Still in Their Prime
And then, the following week.
"Why, you little punk...!"
"Die, damn you!"
On screen, Russell and I were tearing the office furniture apart and swinging wildly at each other — though this brawl wasn't the sheer brutality of our previous one. We'd worked props into it, seasoning the violence with comedy.
The cream pie I flung splattered dead center onto Russell's face, and a huge laugh rolled through the crowd.
Wiping his face clean, Russell snatched up a "weapon" in a fit of spite... It was a toy banana. A tragedy born of grabbing without looking. When I simply stared at him, dumbfounded, Russell checked the banana in his hand and froze in shock.
Genuinely at a loss, I broke off the fight and walked over to him.
"Why is this even here...?"
"I-I was saving it to eat, obviously!"
"You were going to eat... a toy banana?"
As Russell and I stared at each other in shared disbelief, in came Miss Shelby — the specialist in charge of running our 'partnership improvement program.' A quiet, demure white woman in glasses.
The moment the male fans caught sight of her, they let out a roar of delight. She had just returned from a restroom break, and one look at the wrecked room had her eyes going perfectly round.
"W-what on earth happened in here?"
"N-nothing, really..."
"And th-that thing! Hand it over, please!"
Blushing furiously, Miss Shelby plucked the banana from Russell's hand.
"This is a... personal item."
Hearing that, Russell and I were too dumbstruck to get a single word out.
It was a genuinely funny segment, spiked with innuendo, and the crowd's reaction came back even better than we'd hoped.
'So the fans really do want Russell and me as a team, after all.'
Grinning to myself, I picked up the hamburger that had just been set down in front of me.
One big bite, and the flavor flooded my mouth. The marriage of meat juices and sauce was something you could never wring out of mass-produced food. It was magnificent.
A little diner off the highway. I was out on a two-week vacation, and I'd timed it just right to catch that week's GCW show as it aired.
Even viewers with zero interest in pro wrestling were now glued to the tiny TV, courtesy of Miss Shelby's beauty.
That was when the chubby owner, topping up my coffee at my elbow, snorted a laugh and struck up a conversation.
"Got cable installed just to watch that show."
"Really? Must've cost you."
"Well, what can you do? Those two have the whole town in a frenzy these days. Even at my weekend poker table, it's nothing but wrestling talk."
"Who's your favorite?"
"Sin, of course. I like that the man doesn't stop at talking. He always backs it up with one hell of a match."
Somehow, I felt sheepish.
I was currently hidden behind sunglasses and a ball cap, so none of it could have been flattery.
The character I had built and performed was earning praise like this, even picking up fans of his own. What a wonderful thing.
With the show still rolling, I finished off my burger, paid the bill with a tip, and stepped out of the diner.
I climbed into the rental parked out front and got on the highway, driving on and on with nothing ahead but road.
The sun was sinking over the asphalt. All I could see were the enormous mountains far in the distance and the landscape folded around them.
It looked like I'd need to hustle to reach the next city, where I'd booked a motel. I pressed the accelerator a little harder.
A year had turned. In the first days of the new year, I was driving home.
The family home in LA.
Making the trip from Georgia by car meant more than thirty hours behind the wheel.
Flying would have been the sensible choice. I scrapped the idea.
I wanted to rest a while. And I wanted to think.
'Nothing beats a long drive.'
In my past life, I'd spent years crisscrossing the country as a wrestler, and I'd taken up driving as a hobby early on — or to be precise, the hobby of tearing down the interstate at seventy-five an hour with the music blasting.
I loved it because, at least in those moments, my focus could belong to one thing completely.
In 2003, burning your own CDs was the coolest way to listen to music.
While the company arranged my time off, I had agonized over the choice and finally settled on the pop hits of 2003.
But unlike the old days, I couldn't sink fully into the music or the road. Facts about the man singing kept surfacing in my head.
'This man dies of heart disease before long.'
Having come back from the future, I was freshly reminded that I could never again enjoy the past at face value.
