The string bit into my fingers like a thin wire as I held the bow at full draw. Somewhere behind me, a thousand people inhaled at once—the kind of collective breath that makes you feel smaller than your own skin. The stadium lights turned the air hard and white. My sight pin floated, trembled, floated again, refusing to settle on the ten-ring.

“Set,” the judge called, voice calm as a metronome.

My heartbeat was not calm. It was an animal in a cage.

On the huge screen above the targets, the scores glowed in unforgiving digits. One arrow left. I was down by a single point. One point: the width of a fingernail, the thickness of a lie. If I missed, there would be no podium, no anthem, no scholarship—no way to prove that all those mornings of frost and silence had been worth it.

My coach, Mr Lim, stood to my left, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone the colour of chalk. He didn’t speak. He had taught me that words are heavy at moments like this.

The sound that almost broke me came from the next lane.