A Monster's Talent
“There you go.”
True to his word, the head coach fished a clear mouthguard out of a paper box from the gym's little shop and handed it to me as a gift. I just stood there staring down at it, having no clue what to do with the thing.
After all, there was no such thing as a mouthguard in ancient boxing or pankration.
“Oh! Right. You're a beginner. Here, I'll help you.”
The coach led me over to the water purifier. He filled a cup with hot water, added cold water a little at a time until the temperature was just right, then dropped the lump of silicone inside and waited.
“It might make you gag at first.”
“Okay.”
My anticipation was building.
Maybe thirty seconds passed?
The coach fished the mouthguard out with a pair of chopsticks, waved it in the air for a moment, and handed it over.
“Line it up with your front teeth, press it in, and bite down hard.”
I took the still-steaming mouthguard and popped it into my mouth. As I pushed it deep against my front teeth, the lump of silicone filled my mouth completely, giving off a rubbery smell.
“Ugh.”
“Now suck the saliva out.”
“Tsssbb!”
It was gross, but I sucked hard, pressing the silicone flush against my teeth.
“Now press on your lips and cheeks with your hands to help it set. Then just dunk it in here and you're done.”
The coach dumped out the hot water and refilled the cup with cold. Watching him, I pulled the mouthguard out—drooling in the process—wiped my chin with my sleeve, and dunked it in the cold water.
“It feels like it'll be hard to even breathe with this thing in.”
“Yep. That's why everyone breathes through their nose. Especially in a match, the moment you get tired your mouth starts hanging open, so you keep it shut while fighting so nobody notices. And anyway, worse than that—if your mouth's open when you get hit, that's a whole different level of bad.”
“I see.”
I nodded. Back in a time without mouthguards—or dentists, for that matter—biting down tight and tucking your chin was the only way to fight. Honestly, just having a mouthguard was a luxury.
“Done now, right?”
“You need gloves. Grab a pair that fits over there.”
The coach tipped his chin toward a shelf in the corner of the gym, where a jumbled heap of hand wraps and boxing gloves lay piled on top of each other.
I went over and dug through the pile for a pair of wraps and gloves that weren't soaked through. They smelled musty, which was unpleasant, but what could I do? A fun sparring session was worth a little discomfort.
Then again, compared to the days when I'd wrapped rough leather cords and even knuckle guards around my fists just to protect them, these gloves felt decent—a bit heavy, sure, but with all that padding, getting hit seemed survivable.
“Here's headgear.”
And the coach even offered headgear on top of it all. What more did he want me to wear? At that rate I might as well strap on a full helmet!
“I'm fine without it. If I put all that on too, getting hit won't even feel like getting hit.”
“That's the point of wearing it. Gloves hurt more than you'd think. They're not there to protect the person getting hit—they're there to protect the hitter's hand.”
Whether the coach was trying to scare me or not, he laid it on thick with a grave face—but it didn't quite land.
“Really, I'm fine.”
“Well, if you insist.”
That's what he said, but to my ears it sounded like go ahead, you'll regret it.
I didn't pay it much mind. The loud-voiced uncle who was clearly going to be my opponent was only wearing a mouthguard himself, no headgear.
“Rules are boxing sparring. Two rounds, three minutes each. That's fine with you, hyung-nim?”
At the coach's question, the uncle met my eyes and tapped his gloves together, answering with a slurred lisp through the mouthguard.
“Shoundsh good~.”
A supremely relaxed voice.
Well, fair enough. I had decent punching power, but I wasn't arrogant enough to think that meant I'd win for sure.
No, honestly, winning or losing was beside the point. When was the last time… when was the last time I crossed fists with someone like this?
My heart pounded like it was about to burst. I wanted to fight right now—but still, there were things to be said.
“Coach, could you film the sparring for me, by any chance?”
Filming each other during drills and sparring is common practice, so the coach readily nodded.
“Okay.”
Once the uncle and I stood facing each other, the coach spoke.
