The Regressor's Ice Is Golden - Chapter 30

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

030.

“Thank you for your hard work. I’ll get the ice resurfaced.”
Before Group 2 took the ice, there was a ten-minute gap for the Zamboni to do its work.
It gave me time to talk with Coach Park.
“So, what did the coaching staff write down?”
“Want to see?”
I smiled softly and held out my notes.
The coach took the paper and skimmed through it with a nod.
“They’re all saying similar things. The most urgent issue is…….”
“Flip Edge Correction.”
The same problem I’d been wrestling with since before entering the Training Camp had surfaced again.
I clicked my tongue and rolled my left foot gently across the boards.
‘I need to raise my stats even more.’
As I rolled my foot, the plastic blade guard tapped against the floor.
“Don’t worry. Senior skaters struggle with edge correction too. You’re still in the junior ranks—there’s no shame in it. What else do they say?”
The coach flipped through the pages with a low chuckle.
“Oh, they mention your footwork is clean. Your Trace is distinct and you use good edge depth. Just be careful not to go too deep and lose your balance.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Thinking back to when the Triple Jump recovery seemed light-years away, it felt surreal how far I’d come.
I pulled out my notebook and spun my pencil.
“So should we work on the standalone Flip?”
“Yeah. Do it alongside the Loop. The Euler Flip is an important linking jump too.”
The good news was that Euler Flips rarely required a long edge setup.
Physically, when you rotate through the Euler, you land on the Inside Edge anyway.
The coach wanted me to try the standalone Flip in various ways.
“Three Turn, Mohawk, or straight up. Should we head to the gym?”
“Yes.”
Group 2’s program practice was over thirty minutes long, and I couldn’t use the rink during that time anyway.
Of course I couldn’t just sit around—I had to either study or train; that was just common sense.
The squats in the strength training room felt especially slow.
It gave me too much time to think.
An Inside Edge bordering on neutral.
Normally, the Inside Edge is the most familiar edge to use when you step onto figure skates, but things were different when launching a Flip jump.
When you drive down with your right toe pick and draw your extended arm in with force to generate rotation, your body instinctively senses instability.
The leg itself naturally shifts slightly away from your center of gravity.
That’s precisely why the Outside Edge near the pinky toe feels more stable in that instant.
So what did I need to remove and add?
I’d been doing squats for fifteen minutes.
The barbell across my shoulders was heavy, but not heavy enough to interrupt my thoughts.
Sweat was just beginning to bead on my skin.
……
By the time I finished my planned training and came back out, Group 2’s final skater was still going.
I scanned the mobile whiteboard with the roster.
[Group 2 #9 Lee Ji-su]
I looked at the face of the skater dancing on the ice.
I recognized her.
Not that we’d known each other before—I just happened to have picked up certain details about her one-sidedly.
‘Isn’t she the student of that coach with the rough way of giving feedback?’
During the morning practice too, I’d seen that coach being harsh with her.
The moment the music ended, I began watching her quietly.
As the last skater, she was receiving written feedback from the coaching staff and what looked like a stern critique from her own coach.
“Why are your jumps so sluggish? That’s why you’re not getting enough rotation. You’re young—you should have plenty of time. Why are you so afraid?”
……Still brutal, I see.
With that round of feedback, the Short Program practice came to an end.
Now it was free practice time for each skater.
I carefully approached her.
“Um, hello. You’re Lee Ji-su, right?”
Her hair was pulled back into a tight high bun without a single strand out of place.
She looked weary yet composed, her expression clear and striking.
“I’m Kim Ha-seol, a junior skater. I heard you attended Songgol High School.”
“!”
Lee Ji-su’s eyes went wide.

