Chapter 6 — Four-Drone
"Let's go, Shin Yugyeom!"
Park Nam-rae bellowed in his usual thunderous voice. As I walked out toward the cage, I could feel countless eyes tracking me.
"Shin Yugyeom?"
"That him? The kid who got famous on YouTube."
"From what I've seen of him fighting, he's not amateur level. In person he looks even younger, though."
"Look at that face. He's a baby."
"Shin Yugyeom's got the hype, sure, but his opponent's from Team Respect's athlete division…"
I caught all of the murmuring. Most of it centered on my recent fame, but my opponent had drawn plenty of attention in his own right.
This was an amateur league where hobbyists and aspiring pros were thrown together, so expectations attached less to any individual's record and more to the team behind him.
And Respect was the team founded by Lee Ho-sung, a former UFC featherweight — a hardcore outfit, I'd heard, that never let a fighter step into the cage until he was ready.
"Let's go, Cho Chan-young!"
"Kill him!"
"He's just a hobbyist! Win this and we're on to the quarterfinals, Chan-young!"
Maybe that was why loud voices kept ringing out from the opposite corner. Lee Ho-sung himself wasn't here, but it must have felt reassuring all the same.
The moment I stepped inside, the cold canvas met my feet. My head cooled and settled.
"Both fighters, to the center."
Following the referee's instruction, I walked out. My opponent approached. Cho Chan-young bared his black mouthguard at me like a beast baring its teeth, and as he shook his body loose to shake off the nerves, the referee spoke.
"You received the rules briefing in the holding room? No headbutts, no eye gouges, no strikes to the back of the head or the groin, no pointed-toe shin kicks. Follow my instructions during the match, and protect yourselves at all times. Both fighters — touch gloves and return to your corners."
We touched gloves, and each of us took our corner.
"Let's go, Shin Yugyeom!"
In sheer volume, my corner didn't lose to theirs. But no matter how loud they were, they were, in the end, people outside the cage.
Clang.
With the door closed, no one could fight in my place. Out here there were only two people left — my opponent and me — and one of us would have to be the winner and one the loser.
"Ready?"
The referee asked, looking at each of us.
"Ready?"
And then—
"Fight!"
The referee dropped his hand and stepped back, and at last the match had begun.
I never took my eyes off him as I moved toward the center of the cage. My opponent, closing in from the far corner, feinted a bob forward like he was about to spring in and throw a punch — I didn't buy it.
So instead of stopping at the feint, he took a genuine step forward and rotated his hips.
Thwack!
His rear leg slammed heavily into the side of my shin, just below the pad, and I wobbled. He'd deceived my timing on the entry, pinned my gaze on his upper body, then gone after my leg.
I had never faced a calf kick in the ancient world, so of course I failed to answer it properly — but I was a man who had kept marching forward with broken bones and blades buried in my flesh, so long as my legs stayed attached. That obsession carried me through, letting me grind through the numbing pain in my unbalanced state and plant my foot anyway.
Tap.
Having closed the distance, I reached out my lead hand while he was still off-balance, watching his blown-wide pupils the whole way.
Pop!
A fist wrapped in a ten-ounce glove instead of the sixteen-ounce sparring mitts caught him square in the face just as he was retracting that calf kick. The timing pulled him off his rear foot, and he staggered.
I took one more step and drove in a lead jab followed by a rear straight. The two straightest punches in existence — the first things anyone learns, ancient or modern — landed one after the other on his jaw.
Pop! Crack!
His jaw wrenched sideways and his muscular frame crumpled, unfolding before my eyes like slow motion.
And then—
Thud…!
Cho Chan-young sprawled across the canvas, and the referee, who had been watching from a slight distance, crossed his arms.
"It's over!"
He wedged himself between us, but I didn't press any closer to my opponent. I'd known the fight was finished the instant that one-two landed, so I'd turned away the moment he went down.
"That's it!"
Coach Baek Jun-gyeong shouted.
"What the— how did he do that?"