“Start whenever you're ready.”
The uncle nodded and extended both hands. Reading the room, I brought my own gloves up to touch his.
Tap.
Sparring, begin.
“Don't go too hard on him, hyung-nim. Just take it easy and work with him.”
“Don't worry!”
The uncle backed off to a distance just beyond the reach of my punches and rapped his own head with his gloves.
“Don't be nervous. Come on in.”
Nervous—hah.
I wanted to feel it again too, but I doubted it would come easy. Not for someone who'd grown used to fights where every exchange was kill or be killed.
Even so, I walked straight toward him, step by step. And the moment the distance closed, his lead hand came out.
Thwack!
I tilted my head to slip it, but my face caught the glove anyway. Slipping strikes with the minimal movement possible had become habit, and that was exactly why the big glove caught me.
Still, it wasn't clean. I'd snapped my chin down in that instant, dulling the damage—so instead of retreating, I kept pressing forward.
He gave ground and fired the lead hand again. That punch, too, caught my face, which couldn't keep up with my head.
WHAM!
My skull rang like a bell.
“Get your guard up!”
The coach shouted. But—
“I haven't learned that yet.”
That, and the truth was my stance refused to come together—I was used to ancient boxing, where punches slipped through the gaps in any guard and a careless arm could snap in two. So I stuck to him relentlessly, and at the exact instant he drew his lead hand back again, I dropped my stance like a lunging fencer.
Whoosh!
The punch sailed over my head. In the same breath, I speared out my lead hand.
Thwack!
For the first time, I touched his belly. His rear hand snapped back at me in retaliation, but I'd already shifted my weight to my back foot and leaned my upper body away.
Swish—.
His fist swept past my chest. From there I torqued my hips and drove my rear hand straight into his face, right inside range.
CRACK!
The only regret was that the thick gloves turned everything into a dull thud—I couldn't taste that electric thrill that rides up the fist on a clean strike.
Instead, I felt a rush of exhilaration at his desperate reaction, shoving my head away with one hand while guarding with the other. His flustered eyes flickered through the gap in his guard and I thrilled at the sight, slipping under the hand pressing down on my skull to burrow in deeper. Standing my elbow at a right angle, I dug it deep into his ribs.
WHAM!
“Huk…!”
The man who'd been gliding away like a matador just seconds before crumpled and dropped to one knee.
I might not have his systematic technique or footwork, but when it came to knowing how to take a hit, slip one, and land one—nobody alive knew better than I did.
“Hah… hah…”
Even through all this, my own breathing thundered in my ears.
Baek Jun-gyeong, head coach of Baek Jun-gyeong MMA, felt a chill shoot down his spine.
Insane.
Never in his wildest imagination had he expected an outcome like this. Nam-rae hyung might be an amateur, but he was one of the gym's old-timers, the type who practically lived there. He'd done judo through middle school, gone 2 and 2 in amateur MMA tournaments, and racked up a record of something like 5 wins and 2 or 3 losses in amateur boxing competitions.
By amateur standards, that was more than enough to toy with and steamroll the average walk-in member—and yet he'd been pushed back over and over by a middle schooler who was, on sight, at least twenty kilograms lighter, and knocked down to boot?
“Whoa, and he's not even scared of hyung-nim's face.”
“Hyung-nim's got a nasty right hand and the kid just bulls right in with no guard at all.”
“I think the kid's punches hit harder than Nam-rae's, honestly? How does that work at that weight?”
Right on cue, the awed voices of the members drifted over.
“Heh, heh.”
Coach Baek Jun-gyeong let out an awkward laugh and tilted his head.
“Was that… really your first time getting hit?”
Going by how green the kid's body was, it didn't seem like a lie—but that such an untrained body had dropped a heavyweight like Nam-rae hyung with a liver shot still beggared belief, even in hindsight.
Still slack-jawed, he shook his head to clear it and walked over to the two of them.
“Hyung-nim, you okay?”
“Whoo, hah. Coach. This kid's hands are no joke.”
