Episode 15.
A shabby three-story building that looked like it could collapse at any moment.
“Is this the place?”
On the second floor, a sign so old that its letters were barely legible bore the words ‘Jangchungwan Gym.’
It was the same name as the gym he had mentioned in my hazy memories.
The neighborhood checked out too, and it seemed unlikely there was another gym around this tacky, so this had to be it.
I went up the narrow stairs.
Clink—
The moment I opened the door.
“Put your back into it! I said tighten your core!”
A demanding roar echoed.
Huff!
A place where the sour stench of sweat coexisted with the fervor of youth.
It wasn’t a spacious gym, but quite a lot of people were gathered there training.
Rumor had it that this was one of the few gyms in the neighborhood that produced pros, so despite the run-down facilities, aspiring fighters seemed to flock here.
“H-Hold on!”
A middle-aged man who had been holding mitts for a fighter—a director, sadly bald on the crown—came running over.
“What brings you…?”
He probably had more visitors coming for other reasons than customers looking to sign up, so asking their purpose was the natural first step.
“Well, you see….”
I deflected slightly and looked around.
He’d said he started preparing to go pro three years before the apocalypse, so he had to be here now.
“Ah!”
There he was.
In one corner, a guy was diligently beating on a sandbag.
Though he was a bit skinny and young, unlike his future self, traces of his future appearance remained.
Han Yeongung. It was definitely him.
“Are you perhaps Yeongung’s friend…?”
“I want to sign up at the gym.”
Friend, my foot.
Right now, we were complete strangers.
“Ah! Sign-up.”
The director’s face brightened at the unexpected money rolling in.
“….”
Then he quickly sized up my body.
Whether I was an aspiring fighter or just signing up for exercise.
“Just for exercise. I don’t have any intention of becoming a fighter or going pro.”
“Oh, is that so? You definitely look like you need to work out and build up your frame.”
His face lit up.
He must have realized in one glance that my skeleton and physical condition weren’t those of someone with the body or talent to be a fighter.
The director wouldn’t want some random nobody coming in and disrupting the gym’s flow either.
“Yeonji.”
He shouted toward someone in the distance.
“Yes—”
From the women’s section where mats were laid out, a young woman who had been instructing boxing came over.
Wearing a slightly loose crop top, light pink leggings that clung tightly to her body, and her slightly sweat-dampened hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘Choe Yeonji.’
I had never seen her before, but I remembered the name clearly because he had mentioned it so often.
‘Kuh. Yeonji. My first love. If only I’d had a little more confidence, I would’ve been lovey-dovey with her instead of these dark bastards by now.’
Even now, the guy’s laments before falling asleep echoed vividly in my ears.
“My daughter, Choe Yeonji. She also serves as the gym’s manager. You can sort out the registration fee and schedule with her.”
He’d grown comfortable and switched to casual speech.
“Sure.”
I didn’t mind.
People who work out tend to get friendly fast, after all.
“Would you come this way?”
I followed her to a small office furnished with a desk and writing supplies.
Even as I followed her inside, my gaze was—
Bang, thwack—
On Han Yeongung, who showed no sign of stopping his assault on the sandbag. I watched him for a while.
*
“Now, bring your fist here.”
Choe Yeonji, thick mitts on her hands, took her stance and spoke.
Today was Day 1 of learning boxing.
In the past, I would have started with the basics like jump rope and footwork, but it wasn’t that kind of era anymore.
The manager before me had kindly explained that to secure paying customers, they boldly skipped the boring stuff and started with mitt work and sandbag striking to provide immediate fun.
Thanks to that, I was glaring at the mitts with my gloves on.
“Hup!”
I swung my fist with all my might, striking the mitt held up to the right.
Thud!
“….”
Instead of a crisp pop—, what rang out was a pathetic, winded sound.
“E-Everyone’s like that at first. Because they don’t know how to put power into it. Don’t flail around sloppily like that—put power in your waist, turn your upper body as much as possible, like this!”
