Morning light begins to spill through the high windows, thin streaks of gold cutting across the gym floor. The air still carries the sharp echo of what just happened, but now it’s layered with urgency instead of violence.
Several security personnel move quickly, voices low but coordinated, marking positions, checking angles, keeping the scene contained.
Ryoma sits on a bench near the ring, his breathing steadier now but still asured. Sweat clings to his skin, mixing with faint traces of blood near his side. His right shoulder rests carefully, held in place by instinct more than comfort.
A female security officer kneels in front of him, already pulling on a pair of gloves as her eyes scan his condition with practiced focus.
"Alright," she says, calm but firm. "I need you to take your shirt off."
Ryoma shakes his head imdiately. "I can’t."
She pauses, then tilts her head slightly, one eyebrow lifting as she looks at him.
"Relax," she says, a faint teasing edge slipping into her voice. "I’m asking you to take off your shirt so I can check your wound, not strip naked in the middle of the gym."
Ryoma exhales lightly, but the refusal remains. "My shoulder was dislocated earlier. I just put it back in. I’d rather not move it again if I don’t have to."
"Oh?" she blinks, then her eyebrow rising higher. "You did that yourself?"
"Yeah," Ryoma replies simply.
For a brief second, she studies him, asuring whether he’s serious or just stubborn. Then she reaches into her kit and pulls out a pair of dical scissors.
"Alright," she says. "Then we do it my way."
Before he can object, she grips the edge of his shirt and slices cleanly through the fabric. She peels it back carefully, exposing the side of his torso.
The wound cos into view. A narrow, angry line runs along the side a few centiters below his armpit, the skin split just enough to show where the bullet grazed through. Blood has dried unevenly around it, with a faint fresh seep still visible.
"Damn..." she mutters. "I don’t know what kind of luck you’re running on, but keep it. Two inches to the left and your lung would be leaking right now."
Ryoma glances down briefly, then looks away again. "Yeah... I got lucky. We were sparring before that. I dropped him once. Guess he wasn’t fully recovered, and his aim unstable."
She hums softly, already beginning to clean the wound with careful precision. "Lucky," she repeats under her breath, though her tone suggests she’s not entirely convinced it’s just that.
Not far from them, Aramaki stands near the wall, phone pressed to his ear, his voice low but tight with urgency.
"Yes, Coach... yeah, it’s ," he says quickly. "We’re at the gym... sothing happened."
There’s a pause as he listens, then he continues.
"We’re okay. We’re safe now. But... there were two guys. They attacked Ryoma. It turned into a fight, and..." He swallows hard. "...one of them pulled a gun."
There’s another pause, longer this ti. He glances toward Ryoma, then adds quickly:
"Yeah... he got hit. But it’s not serious. Just a graze. He’s conscious, he’s talking. His shoulder got dislocated during the fight too."
On the other end, the reaction is imdiate, and Aramaki nods quickly.
"I know, I know... But it’s okay. We already put it back in. Just get here and take a look yourself."
He lowers the phone slightly, exhaling as the call ends.
Across the gym, two other security officers move near the edge of the ring. One of them crouches, reaching toward a magazine lying on the floor, but the other imdiately steps in.
"Don’t touch it," he says. "Mark the spot. Let the police handle it."
A few ters away, another officer kneels near a row of lockers, reaching underneath using a cloth and carefully pulling out the Glock.
Beside him stands the sa guard who had crossed paths with Douglas and Archie earlier. He exhales sharply, frustration clear on his face.
"...Damn it," he mutters.
The officer beside him glances over. "What?"
The guard shakes his head, jaw tightening. "They played . They ditched the gun, then walked out acting like scared civilians."
The other officer lets out a short laugh, shaking his head. "And you just let them walk?"
The guard shoots him a look, irritation flashing. "My first priority was the gunshots," he snaps quietly. "Soone got shot. I wasn’t going to waste ti interrogating people while that was happening."
He exhales again, slower this ti, his gaze drifting toward Ryoma. "Now I’m starting to wonder," he adds under his breath. "What kind of life puts a target on soone like that?"
His eyes linger for a mont longer before he straightens, returning to the task at hand as the gym fills with the weight of what just unfolded.