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“That's not even the thing. His aggression is something else.”
“Aggression?”
The middle schooler didn't look fierce in the slightest. If anything, he was on the pretty side, so unless you were standing across from him, you'd never sense anything like killer instinct.
“He's still in middle school, and…”
“Exactly. But I kept getting shoved back somehow.”
“Weren't you just taking it easy on him?”
“At first. Only at first.”
“Well, you did throw the first punch.”
“He came in without even leading with a punch. No guard either. And from what I saw, he was taking punches with his eyes open.”
“…”
Come to think of it, the kid had rationed his punches. Two swings, two clean connects. And both of those shots had put a grown man on the floor.
He wasn't even setting them up—can a beginner really hold back until only the surest opportunities, and then throw? He'd been hit first, no less…
Meanwhile, Nam-rae hyung was already holding forth on just how devastating those punches had been.
“And the second that two-straight counter landed, I knew this was bad news, you know? It honestly felt like half my face was being torn off, scared the hell out of me. And then the body shot—look, I've taken hits from the coach before, sure, but I've never been dropped to the body by an amateur. I mean, just…”
Park Nam-rae, still crouched on the mat, turned his head to look at the little runt who'd put him down.
“How is a middle schooler this strong? Are you seriously a beginner?”
Baek Jun-gyeong followed his gaze. The little runt who'd just performed the miracle of flooring a man with sixteen-ounce gloves was excessively calm. Neither flustered nor giddy, he simply stood there, quietly watching the scene unfold around him, as if he'd done nothing more remarkable than tie his shoes.
The way that uncle I'd sparred with had sold every shot made the thrill of victory twice as sweet. But that wasn't the whole story.
Ancient boxing and pankration were, without question, crude. Yet the essence of fighting—putting your opponent on the floor—had never changed across the centuries, and in the end I'd simply claimed victory through cunning born of wildness and experience.
So I turned to the coach, who was staring at me with a slack, addled expression, and asked:
“It feels a little rich asking this right after learning the one-two, but… what's my biggest weakness?”
I braced for the answer everything, but the coach responded with unexpected seriousness.
“First off, you've got no footwork? And your defense… you slip well enough, but at a higher level, well, I honestly don't know.”
“Whoa, what, are you trying to turn him pro?”
The loud-voiced uncle asked with a mischievous grin.
Everyone laughed—but the coach didn't.
“You've got nerve, and your reactions are fast. Your punches and your accuracy are already excellent, so with a few months of serious training you could reach the point where no amateur could touch you. How about giving this a real shot? I know it's early to talk about going pro or whatever, but I'm saying this because I genuinely see talent in you.”
I answered while peeling off my gloves.
“I'll think about it. I'd like to see the sparring footage—did it come out well?”
The coach nodded.
“I'll send it to you. Want me to send it to you too, hyung-nim?”
“Of course.”
“Um, by any chance…”
I turned to the uncle.
“Would it be okay if I uploaded the sparring video to my YouTube?”
“Oh, you do YouTube?”
“Yes. Though it's a channel with exactly zero subscribers.”
Thankfully, the uncle brightened.
“I should be thanking you. Send me the link too, yeah? I'll be your first subscriber.”
“Me too, me too.”
The coach piled on. Two more members followed suit, and so, to my surprise, I walked away with a grand total of four subscribers. I gave a polite bow.
“Thank you.”
“At this point you're basically family. Family!”
The coach cracked a joke, his whole face split in a grin, then added:
“If you've got time, work on your one-two today, and tell me when you get bored. I'll teach you the hook and the uppercut too.”
“Yes, sir.”
On my very first day, I learned all four basic punches. The rest of the session was time spent drilling my stance.
And then, on the walk home, pleasantly drained, I checked the bully-punishment video that had been uploaded that morning at school through Kang Ji-won's account.
Less than half a day had passed, and the view count was already climbing past four digits. Comments were even rolling in one after another. The one that stood out most was—