VISION GRID SYSTEM: THE COMEBACK OF RYOMA TAKEDA

The moment Hiroyuki’s body hits the canvas, the arena erupts, but no voice rises louder, sharper, or more violently alive than the Cruel King’s Army.

For two rounds they’d been silent, uneasy, suffocated by Hiroyuki’s brilliance.

But now…

“There it is!”

“ARAMAKI!!”

“THAT’S OUR MONSTER!!!”

It’s not cheering so much as a detonation, a choir that claws the air like they’ve been waiting to breathe again.

Fans stomp the floor, fists raised, roaring his name with a fever that shakes the barricades. The sudden shift is so fierce it feels like the entire arena snaps back to its original axis.

Aramaki stands over Hiroyuki with that emotionless calm, chest barely rising, as if the trap, the bait, the brutal left to the ribs, and the perfect right hook, cost him nothing.

The commentators explode over each other, voices cracking with disbelief:

“What… what was that? aramaki set a trap!”

“He pulled Hiroyuki into a feint… mid-motion! We have never seen him do something like that!”

“That left body shot was vicious, but that right hook… that was surgical!”

“He baited him, slipped him, and detonated him! This is a completely different Aramaki!”

The crowd’s fever and the commentators’ astonishment collide into one electric roar. It’s the kind that marks a turning point, a moment when a fighter shows a piece of himself that no one believed existed.

From the blue corner, Sugimoto shouts out loud with desperate voice.

“Hiroyuki! Look at me! Stay with me! Breathe…! Hiroyuki, breathe!”

Hiroyuki blinks up at the lights, breath caught between his ribs and head where the two hooks collapsed him.

The ref’s count cuts through the air.

“ONE!”

“TWO!”

“THREE!”

Hiroyuki rolls to his knees by four, gloves trembling against the canvas. His lungs burn. His legs feel like wet sand.

“FOUR!”

“FIVE!”

Sugimoto leans over the ropes, arm out, voice cracking with urgency.

“Use the ropes! Don’t rush it! You’ve got time!”

Hiroyuki grips the bottom strand, pulling himself up by six.

He stands by seven. But he doesn’t even try to step away. He keeps one hand braced on the ropes, head low, drawing in air like he’s trying to refill a broken body.

“NINE!”

Only then does he lift his guard, force his feet square, and look the ref in the eye.

“I can still fight.”

The ref nods. Claps his gloves. And the moment he steps aside, the arena detonates all over again.

“He’s up! Hiroyuki’s back on his feet!”

“How!? After that body hook?!”

“He’s still in this fight!”

Aramaki, still calm in the neutral corner, watches Hiroyuki push off the ropes and escape the pocket with desperate footwork, of course, with what’s left of it anyway.

Hiroyuki tries to glide, to bounce, to flee. But the truth hits him immediately: his legs are lead.

Damn it… my footwork… it’s gone.

He switches to jabs, snapping them out to keep Aramaki back. And for a few seconds, they work.

Aramaki keeps his guard tight, blocking, and waiting. But then, he simply bulldozes forward, bracing through the jabs.

Two snap against his face, but they barely slow him. And Hiroyuki, panicked, shoots a right to the body.

Aramaki sees it, and ignores it.

He trades.

BOOM!!!

Both punches crash in the same heartbeat: Hiroyuki’s right thuds into Aramaki’s ribs, while Aramaki’s right hook smashes into Hiroyuki’s guard on the head.

Hiroyuki’s glove absorbs part of it, but not enough, not for Hiroyuki’s current condition. His stance breaks, his guard wavers.

And Aramaki takes everything.

Three hooks fire off…

BAM! The first snaps Hiroyuki sideways.

BUG! The second buries itself in his midsection.

The third…

Dug!

…Hiroyuki clamps down his arms, absorbing it through sheer survival instinct.

The crowd is a storm now, wild, frantic, and electric.

“Aramaki’s on fire!”

“Hiroyuki’s still trying to fight back!”

“This is insane!”

“No, he’s losing the ground.”

“Keep it, Aramaki! End it!”