To ordinary people, 2003 was the present. To me — someone who had already lived through it and returned — it was a chapter already written.
Which meant I couldn't simply savor it as nostalgia.
What would the future look like if, on the day this man was fated to die, I 'happened' to barge in and save his life?
Thoughts like that kept creeping in.
Maybe that was also the reason I'd avoided meeting my parents for so long.
But at last, I had made up my mind.
'I wonder how they're doing.'
Having watched my parents all the way to their deaths in my past life, I drove on, wrapped in a strange, heavy feeling.
Like anyone else, I had more than my share of regrets in this life. This was one of them.
My mother and father — the two people I'd left half-estranged over pro wrestling.
They had each immigrated to America in the eighties, found each other through the common bond of being orphans, and before long, I came into the world.
And as parents do, they gave me their very best.
But the moment I became an adult, I loaded up a camper van and drove away from home.
I wanted to prove my chosen path to the parents who begged me, worried sick, to stay. ...Looking back on it now, it was a pathetically small thing to do.
In any case, I never did amount to much after that.
By the time I came home in defeat, they had already grown old.
The two of them kept collecting whatever they could find about their son the pro wrestler, and whenever a fan vote came around, they'd phone in without fail and gladly pay the thirty dollars.
And they would say: "Kung-Fury. Yes."
A name that wasn't even on the ballot.
That, I regretted.
I had wanted to spoil them rotten. I had wanted to show them something worth being proud of. Impossible, in my past life.
'But now... just maybe.'
Now I could hold both of the things I'd wanted since before I ever came back: to repay my parents, and to become a son the two of them could be proud of.
That was exactly why I had taken this vacation and pointed the car toward home.
With Mom, it was easy — we had always kept in touch, so telling her I was coming was nothing.
The problem was Dad.
'Will he deck me?'
Dad was taller than me. His body, tempered by decades of hard labor, was nearly as strong as a lowland gorilla's.
But I had trained hard too, and Dad had eaten his share of years by now. Surely I'd be fine?
...That was wishful thinking.
THWACK!!
"Honey!!"
Dad was still very much in his prime.
I had barely managed an awkward greeting at the front door before his fist caught me square and sent me flying backward.
The sky wheeled. The ground wheeled.
Staggering from the impact, I went down hard and slammed into the mailbox, groaning.
Was this what Baku's fist felt like?
Russell, Sheamus, Wyatt, or anyone else in that locker room — not one of them threw a fist with this kind of weight behind it.
"Honey!! Why are you hitting our boy!!"
"You keep quiet."
Dad said it flatly and came closer. Still clutching my cheek, I picked myself up off the ground.
'Still, he's glad to see me.'
The basis for my confidence was this: he had hit my cheek, not my jaw.
Which meant he had pulled it. If Dad had swung for real, I'd have woken up on the lawn an hour later.
"...So you got into a company?"
"Y-yes, sir. With GCW — a promotion under the WWF, the biggest pro wrestling company in the world..."
"They don't feed you meat there?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Forget it. The wind's cold."
Dad cut off my puzzled echo and turned away. Right behind him, Mom came hurrying over.
"Aigoo, look how skinny my baby's gotten."
"M-Mom?"
"Do they not feed you real meals out there? It's nothing but hamburgers, isn't it?"
"...It is not."
All that had actually happened was that I'd shed fat and put on muscle. Overall, my body was in far better shape than it had ever been.
...So why in the world did I feel like crying?
Once the commotion had died down.
I had stowed my things in my old room upstairs and come back down, only to find Dad nowhere in sight.
'What's going on?'
Tilting my head, I followed the sounds to the kitchen, where Mom was washing fruit.
"Mom, where's Dad?"
"Hm~? He stepped into town for a bit."
"Oh? Why?"
"Something about you being all skin and bones — said he was going to buy you some pork."
"......"
"Never mind that. You come sit and have some fruit with your mother. The apples are wonderful right now."
"S-sure."
