The Wisdom of the Veteran
Weeks passed like that.
The tag team of Booker-Lee and me cruised along exactly as we'd predicted.
And the proof of it showed up in spades.
An office tucked in one corner of the arena.
Booker and I were going over the samples the business team at headquarters had sent down.
"Is this it?"
Colorful T-shirts.
Two designs.
Booker-Lee's Kung-Booker tee and my Kung-Fury tee, both sporting some indecipherable Chinese character across the chest as the centerpiece.
"Not bad at all."
Perhaps because they'd been in the merchandising business for so long, they really did know how to crank out a solid T-shirt design.
At my question, Booker cracked a satisfied smile as well.
"Damn sharp."
Apparently money talk was enough to loosen him up, because he was more responsive than usual too.
He'd been gruff and indifferent the entire few weeks we'd been working together. Well, everyone's honest when it comes to money, I suppose.
I smirked and turned to the team lead standing across the table.
"When does it launch?"
"A month out, maybe? I heard mass production just kicked off."
"Should sell well."
"……And even if it doesn't, Bart's going to keep pushing you two for a while. Every time he watches your segment he howls laughing and talks about nothing else for a whole week."
The team lead narrowed his eyes.
"I honestly can't figure out what kind of magic you're working. Kung-Fury."
Look, I'm sorry, but could you please not call me that in real life?
I felt those words jam up in my throat, but managed to laugh them off.
Either way, this was exactly what I'd intended.
When I was first handed the Kung-Fury character, I'd set out to build something with genuine depth.
That's why I'd presented the interpretation of "the gimmick Sin received when he first joined the company."
But after my conversation with Bart, I'd also poured serious effort into the exaggerated surface layer of Kung-Fury itself.
A character simple enough that Bart Maxen — in other words, the audience that loved dumb, straightforward scripts — could enjoy it too.
The result was that the two storylines merged into each other, and through the alliance with Booker, the act had settled perfectly into Burning Kong.
For weeks on the show, I'd put Booker through ridiculous "training" under the pretense of teaching him kung fu.
It ended in failure every single time, and Bart, charmed by the storyline, kept inflating our airtime.
Of course, if Kung-Fury had really been the shallow character he appeared to be, none of it would have landed.
Most fans were less interested in Kung-Fury's antics than in the single line I spat out at the end.
That's why everyone watched Kung-Fury's over-the-top behavior with good humor, reading it as something like the sorrows of a new employee.
It's probably a script you can only get away with during your rookie years — like right now.
Either way, it was nice to have Bart's and the audience's goodwill at the same time.
It was oddly disheartening, though, that a man's taste as the chairman of a corporation could be so out of step with the general public.
But what could you do.
The era when he'd fallen in love with pro wrestling was the '70s and '80s. That was before Captain Logan even appeared.
Still, Bart had pushed his favorites whenever the chance arose, and they'd always fumbled it.
Then he'd blamed the failure on the wrestlers and buried it.
What a waste.
So my plan was to show off my abilities only up to a certain line.
Prove my talent to Bart — but stop short of the point where he'd start consulting me.
Seen in that light, my position as an "Asian" had actually been a huge help.
Bart loves one thing and one thing only: muscled, American-born white men.
I smiled bitterly.
Before long, Booker and I finished inspecting the shirts and stepped out of the office.
We'd wrapped up everything for the day and were about to head out when Booker spoke up.
"……Honestly? I'm a little surprised."
"You didn't expect us to get popular enough to warrant merchandise?"
"No, I didn't. And to be even more honest…… it worries me a little."
He let out a sigh.
"Promising rookies vanishing into some dumb gimmick and dumb storyline — happens all the time. It's about time you climbed out of it."
"You think so?"
"The reactions are good right now, sure, but this isn't the story the audience wants."
Booker's eyes were serious.
"The reason they're paying attention to Kung-Fury at all is because they're expecting you to break out of it."
"I'd have to agree."
I nodded. It was precisely that expectation that made the gimmick work.