Eventually, Aramaki’s blows drive Hiroyuki backward, hammering him straight toward the ropes.

“Hiroyuki’s trying to stand his ground!” one commentator shouts, voice rising with the chaos. “He’s not giving in. He’s firing back!”

“But he can’t hold it!” another cuts in. “Aramaki’s walking him down step by step!”

“He’s hurt… seriously hurt!”

“He swings back… but Aramaki reads it instantly and seizes the opening!”

Hiroyuki’s guard snaps high, but Aramaki pierces through it, hooks slipping between his gloves, snapping his head back, rattling his vision white.

One moment…

Two moments…

He stops responding.

Sugimoto screams bloody fury from the blue corner.

“Hiroyuki! Answer him! Move! Throw something back!!”

But Hiroyuki’s body won’t obey.

Aramaki steps in, twisting his hips for another hook. That’s when the referee lunges between them.

“Ups…” a commentator falters. “What’s going on here?”

The referee grabs Aramaki’s shoulder, and waves both arms wide.

“Oh, he stops it! That’s it! It’s over!”

The arena detonates into pure chaos.

“TKO! TKO! ARAMAKI WINS BY TKO IN ROUND FIVE!”

“What an unbelievable turnaround!”

“He survived hell, learned mid-fight, and finished with a perfect trap and calculated pressure!”

“This is a new Aramaki… no doubt about it!”

The Cruel King’s Army erupts in triumph, chanting Aramaki’s name like a battle cry.

Sugimoto climbs into the ring, catching Hiroyuki before he collapses, holding him upright even as the crowd roars around them.

Hiroyuki’s eyes are dazed, unfocused. But there’s no shame in them, only exhaustion, and the knowledge that tonight, he fought until nothing was left.

His will is still burning, begging him to keep fighting. Yet the wall standing before him now is one he no longer has the strength to climb.

***

Meanwhile, the red-corner locker room bursts wide open after the TKO is announced. Cheers detonate like fireworks; fists pumping, towels whipping through the air.

It’s relief, pride, adrenaline, all tangled into one explosive roar after two rounds of suffocating tension.

Coach Murakami stands in the center of the chaos, arms folded, watching the replay on the monitor.

The corners of his mouth tug upward, not loudly, not boastfully, but with the quiet pride of a man who once taught Aramaki how to throw his very first jab.

“That brat…” he mutters under his breath, almost laughing. “Look at him go.”

On the side, Ryoma watches the screen with a calm expression. Kenta, half-sunk into a bench with his hands resting on his knees, cracks a lazy grin.

Murakami’s eyes stay fixed on the monitor replaying the finishing sequence, also the bait, the pivot, the rib shot, the right hook. And then he exhales, long and thoughtful.

“…I’ll be honest,” he finally says, glancing at the two. “I never expected this version of Aramaki. Not in a million years.”

Ryoma raises a brow. “What do you mean?”

Murakami gestures at the screen. “That calm… that patience… and the trap. That’s not the Aramaki I trained. He used to tear forward like a mad bull. He knew one road, and it was straight.”

His voice dips into a mixture of confusion and admiration.

“So tell me… how did Nakahara do it? How did he turn him into… that?”

Kenta chuckles. “We’re still trying to figure it out too, Coach.”

Ryoma adds in a steady tone. “We spent a lot of time together in the ring. Not really sparring, though. Most of it was… talking. He kept asking questions. Constantly. Even right in the middle of exchanges.”

Murakami’s brows lift, genuinely surprised. That’s not something done in his gym, nor in most gyms.

Usually, fighters fight, and coaches coach. Talking mid-spar? Asking questions while trading blows? That was unconventional, and strange.

But as he remembers the trap Aramaki set, the patience, the timing, Murakami finally sees it, a glimpse of where that ring insight bloomed.

He doesn’t voice the realization fully. Instead, he lets out a soft breath. “Whatever it was… it’s working. That kid’s grown into a fighter I barely recognize.”

He turns toward the door, the one Aramaki will soon walk through.

“…and I’ve never been prouder,” he adds, his smile deepening.