I sat down at the table. When Mom reached for the peeler, I gently pried it out of her hands and started peeling myself.
"Well, look at that. Three years away, and my son comes home knowing how to do this too."
"They're for you, Mom."
I smiled.
Strangely enough, after three years apart, I settled right in. Part of it was Mom deliberately keeping things light, but the words really did come out easy and ordinary.
"So how's the wrestling going?"
"Good. I signed a wrestler's contract the moment I passed tryouts, and I've been appearing on the shows ever since."
"In Georgia, was it? I've seen you on there myself."
"You have?"
"You know Mr. Choi? Runs the market over that way. His son's a fan of yours — so your mother had to go find our son on the TV as well."
Mom beamed.
"You looked wonderful. And are you getting along with that Russell friend of yours?"
"Of course. We get along great."
I was glad I had so much good news to hand her.
"Funny thing, my current gimmick actually has a religious angle."
"Oh my~ well, that's a relief. I seem to remember a boy who hated church so much he drew an upside-down cross on his own body. In his own blood."
"...Did I really do that?"
"You did! And your father said, 'Oh, I'll make you one for real,' flipped you upside down, and hung you from a tree."
"......"
It was all coming back now.
"And yet here you are now, peeling every apple for your mother. You've grown so much."
"I'll come home often from now on."
"That's good~ Wherever you go, your mother trusts you'll take care of yourself just fine."
"And I really am doing well."
"Oh my, are you now?"
"Yes. Honestly, I don't think the show would run without me."
"BWAHAHA! Nonsense!"
"......"
"Oh, forgive me. It just caught me off guard for a second, that's all."
Weren't you the one who just said you trusted me?
I swallowed the retort and smiled instead. My mom, as far back as I could remember, had always been like this.
Comfortably, cheerfully bourgeois — and unfailingly positive all at once. Our wonderful mom.
In front of her, I was a kid again. I poured out everything that had happened and then started bragging for good measure.
Mom listened to it all, half believing and half not, but she never once brushed it aside. Thanks to her, the weight in my chest came loose.
'I'm glad I came home.'
As the thought crossed my mind, I heard an engine outside shut off.
"Oh, that'll be your father."
Mom rose from her seat, and I stood to follow her out and greet him.
Surely he wouldn't hit me again — I'd already taken my one punch at the door. ...That optimistic thought would last exactly that long.
"...?"
"Oh my, honey."
"Here — get the back open for me."
Dad climbed down from the truck's cab, reached into the cargo bed, and turned around with something enormous hoisted across his shoulders.
It was a dead pig.
He hadn't bought pork. He had bought an entire pig.
"D-Dad? Isn't that heavy?"
"I can carry it myself. Step aside."
"Doesn't that thing weigh about four hundred pounds?"
"Six hundred and thirteen."
"......"
"Honey, how much did you pay this time?"
"Three dollars a pound."
"Why on earth would you pay that much?"
"Figured I was feeding my boy, so I told them to give me the good stuff."
Dad!
"We'll have to send you back at least twenty pounds heavier. Honestly, look at you — nothing but bone."
"Hoho, he's right. Son~ you said you'd stay about a week? Then you can finish this whole pig before you go, can't you? Stews and soups, braises and grilled cuts — Mommy will cook you everything delicious, so you're going to eat every last bite, okay?"
'...My luck with food had never been better.'
I kept my mouth shut.
And without waiting for my answer, my parents drifted into their everyday chatter.
"Oh, speaking of which — this is from Mr. Park's butcher shop again, right?"
"That fella's meat is the best."
"Oh, good on you, dear. After what he's been through — armed gangsters nearly robbing him — he must be beside himself. Neighbors have to look out for one another."
"...Gangsters?"
"Yes — two of them tried to take his money and got the worst of it instead."
"Oh, that's right — Mr. Park served in the same unit as Dad, didn't he? Thank goodness he happened to have a gun at the shop."
"No. His slaughtering knives."
"......"
And there it was — the realization.
My parents were still in their prime.