VISION GRID SYSTEM: THE COMEBACK OF RYOMA TAKEDA

Ramos lets himself drop to one knee, both gloves braced against the canvas, chest heaving violently.

“Zaaahhh…”

“Arrgh… zffh…”

Air finally claws its way back in, ragged and painful, as the round ends.

The bell’s echo hasn’t even faded before Virgil Santos is through the ropes, Reyes right behind him. They don’t wait for instruction. They’re already moving.

Virgil drops to a knee beside Ramos, one hand firm on his shoulder, the other hovering near his chest, careful not to press.

“Hey. Look at me,” he says quickly. “Ramos. You with me?”

Ramos nods once, shallow and stiff. He tries to inhale again and winces.

“My chest…” he mutters, voice rough, barely there.

“It’s okay,” Virgil cuts in immediately. “Don’t talk. Don’t force it.”

Reyes is on the other side now, slipping an arm under Ramos’s shoulder.

“Easy,” he says. “We’ve got you. Just breathe.”

They lift him together, making sure his feet find the canvas before asking him to stand. Ramos rises halfway, pauses, breath hitching again.

“Slowly,” Virgil repeats. “No rush.”

Ramos manages another nod. His gloves hang heavy now, no tension left in them, just weight.

They guide him toward the corner, Virgil steadying his balance, Reyes talking softly the entire way.

“In through the nose,” Reyes murmurs. “Out through the mouth. That’s it. Stay with me.”

The referee follows a step behind them, eyes sharp, watching every hitch in Ramos’s breathing, every uneven shift of weight. He doesn’t interfere, but he doesn’t look away either.

Ramos lets himself be carried the last few steps. The corner post presses against his back as they reach the stool, cold and solid. He sits, shoulders sagging forward as another long, shaky breath drags its way in.

The referee moves in immediately.

“Ramos,” he says, crouching slightly to meet his eyes. “Look at me.”

Ramos lifts his head. His eyes are glassy, but they focus.

“You still want to continue?”

Ramos nods once, then forces the words out, voice rough but steady.

“I’m okay. Just… need a break. A breath.” He swallows, inhales again. “Nothing more. I’ll be fine.”

Virgil straightens and looks the referee dead in the eye.

“You hear him.”

The ref studies Ramos for another beat, watching his chest rise and fall, then gives a small nod.

“Alright.”

He steps back, hands dropping to his sides, but his gaze doesn’t leave the corner as he turns away.

Virgil crouches in front of his fighter, but this time he doesn’t speak right away. His hands are already moving around Ramos.

Reyes pulls the mouthpiece free, red with blood, and dunks it into a bottle before wiping it clean. Another cornerman presses a towel beneath Ramos’s nose, clearing the nostrils, careful and quick.

Salem tilts a bottle, rinsing his mouth, letting the water spill back out rather than forcing him to swallow.

Then a cold metal touches his skin. Enswell presses into both temples, then the right cheek, slow circles, firm but controlled.

Virgil waits until the work settles into rhythm. Then he leans in, voice low but precise.

“Talk to me,” he says. “Is it just the breathing? Were the body blows really that hard?”

Ramos swallows. He nods once, then again, slower.

“…They hurt,” he admits. “Bad.”

Virgil doesn’t react. He just listens.

Ramos exhales, shaky. “I don’t know what he did,” he continues, voice hoarse. “But my chest… it aches.”

He presses a glove lightly against his sternum, not in panic, just to feel it there. He takes another deep breath, but there’s trembling in it.

“It’s like…” he searches for the words, blinking hard. “Like there’s not enough air in here.”

The enswell presses again. Cold steadies him.

“My head’s light,” Ramos adds. “Not spinning. Just… light.”

Virgil nods slowly, absorbing every word. He glances at Ramos’s chest, timing the rise and fall, watching how long each inhale takes to settle.

Virgil nods slowly, absorbing every word. His eyes drop to Ramos’s chest, timing the rise and fall, counting the seconds it takes for each inhale to settle.

This isn’t new, he tells himself. Ramos has eaten body shots before, plenty of them. Fighters have tried to sap him from the ribs, from the gut, from the hips.

But it never worked. His tempo always held. His legs stayed live. By the later rounds, it was usually the other guy slowing, breathing hard, fading.

That history is why Virgil trusts him. Why he’s never panicked before.

But this is only the third round. Ryoma only needed ten seconds back there, a handful of body shots, and Ramos is already breathing like this.

Virgil knows the knockdown came from upstairs, the straight to the face. That’s where the blood came from, the split lip, the leaking nose.

