The metallic taste of blood filled Kai's mouth as another devastating blow crashed into his ribs, sending him crashing against the cold brick wall of the alley. Each breath felt like drowning in liquid fire, and his vision blurred as consciousness threatened to slip away entirely. The expensive watch on his wrist—a gift from Yuki for their engagement—showed 11:47 PM, though time seemed meaningless now.
"You know what's funny?" Daichi Sasaki's voice cut through the ringing in Kai's ears, dripping with the same sadistic satisfaction that had made his professional career legendary. But this wasn't the clean, media-friendly champion the public knew—this was a predator who'd inherited more than just boxing skills from his father.
Kai tried to form words, tried to tell this monster exactly what he thought of him, but all that came out was a wet, gurgling cough that splattered more blood across the pavement. His body had given up the fight even though his mind refused to surrender. Twenty-seven years old, and he was going to die in an alley like his father before him.
"Twenty years," Daichi continued, rolling his shoulders like he was warming up for a training session rather than committing murder. The motion was fluid, professional—the movement of someone who'd spent his entire life perfecting the art of violence. "Twenty years I've been waiting for this moment. Ever since my old man told me about the debt your family owed us."
Through his swollen eyes, Kai could see Yuki struggling against the two men holding her just meters away. Her white dress—the one she'd looked so radiant in at their engagement party just hours earlier—was torn and stained with dirt from the alley floor. The ring he'd saved two years to buy caught the stuttering streetlight, reflecting their shattered future back at him in fractured pieces.
"Your father thought he was so righteous," Daichi said, crouching down so his face was level with Kai's. His breath smelled like expensive whiskey and violence. "Hiroshi Nakamura, the 'People's Champion.' Thought he could expose my father's connections, clean up the boxing world, be some kind of hero."
The name hit Kai like a physical blow. His father—Hiroshi Nakamura, former lightweight champion, the man who'd taught him that boxing was about protecting the innocent—had been more than just a great fighter. He'd been trying to expose the corruption that ran through professional boxing like cancer, the match-fixing and underground betting that turned the sport into a tool for criminals.
"But heroes don't live long in our business," Daichi continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried more menace than shouting. "My father learned that lesson when he had your old man eliminated. Car accident, they called it. Very tragic. Very final."
Kai's world tilted on its axis. The car accident that had killed his father when Kai was seven years old—the accident that had destroyed his mother's health and left her hospitalized for the past twenty years—hadn't been an accident at all. It had been murder, orchestrated by the Sasaki crime family that had been using boxing as a front for their operations.
His mother. Even now, she lay in that hospital bed, her mind shattered by grief she'd never been able to process. The doctors said she'd suffered a complete psychological break after his father's death, retreating so far into herself that she barely recognized her own children. Twenty years of visiting a woman who looked at him with empty eyes, as if he were a stranger she couldn't quite place.
"Please..." The voice was barely a whisper, broken and desperate. It took Kai a moment to realize it was coming from Yuki, who was staring at him with eyes full of terror and love. "Please don't hurt him anymore. I'll do whatever you want, just—"
"Oh, sweetheart," Daichi laughed, the sound echoing off the alley walls like breaking glass. "You're going to do whatever I want anyway. The only question is whether your boyfriend lives long enough to watch it happen."
Rage flooded through Kai's broken body—pure, incandescent fury that burned hotter than the pain. He'd spent his entire adult life studying boxing, memorizing every technique that had ever been developed, analyzing every fighting style from the bare-knuckle champions of the 1800s to the modern masters of today. He knew more about the science of combat than most professional trainers, could break down any fighter's style and identify their weaknesses within minutes of watching them compete.
But when it actually mattered—when the woman he loved needed a protector—all that knowledge was worthless. He was weak. He'd always been weak. A spectator who watched real fighters compete while he stayed safely on the sidelines, content to analyze and theorize instead of training his own body to match his analytical mind.
"You know what the best part is?" Daichi continued, standing up and adjusting his expensive suit. The fabric was custom-tailored, probably worth more than Kai made in three months at his office job. "My father always regretted not finishing your whole bloodline back then. Too soft-hearted, he said. Left the wife and kids alive out of some misguided sense of mercy."
Daichi's fist came down like a sledgehammer, and Kai felt something fundamental break inside his chest. Not just ribs—something deeper, something that had been holding his life together. Blood filled his mouth again, and he could taste copper and failure in equal measure.
"But I don't have that problem," Daichi said, his voice growing distant as darkness crept in from the edges of Kai's vision. "I'm going to finish what he started. Clean up the family business, you might say. Starting with your pretty little fiancée here."
The sound of fabric tearing cut through the night air like a scream, followed by Yuki's terrified sobs. Kai tried to move, tried to reach for her, but his body no longer obeyed his commands. All he could do was lie there, helpless, as the woman he loved suffered because he'd been too weak to protect her.
This is how it ends, he thought as consciousness began to slip away. This is how the Nakamura bloodline dies—not in the ring fighting for something noble, but in an alley, beaten down by the same criminals who destroyed our family twenty years ago.
But as the darkness closed in and Yuki's screams became a distant echo, one thought burned through the dying embers of his consciousness like molten steel:
If there's any justice in this universe, if there's any god or devil listening, give me another chance. Let me go back with the power to protect her. Let me become strong enough to destroy the Sasaki family and everyone who helped them. Let me have my revenge.
The prayer seemed to hang in the air for an eternity, and then—
WISH ACKNOWLEDGED
The words appeared in letters of fire behind his dying eyes, followed by an explosion of light that consumed everything else. And then, mercifully, there was nothing.
But in the void between death and whatever came next, Kai felt something fundamental change. Power, raw and unlimited, flowing through his consciousness like electricity through copper wire. Knowledge beyond what any human should possess, systems and interfaces that belonged to dreams and fantasy, all of it flooding into his dying mind with the promise of a second chance.
The King of the Ring System has been activated, a voice that wasn't quite a voice whispered in the darkness. Uploading user data. Preparing temporal displacement. Welcome to your new reality, Kai Nakamura.