How Do You Beat Something Like That Fair and Square
How the hell do you beat something like that fair and square.
"Finish him off in style──!! Send him packing, Bear!!"
Seo-yeon was bouncing on her feet in the stands, both fists clenched tight and pumping. From the instant Tae-san went flying off a single blow—his own fist shattering as he was sent crashing down—she had been screaming herself hoarse.
The image of her fretting and pacing all night long was nowhere to be found.
"See?! There's no way our Bear would lose to a big guy like that!! That was awesome—so freaking awesome!!"
The arena had already boiled over into pure frenzy.
"It's overrr──!! Kang Tae-san, with a single blow!! The moment their fists collided, it was him who went flying!!"
"Is this even possible?! That massive frame, that monstrous power…… against Han Daewong, it was nothing!!"
The crowd roared like madmen. They stomped the floor and chanted his name. Watching that mountain of a man Tae-san sail through the air like a scrap of paper had snapped every last thread of sanity in the place.
"Did you see that?! Just now—did you see?! Their fists met and Tae-san went flying!!"
"Is that even human?! He just bounced a guy that size off him!!"
"His arm's wrecked! Tae-san's arm just exploded!!"
"Insane…… this is actually insane…… I've never seen anything like it!!"
Right in the middle of that storm of noise, Seo-yeon was screaming louder than anyone.
"Han! Dae! Wong! Han! Dae! Wong!"
Rachel, standing beside her, shot her a sidelong glance and let out a quiet snicker.
"……Seo-yeon."
"Yes?!"
"I heard someone flooded Han Daewong with a whole barrage of worried messages not too long ago. Warning him the guy was huge, telling him to be careful……"
Seo-yeon's face went scarlet in an instant.
"……Th-that was……"
"Who was it again. I'm pretty sure it was the assistant manager."
Rachel's smile turned pure mischief.
"……I-I don't know! It made sense at the time, okay?! The videos made him look enormous!"
"And yet the result is, well—look for yourself."
Rachel jerked her chin toward the cage. Tae-san was being carried out on a stretcher.
"What did I tell you. Han Daewong isn't the kind of man who goes down that easily."
At that, Seo-yeon stuck out her lower lip.
"……I know. I know better than anyone how strong our Bear is."
But, she added silently to herself.
Knowing and worrying were two different things. No matter how strong he was, how was she supposed to stop fretting that he might get hurt? That was just what happened when you cared about that idiot bear as much as she did.
Of course she kept every word of that locked behind her teeth. Rachel would only tease her again. So she cleared her throat for no reason and turned back toward the cage, raising her voice even louder.
"You did great, Bear!! Our Bear really is the best!!"
The knot that had sat in her chest all night finally loosened and melted away.
Well, it had ended so anticlimactically that all that fretting almost felt wasted.
But he hadn't gotten hurt. That was enough.
After the match, back in the waiting room.
"Bear!! You were the absolute best!!"
Seo-yeon slammed the door open and came flying straight at me.
"You saw that, right?! One punch—one single punch! That huge guy just went whoosh and flew off! It was like something out of a movie!"
"Who was it again who was fretting herself sick right up until the fight started."
The moment I said it, her face flushed red.
"Wh-when I watched the videos he looked huge, okay! Anyone would've worried!"
"……And yet it was still one punch."
"Ugh, whatever! We won in the end, so it doesn't matter!"
She huffed and crossed her arms, but her face was overflowing with relief. It was the look of someone whose heart had finally unclenched after a whole night of tension.
Watching her, I couldn't help the little snort of laughter that slipped out.
The whole world looked at me like I was something to fear, yet this tiny girl was the only one who stayed up all night worrying I might get hurt—and then celebrated like it was her own victory the second it was over.
That was when Rachel stepped into the room.
"Congratulations, Mr. Han Daewong. That was a perfect fight."
She smiled and held out her hand. I took it carefully, mindful of my size.
"……Thank you."
"But the real congratulations start now."
Rachel's smile turned meaningful.
"……What do you mean?"
"Mr. Han, your next match is……"
She paused just long enough to let the words land.
"The finals."
"……The finals?"
For a second my mind went blank.
"Yes. The tournament finals. Win just one more fight and—you're the champion. And if you win, you get a direct UFC contract. The real Octagon. The world stage."
"……"
Already the finals.
My debut felt like it had been only yesterday.
Fighting guys like Kim Do-chol, Seo Min-ho, Tae-san…… and somehow I was standing one step away from the end.
For a moment I remembered the first day I ever stepped inside an Octagon cage. Back then I never could have imagined that a former bear like me would one day stand on this stage as a human. And now the very peak of that stage was right in front of me.
"Woooooah!! The finals?! That's insane!!"
Seo-yeon started bouncing all over again.
"Our Bear's in the finals! Hey, if he wins this he actually goes to the UFC?! The world stage?!"
"That's right. So……"
Rachel's eyes grew serious.