"Impressive analysis."
"……Don't tell me you thought I couldn't understand a storyline this simple."
"Our writers seem to think that."
"They probably figure if the reactions are good now, everything's fine. But that's not the point, is it?"
Booker really was a veteran through and through.
It was true this wasn't a moment you could afford to feel complacent about, reactions or no.
"If you're going to get over as a babyface, how this current storyline ends is what matters. And in that sense, I'd say it's about time you started preparing."
"Do you have any ideas?"
"Nope. ……Truth be told, I don't even fully get why this is working."
"Because you're funny, Booker."
"Damn right I'm a funny man."
"But it's no joke, either. It's a critical part of our team."
Booker looked back at me, puzzled.
As we walked toward the parking lot, I kept explaining.
"I'm only telling you this because we're alone. Keep it secret until the reaction builds up enough."
"S-sure."
"The reason I accepted this storyline in the first place was that I needed likability."
"Likability……?"
"It's your strength, senpai — the thing Kane and Hunter don't have. The kind of presence where nobody blinks when you spin a windmill in the ring and still become world champion."
"So that's why you teamed with me? Because I've got that friendly face?"
"Yes. That's reason number one."
"……There's a number two?"
"Of course."
When he heard my answer, Booker let out an exasperated little laugh.
"This kid's a scary one, huh."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"So what exactly are you planning to do with all that friendly charm?"
"Establish myself as a babyface, obviously."
I had a long storyline in mind — one that ran all the way through to the Revolution feud.
"I need something to break out of Kung-Fury, don't I?"
"Hmm, and what would that be?"
"The person who deceived me into being stuck with this gimmick in the first place."
"No doubt about it. Without that opponent, there's no story to tell."
"If Bart pushes us, then logically one of the Revolution members should fill that role."
"You're chaining it all together with a feud…… How many moves ahead are you seeing, exactly?"
"Nothing special. It's just the scenario that fell out naturally once I started linking together the pieces that made for a good story."
In front of Booker, who couldn't hide his admiration, I laughed awkwardly.
If this were GCW, I'd have pitched the idea right here, it would've been approved, and the story would have rolled forward from there.
But this was the main show.
Which meant I needed grounds to make my opponents fall in line.
And those grounds were mostly built through results on the show and the backing of management.
Things have gone smoothly so far.
Still, Booker was right — the moment had come to do something.
First step: sit down and talk with the Revolution, the ones who'd be carrying this storyline with us.
Burning Kong was a gathering place for the greatest wrestlers on the planet.
They drew the highest salaries in the industry and enjoyed fame that would make most movie stars jealous.
Which meant surviving among them required a genuine willingness to do anything.
Baku once said: no matter what a pile of garbage a wrestler might be, the company's job is to slap gold paint on him and sell him as a product.
But on the main roster, that was a privilege reserved for a chosen few.
Certainly the company tried its best, too. Even so, the number who stood under the spotlight remained limited.
So here's the question: what did it take to claim one of those scarce spotlights?
The answer was simple.
It always was.
The iron law of pro wrestling.
In the end, whoever drew the louder response from the crowd won.
The locker room, after the weekly show had ended.
Most of the wrestlers had already cleared out of the arena, and I was deliberately sitting alone with the most uncomfortable possible company.
Hunter, of course.
"……Well, I'll be damned. Never thought you'd have the nerve to call me out."
"It's not every day a rookie summons a senior wrestler, that's true."
"First time for me."
"Well, now you can go around saying you've had the experience."
"Still quick with that tongue of yours."
Hunter gave a thin, cold smile.
Honestly, I'd assumed the Orton incident would make him want nothing to do with me, so the fact that it didn't took me a little by surprise.
Well, Hunter has always been good at hiding what he feels.
I hadn't expected him to go this far — taking a one-on-one meeting with a brand-new rookie like me.
Whatever. I decided to take it as a compliment.
After all, didn't it mean my rise had been terrifying enough to make even Hunter this gentlemanly?