***
anwhile, inside the surveillance room, the glow of multiple monitors flickers across the dim space. Two security officers stand side by side, eyes locked on the CCTV feeds. One of them holds a radio close to his mouth, still mid-conversation with soone on the gym floor.
"I told you already... I stepped out to grab coffee," he says, irritation slipping into his tone. "Who expects sothing like this to go down this early in the morning?"
A voice crackles back through the radio. "Did you get a look at them? Check if they’re still in the hotel."
The guard exhales through his nose, eyes scanning the footage. "No... they’re gone. Left a few minutes ago. Lobby cam caught them walking out like nothing happened. Gloves still on. No one stopped them."
He shifts his focus to another monitor that shows the gym footage. The video plays from the aftermath of the sparring session, rolling forward fra by fra until it reaches the mont everything turns, the gun, the shots, and how Ryoma got away from it.
"So... our OPBF champion is still alive?" he asks to the radio, almost absently.
"Yeah," the voice on the radio answers. "He’s lucky, only got a graze on the ribs."
"Lucky?" he mutters, shaking his head slowly. "That’s not luck."
On screen, Ryoma moves during the gunshot, and the guard leans closer, watching intently, face frowning.
Ryoma’s movent flows as one continuous sequence; his head dips slightly to the left, his torso follows by tilting off the line, and even while still leaning, a final reflexive push carries him down onto the canvas.
Three shots, and three reactions that seed to take place just ahead of impact.
The guard’s expression tightens. "...No way," he murmurs.
He rewinds the footage, then plays it again in slow motion, pausing between fras.
"Tommy, what is it?" the radio voice asks. "You see sothing?"
Tommy doesn’t answer imdiately. His eyes stay glued to the screen as he scrubs back and forth across the sa few seconds.
"Yeah," he finally says. "I see sothing."
He pauses the video on the exact fra where Ryoma begins to move, just a fraction before the shot.
"And you’re not gonna believe this."
He replays it again, slower this ti, stopping at each micro-movent.
"That’s your OPBF champion," he says quietly. "I heard his defense was the best in the division... but this... this is sothing else."
The guard beside him lets out a low chuckle, shaking his head in disbelief, eyes still fixed on the screen.
"Man... screw Dante Vilanueva," he mutters. "I’m a fan of this kid now."
Monts later, movent catches their attention on the monitor. Coach Nakahara enters the gym first, Kurogane right behind him, followed by the rest of the group in quick succession.
They move with urgency, closing in on Ryoma almost imdiately. The tension is obvious; Nakahara appears to be pressing Ryoma hard about what happened.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Nakahara’s voice cuts through the space the mont he reaches him. "A sparring match without my permission? Gunshots? Are you out of your goddamn mind?"
Ryoma exhales slowly, keeping his gaze steady. "They weren’t here to spar. I just played along long enough to confirm it."
"And that’s supposed to make it better?" Nakahara snaps. "You let it escalate that far?"
"They were already committed," Ryoma replies. "If I walked away, they’d just find another chance."
Kurogane folds his arms, eyes narrowing. "So you decided to handle it alone?"
Ryoma shrugs slightly, careful with his shoulder. "I handled it, didn’t I?"
"That’s not the point," Nakahara fires back imdiately. "You got your shoulder dislocated and nearly took a bullet to the chest!"
"Nearly," Ryoma repeats calmly. "And my shoulder’s just fine. It will be back to normal after two weeks."
Nakahara steps closer, voice dropping but no less intense. "Don’t play smart with . You’re three weeks out from a title defense. You think two weeks doesn’t matter?"
A brief silence hangs between them before Ryoma looks away slightly.
"I’ll be fine," he says. "I can still train. Cardio, footwork drills... shadowbox with my left. The focus now is the weight cut anyway, so it really doesn’t matter."
As usual, Ryoma brushes it off, treating the whole incident like nothing more than a scuffle with so street thug.
But his face tells a different story. The color hasn’t fully returned, his skin still pale, the aftermath of it all lingering beneath the surface.
He made it out alive, but it’s clear, this isn’t sothing he ever wants to go through again.
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