Marina
Oh shit.
I knew from the moment I saw his face. I was still half-laughing at something Eli said after the match, adrenaline rushing through my veins like lightning. Then I heard that voice, the one that never needed to yell to feel like a scream.
“MARINA!”
Vincent Chen.
My father. Standing like a shadow with perfect posture and a face carved from stone, right outside the interview tunnel.
Suddenly I was twelve again and late for drills.
“Go ahead,” I muttered to Eli. “I’ve got this.”
“You sure?” he asked, brows furrowed.
No. Not even close. “Yeah.”
I stepped toward my father. He didn’t speak right away. He just looked at me, like he was counting every wrong move I’d made since birth.
“You lied to me.”
“I—”
“You lied, Marina. You looked me in the eye and told me you were working with Lee. Instead, you were training with him.”
People walked past, pretending not to stare.
I kept my voice low. “I had to—”
“You chose to. That boy is poison. He is everything I’ve protected you from.”
“He’s not—”
“You think this is a joke?” His voice dropped into that quiet, sharp tone that meant I was already in deep. “We built your name from the ground up. Every handshake. Every tournament. Every interview. And you just threw it away for a PR stunt.”
“It wasn’t a stunt.”
“You let cameras catch you laughing with him.”
“We won the match.”
“Winning means nothing if it stains your name!”
I flinched. Not visibly—but he knew me too well. He saw it.
“You were supposed to rise above all that noise,” he said, eyes narrowed. “But instead, you want to join the circus? Stand next to the guy who cheated the sport you claim to love?”
“He didn’t cheat.”
“Oh? And what do you think the headlines say?”
I didn’t answer.
He kept going. “You don’t get to make reckless choices and pretend there are no consequences. You are Marina Chen. Do you know what that means?”
“It means I haven’t made a single choice that’s mine in ten years!” I snapped before I could stop myself.
His eyes widened—just for a second. Then they hardened.
“You are where you are because I made the hard decisions.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You think this is about what you want?”
“No. I think it’s about you needing me to be perfect so you can sleep at night.”
Silence. That was the worst part. When he didn’t yell. When he just looked.
“Get your head straight,” he said coldly. “Or you’ll lose everything.”
He turned and walked away. And just like that, I couldn’t breathe.
I stumbled into the locker room, dropped my racket bag, and crouched beside the bench like the floor was shifting under me.
Breathe. Just breathe.
But my chest was too tight. My fingers tingled. My heartbeat pounded in my ears like a warning siren.
“No, no, no, not again,” I whispered, pressing my forehead against the locker.
I knew this feeling. I knew it too well.
The first time I had a panic attack, I was fourteen. I had just lost a match in straight sets. My opponent had been aggressive, wild, unpredictable—exactly the kind of tennis my father hated.
Afterward, he met me in the tunnel. I thought he was going to say, “It’s okay. We’ll fix it.”
Instead, he said, “Do you know how much I sacrificed for this? For you to waste it choking in front of a stadium full of people?”
I stood there, frozen. Numb.
He kept going.
“You want to be average? Fine. But don’t expect me to fund it. You want freedom? Go get a normal job. But as long as my name is on your racket—play like you mean it.”
That night, I sat in the hotel bathroom for an hour, trying to breathe like my lungs weren’t shutting down.
And now? It was happening again.
My hands shook as I grabbed the edge of the bench. My skin felt too tight. My thoughts blurred together in a spiral of pressure and shame.
I dug my nails into my arm just to feel something real.
“You’re okay,” I whispered. “You’re okay, Marina. It’s just stress. It’s just stress.”
But it wasn’t. It was ten years of pressure crashing through me all at once.
It was the fear that no matter how many matches I won, I would always be one mistake away from losing everything.
It was the look in his eyes. And the voice in my head that still believed him.
I wiped my face. Slowly stood up. My legs felt like paper. I didn’t want to train. I didn’t want to stretch. I didn’t want to smile for cameras.
I opened the door of the locker room and stepped into the hallway, still shaky, still hollow.
And I whispered to no one—
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”