But that’s not what’s troubling Ramos now. He’s still rubbing his chest.

He doesn’t complaint about dizziness anymore, not about his legs, but breath problem. That’s what twists in Virgil’s gut.

Body shots are supposed to drain you, sure, slow you, makes your legs heavy. But they shouldn’t do this to Ramos, not this early, not this deep.

So what did he do?

Virgil watches Ramos draw another breath, sees the way his ribs hesitate before expanding, like something is resisting from the inside.

“Is it just punching power?” he wonders. “Or did he hit something else…”

Because whatever Ryoma landed didn’t just hurt. It disrupted something fundamental, something deep in his organ.

It isn’t just Ramos’s condition that scares him. It’s the not knowing, the helplessness of watching your fighter hurt, without understanding why.

Ramos never experienced this before. Virgil too, never encounter this kind of issue himself.

Then Ramos speaks. “It must be the solar plexus… he did hit me there.”

Virgil turns to him, nodding slowly, but doubt lingers.

A clean shot to the solar plexus can steal air, sure. Everyone in boxing knows that. But the effect is sharp and brief; a momentary collapse of breath that fades once the body recovers.

And Ramos is trained for that. Virgil has drilled him to absorb body shots, to brace, to breathe through them. One hit, even a good one, shouldn’t leave him like this.

Which means the problem isn’t where Ryoma hit him, or whether the punch itself was that powerful. There has to be something else at work.

***

The unease spreads beyond the corner.

In the press row, journalists lean closer to their monitors, replaying the sequence frame by frame. They’ve followed Ramos for years. They know how durable he is, how many body shots he’s absorbed without folding.

“This doesn’t line up,” one of them mutters.

Whispers ripple outward. Old rumors resurface.

“Was he always this vulnerable?”

“Did something go wrong tonight?”

Someone even jokes, “Maybe he forgot the drugs this time.”

The words hang there, ugly and uncertain. Because if this is Ramos clean, then what just happened becomes even harder to explain.

High above the ring, Sekino watches the big screen with his arms folded, Noguchi beside him.

“Man…” Noguchi exhales. “Look at him wasted.”

Sekino nods slowly. “That’s what gets me. We both went to the body on him back then. Over and over. And the dude still laughed.”

He shifts his gaze to Ryoma. His eyes narrow.

“But that kid…” Sekino says quietly. “Three body blows. Just three. And he folded him. Broke his guard completely. And put him on the canvas.”

What neither of them fully understands yet is the blend of three conditions; that Ramos was fighting in a prolonged anaerobic state, a rhythm he created into habit. When his lungs reached for air, Ryoma stole that chance.

And the punch didn’t just land on the terrible spot, but also arrived at the exact moment Ramos needed oxygen most, ruining the inhale before it could complete.

It’s not just cause pain, but also deny recovery.

The result isn’t injury in the conventional sense. It’s air hunger, a cascading failure of breath, where each attempt to inhale is disrupted before the body can reset.

Ramos was knocked down by a punch to the face. But more than that, he’s also made starved for air.

***

At last, after a full minute on the stool, a full minute spent fighting just to steady his breathing, Ramos starts to look like himself again.

The ref calls out.

“Seconds out.”

Ramos rises from the stool, looks a bit fresher now.

Vaseline has been worked into the cuts and swelling on his face. His arms still feel heavy, dull with fatigue, but when he presses his feet into the canvas and tests his legs, the strength answers back. They’ll hold. He can use them next round.

The cornermen clear the ring. But Virgil lingers, watching Ramos standing there.

“I think I’m fine now,” Ramos says.

Virgil studies him. “You sure?”

Ramos nods once. “Yeah. Breathing’s okay.” He pauses, brow tightening. “My head’s still heavy from that shot. It aches.”

He exhales through his nose, steady this time. “But I can manage.”

Across the ring, Nakahara steps up to the apron, one hand gripping the rope as he leans in toward Ryoma.

“Kid,” he says, voice low but firm. “Remember what I told you.”

Ryoma turns his head slightly.

“That’s a national champion over there. Years at the top.” Nakahara’s eyes harden. “Pain alone won’t stop him. Don’t give him mercy.”

Ryoma only gives him a lazy glance in response, eyes half-lidded, unbothered.

The warning isn’t necessary. Everyone knows it.

Ryoma Takeda isn’t a man who needs to be reminded what mercy costs in the ring.

They call him the Cruel King for a reason. Since getting that nickname, mercy has never been part of his philosophy.