She explained it as simply as possible, but.
Thud!
As if that would make it work.
‘Damn this useless body.’
A body that had never exercised a day in its life.
Of course, I had survived the apocalypse, but that was useless if my body couldn’t keep up.
Thwack!
Then, a crisp sound rang out from across the way.
“That’s it!”
An exclamation of admiration burst from the director holding the mitts.
It wasn’t false praise to secure a customer.
“Alright, next is a one-two.”
Pop, thwack!
At the director’s words, he weaved once, then unleashed a relentless combination.
“Good balance. Let’s go jab-jab-one-two.”
Pop, thwack!
Agile movements, and power erupting from stable core muscles.
“This kid’s the real deal, huh?”
Whether he was in a good mood or not, he kept giving thumbs-up.
“Phew. Thank you.”
The praised young man with dyed-yellow hair smiled as he wiped his sweat.
The skeletal structure and muscles visible through his sleeveless shirt were already well-developed.
His innate physique was extraordinary.
We called that talent.
“No need to compare. Minseok has exceptional talent.”
Huh?
That hurts my pride even more, though?
But wait.
Minseok, if it’s Minseok.
‘Jeong Minseok. If it weren’t for that bastard, my arm wouldn’t have ended up like this. Anyway, you just wait, you bastard. I’ll smash you to pieces.’
The name mentioned second most often after Choe Yeonji.
Unlike her, who was mentioned in a good way, he had mentioned it tens, hundreds of times through gritted teeth, in a bad way.
The fact that such a guy had entered the gym meant that the incident I had heard about ad nauseam was imminent, didn’t it?
‘Uh… wait?’
But this guy, Minseok.
He looked familiar.
I covered my eyes with my index finger, peering carefully at his face past the yellow-dyed hair.
“Ah!”
In that moment, I let out a sound without realizing it.
‘You treacherous bastard!’
The reason my painstakingly built hideout had been discovered.
The one who provided the pretext was this treacherous bastard right before my eyes.
‘I thought he was bad luck from the first time I saw him. So this was his past!’
Realizing that fact somehow made me happy.
Because now I had a justification to make that delinquent bastard miserable.
Ah, of course, I had planned to take care of him even if he wasn’t a betrayer.
“Yeongung.”
The director, lost in thought, called out to Yeongung, who had been shadowboxing.
“Want to try sparring with Minseok?”
“….”
He couldn’t answer immediately.
He must have been dumbfounded.
The idea of sparring with a newbie who had only trained for a month, when he himself had been attending for three years aiming to become a pro.
Of course, sometimes fighters would go easy on newcomers to build their confidence.
“Not going easy. For real.”
What the director wanted wasn’t him going easy.
He wanted to check Minseok’s skill.
And to check that skill, he was using Yeongung.
“…I understand.”
They were the words of the director, who was nothing less than his benefactor.
The guy stopped shadowboxing and climbed into the ring.
“I think I should rest for a moment.”
She took off her mitts and approached the ring with a serious face.
“Oh, sparring?”
“Minseok and Yeongung?”
Sparring was a rare sight unless one was preparing for a pro license or a competition.
The fighters and gym members who had been training gathered around the ring.
The director didn’t seem intent on stopping them, and allowed the people to gather.
“Three rounds. 12-ounce gloves….”
The director explained the rules enthusiastically, spitting as he spoke, as if he planned to do this properly.
‘So greedy.’
This sparring was probably intentional to some degree.
A sly old fox’s scheme to reel in a talented young man who wasn’t yet interested in becoming a fighter.
If he knocked down a pro-aspiring fighter who had trained for three years, how would his confidence change?
Naturally, he would start aiming to become a fighter.
If that happened, the director would have a promising seedling in his hands—a happy ending for everyone except one person.
Ding!
The bell rang as if it were an official match.
The two took their stances and approached each other.
Smack!