***

Lee Yu-na’s career had spawned countless skaters who followed in her wake, and generations were often divided by her retirement and the Olympic season.
Among them, Lee Ji-su was one of the skaters who made a name for herself about five years after Lee Yu-na’s retirement.
She was no less than the first Youth Olympic Games champion and the first Four Continents medalist after Lee Yu-na.
But what mattered here wasn’t that.
“That coach is still there?”
“Yes. So when I mentioned school, she asked if it was Songgol again. It’s not far, after all.”
I cracked open an ion drink and handed it to my senior.
Lee Ji-su took it with a bright smile.
“Thanks. I’m terrible at opening cans. It’s so strange seeing someone from the same school, same rink after all this time.”
That’s how it works—life runs on school ties, regional ties, and blood ties.
Once I started talking about my background, her expression brightened noticeably.
And I got a free drink out of it too.
Not that one ion drink would wreck my diet, and when a senior offers something, it’s only right to accept gracefully.
“Right. Figure skaters usually train as novices in their region, then move up to Seoul.”
“Exactly. The Mokdong Ice Rink is in Seoul, after all. It’s funny—I remembered you because of your short hair, it’s distinctive.”
“Thank you.”
Lee Ji-su regarded me with visible excitement.
“Are you planning to move up to Seoul? It must have been difficult to train with only one rink.”
“That’s… something I’m still thinking about slowly.”
The three-room apartment we’d just moved into had a two-year lease. There was nowhere to go.
I shook my head and gently steered the conversation elsewhere.
I hadn’t approached her just to chat and make friends, after all.
“Actually, I’ve been worried about my Flip edge. I’m a Ripper.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“I’d like to hear from skaters like you too, not just coaches.”
Lee Ji-su’s eyes widened, then she rested her chin on her hand and laughed a bit sheepishly.
“I was a Ripper too. Fixed it once during my junior years, but after I recovered from a back injury, my Lutz fell apart. You wouldn’t believe how much my coach gave me grief over that.”
Tell me about it.
Lucky I’d found someone who’d actually dealt with a similar problem.
I listened as Lee Ji-su blinked and began to speak freely.
“Your Lutz looks solid though. Usually a Plusher is more common than a Ripper, isn’t it?”
“Haha… that’s exactly why I wanted to ask.”
I took a sip and rested my chin on my hand.
“My coach said that since I’m still a junior, I can fix it slowly, but I think it’s better to do it right from the start. I want to correct it before my body shape changes significantly.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“How did you go about correcting your edge, senior?”
“Me? Well…”
Lee Ji-su lowered her gaze and traced the rim of the can.
“You know how strict our coach is, right? During my junior years, she was just frightening, but I think that time was necessary.”
“In what way?”
“Well, the Flip edge is an inside edge, and the center of gravity is slightly off-axis, you know?”
And what Rippers fear is that very ‘offset.’
“That’s what my coach told me: figure skating is a sport that requires courage.”
“Courage?”
“Yes.”
Lee Ji-su drained the rest of her drink and set the can down.
“It’s suppressing the instinct that makes you not fall on the ice.”
And the nerve to push yourself to the point of danger.
The ice rink is inherently a place where every winter brings slip-and-fall accidents that injure multiple people.
Naturally, your body’s senses get programmed with ‘the ice is dangerous.’
Figure skating is what happens when you jump, spin, and dance in such a place.
“You keep thinking you’re going to fall right before you plant your toe, so you can’t hold your edge. It’s like learning to ride a two-wheeled bike for the first time.”
“Ah, I see.”
In other words, you need the nerve to keep your cool even if your body goes down.
You’re reading the right takeoff timing by instinctively etching that sense of “this much is fine” into yourself.
While pushing down the fear that says you’re about to fall.
I downed the Ion Drink in one gulp and crushed the empty can.
“Thank you. I think I understand what to do now.”
“Yeah?”
I added something to Lee Ji-su, who was beaming.
“Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you about too.”
“Hmm?”
“You mentioned the Lutz edge is the problem now. The timing of when to plant the toe—”
I was rambling on without even moistening my mouth.
I didn’t notice how Cha Seo-hee glanced oddly toward the rest area just then.

