Everything Is Ready
The next morning.
No sooner had I finished breakfast than the seniors hauled me off again, and I was back at it—training that made me want to throw up.
My teeth were grinding.
But even if the thing standing in front of me was a man pushing three hundred and thirty pounds, there was no way I could run.
Why?
'Because if I run once, there's no guarantee I won't run twice.'
So I resolved to endure it.
By my calculations, my body wasn't being pushed past what it could take.
"Here it comes! Back body!"
"Kgh...!"
Using the rebound of the ropes, Husky Harris came barreling toward me, thundering with every step—and I bent at the waist.
My body creaked with soreness and refused to obey, but I got my hands under his knee and tipped him backward.
Back body drop.
"Guhh!"
That weight was heavy enough that if I hadn't used my arms, my back would have given out on the spot.
Still, I threw Husky as high as I could. Only then could he hit the bump cleanly.
If I'd tossed him halfheartedly, he wouldn't have had the time to take the fall right—and could easily have hurt his neck badly.
And so I repeated yesterday's training, exactly as before.
Except for one thing.
"Gnnngh!!"
"What, that's all you've got?!"
Unlike yesterday, Sheamus's raw strength plowed straight through me and drove me back.
I couldn't put any power into my body. My muscles were ripped from the brutal workouts and still mid-recovery—what they call being "off the mark." On days like this, the standard approach was to recover through baths, ice packs, and light exercise...
Of course, today that wasn't an option.
SLAM!
CRASH!
They rotated through me one after another, these seniors overflowing with stamina, working me over even harder than yesterday. The longer I held my ground, the bigger the moves they hit me with. But I absolutely refused to give up.
Part of it was the whole "once, twice" reasoning I'd laid out earlier.
But honestly? I was pissed off, too.
Having someone try to grind you under their heel was something I'd already endured to the point of nausea in my past life.
Bart Maxen, president of the WWF. The producers. All manner of self-important men up on high.
I refused to lose to people like that ever again. That was why, no matter how brutal or agonizing it got, I gritted my teeth and bore it.
I just smiled.
...I mean, they say the greats smile in their hardest moments, don't they? Something like that.
In truth it was nothing but a desperate reflex—a way of coping when it hurt so much I didn't know how else to hold on.
The one who rescued me after a full morning of that abuse was Baku.
Precisely twelve thirty.
He swung the door open, came in, and started flicking the seniors off me one by one, sending them scattering.
"You lot planning to skip lunch?"
"Just a little more, please."
"More, my ass. The cafeteria ladies are about to toss the food out, so go eat and come back. Now."
"But just a little—"
"Move."
He'd apparently just left off the tail end of his sentence: before I kill the lot of you.
At the word of Baku, the strongest brawler alive, even the active pro wrestlers curled their tails between their legs and filed out.
Baku climbed into the ring and walked over to me where I was slumped against the turnbuckle.
"You hanging in there?"
"If I think of this place as hell, then yeah—I'm holding up okay."
"You little punk. Let's go grab lunch. My treat."
"Going outside?"
"Yeah. Keep this up and there's a match tomorrow, and you won't even make it to the ring. Go shower and get out here, fast."
I followed his advice, finished a shower in the locker room, and came out.
For tomorrow's match, this really was where I had to draw the line, I figured. I was changing when I found Baku already outside with the van running.
I climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up, and he asked with a grin:
"What do you want to eat?"
"Something like kimchi jjigae."
Half out of my mind with exhaustion, I answered on autopilot. Baku tilted his head.
"Kimchi... what?"
"Kimchi. Kimchi."
Kimchi jjigae—kimchi stew.
Born to Korean immigrant parents, I used to eat Korean food now and then when I still lived with them. Somehow that memory came back to me.
Not that even if a Korean restaurant existed here in Georgia, there'd be anything worth calling the real deal.
"Just kidding. Let's just go grab a burger somewhere nearby."
"R-right."
Baku, who'd clearly failed to understand a word, eased his foot off the brake.
'I can finally rest a little.'
I sank into the hard seat and felt my heart still pounding away, even after a thorough shower.
Tomorrow's match was only three minutes long, so there wasn't much to worry about there—but the fatigue in my body was a heavier weight than I liked.
Maybe he noticed, because the moment we hit the road, Baku asked:
"Body holding up all right?"
"You can't always walk into a match at a hundred percent, right?"
"True enough."
"I just have to survive for three minutes somehow. Honestly, though, it's been two solid days of sharpening my craft because of it."
"Hahaha! Even our fools took one look at your skill and got a little shock."
"...Then watching, they could've called a stop to it."
"If you want a man to listen to you, you leave him be until he's properly satisfied."
"You could've just grabbed one and flattened his face. That'd have shut the rest of them up."
"BWHAHAHA! How could I do that to our precious athletes?!"
'So we're not counted as athletes, huh.'
I felt vaguely reassured (?) by that.
The van sped down a quiet road.
Maybe I'd take this chance to ask.
"How are preparations for the show going?"
"Everybody's pulling their weight. Not getting much sleep, from the look of it... But you know what's strange?"
"What is?"
"They keep saying ever since you showed up, strange things keep happening around here."
"Because of me?"
"Yeah. Thanks to you, our show finally has the buzz it's been missing."
"Well... I can't exactly take credit for all of that."
Most of it had been accomplished by Mr. Baku's fists—rescuing the Corner family while they were being mugged.
A few punches to a man, a firm grip on his head, and suddenly he's lying there cold as a corpse. Who knew.
"Either way, good is good. Tomorrow's show has everyone prepping with real excitement for the first time in a while."
