Even though Hyo-bin was only going to wear a swim cap and goggles and nobody was going to see his T-shirt, his mother ironed his best T-shirt for him.

Hyo-bin took the T-shirt off the hanger and stuffed it into his bag so he would not argue with his mother. Arguing with her meant explaining why getting a clean T-shirt ready for a swim meet was the funniest but saddest thing that had happened all week.

They got on the bus together. His mother sat beside him in her best coat, the one she wore only to weddings or parent-teacher conferences. She was doing everything she could to stay quiet because Hyo-bin never spoke on the mornings of his swim meets. He always kept his mind on the race, and he knew exactly how hard his mother was trying not to distract him.

Halfway there, Eun-jung placed her hand over his where it rested on his knee, gave it a gentle squeeze, then pulled away. "It's just one race," she said. "You've done this a thousand times."

"I know."

"You can do it in your sleep."

"I know, Mom."

"I'm just saying."

"Aissh, Mom... Stop talking. You know I gotta focus."

Eun-jung looked out the window and smiled as though she had already won an argument Hyo-bin did not even know they were having.

—

The pool at the district sports center was bigger and louder than the school pool. Voices bounced off the tiles and echoed through the ceiling rafters.

Hyo-bin registered, learned his lane, and went to the warm-up pool to find a corner where he could be alone for ten minutes. He was going to swim the hundred butterfly in lane four.

He did not even need to look at the list to know who was in lane five.

Seung-ho was already there when Hyo-bin came out of the locker room. He stretched his arms and looked at the water the same way he looked at most things, with undisguised hatred. Seung-ho did not even turn his head as Hyo-bin walked past him, and he did not need to. Hyo-bin felt his lack of reaction the way a person feels a hand that is about to touch them but gives up at the last second.

His mother sat somewhere in the stands behind the starting blocks. He did not look up to find her because it felt as though something would break if he did.

"Heat two, hundred butterfly. Swimmers, take your marks."

He stepped onto the block, bent down, and curled his toes over the edge.

The pool went quiet with that familiar silence right before a race. The place was like the held breath of a huge building where everybody hoped for different things.

The whistle blew.

Later, Hyo-bin would not remember jumping into the water. The water took him in, and he started stroking. The first twenty-five was the part where his body decided how the race was going to go, making its decision before his mind even understood the situation.

He was fast. He could tell he was farther ahead than usual from the way the lane rope on his right moved past him while his shoulders did exactly what he had wanted them to do all year.

To his left, Seung-ho was right beside him.

But Seung-ho's position beside him showed that he was pacing Hyo-bin, not racing him. He was like someone adjusting their pace so their friend would not fall behind, even though they could run faster. Hyo-bin felt it like the difference between someone holding your hand for real and someone holding it only to show everyone else.

He hit the wall, tucked, and came out clean. Fifty was done. Fifty remained.

The third twenty-five was where the hundred butterfly really started making you pay the price. His arms started aching and telling him they had had enough.

He did not listen to them.

Seung-ho was still there on his left, flowing through the water with the same relaxed form he had maintained all day.

In the last twenty-five meters, the distance between them began to grow. Not by much, but enough.

Hyo-bin could feel it from a meter away in the next lane, even if no one in the stands could see it. The pressure beside him seemed to ease, the way it did when another swimmer stopped driving through the water with the same force. His mind registered what was happening and refused to accept it.

His hand hit the wall, and he came up to the surface to look at the board before anything else.

His time lit up in green.

Coach Yoo stood at the edge of the pool. He clapped with both hands above his head and yelled something Hyo-bin could not make out over the water and the noise around the pool. Up in the stands, a woman in a nice coat stood so quickly that she had to hold the back of the seat in front of her with both hands.

Hyo-bin looked up for half a second. Just half a second.

His mother covered her mouth with one hand.

He pushed his goggles up.

Seung-ho came to the surface a moment after him.

After coming up smoothly, Seung-ho did not even look like someone who had just swum a hundred butterfly. He pushed his goggles onto his forehead and held the lane rope. As he held it, he acted as though they were not in a pool and a very important race had not just ended.

