Off the Charts
"It isn't even that he says he'll win in round one — he says he'll submit the champion? The champion?"
"That kind of gall, aimed at a senior and a champion... Is it just because he's young? He's going to get shredded online, that much is certain."
"If he loses, they'll grind him to dust. Let's hope his head's screwed on tight."
"Forget a first-round submission — if he so much as takes a decision, all hell is going to break loose. Then again, it won't be easy, will it?"
Every murmur from the reporters seated up front reached my ears. Amid it all, the champion across the table — Choi Woo-seung — asked a question of his own.
"The young man is brave. I understand the fire of youth, but someday you'll look back on this and kick yourself. As your elder, my advice is this: don't write yourself any more pages of embarrassing history."
"Whether it becomes history I'd rather forget or history itself — open the lid tomorrow and find out. Consider it my gift to you: a chance to unbox it."
"Ooooh—"
The room flared white-hot.
"So I'm to be your sacrifice, am I? Fine. Let's see whether you can back up those gallant words against a man like me."
Saying so, Choi Woo-seung pulled off his sunglasses and rose to his feet. I stood from my own seat and walked out to the center of the stage.
"WOOOAAAH!"
Cheers and applause rolled across the hall, whistles shrilling here and there through the din.
Amid the noise, Choi Woo-seung slid his sunglasses into his pocket and settled into a light fighting stance. I stood square across from him, hands clasped behind my back, simply watching. I'd be called arrogant no matter what I did, so I might as well stand however felt comfortable.
"Not worried?"
Even just the dried, crusted split on the lip of the man asking, and the dull bruise blooming under his left eye, told me how seriously he had prepared for this fight. Beyond that, the killer focus in his eyes as they tracked minutely left and right, and the scars carved into his face, said plenty about the treacherous road he had climbed to stand where he stood.
But he doesn't know.
What the past life I remembered had been like. How deep and dark that trauma ran. That a beast crouches coiled within me — one for whom prison bars, not cage fencing, would be the truer enclosure.
"Not at all," I told him, each word crisp. "Everything is going to go exactly the way I intend."
"You're that sure you won't lose?"
"You're going to tap, sunbae."
I let my voice sink low and level.
That's right. I had never once entertained the idea of losing — it wasn't something I would ever acknowledge in the first place. And so I did not fear its price, either. Whatever scolding and abuse came with it, no shame or lesson in this world would outweigh defeat itself.
Whether that conviction reached him or not, Choi Woo-seung knit his brow and nodded.
"Looks like I'd better keep my head on straight, then."
He let the stance go and extended his hand. When I took it, he gave me his resolve.
"I'll be the one to put you to sleep."
Only then did a smile rise to my face.
"I look forward to it."
Camera flashes burst without pause.
Choi Woo-seung was in a strange mood.
'Eyes so calm they bordered on cruel.'
It had felt like standing before some great predator. Even now, replaying that pressure he'd absorbed in the moment, he broke out in gooseflesh.
Who could have imagined it? That such killing intent would drift off an adorable face, out of eyes that looked so pure. That was something you understood only if you had stood across from it yourself.
"Funny — all of a sudden I don't want to fight," he murmured.
His wife's head turned; she must have caught it.
"Why?"
"It's nothing."
"Talk to me. I'm anxious enough already — I won't sleep a wink tonight. Are you planning to keep me chewing my nails until this fight is over tomorrow?"
"Doesn't sound half bad, actually."
"Babe!"
"Kidding. It's just... you saw it today. Now that I'm getting older, the momentum of these kids charging up behind me weighs on me, that's all."
"Is that all it is?"
"That's all."
"The fight is tomorrow, and this is the first time I have ever heard you say you didn't feel like fighting."
"Is it?"
"It is. You always loved this. You said you'd trained all this time for exactly this kind of moment."
"Right. I did."
Choi Woo-seung nodded.