Muttering that, he turned on the audio.
"...?"
My eyes went wide.
I remembered the last time I'd ridden in the van—and heard Baku sing.
"Country rooooads~ take me hoooome~ to the place, I belooong~ West Virginia, mountain mama~"
A singing voice every bit as vicious as his fists. I'd nearly lost an eardrum that day.
I braced myself with that memory in mind... and unexpectedly, what poured out of the speakers was a man's voice soaring in a long, sustained ahhh—
"Baku, what's this?"
"Your theme song."
"..."
My eyes flew open in an entirely different sense.
A sacred melody.
Like a Gregorian chant from the Middle Ages, a man's voice rang out in elegant, soaring tones. I sat in silence.
Beneath that religious, sanctified vocal rose a driving electronic beat.
The polar opposite of religion.
A shrieking, tearing noise.
And a voice chanting in majestic praise.
The two blended and became one—and out of that union began a melody with an atmosphere so fierce it defied description.
"...This kills."
I smiled.
The second most important thing in a pro wrestling theme song.
It had to be something you could sing along to. Surprisingly few songs actually met that bar.
Like a sports stadium chant—a song where the crowd could send out boos or rally behind a wrestler on cue, riding a specific melody.
And my theme song hit that mark dead center.
"Sounds good to you?"
"Yeah. It's awesome."
"The head of our sound team pulled all-nighters for a week straight making that, and he's off recovering his eyes right now. Remember to thank him later."
"This is a debt I've got to repay."
"It sounds a bit strange to me... but eh, as long as it sounds good to the young ones, that's all that matters."
Baku scratched his cheek.
"That sound team guy keeps comparing himself to Salieri out of nowhere, too."
"Salieri?"
"Yeah. Antonio Salieri—Mozart's teacher."
"Fitting, I suppose."
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
I dodged the question lightly.
There was no way he'd understand if I tried to explain Skullex—a genius who wouldn't become a star for another ten years.
Baku fell quiet for a moment, then eventually pointed a finger at the glove box beneath the passenger seat.
"Open that."
I checked inside and found a binder of files.
"The production team sketched out some storyboards for your entrance. See which one you like."
"...They must have pulled all-nighters on this, too."
"They got a look at your theme and your gimmick and just started gushing ideas. Harley said they nearly blew the budget keeping up with them."
"Hmm."
So this was what it meant to be a rookie with expectations riding on him.
I felt my shoulders square with pride as I looked through the storyboards.
Smoke billowing thick across the stage.
'This one's nice.'
A rising-from-the-coffin sequence.
'Pass on that one.'
Red lighting.
'I'm not doing a vampire gimmick.'
Try a gimmick like that in this era and I'd be laughed off as a walking GEEK in one flat second.
"Well? What do you think?"
"None of them are bad. But since it's my first one, I'd rather keep it simple."
"Tell me straight and I'll carry it to the production team word for word."
"Smoke on the stage, lighting kept dark."
"You're cutting all the entrance theatrics?"
"I'm the villain, remember."
"Fair enough."
It was standard practice for a heel to keep his presentation understated—his job was to make the babyface shine by contrast.
Unless, of course, you were an overwhelming heel like Triple H, currently reigning as the top heel in the WWF.
"Once I make it to the top myself, then you can give me the flashy entrance."
"Cocky little brat, aren't you."
I nodded.
The moment I learned just how many people had stayed up all night for my sake, I wanted nothing more than to get in the ring and wrestle right now.
Every piece of preparation was done.
The only task left was to go out there and make the crowd erupt.
GCW's Thunder was a weekly pro wrestling show airing its 273rd episode as of today.
Roughly five years on the air by count.
It broadcast live on Saturday nights and pulled a viewership of barely 0.7 percent—which, given that it was a subsidiary promotion, was actually a decent number.
And yet Thunder carried a few structural deformities that kept industry experts from rating it highly.
The first was that it was a show propped up by the WWF name. The brand value of Thunder itself was considered weak.
The second was the "main call-up" problem: the show's ratings were at the mercy of whichever wrestlers the big leagues siphoned away.
In fact, GCW had weathered crisis after crisis as its roster kept evaporating, the show wobbling on its feet each time. They'd churned through new talent and dug up fresh stars to scrape by... but this latest crisis was a serious one.
In my past life, too, right up until the year after I joined, the ratings refused to pop, and the people there suffered for it.
'But that was my past life.'
This time would be different.
I intended to take this show in my own hands and push it past 3.0 percent—the golden-era ratings.
And the ingredients were plentiful.
A lineup of future superstars climbing the card and rising ever higher.
With them, it would be possible.
And today was the beginning of it all.
"GCW Saturday Night Thunder! We are live and on the air—right now!"
The commentator, in a sharp suit, worked his voice into a fever pitch before an audience of some five hundred, whipping the arena into a frenzy.
The sound team fired up the main theme of our show.
The camera crew swept across the ring, the crowd, and the stage set as the broadcast began.
The show opened today with an interview segment featuring Russell Hart—the promising rookie who had debuted out of the Hart Dungeon.
While the music played, frantic preparations were underway behind the set, at Gorilla Position.
The conductor of it all, Harley Racy, spoke up.
"Is Russell ready to go?"
"He's clear to head out!"
"Kill the music and send him straight out! Hey! You, kid!"
Harley nodded, then turned to look at me. The staff followed, their eyes landing on me where I stood waiting in silence.
"Go out there and make it count!"
My first role today: ambush Russell Hart.
"Just leave it to me."
I flashed a wide grin, shrugging on my jacket—a ragged thing peppered with burn marks.
Time to go to work.