"This next opponent is going to be different from anyone so far. He made it to the finals for a reason. You need to prepare thoroughly."
I nodded slowly.
One last fight.
Win this and I reach the real world stage. The same true Octagon Dominic Carter once stood in.
……I've already come this far, huh.
Something hot swelled up deep in my chest.
At the same time, somewhere in the stands.
A man was looking down at the cage. Moments earlier Kang Tae-san had been carried out on a stretcher. That mountain of flesh once called the strongest physique in super heavyweight—taken out by a single blow. His own fist shattered, body flung through the air like a rag doll.
The spectators around him were still buzzing with excitement, each tossing out their own take.
"Whoa, you see that? Absolute monster, that guy!"
"But honestly, wasn't there a little luck involved? The timing on that fist clash was ridiculous."
"Yeah. Lucky punch. No way that happens every time."
Even as they stomped and chanted Han Daewong's name, people were already writing off what they had just witnessed as nothing more than a lucky shot. They simply didn't want to believe a human could send another human flying like that.
The man, however, agreed with none of them.
Luck? A lucky punch?
……What a joke.
That was not a blow you could throw by chance.
In the exact instant Tae-san extended his fist, a counter had met it at the single most precise timing and the single most lethal angle.
As if every one of the opponent's movements had already been read.
No—more than read. Pure instinct, the way a starving beast snaps the throat of its prey.
Something like that didn't come from luck.
The man recognized it at a glance. He was a fighter who had clawed his way to the finals, after all. Eyes that had rolled through every muddy corner of this world were not so easily fooled.
He shifted his gaze to the smartphone in his hand.
A video was playing on the screen.
The infamous clip that had turned the entire internet upside down.
In some underground fight club, one man tearing through more than a hundred people with his bare hands, flinging them aside like paper—the world had dubbed him the Barehanded Massacre, and this was that very video.
Four hundred million views. Most people who watched it had laughed.
That was the overwhelming majority reaction.
Whether they mocked it or marveled at it—no one believed for a second that it was real.
And of course they didn't.
A man sending a hundred people flying with his bare hands. Bodies launching into the air like they'd been hit by a truck. By any common sense it was impossible.
The man himself had thought the same at first. A well-made short action film, or expensive CGI. He had snorted and scrolled past.
But today.
After watching Han Daewong's fight with his own two eyes, every one of those assumptions had been flipped on its head.
He rewound the video to the beginning. Then, freezing frame after frame with his fingertip, he studied every single shot with obsessive care.
The angle of the man's fist as it extended in the video.
The overwhelming destructive power that launched entire bodies through the air.
Movement far too fast and beast-like for such a massive frame. And above all—those empty, indifferent eyes that seemed not to regard the people in front of him as people at all.
One by one he laid those details over the Han Daewong he had just watched in the cage.
The angle of the fist.
——Identical.
The destructive power.
——Identical.
Those eyes.
——Chillingly similar.
Of course the blurry figure in the video and the Han Daewong he had seen today did not look completely the same.
Different hairstyle. Different clothes.
Someone else might have tilted their head and muttered that they sort of looked alike and sort of didn't, then moved on.
But not this man.
Appearances could be changed at will. Cut the hair, swap the clothes, rearrange the expression—done. But those eyes could never be changed.
The empty eyes of a predator that did not see humans as human.
No amount of pretending to be human could hide that. And the man had long since become an expert at recognizing eyes like those.
He had met every kind of human this world had to offer.
"……Other people can be fooled. Not me."
The fingertips gripping the phone trembled on their own.
"……It's not CG."
He muttered under his breath.
"That video…… was real."
Certainty crawled ice-cold up his spine.
This Han Daewong was the monster from that video. The real massacre artist who had torn through a hundred men with his bare hands underground.
That was no human. It was a monster wearing human skin.
"……How the hell do you beat something like that fair and square."
A crooked, bitter smile twisted across the man's face.
There was no winning clean. Not with technique, not with power, not with size. Stepping into a fair fight against that monster was no different from offering your own neck and asking to be killed nicely.
But that did not mean he had the slightest intention of losing.
To this man the finals were the single chance he had spent his entire life waiting for.
Win and you went straight to the UFC.
The stage that could overturn, in one night, a life spent scraping by on the fringes of the circuit.
He would not let some monster of unknown origin snatch that away from him.
Absolutely not.
"……It's not like there's no way at all."
His eyes sank into something dark and moist.
No matter how strong the monster.
No matter if it wasn't even human—every living thing had a weak point.
If you couldn't win from the front, you found that weak point and twisted until it broke.
If it couldn't be done inside the ring, then outside the ring.
If it couldn't be done fair and square, then not fair and square.
The man switched off the phone screen.
Then he looked once more, slowly, at Han Daewong standing in the cage and soaking up the cheers.
"……Just wait. I'll see you in the finals."
A warped smile spread wet and ugly across his lips.