"Tomorrow I'm going to pour out everything I have. Like a rat cornered in a dead end. This might be the last fight of my life — so tomorrow, if never again, I want to fight without a single regret."
"And your brain doesn't worry you?"
At that, Choi Woo-seung let out a short laugh.
"I intend to focus on the fight and nothing else. If it's my last one, that's how it should be. I saw it in my opponent. To beat a fighter like that, I have to walk into that cage carrying the same heart. The belt's mine, but his popularity has given me the biggest payday of my career — the least I can do is bring everything I've got."
"Understood. It's not like this is my first rodeo — I'm a professional too, as a fighter's wife. I won't cry. I won't fuss. I won't even tell you to be careful. Just burn it all up with no regrets and come back with the win. I will never get in your way."
"Get in your way? You never have..."
Choi Woo-seung wrapped an arm around his wife's waist and went on. "I mean to show him that a man with much to protect hits harder than a man with nothing to lose. Give your mother a call. I could use the right frame of mind — and we can video chat with the kids while we're at it."
Olympic Park, Seoul — the Ticketlink Live Arena.
Riding in my dad's car, I pulled into the parking lot at the arena's rear entrance.
"Don't get hurt. You hear me?"
"Yes. I'm off — see you soon!"
Turning my face away from the look in my parents' eyes — a look I had no words for — I pulled on my cap, grabbed my sports bag, and stepped out of the car. When I came up to the rear entrance I'd been tipped off about beforehand, a staff member greeted me.
"Hello there."
"Hello. I'm Shin Yugyeom — I'm fighting today."
I took off my cap as I identified myself, and the staff member studied me as though seeing something rare, then handed me an access pass on a lanyard. "I'm a fan too, you know. Go get that win! Follow the corridor and you'll see the holding room."
"Thank you."
With a short bow, I set my cap back in place and walked on. Reaching the holding room, I opened the door and stepped inside.
"There he is."
Several people turned, and among the faces I spotted Coach Baek Jun-gyeong and Nam-rae hyung.
"Hello, everyone—"
Right at that moment—
"WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
A colossal roar rolled in from outside the holding room. For an instant a chill swept over me, and electricity prickled up my spine.
"How are you feeling?"
"Great."
Answering the coach, I unzipped my bag and took a chair. Then, facing the open stretch of mat at the center of the holding room — a courtesy any fighter headed to the blue corner today was free to claim as his own — I had my hands taped.
Out there, the fighter booked into the co-main event ahead of mine was loosening up, cracking light combinations into pads and shooting takedowns as he found his rhythm with a young man who might have been his coach or his sparring partner — I couldn't tell which.
Watching them, my blood lit up all over again.
"You've got the face of a man about to die of happiness," the coach remarked.
"Have you not read the comments?"
"No."
"Why?" I asked. "What about them?"
"Nothing."
"Are people trashing me?"
"Fifty-fifty."
"Doesn't bother me."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"And that's exactly it. That's the part I honestly can't get over."
Nam-rae hyung shook his head. "Watching Yugyeom, I really do think every man is born with his own measure. There's no way I could have said what you said to a champion's face at a press conference."
"Neither could I. Which is exactly how Yugyeom's got a hundred thousand subscribers, isn't that right, hyung?"
"A hundred and fifty thousand now, Coach."
"Man, that's fast. A following that size, and both his fights since debut have been title fights. Win this one and there won't be a soul left in Korea or Japan who can stand against him. Even the people calling you an arrogant little brat right now — every last one of them is going to become your fan."
"That's right! You can win this! Hype and hate always travel together!"
Yet the eyes of Nam-rae hyung as he shouted it wavered, unable to find their footing. The eyes are windows to the heart — however well a man plays at it, the truth leaks through. Evidently he, too, could not quite convince himself that I would win this time.
The coach's eyes, on the other hand, were shining bright.
"So what are you planning this time?"
"Couldn't say." I shrugged. "I've watched plenty of his fight footage. But you never really know until you're in the cage with someone."