They lightly touched gloves out of courtesy.
Swoosh—
Yeongung quickly closed the distance, his upper body lowered.
He was an in-fighter—the type for whom not giving the opponent distance was crucial.
But.
Thwack!
Minseok’s jab, boasting considerable reach, landed cleanly on his face.
He faltered.
Though the impact wasn’t great, his vision was blocked and he faltered for a moment.
Swoosh!
Another jab flew in.
But he had experience; he slipped the punch with a weave.
However, it was a feint.
Instead of the jab that closed in and stopped, a left hook slammed into the right side of his headgear.
Wham!
His skull rang, and he staggered briefly.
But he didn’t fall to a newbie’s poorly powered attack.
Grit.
He advanced, biting down so hard his teeth seemed ready to crack.
But he didn’t see it.
Swoooosh—
The uppercut coming from below.
That fist carrying the speed unleashed from long reach.
BAM!
He floated in the air for a moment, and when he fell back down.
Thud.
Unable to brace himself with his legs, he collapsed just like that.
“Stop!”
The director rushed in, crossing his hands left and right.
‘That landed clean.’
Though I was a boxing newbie, I was an expert at taking people down.
That uppercut had landed properly.
The shock transmitted to his brain had probably caused him to lose consciousness.
“Yeongung!”
A surprised Choe Yeonji tended to the collapsed Yeongung.
“Minseok, you rascal!”
But the director showed no interest whatsoever in Yeongung.
“When on earth did you learn that feint? No, more importantly, what was that combo just now?”
“Haha! It’s nothing special.”
His eyes sparkled as if he had found a gem.
He must have been convinced now.
Of Minseok’s talent.
‘Tsk, tsk. Old man. Don’t just look at the talent, look at the person.’
The director probably had no idea.
Who he was trying to reel in right now.
What the owner of those rotten, greed-filled eyes staring darkly at Choe Yeonji would do in the near future.
*
Thwack, thud!
Inside the lonely gym after everyone had left.
In that place where lights were on in only one corner, the sound of strikes rang out without rest.
Thud, thump.
It was Han Yeongung, hitting the sandbag hard and sweating profusely.
The man whose three years of effort had been thoroughly destroyed by a mere month.
Thud!
“Weak.”
Thud!
“I’m weak!”
Although he had trained for three years, he couldn’t compare to Minseok’s single month.
Why?
“The difference in talent….”
The words he had heard throughout his three years of boxing.
He had no talent.
Not just a lack of it—he had so little it could be called nothingness.
That much was clear just from the sparring result a moment ago.
No matter how much innate talent one possessed, his three years had crumbled before a newbie who had trained for only a month.
Having realized this reality, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to quit.
Thwack, thud!
As if trying to erase the shock from just moments ago, he hammered the sandbag without rest.
This was the same guy who had once resolved to die due to the bullying he suffered in school.
It was boxing that had raised the dead young man back up.
Having come back from the brink of death, what was a little shame?
Thud.
“Kk, kkugh….”
Right now, he was shedding tears of frustration, but this too would pass.
“Frustrated?”
A voice rang out suddenly.
Swish, swish.
Yeongung wiped the tears flowing down his forearm and turned around.
“W-Who is it?”
Thud, thud—
Someone was moving from the depths of the gym shrouded in darkness.
“Of course you’re frustrated. You couldn’t even lay a hand on a newbie who’d only trained for a month.”
The one revealing himself from the darkness was the man who had registered at the gym today.
Why would a complete stranger…?
“But don’t worry. That’s why I’m here.”
“…If you’re here to make fun of me….”
“Who said anything about making fun?”
Saying that, I took out what I had hidden in my arms.
Wild ginseng, deer antler velvet, various medicinal herbs, and all kinds of health supplements.
“You’re a precious person who’ll turn a hard worker into a talented one.”
At that sinister gaze—as though a predator had found its prey—Yeongung trembled once, as if feeling a chill.