Viper, Kim Do-chol
Viper. Kim Do-chol.
Five in the morning.
In an empty gym, only the dull, heavy thuds of impact rang out.
Thud. Thwack. Thud.
Kim Do-chol was working the heavy bag. Three hours already. Sweat poured off him like rain, and the wraps around his fists had long since soaked through.
"…Hah. Hah."
Dragging in rough breaths, he looked at the mirror on the wall.
A man stared back from the glass.
A nose broken and reset. Eyebrows latticed with scars. Calluses patchworked across his hands, old wounds braided through the lean muscle of his body.
Even a glance at the mirror made it plain—his prime was behind him. At his age in the heavyweight division, a fighter was already past his sell-by date.
But Kim Do-chol had no intention of being finished.
…This is the last one.
Road to UFC. The Asian prospect tournament. Win it, and you walked straight into the UFC.
For a washed-up fighter like Kim Do-chol, a chance like this would never come twice. Fail to climb here, and it was truly over.
Maybe it was the years catching up, but fight offers had grown sparse. Younger fighters were rising hard and fast, and the organizations that once sought him out had long since turned their backs. Drop out of this tournament, and there would be nowhere left to go.
What waited then was a corner of some backwater gym, aging into a nobody no one remembered. That was the only future left to Kim Do-chol.
So he trained harder than anyone.
From dawn to night, until his body was ready to break. When others slept eight hours, he slept four. When others rested, he hammered the bag again. When it came to effort, he prided himself on never losing to a single soul in this business.
But.
From the very beginning, that effort had been pointed the wrong way.
Kim Do-chol had known early on that he had no talent.
No gifted physique. No flash of instinct. If he fought clean, he would never, ever beat the talented ones.
So he sharpened something else.
How to jab a thumb into an eye. How to slip into the referee's blind spot. How, in the clinch, to dig a finger into an open cut. How, on the ground, to twist a joint where no one could see.
While others practiced punches and kicks, Kim Do-chol practiced fouls.
Obsessively.
Without getting caught. Effectively. Exactly where it would hurt the most.
When it came to perfecting those dirty techniques, Kim Do-chol was more diligent than anyone alive.
His record stacked up for it. Twelve wins, two losses. But half of those twelve wins had come from breaking the other man.
There was a fighter who retired after losing sight in one eye to Kim Do-chol's fingers. Another whose knee was twisted on the ground until he could never walk right again.
That was how the nickname stuck. Viper. They said he was dirty. That he wasn't even a real fighter.
Kim Do-chol did not care.
Winning was enough. Whether the other guy fell apart or not, as long as he climbed, that was all that mattered. No one ever offered a hand to a loser.
"…I've got to climb all the way."
Kim Do-chol muttered as he rewrapped his hands.
It didn't matter how many men he had already stepped on. He meant to step on more, and climb higher still. This tournament was the last stair.
"Who'd they say my opponent was again."
Wiping sweat, he called up the file his manager had handed him.
Han Daewong.
No record. Debut fight. No nickname. A nobody no one had ever heard of.
At first it had been almost insulting. A debutant greenhorn for a first-round opponent? Zero pro fights. Not even amateur tape. Just some oversized rookie who had rolled in from God knew where.
"He's been blowing up online, hyung."
That was what the manager said. Some video had gone viral. One man dropping a hundred people with his bare hands.
Kim Do-chol watched the video.
Then he snorted and laughed.
"…What is this. It's CG."
A guy sending a hundred men flying barehanded? People cartwheeling through the air like they'd been hit by a truck? It made no sense. Either a slick composite, or a short action piece with money behind it. One or the other.
"Lucky break. Pure luck."
Kim Do-chol crumpled the papers and threw them.
He had seen every storm this world could throw. Empty shells with big frames—he had met them by the dozen.
Those types didn't know a real fight. One clean punch and their legs went soft, their eyes rolled back.
Debut fight, they'd said.
He would be locked up tight with nerves. The first time you stepped into a cage, your legs shook and your mouth went dry. And when a dirty veteran like him came charging in—
Poke the eyes. Kick the groin. Rattle the head. A greenhorn would fold under his own weight.
Just because a video made him a little famous, he must have thought the Octagon looked easy.
"…Just wait, Han Daewong—or whatever your name is."
Kim Do-chol unwound his wraps and looked at himself in the mirror.
The scarred face smiled, thin and mean.
"This Viper's going to turn your debut into pure hell. Eye or knee—better be ready to get carried out with one of them wrecked."
A man who had survived his whole life dirty and stubborn. A man who, once he bit down on prey, never let go even if the flesh tore free. A fighter who never hesitated for a second to climb over other men.
