a little, the whole pelvis turned with him. It was the posture of a man walking with his lower back so he doesn’t have to bend the knee.

Yunseul slowed.

The man started to walk. Three steps toward the water, three steps back toward the bench. He was working not to limp. That was the problem. A man who limps knows how to avoid the side that hurts, which makes him safer. This one was hiding the side that hurt, and to hide it the good side had to do double the work.

Six months of that and the right one goes.

The thought came first, then the assessment, and by then Yunseul had already stopped.

She didn’t much like the phrase occupational hazard, but there was nothing else to call it. For five years she had looked at nothing but injured bodies. Dancers, footballers, a man in his thirties who’d taken up marathons. Every one of them lied to his own body in his own way, and not once did the body lie back. So Yunseul had learned to look at the walk first. The walk was more accurate than the face.

“Left knee.”

The man went rigid.

Not stopped — frozen. He immediately dropped his head, pulled the brim of his cap down, and drew his mask up over his nose. Not one step of it out of order. It was the sequence of a man who had done it many times.

Yunseul didn’t understand the reaction.

“Run like that and the right one goes first,” she said. “You’re not using the left. Not not using it — you can’t. If you’re doing cardio in that state—”

“I’m fine.”

The voice was young. And the way he said those two words was the way she had heard every week for five years in a treatment room. The exact intonation of people who call their pain a three.

“You’re not, though.”

The man raised his head very slightly. Under the brim only the eyes showed. He was waiting for something. Not for what she would say next — for what her face would do.

Yunseul’s face did nothing.

She looked at his feet instead. The shoes were good ones, and the sole was worn on the inside of the left only. An old habit. He hadn’t been hurt yesterday.

“Your knee collapses inward when you land. You won’t know it. It doesn’t do that in front of a mirror.” She was already turning as she said it. She had no intention of standing in someone else’s morning. “If you’re seeing a doctor, tell him. If you’re not, start.”

Three steps on, a sound came from behind her.

“Excuse me.”

Yunseul looked back.

The man was still there. The eyes above the mask had gone an odd shape. Not wariness, not relief. If she had to name it, it was fluster, and Yunseul couldn’t work out what he had to be flustered about.

“You… don’t look at my face?”

“Sorry?”

“No.” The man shook his head quickly. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you an entertainer?”

“…”

“Then you should be taking better care of it,” Yunseul said. “A knee doesn’t go easy on you for being famous.”

She turned and ran on.

The river was still black and the light was still breaking. Far ahead, the edge of the sky had begun to thin, very slightly. It was a long way from rising yet. February’s sun was late.

Yunseul thought about the man for about three minutes. Left patellar tendon, chronic, probably one bad injury a long time ago and nothing but maintenance since. And he was preparing for something now. People who aren’t preparing for anything don’t come out to the river at five in the morning on a bad leg.

Three minutes later she’d forgotten him.

Yunseul knew how not to think about other people’s bodies for long. That was another thing five years had taught her.

Three days later.

The consultation room at Haan Sports Rehab had no window. The fluorescents were evenly bright, an anatomical chart of the muscular system was pinned to the wall, and the morning’s intake file lay on the desk.

Oh Se-ra put her face around the door.

“Coach, Room 10. He’s ready.”

“Yes.”

“And this.” The director set a file on the desk. “Came over from the agency. We’ll go through the rest later — for now just look at the target date.”

Yunseul opened the file.

The target date was on the first page. June first. Beneath it, in a single line, was what was supposed to happen that day. Solo showcase · full live · complete choreography.

Yunseul counted the days on her fingers. The counting habit was still there.

A hundred days.

“Full choreography in a hundred days?”

“Which is why it came to us,” Se-ra said, leaning in the doorway. “And you got it because you’re the safest. It’s a job that needs someone who doesn’t cause accidents.”

It sounded like a compliment. Se-ra had certainly meant it as one.

“Understood.”

The door shut. Yunseul turned the pages. Summary of medical records, copies of the imaging reports, history of prior awards. Partial damage to the left patellar tendon. The winter before last. Under circumstances of injury it said landing accident during performance, syncope from overwork.

Then there was the personal information field.

There was a parenthesis next to the name. Inside the parenthesis was a different name, marked as a stage name. Yunseul looked at the stage name once. She had never heard it. She didn’t know idols and had no reason to. Everyone who came into that room was a joint.

Yunseul took the file to Room 10.

When she opened the door the man was sitting in the chair beside the treatment table. The cap was off and the mask was hooked under his chin. Twenty-five or so. His face was very good. Yunseul registered the fact the way a physical therapist registers muscle mass, and moved on.

He looked up, saw her, and his eyes widened by a fraction.

Yunseul didn’t recognize him.

Three days ago on the riverbank, all she had seen was the top half of his eyes and his walk. The face was a face she’d never seen.

Yunseul opened the file, read the name in the personal information field, and called him.

“Park Seon-woo-ssi.”

There was no sound in the room.

The man didn’t lift his head. Or more precisely, his head was already up and he didn’t respond. Like a man whose body needs time to register that his own name has been spoken.

And then, late, he turned.

Not a beat. It wasn’t that long. About half a beat.

Yunseul let it go at the time. Nervous people did it often. Half of all new patients were slow to their own names.

She had a hundred days left before she’d understand what that half beat was.