The air in the gym had changed. It was always a place of sweat and effort, but now it hummed with a new, sharper frequency. The casual lifters were gone. The air was filled with the sharper sounds of focused violence: the crisp pop of gloves on focus mitts, the grunt of explosive effort, the sharp hiss of exhaled breath. This was no longer just training. This was Fight Camp.
Coach caught my eye from across the mats and jerked his head toward his small, cluttered office. The usual stern gaze was gone, replaced by a businesslike intensity that made my stomach tighten. This was it.
I wiped the sweat from my face with a towel and followed him. He didn't sit. He just clicked play on a laptop that looked older than I was.
"Your first-round opponent is Kaito 'The Bull' Mori. 23 years old 5'11 75kgs. You have the height and weight advantage but that doesn't mean you'll win. Watch."
The footage was grainy, shot from a bad angle in some other cramped, echoing gym. But the violence was crystal clear. Mori was a stocky, thick-necked ball of aggression. He came forward like a charging rhino, swinging wild, looping hooks with bad intentions. There was no technique, just pure, unadulterated fury. The guy he was fighting tried to back up, to circle away, but a wide, arcing right hand caught him on the temple. His legs folded like a house of cards. The video stopped.
"He's a bomb," Coach grunted, his eyes still on the frozen screen. "If he connects clean, it's goodnight. Don't let him connect." He rewound the tape, pointing a thick, calloused finger at the screen. "But look. See how he swings? He leaves his chin wide open. He's all offense, no defense. His footwork is garbage. He plants his feet to throw. He's a one trick poney but that one trick is very good. Think of Fury Wilder."
He turned to me, his gaze like a physical weight. "Your job is simple. Survive the first round. Use your footwork and the height and reach advantage you have over him. Make him miss. Make him chase you. Let him punch himself out trying to take your head off. The second he gets frustrated and gasses, that's your opening. Either kick his head out of his head, make his knees weak with quick 1-2's. And if that doesn't work then." He jabbed his finger at the screen again. "Look at this. The one time this idiot got taken down."
He pulled up another clip. Mori, on his back, looked like a turtle someone had flipped over. He flailed wildly, leaving his neck exposed as he tried to shrimp away with zero technique.
"He's a fish on the ground," Sendo said, a note of contempt in his voice. "Absolutely clueless. You get this fight to the mat, it's over. You tie him up, he'll panic. He'll give you his back. Look for the choke. Rear-naked or guillotine. His neck is begging for it. Understood?"
The plan was simple. Terrifyingly so. Survive the storm. Take him down. Submit him. It sounded easy when Sendo said it. The footage told a different, more brutal story.
"Understood, Coach," I said, my voice tighter than I wanted it to be.
He grunted. "I'll get you a copy. Now get back to work. We're drilling takedown entries for an hour."
The rest of the training session was a blur of exhaustion and focused repetition. Every shot, every sprawl, every attempt to secure a body lock was done with the image of Mori's wild swings in my head. The fear was alive in my chest, but Coach's game plan was the lifeline I clung to.
Later that evening, under the guise of needing help with a "college level physics problem," I found myself in an empty classroom with Honoka-sensei. The sun was setting, casting long orange shadows across the desks.
"I assume the 'problem' is more kinetic than theoretical?" she asked, her tone dry as she pulled out her laptop.
I nodded, pulling the flash drive from my pocket. "My opponent."
We watched the same footage in silence. Seeing it again, in the quiet of the classroom, made it seem even more savage. My palms felt slick.
When it finished, Honoka-sensei didn't look alarmed. She looked fascinated. "Fascinating," she murmured, rewinding the KO. "His kinetic chain is wildly inefficient. Observe." She paused the video. "He relies entirely on upper-body torque, neglecting hip rotation for true power transfer. It's why his energy expenditure is so prodigious. He's functionally useless after the initial three-minute burst."