"I found the note you left in my bag yesterday," he said. "Am I really an asshole?"

Hyo-bin could not believe that was what he wanted to talk about. Moving closer to the lane rope, he said, "You slowed down."

Seung-ho looked at him over the rope. "I came in second, if you noticed."

"Yeah, because you slowed down on purpose."

"I just came in second, Hyo-bin."

"Your time last week was fifty-three, asshole. You just swam a fifty-six."

"Maybe today was a bad day, idiot."

"You don't have bad days, bitch."

"Everybody has them, moron."

"Not by three seconds. Why did you slow down, bastard?"

Seung-ho looked at him while preparations for the next heat began around them. The noise of the building filled Hyo-bin's ears again, but he did not hear any of it.

"It wouldn't be bad if we got out of the water," Seung-ho said before pulling himself up.

Hyo-bin climbed out of the pool and went after Seung-ho without even stopping by the coach. "You feel sorry for me."

"What? No."

"You thought I needed to win this, so you let me."

"No, I just wasn't fast enough."

"Stop lying!"

"Haah, yeah, I slowed down, okay?" Seung-ho said quietly. "So what, Choi Hyo-bin? Shut the fuck up, okay?"

"I'm asking you why you did it!"

Seung-ho looked at him the same way he had at the door of the school pool that first morning. "I like watching you win," he said. "That's all. I like it."

Hyo-bin opened his mouth, but he could not find any words. He walked to the bench for his towel without looking back.

Coach Yoo came toward him, saying something that included the word federation again. Tae-hyun jumped off the bench to wrap his arms around Hyo-bin's neck and shake him. His mother tried to make her way down from the stands with one hand on the railing because the stairs were steep.

Hyo-bin let everything happen. He allowed the coach to grab his shoulder and Tae-hyun to shake him. When his mother reached him and placed both hands on his face, she looked as though she was checking whether he was still the same boy she had put on the bus that morning.

"You scared me," his mother said.

"I won, Mom."

He laughed so his mother would laugh. In the background, on the other side of the pool, Seung-ho dried himself calmly without looking their way.

—

That night, there was a cake at home. It was not a real cake from a bakery, but the kind his mother made when she did not have enough money to buy one. She had made it from a ready-made sponge and spray cream, placing the single strawberry left at the corner grocery store on top. She set it in the middle of the table on a white plate with a cracked edge. His father sat at the table in a clean shirt with his sleeves rolled up, and he was sober.

"Sit down," Young-ho said. "Your mother's been on her feet since four."

"It was three, actually," Eun-jung called from the kitchen.

They ate dinner before his mother brought over the cake with a candle on it. His father sang the first line of the birthday song incorrectly on purpose to make his mother laugh. Hyo-bin blew out the candle even though it was not his birthday.

If he did not blow it out, his mother would be disappointed, and he did not have the energy to carry that disappointment tonight.

He ate his slice while his father told a story about a man at work who had knocked over a crate of melons and tried to blame the forklift driver. His mother laughed exactly where she was supposed to.

Hyo-bin looked out the window. It faced the back of the building across the street, where there was a wall, two windows, and a clothesline someone had hung years ago and never taken down.

But he did not actually see any of it.

"I like watching you win."

He had never heard a sentence like that in his life before.

Not from a coach, not from a teammate, and not from his mother, who joked, "Bring me a medal," every morning. Seung-ho had not said, "You're very fast." He had not said, "You deserved it," or "You worked hard." He had simply said, "I like watching you." It was as though watching was the main point, and winning was only something Hyo-bin happened to be doing at the time.

"Hyo-bin-ah."

"Yeah?"

"You aren't eating your cake. You only took two bites."

"The slice was big."

His mother looked at him for a long time, just as she had with the coat. Then she picked up her own fork and went back to her cake.

At the other end of the table, his father watched everything while pretending not to look at them, just as he did on good days.

Hyo-bin took another bite of cake, but he did not taste it at all. In his mind, someone was still standing right there in the lane next to him.

"I like watching you win."