Chapter 451: For Now The room feels too bright now that everyone is here, crowded with warmth and meaning Ryoma can’t quite reach. Smiles hang in the air, restrained out of respect for the hospital, but unmistakably real. They look at him the way people look at someone who’s crossed something dangerous and come back. And Ryoma doesn’t know how to react inside that gaze. The belt still sits at the foot of the bed. It feels unreal, like a prop that wandered into the wrong scene. His throat tightens. "...Please," he says quietly, the word escaping before he can stop it. His face has gone pale, eyes searching each of them in turn. "Just... tell me I’m not dreaming." Nakahara’s expression softens at once. Sera’s smile fades into something gentler. Even Kenta, who’s been barely containing himself, reins it in. They all understand what this looks like from the inside. "You’re not," Nakahara says, voice calm, grounded. "And it’s alright to be confused." Ryoma swallows. "But I don’t remember winning." His fingers curl slightly into the sheets. "I remember messing up. I remember the counter failing. I remember him breaking through my guard." He shakes his head, slow, disbelieving. "That should’ve been it." Nakahara nods. "We thought so too." Ryoma looks at him sharply. "We got you back to the corner," Nakahara continues. "You were hurt. We were treating you when the announcement came. The red corner said they couldn’t continue." "...Couldn’t continue?" Ryoma repeats, the words strange on his tongue. "How does that even... How could they just forfeit?" "We were shocked," Sera says quietly. "All of us were. Not just the team. The entire arena." Ryoma tries to assemble it, piece by piece, but the shape refuses to form. "But I was hit," he insists. "Clean. In the head. I felt it. I know I did." "You did," Nakahara says. He doesn’t deny it. "I was already reaching for the towel. I thought it was over." Ryoma’s chest tightens. "But just before McConnel followed it up," Nakahara continues, choosing his words carefully, "you threw something. I still don’t know what to call it. It disrupted him. Stopped the momentum. And after that..." He exhales. "The rest is history." The word lands wrong, and Ryoma’s jaw tightens. "What history?" he asks, bitterness creeping in despite himself. "A win I can’t remember? A belt I didn’t earn? What kind of champion is that?" He laughs once, sharp and hollow. "Did he stop because he didn’t want to hurt me anymore?" Kenta steps forward before anyone else can answer, his grin smaller now but still stubbornly present. "Not because he didn’t want to," he says. "Because he couldn’t." Ryoma looks at him, his face still utterly confused. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎 "You were deep in the zone," Kenta continues. "Deeper than I’ve ever seen. He threw everything at you in that corner. Dozens of punches. You didn’t leave the spot. You slipped all of them." "The... zone?" Ryoma echoes. His brow furrows. He searches for it, any trace of vision narrowing, of instinct taking over, but finds only blank space. "I know that look," Kenta adds. "I had it once. Against Liam Kuroda." He scratches the back of his head, thoughtful. "My vision narrowed so much it felt like a tunnel. I wasn’t thinking. My body just moved. Later, when I tried to remember it... there was almost nothing there." Ryoma shakes his head slowly. "I’ve been there before," he says. "I know what that feels like." His voice drops. "But not like this. Not nothing." "You lost consciousness when you came back to the corner," Nakahara adds. "That much is clear. Everything after that... isn’t unusual, given the fight you had. Many boxers experience the same." He meets Ryoma’s eyes. "You don’t need to remember it. You just need to know this wasn’t a gift. The champion couldn’t continue. He was badly hurt." Sera nods. "We got confirmation. Broken ribs. Nose. Jaw." The words echo strangely. Ryoma’s hands begin to ache again, the pain sharpening as if summoned by the thought. He lifts them slowly, bringing them closer to his face. He tries to clench his fists, and pain flares. His face twitches despite himself. "The doctor confirmed it," Hiroshi says from behind Sera. "Hairline fractures in both knuckles. You really didn’t hold back last night." Ryoma stares at his hands, bandaged and useless, throbbing with every heartbeat. The realization doesn’t come all at once. It settles gradually, heavy and reluctant. Whatever happened in that ring, his body remembers it, even if his mind refuses to. He exhales slowly. "...So it wasn’t mercy," he says at last. "No," Nakahara replies. "It wasn’t." The bitterness doesn’t disappear, but it dulls, losing its edge. Winning his first title without memory of it still tastes wrong, like something incomplete. But it no longer feels false. A memory surfaces then; Paulo Ramos, out cold on his feet, still moving, still throwing, guided by nothing but instinct and will. Ryoma closes his eyes, convincing himself, maybe that’s all this was. Not consciousness, not thought, just a body that refused to stop. And for now, that has to be enough. For now... *** Meanwhile, Dr. Matthew Hale, the physician in charge of Ryoma Takeda’s case, sits alone in his office, watching the replay of last night’s title fight. He isn’t watching as a fan. He isn’t even watching as a ringside physician would. This is slower, more deliberate. He pauses, rewinds, studies angles, impact, reaction. The early rounds make sense. Body shots landing cleanly. Guard absorbing most of the damage. Bruising patterns already reported by the ring doctor line up neatly with what he sees. Then comes the fifth round, and the failed counter in the corner. He slows it down. The punch to the forehead is there. Clean, heavy, but not catastrophic. Enough to disorient. Enough to stagger. The secondary impact, back of the head brushing the padding, explains the loss of consciousness afterward. That part fits, and he nods faintly. Then he lets the footage continue to the part where Ryoma doesn’t go down. The champion moves in, and something shifts. Not the movement. Not the defense. Those are remarkable, yes, but still within physical possibility, reflex and conditioning. It’s that expression in Ryoma’s face. The doctor freezes the frame, leaning forward, eyes narrowed as he takes a much longer time to observe. "Blood in the mouth," he mutters. "Eyes wide, too wide. And that grin..." It isn’t triumph, isn’t confidence. It’s manic, almost euphoric. The doctor leans back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. He watches it again, then once more, slower still. "I don’t like this," he murmurs. He considers possibilities carefully; acute stress response, dissociation, transient altered mental state under extreme conditions. Or it could be something deeper. A brief loss of executive control. A compartmentalized response. A psyche stepping aside and letting something else take over. The thought makes him uncomfortable. He doesn’t say the word out loud, but it forms anyway. Psychiatric issue. Mental disorder. He exhales and shakes his head. "Speculation without evidence is a dangerous thing," he reminds himself. "And this isn’t my discipline." Fighters have worn strange faces under pressure before. Men have smiled through pain, laughed through damage. There’s nothing unusual about that. Then a knock interrupts his thoughts. "Yes," he calls. A nurse opens the door. "Doctor, the boxer from last night, Ryoma Takeda... he’s awake." The doctor blinks, then allows himself a small smile. "Already?" "Yes. He’s alert." "Well," he says, standing, gathering his notes, "that’s encouraging." He tells himself the same thing as he steps into the corridor. Quick recovery is a good sign. Whatever he saw on the screen was likely temporary. It’s just contextual. Nothing pathological. Nothing that requires a different kind of specialist. At least, for now...