"So. What do you want."
"I wanted to reach an understanding with you before I go to Bart."
"An understanding?"
"You've heard, right? Booker and my tag team is set to work with Flair and Batista."
"Nothing's confirmed yet."
"Bart himself said it?"
"Nobody knows a thing until the storyline actually plays out, kid."
"Then the real dividing line is whether we can ride this great reaction all the way to a tag team championship match."
"Exactly. And in that sense, you've fumbled the very first step."
"Oh?"
"I get the scheme — build goodwill with a comedy character. But does that really befit a champion?"
Hunter rose from his seat.
A man closing in on two meters tall and hovering around 130 kilograms, built like a hero straight out of myth.
To be perfectly honest, Hunter in his prime had a look no other pro wrestler could match.
So I had a rough idea of the criticism he was about to deliver.
"Two monsters from legend, locked in a blood feud. That's what people want when they watch pro wrestling."
"Meaning there's no place in it for our little kung fu duo."
"Right. Well, I have a rough sense of what you're thinking."
Hunter's eyes gleamed.
"You took the Kung-Fury gimmick Bart handed you and reinterpreted it realistically. Made Kung-Fury something people could accept."
"Oh. You do understand."
"But here's the thing — audiences are merciless. Even if you become champion off that kind of story, it won't last."
Hunter laid it out plainly.
"There'll be backlash, most likely. Rather than invite that kind of damage, wouldn't it be smarter to rein in the ambition and cut your losses?"
"Worst-case scenario, huh."
"Exactly. When the crowd reacts in the exact opposite direction from what we intend…… your whole theory goes up in smoke too."
He really doesn't get it.
I held my tongue and thought.
Hunter's approach was old-school as well. To him, the essence of pro wrestling was the blood feud between giants.
That, too, was a legitimate method.
Early pro wrestling had, after all, been the mythic clash of muscle-bound monsters pumped to the absolute limit.
But my thinking was a little different.
That wasn't all there was.
The reason I'd spent this entire time deliberately blurring the line between reality and storyline.
It was to make people empathize with me.
For an Asian man like me to draw attention amid all these white and black wrestlers, I needed this kind of story.
I refused to be some "martial arts master from the East" that audiences could half-watch without ever investing themselves.
Being packaged as a strongman villain only to end up flattened by America's homegrown hero — I found that role genuinely repulsive.
So instead, I created a man willing to do anything to win his way past every kind of discrimination.
He meets good companions and enjoys his share of happy times, but at his core, all he wants is to prove himself.
Which is why he sometimes walks the wrong road, and plenty of days see him doing dirty work as a heel.
And at the end of that long arc, he's become a new employee suffering unfair treatment under a rotten contract.
In this chain of storytelling, I was the babyface earning the people's cheers.
Maybe because the two of us had lived completely opposite lives, Hunter and I thought about this business in ways that could not have been more different.
"Seems to me that staying put at this kids'-play level, like you are now, would be better for your career than anything else."
"That's a bit harsh."
"I'll be blunt. No matter what you pull off on the main show from here on out, you'll never escape the shadow of a comedy character called Kung-Fury."
"You think so?"
I curled my lips into a smile.
"Just because it doesn't fit your philosophy doesn't mean it's wrong."
"Are you doubting me right now?"
"No. I'm not doubting you — I'm telling you you're wrong."
"You little brat—"
"I'd have preferred to keep this civil, but forget it. Whether my storyline works or not — we'll decide that after you've seen what's in it, don't you think?"
Not giving Hunter so much as a beat to object, I pulled out my phone.
A dark green screen.
The moment that hulking frame registered the message glowing on it, he went rigid.
"You little……. Again."
"Again? I've always been like this. You just never noticed, what with all your attention devoted to pumping iron."
Smiling sweetly as I said it, I took a moment to savor the look of naked panic on Hunter's face.
Had the conversation gone as pleasantly as I'd hoped, this never would have happened.
But oh well.
He brought it on himself.