Nam-rae asked, flabbergasted.
"Waaaaaah…"
Clap clap clap clap clap…
Amid the crowd's jumbled shouts of awe and scattered applause, I — the guy who'd just walked up and flattened a man with a jab-jab-straight — soaked in the rush of this moment for everything it was worth.
"You were floating off your base from throwing the kick, so I took it!"
By then, the man I'd sunk had finally come to and pushed himself upright.
"I'll be right back."
Glove off, I paused the celebration with my team and walked over to my opponent. I stood waiting a moment before Cho Chan-young's eyes finally met mine, and with his cornermen supporting him he rose to his feet. Waving off their hands, he came to meet me with a handshake.
"Wow, you're seriously strong. I don't think you're an amateur at all. My jaw's still ringing."
"Same here."
I shook out the leg that had taken the calf kick. My shin was bright red.
Chan-young looked at the mark he'd left on me and gave a wry smile.
"You walked in like it was nothing, so I figured it hadn't hurt. How did you land that with full weight, that accurately, while your stance was collapsing?"
"That's… instinct, I guess."
There was no better way to put it. Chan-young, who had survived fight after life-or-death fight for years, had a weapon carved into his body — and he named mine in a single word.
"Talent, huh… I'll be rooting for you in the rest of the bracket. Watch out for injuries, and take the whole thing."
"Thank you."
"No, thank you."
"Great work out there!"
When I bowed to his cornermen too, Chan-young gave my shoulder a light pat, wiped the humor off his face, and went to stand beside the referee. He stared up at the ceiling with a complicated expression. I lined up beside the two of them and opened my ears.
Soon the referee made his declaration.
"KFC One-Day Tournament, featherweight quarterfinal! Winner — Shin Yugyeom!"
"Woooooaaah!"
Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap…
The other competitors sent up cheers and applause. Some of them I'd no doubt meet again down the bracket, but for now I simply savored it and stepped out of the cage.
"Put this on your leg. A victory gift."
Coach handed me an ice pack.
"Thank you. Oof — cold! Cold, but it feels good."
"That kid's calf kick was solid."
"Yeah, he kicks well."
If it hurt this much through a pad, how much worse would it have been bare? Not that it mattered — pain that couldn't kill me only made me stronger.
"You let that kick land on purpose, didn't you?"
Nam-rae asked.
"Of course. I have to finish fights early."
"Give the flesh, take the bone…" Coach murmured under his breath, then asked, "So you're doing the four-drone again?"
"Yep."
"And if something tweaks while you're at it?"
"Then it's all-out, do-or-die, every-man-for-himself time."
Stamina couldn't be built in a day, anyway. And it wasn't like conditioning was the only thing I was short on.
"Unbelievable. This kid is historic — completely off the rails."
Nam-rae shook his head.
"First time in my life I've met anyone more off the rails than me."
"Same here."
"…"
Nodding along with ferocious agreement, Coach added:
"Still, you need a little of that reckless streak to be good at fighting. You had it too, hyung. And look at the kid — he won, didn't he?"
Nam-rae scratched his cheek roughly.
"So, no rationing your stamina for the rest of the bracket, then?"
I snorted a laugh.
"There's no stamina to ration."
"Next up! Featherweight semifinal! Kim Chang-soo! Shin Yugyeom!"
Kim Chang-soo's goal was to win the One-Day Tournament and break into the KFC, the biggest fighting organization in the country. His goal since three years ago.
"Three-time repeater."
He murmured it like a self-hypnosis.
"…This is the last one. I can't fail again."
Last year he'd made it all the way to the final and fallen there. His opponent that day was a ranked fighter now. Among the amateurs gathered here today, he was almost certainly the most seasoned veteran.
He could have turned pro with any mid-tier promotion the moment he wanted — it was sheer stubbornness that kept him an amateur.
And today was the day he'd put a period at the end of it all.
"UZZZZZZZZA!"
The moment he entered the cage, he roared at the top of his lungs and pounded his chest.