She clicked to the takedown clip. "And here. His stance is too upright. His center of gravity is dangerously high. His base is way too unstable." She turned to me, her eyes sharp with analytical fire. "The most logical path to victory is to remove the vertical variable entirely. Take the fight to the horizontal plane. The probability of his success plummets there."
She said it with the certainty of someone stating a fundamental law of physics.
"His ground game is statistically non-existent," she continued. "The data suggests a submission is the optimal outcome. A chokehold would be most efficient—it directly mitigates his primary weapon."
I stared at her, a slow wave of disbelief washing over me. She had just articulated, in perfect, clinical scientific terms, exactly what Coach Sendo had growled at me hours earlier.
Survive the storm. Take him down. Submit him.
Hearing it from two such completely different sources—the grizzled veteran of a thousand fights and the brilliant, analytical physicist—was like receiving a prophecy. The plan was no longer just a strategy; it was an inevitability.The terrifying, charging bull was reduced to a set of predictable, solvable flaws.
"A rear-naked choke," I said, my voice quiet.
"Precisely," she nodded. "It applies biomechanical leverage he won't understand how to counter. The data is clear."
The fear was still there, a cold stone in my gut. But it was now encased in a shell of hard, diamond-edged certainty.
The next week was a descent into a special kind of hell. Every waking moment was consumed by the blueprint.
My training became a violent reflection of the plan. Pad work with Coach was no longer just about power; it was all about the speed and technique. We did more drills, circling away from the right hand until my calves burned, throwing jabs to maintain distance, slipping and weaving until the motions were muscle memory.1-2, 2-3, 1-2-1-3, all the combos engraving into my mind.
Wrestling was worse. I spent hours shooting for takedowns on partners who were told to mimic Mori's wild, swinging aggression. I ate more glancing punches than I ever had, learning to close the distance through a storm of punches to get to the safety of the clinch. Suplexing was an option but very risky.
On the ground, it was all BJJ. Round after round, I did nothing but work for back control. Securing the body triangle, fighting for hooks, sinking in rear-naked chokes from every possible angle. Over and over and over again. Survive. Takedown. Submit.
The toll was brutal. I was a ghost in the hallways of Aoba High, moving through my classes in a haze of exhaustion. The weight cut had begun, sapping my energy, making every thought feel slower than usua;.
In the library, trying to force-feed my brain calculus, Hikari found me. "Whoa, Satoshi-kun," she said, her usually bright voice laced with genuine concern. "You look like you got run over by a truck. And then it backed over you. For good measure. You okay?"
I managed a weak grunt. "Just… projects. Lots of projects."
She didn't look convinced. "Well, eat a burger or something! You're gonna disappear!" She said in a tone that sounded like a mother scolding her son for not eating spinach.
Later, in the committee meeting, Kurayami's piercing amethyst eyes studied me from across the table. We were supposed to be discussing sound effects for the haunted house, but her gaze was fixed on me.
"Your sleep cycle is clearly compromised," she stated flatly, derailing Hikari's rant about spooky music. "Your reaction time is diminished by approximately twenty percent, and your cognitive processing speed has noticeably slowed. Your current project is inefficiently consuming your resources."
I just stared at her, too tired to even be startled by her terrifying perception. She was right. The project was consuming me. She just had no idea what the real project was.
That night, lying in bed, my body was a collage of pain. Every muscle screamed in protest. Every fresh bruise throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I closed my eyes and the video played on a loop behind my eyelids: Mori's wild charge, the devastating impact of his fist, the helpless flailing on the ground.
The cold stone of fear was still there. But it was now wrapped in layers of hard-earned certainty Coach's commands, Honoka-sensei's cool data, the feel of the mats under my grinding knees.
Kaito Mori wasn't a monster anymore. He was a puzzle. A dangerous, violent puzzle, but one with a solution etched in bright, undeniable letters.
Survive the storm.
Take him down.
Make him tap.
The plan was simple. Brutal, terrifying, but simple.
Executing it would be the hardest thing I'd ever done.
But for the first time, staring at the cracks in my ceiling, I wasn't just hoping to win.
I was starting to believe I could.