By the time all training had wrapped up, the sky had already darkened.
Evening came to the Training Camp sooner than expected.
Even more so, since it was nestled in the mountains where barely anyone lived nearby.
After showering, I toweled my wet hair dry with rough, quick motions.
Cha Seo-hee was still blow-drying hers.
The whirring sound finally stopped five minutes later.
“Ahh, that’s refreshing.”
I don’t know why she’s acting like that when someone else dried her hair.
Click—the power switched off, but silence didn’t follow.
“Ha-seol, hey. How do you know Lee Ji-su?”
“She went to Songgol High, right? She trained in our neighborhood, so I asked her once. While we were talking about feedback.”
“Yeah? And you got her number too, right?”
Where does she pick up all this gossip.
I just nodded quietly, but Cha Seo-hee made an “ooh~” sound and bobbed her head excitedly.
“Your people skills are seriously great! Even I find it hard to approach the senior girls.”
“It can happen.”
“But she’s really cool. I want to get close to her too.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
If Cha Seo-hee had just said one word less, I probably would’ve given her a half-hearted answer and gone back to prepping.
“Can’t you introduce me to her too?”
“What?”
I turned my head to find Cha Seo-hee grinning.
“I want to get close to the older girls too! But even after I tried talking to them, they didn’t treat me as warmly as they treat you.”
“…….”
But because of that, I started to understand why she was doing this.
The way Cha Seo-hee was blinking was extremely off-putting.
‘She’s feeling threatened right now.’
In other words, among the junior skaters at the Training Camp, she needs to be the one princess on top, but she thinks I’m threatening that role.
Whether she was aware of it or not.
I lay back on the bed and pulled the blanket over myself.
“She seemed really kind, didn’t she? You’ll have morning training together anyway, so try approaching her yourself during breaks.”
“Ugh, I was hoping you’d introduce me.”
Why is she like this.
I groaned and pulled the blanket completely over my head.
“No matter what, they’re not the type to act condescending toward their juniors. Don’t be scared—try approaching them yourself.”
“Tch.”
Fortunately, Cha Seo-hee didn’t push further and quietly turned off the light.
I read through my phone messages one more time before bed.
[Lee Ji-su from Songgol High: It was nice to talk about it together today! Thanks to you, I think I’m finding a way too. Thank you. Let’s keep being close. You can call me unnie comfortably. >_<]
She seemed excited to be treated like a senior.
That’s the right age for it, if you’re in high school.
I turned off my phone and fell asleep peacefully.

A week had passed since then.
“Ha-seol, your blade guard fell off? I hung it on the fence!”
“Oh, thank you so much!”
“Ha-seol, hey there?”
“Hey. Is your back okay?”
I’d evolved into someone who could exchange easy words with the other female single skaters at the shared training camp.
I’d grown especially close to Lee Ji-su.
“That’s why Coach Cha kept saying we should all get along. Coming from someone with such a foul mouth, I almost thought the sun had risen in the west.”
Coach Park laughed and patted my shoulder.
Just how harshly had he said those words about getting along?
In any case, every time our eyes met, Lee Ji-su would flash me a bright smile as she passed.
In any case, ice training began today without fail.
“Come on, everyone up.”
Cha Seo-hee’s eyes trembled faintly as she called us on.
The Returner’s Ice Chapter 30
E-book publication date | 2026.06.05

Author | Korcarolli
Publishers | Heo Heung-beom, Park Geon-won
Published by | Potent

Address | [04783] 9F, 11-gil 8 Yeonmugang, Seongdong-gu, Seoul
Phone | 02-6320-8500
Fax | 02-6320-8585

UCI | G720:N+A101-20260514092.0030
List price | 100 won

ⓒ Korcarolli 2026

This e-book is protected by copyright law.
This e-book is published under a contract with the author, and unauthorized reproduction, copying, distribution, or sharing is prohibited without written consent from both parties.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————