Thwack! THWACK!
Laughter burst out around the cage at the spectacle he was making of himself, but Kim Chang-soo didn't care in the slightest and walked to his corner. He was in the zone, completely.
"YouTube star or whatever you are — I'm folding you in half."
Kim Chang-soo prowled back and forth in his corner, huffing. His second looked up at him and shouted.
"Why are you mad again? Chill out, man! If you could just keep your head, you'd have gone pro ages ago! Fight with YOUR weapon — save the impact for the pros!"
Something in those words tripped a switch. Kim Chang-soo stopped dead in his tracks and took a long, deep breath.
"Hoooah…!"
When he opened his eyes again, his face had transformed into something unrecognizably calm, and he walked out. He faced his opponent, listened to the referee's instructions, touched gloves, and returned to his mark.
"Ready?"
He nodded his shaved head — the head he'd cleared of everything for the sake of discipline. Then the referee turned to his opponent.
"Ready?"
His opponent raised one hand, and—
"Fight!"
With the referee's shout, the match began. At the same instant, Kim Chang-soo exploded forward. The distance closed rapidly — then he abruptly stopped dead, planted himself at kicking range, and swung his rear leg up with everything he had.
Whoosh!
And then, his opponent vanished.
"Huh?"
The man who should have been right there at the arc of his high kick wasn't anywhere to be seen. A chill crawled up his spine.
He should have blocked it — or slipped it at most, dropped his stance or circled back. So if he'd dropped into the ground—
A shot.
Who in their right mind dives into a tackle straight under an incoming kick?
That takes the kind of nerve it takes to shove your head into a lion's open jaws.
Except his opponent wasn't gutsy. He was that good-looking, sure — but he wasn't a lion. He was a lunatic who would dive under a dump truck barreling toward him head-on.
"Damn it…!"
In any case, before Kim Chang-soo could even bring his kicking leg down, he sensed something boring in under his planted leg. Even then, he tried to pull his hips away — but it wasn't a tackle.
'Wait—what?'
His opponent had taken his back, seized the back of his knee, wrapped both legs around his thigh, and spun like a top.
CRASH!
Suddenly flat on his back with one leg snared, Kim Chang-soo heard the eruption of shouts from around the cage.
It felt like the crowd was mocking him. His second was screaming something, but none of it reached his ears.
'Son of a— they want me to fight a monster like this with MY game plan?'
He had always been more diligent, more consistent than anyone else. Years of relentless training had forged him a rock-solid engine. He possessed, as his strength, the very thing amateurs were weakest in.
So he'd meant to attack boldly. Keep his cool and drain his opponent's gas tank. The high kick was supposed to be the opening move — and before he could do anything at all, the guy had flown at him with an Imanari roll out of nowhere…!
'Isn't that a technique that died out in actual competition?'
A surprise attack that only worked when the opponent didn't know it — in an era when jiu-jitsu had gone mainstream, the moment you committed to it you were a perfect target. Worse, you had to put yourself on the floor to do it, so it usually ended in self-destruction.
He'd taken the bait on that suicidal move hook, line, and sinker, and now his left leg was caught deep. Both legs cinched tight around his thigh. His heel was surrendered too, leaving his ankle and knee exposed to the heel hook. One rotation and his ligaments would stretch — and tear.
"Shit."
His infinite stamina was worthless. The total expenditure of his gas tank so far: one kicking motion. And still, cornered by raw survival instinct, he had no choice but to tap.
Tap! Tap!
"Waaaaah…"
Cheered on by the crowd, I released the grip and stood. A shiver ran through me at the sensation still lingering in my body.
Thanks to the One-Day Tournament allowing joint attacks on the lower body for the sake of fast pacing, I'd been able to put moves I rarely got to use into practice, boldly and without hesitation.
And once again, it had landed beautifully. Though I suspect that to everyone else it looked like pure madness…
Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap…
Rising from among my rivals and the industry men watching — a standing ovation.