Nam-rae hyung turned to the coach. "Have you ever seen a fighter like him?"
The coach shook his head. "That's what I've been telling you! Coaching this kid is more than I can handle. I keep telling him to go find a bigger gym!"
Fair enough — he'd urged me more times than I could count.
"I've never seen anyone like him, so I can't make heads or tails of it. And you don't go ruining a genius by holding him to an ordinary man's yardstick. I couldn't draw up a tailored game plan for him even if I wanted to — not when I can't even gauge how good he actually is."
The coach heaved a deep sigh. "So what does that make me? A spectator. Just a spectator."
And honestly, that was exactly why I trained at a neighborhood gym without so much as a fight team attached. Fighting without knowing who would be standing across from me — that was the mode I knew best. For too many long years I had fought on the fly, adapting to whatever came; if I were made to move according to someone else's strategy, I suspected it would feel like fighting with my hands and feet tied. Fighting alone, on my own terms, was simply far more comfortable.
What I needed right now was not a bench of coaches parsing my opponents to hand me tailor-made strategies. It was someone who, without asking or demanding anything, respected and believed in me — and who could still put the training methods and techniques of this era in front of me.
"You're more than enough as you are."
"See? My spiritual anchor, no less. And he does a very tidy hand wrap."
Nam-rae hyung stole a sidelong glance at the coach and snickered. But the coach chuckled and fired right back. "You're practically a one-man cheer squad yourself, hyung. I hold his pads and spar with him. I'm clearly the better deal."
Nam-rae hyung's face went red. He'd taken that one flush on the chin.
I had no particular desire to wade into such a juvenile contest, but—
"Now, now. You're both—"
Just as I — the one with the most delicate stake here, no less — moved to encourage the pair of them, the door swung open and the name of the earlier bout's fighter rang out.
"Yoo Han-sung, we'll have you standing by for your walkout."
"Let's go!"
"Bring home the win!"
The coach and Nam-rae hyung cheered him on.
"Thank you!"
"Let's go!"
"LET'S GO!"
The fighter and his seconds each roared their own cry and swept out the door brimming with fire.
"Shall we hit some light pads?" the coach asked, finishing my taping.
"No — I'll shadowbox."
I rose to my feet, shaking out my arms, and turned my eyes to the monitor. The fighter who had shared the holding room until moments ago was walking out into the arena.
"Waaaaaah..."
My whole chest thrummed. No figure of speech — my heart was genuinely pounding.
"Whew."
Once the introductions wrapped up, the two men began to move inside the cage.
Slipping into the skin of the fighter who had been with us, I faced his opponent and answered every movement.
Swish—
I sank my stance, slipped the punch, gauging distance and speed. My body moved a beat faster than the man I had poured myself into, and along different lines besides, so our paths kept slipping out of register — and each time, I re-synced my response to the scene as it played.
The upshot: the opposing fighter walked into my counter three times clean. Reality, however—
"WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
Under that enormous roar, the fighter I had poured myself into crumpled on the screen.
"Ah!"
I had been so absorbed that a groan burst out of me — and in that instant—
"Wait — no way. Something about that looked familiar, but don't tell me... you were dodging the very instant the opponent threw his punch?"
My movements and the on-screen opponent's had overlapped one time too many, and so the coach had to ask.
"That's right."
I answered honestly, and Nam-rae hyung pressed again.
"But how? Do you see half a second into the future or something?"
"No, nothing like that..." Was this really such a marvel? "I just read the way a man moves in the instant before his attack comes out, and predict from there. The screen runs a little slower than real life, too."
Drawing on the training methods of my past life, I said it as though it were nothing at all — but Nam-rae hyung muttered with a stricken look on his face.
"Coach, this kid genuinely gives me the creeps."
"He's completely insane. No wonder clean shots never land on him."
"Ah—"
What they had both overlooked was this: unlike the fighters of today, I was steeped in ancient training methods — methods first devised for facing men who came at you with cold steel.