Chapter 1: The Last Bell
The sound of the bell had always been my anthem.
The sharp clang that split the silence before a fight – the sound that told me it was time to become someone else.
But that night, it wasn't an anthem. It was an ending.
The cage lights burned white above me, blinding and merciless. I could taste the copper of blood on my tongue, feel the sweat stinging my eyes. My opponent – Jared "The Hammer" Hall – towered in front of me, his knuckles swollen and his breathing even. I had beaten men twice his size before, men who came in reputations larger than the cage itself. But tonight wasn't about them. Tonight, it was about survival.
The crowd roared, their chants shaking the air. My name, once shouted like a promise, now wavered somewhere beneath the noise. "Ryo! Ryo! Ryo!" Every syllable felt distant, like they were calling someone else entirely.
My leg was already gone – I could feel it in the sharp, electric pain crawling up my thigh. Every time I stepped, the world tilted. My body wanted to quit. My pride refused.
One more round, I told myself. Just one more.
The bell echoed again.
Hall charged first. His fist came fast – too fast for my leg to plant. My foot slipped, and I saw the blur of his glove an instant before impact. The crack was louder than the crowd. Something deep inside me gave way.
I hit the floor hard, the mat biting into my skin. My vision split – lights, sound, chaos. The referee's voice cut through it all, distant and panicked. "Kusanagi's down! Medical, now!"
My coach's voice was somewhere above me, raw and desperate. "Stay with me, Ryo! Don't move that leg, you hear me?"
But I couldn't hear much anymore. All I could see were flashes – the crowd leaning over the rails, phones raised; the blood smeared across the mat; the slow crawl of medics with their white gloves and blank faces.
Someone shouted for a stretcher.
Someone else said the word fracture.
And somewhere in all that noise. I realised that the dream I had built my entire life on – every bruise, every victory, every sleepless night – had just shattered like bone under pressure.
When I woke, the lights were softer. White walls. Beeping machines. A leg wrapped in metal and regret.
The nurse looked up from her clipboard when I stirred. Her smile was gentle, but her eyes gave it away. "You're awake. That's good."
"How bad?" My voice cracked.
She hesitated. "The doctors will explain more soon, but…your right femur and knee joint were severely damaged. You'll need multiple surgeries and long-term therapy."
Her words blurred together. I didn't hear the rest. The only thing I understood was that I was done.
A fighter's body was his currency. Without it, there was nothing.
The next few days were a haze of painkillers and denial. I kept expecting someone to walk in and tell me it was temporary. That I'd be fine by next month. That the crowd would be waiting.
Instead, the only visitor who came was my coach, Kaito Nomura. He stood at the edge of the hospital bed like a shadow that refused to leave. His voice was quiet, almost afraid to break the silence.
"You've got to face it, Ryo. It's over."
I stared at the wall. "No. It's just recovery. I can –"
"Don't do this to yourself." He cut me off sharply, then softened. "You're one of the best I've ever trained. But if you keep trying to fight after this…you'll destroy what's left of you."
Silence filled the room like smoke. When he left, he didn't say goodbye – just a quiet nod, the kind a man gives when he knows words won't fix anything.
Months passed.
The media forgot about me faster than I expected.
One day I was the undefeated "Crimson Ghost," the next day I was a cautionary headline: "Kusanagi's Career Crumbles After Catastrophic Injury."
The sponsorships evaporated. The fans disappeared.
Even my reflection in the mirror started looking like someone I didn't know.
I moved out of Tokyo a few months later, selling what was left of my things and renting a small apartment in a coastal town two hours south. The sea air was supposed to be peaceful – the kind that healed you. But it only reminded me of the silence that came after applause.
Every morning, I limped to the edge of the pier with my cane and stared at the water, waiting or something inside me to move again.
It never did.
Writing began as a mistake.
One afternoon, I found an old notebook in a box of fight notes. It was filled with scraps – training routines, diet plans, motivational quotes from coaches. I flipped through the pages until one fell out – a small photo of me after my first victory, grinning through a bloodied lip.
I stared at that picture for a long time before I started writing.
Not about fighting.
Not about winning.
But about the moment after the fight – when the crowd goes quiet, when you realise that glory fades faster than pain.
The words came awkwardly, heavy and clumsy, but they came. Each sentence was like throwing a punch underwater – slow, exhausting, but strangely freeing.
At first it was just therapy.
Then it became something else.
Days turned into weeks. The notebooks pilled up. I began typing instead, my laptop humming like a faint heartbeat in the quiet room. I wrote until dawn some nights, driven by something I couldn't name.
The stories weren't about me, but they were mine. Each character fought in their own way – some against others, some against themselves.
It was strange. For years, I had been fighting to survive. Now, I was writing to remember what survival even meant.
A year passed.
I sent out my first manuscript to ten publishers. Every one of them rejected me.
The first few rejections stung, but the rest just numbed me. The messages were all the same – "Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, it does not fit our current needs."
I told myself it didn't matter. That I wasn't a writer anyways. But it did matter. Because for the first time since the injury, I had hoped again – and losing that felt like breaking a bone all over again.
The silence of my apartment grew heavier.
At night, the old fights replayed in my head. The roar of the crowd, the crack of gloves, the heat of adrenaline. And then – the snap. The same sound every time.
I'd wake up sweating, gripping my cane, staring at the dark ceiling until the sun rose.
On one of those nights, I wrote something different. It wasn't a story – it was a confession.
"To whoever reads this, I use to think the cage was my whole world. But now I realise it was just a small box I built around myself. The real fight begins after the applause stops. When the lights are gone, and it's just you and your regrets. If pain is all I have left, then maybe it's time I learn how to use it."
I didn't send that piece anywhere. But it changed me.
For the first time in two years, I felt something close to purpose.
Then, three months later, I got an email.
It came from a publisher I'd never heard of – Ardent House.
The message was brief.
Mr. Kusanagi,
Your manuscript "The Fight Who Forgot How to Breathe" was reviewed by our editorial team. One of our editors, Mina Arata, has taken a personal interest in your work and wishes to discuss potential revisions and a possible signing offer.
Please confirm if you're still available to proceed.
I reread it three times, afraid it might vanish if I blinked too hard.
For the first time in a long while, my hands shook – not from fear, but from something else. Hope.
I didn't know then that this email would change everything. That the woman behind it – cold, calculating, and painfully honest – would become the most important person I'd ever meet.
That night, I looked out the window and whispered to myself,
"Maybe the bell wasn't the end after all."
And for the first time since the cage, I smiled.