That was who "Viper" Kim Do-chol was.
Fight day.
Sitting in the locker-room chair, I looked down at my hands.
Huge hands, wrapped in tape. With the gloves on, they looked almost ridiculous—too big to believe.
In a little while, I was going to hit someone with these. Inside the Octagon, with everyone watching.
…It still didn't feel real.
"Daewong, you nervous?"
Seo-yeon asked from beside me. She had been restless for a while now, circling around me.
"…No."
"Liar. I can see your hands shaking."
"…They're not."
"They are. Look. Like this."
Seo-yeon made a show of trembling her own hands, then cracked a small grin.
"It's fine if you are, though. It's your first time."
First time.
Yeah. It was.
Not outside the screen—inside it. Not in the stands—inside the cage. Not watching. Fighting.
The stage I used to watch in my past life while tearing into fried chicken. The world on the other side of the TV I used to lean into from the sofa, thinking, Whoa, that has to hurt. I was walking into that world.
"Ready?"
Rachel came into the locker room. Even in a suit, her face was lit up with excitement.
"You're up soon. Mr. Han Daewong, I know it's your first time under the lights, so don't put too much pressure on yourself…"
Rachel trailed off mid-sentence and stared at me.
"…But you're calmer than I expected?"
"…Am I."
"Most people say they feel like throwing up before a debut. You've got strong nerves."
Rachel wouldn't know. I wasn't calm because my nerves were strong.
I wasn't tense because the other guy didn't scare me. Honestly, no matter who walked out, I couldn't picture myself losing. Whether that was arrogance or fact, I didn't know—but a picture of defeat simply wouldn't form in my head.
What did weigh on me was something else.
Power control.
Underground, I had smashed as hard as I wanted. As long as I didn't kill anyone, it was fine. But this was the Octagon. There were rules. There was a referee. And above all, people were watching.
I had no feel for how far I was allowed to go.
"…Ms. Rachel."
"Yes?"
"If I hit… too hard. What happens."
Rachel paused a beat, then smiled.
"The harder the better. A KO has impact. If you go too soft, people get bored. Just finish it with a bang."
With a bang.
…That was the problem. Even I didn't know how far "with a bang" went for me.
But I didn't try to explain any further. Words weren't going to make it clear anyway.
The announcement spilled from the speakers.
My turn.
"Daewong."
As I stood, Seo-yeon caught my arm. That small hand couldn't even wrap halfway around my forearm.
"…Don't get hurt."
Her upturned eyes were full of worry. The same girl who always called me bear-this and bear-that with all that fire was, just for now, completely serious.
I ruffled her hair lightly.
"…I won't."
"Of course you won't. Like you could get hurt. But still… just. Still."
Seo-yeon pouted. Even saying that, her hand didn't let go easily.
I gently peeled her fingers free.
"I'll be back."
I left the locker room.
I walked the long corridor. Light spilled in from the far end. The roar grew louder with every step.
Thousands of voices at once. Stamping feet. The vibration climbed up through the floor of the hallway.
Through the noise, snatches of talk reached me.
"They say that one's a rookie! Zero-record rookie!"
"Look at the size of him—holy crap, he's huge."
"Hey, that video! The CG one where he drops a hundred guys! That's the guy, right?"
"Oh, that fake video? I came to see the real thing because of that."
"So he just acted the part with that frame. No wonder it looked real."
"I came to watch the Viper wreck him. Getting Kim Do-chol for a debut—what a joke."
"Viper! Viper! Kim! Do! Chol!"
"Crush that rookie!"
The crowd was treating me like a sideshow.
I was a topic, sure—but no one believed it for real. The video was CG. I was just a big rookie. A greenhorn the Viper was going to tear apart. That was who they thought I was.
…Well. Didn't matter.
They'd find out soon enough.
At the end of the corridor, the view opened wide.
A massive arena.
Thousands of seats. Lights hung from the ceiling. And right in the center, shining bright—the eight-sided cage.
The Octagon.
I stopped there for a moment.
The place I had seen on screens more times than I could count was right in front of me. The stage where Dominic Carter had lifted the champion's belt. The place I had always thought of as another world, forever on the far side of a screen.
I never imagined that I—once a bear—would stand here as a human being.
Something surged up hard from deep in my chest.
Dying in my past life. Being born a bear. Becoming human again.
At the end of that long, strange road—the place I had arrived was inside this light.
My name rolled through the arena.
The name Seo-yeon had given me.
Inside the roar of thousands.
I stepped forward, slowly, toward the inside of the cage.
Toward the stage I had always dreamed of.