Chapter 449: Those Who Know What They’re Seeing

Meanwhile, Utsunomiya feels far removed from the noise of Tokyo, especially from this high up. Shinichi Yanagimoto stands near the window of his luxury apartment, the city lights spreading beneath him like something owned rather than admired.

The television glows behind him, muted but unavoidable, replaying the same images everyone else in the country is watching.

On the screen, Ryoma is already on the stretcher, surrounded by medics, the title decided but untouched, as if it no longer belongs to the ring.

Shinichi doesn’t sit. He watches standing, arms folded, posture loose but alert, like he’s studying footage rather than history being made.

There’s no flinch when Jade McConnel goes down. No tightening in his jaw when the referee waves it off. Instead, his lips curve, just slightly.

“So that’s how you did it,” he murmurs, “Ryoma Takeda?”

The commentators talk about age. About experience. About seven professional fights, about twenty-one years old, about Jade McConnel losing on home ground.

But Shinichi barely hears them. His eyes stay on Ryoma’s and his team.

He actually learned switch hitting himself to fight McConnel. Southpaw to orthodox, back again, denying angles, stealing rhythm. Shinichi had done the same.

He’s spent years forcing his body to obey a different logic just so he could meet that champion on equal terms. And now a fellow countryman has taken it instead.

Shinichi exhales, slowly. Unlike Sagawa, he doesn’t feel threatened. He feels challenged.

“Fine,” he says to the screen. “Then I’ll just take it from you.”

His own fight next month against Shimamura Suzuki barely registers anymore, treated as if it’s already behind him. He reaches for his phone and scrolls without hesitation to a familiar name: Daisuke Yoshizawa.

The call doesn’t go through. Instead, an operator’s voice cuts in, flat and rehearsed, informing him that the number he has dialed is currently busy.

Because right now, Daisuke Yoshizawa is already on the phone.

In his apartment, the flat-screen TV replays the fight over and over, the pundits talking endlessly about how brilliantly Ryoma won, as if the damage he took were just another detail worth celebrating.

Yoshizawa stands alone in front of the screen, phone pressed tight to his ear, breathing hard through his nose.

“You see it now?!” he says into the phone, voice sharp with accusation. “You seeing what you’ve done?! He won it! That kid actually took the belt. And this…”

His voice cracks, then rises, “…this is on you!”

On the other end, Noya Fumihiro exhales slowly.

[Explain to me how this is my fault. It was your champion who broke Sagawa’s ribs because he couldn’t control himself during sparring.]

Yoshizawa laughs, dry and vicious. “So now you’re blaming Shinichi?”

His face turns sour, lips tightening and eyes narrowing, disdain written plainly across every line.

“If he can’t even take a body shot from a Japanese champion,” he continues, voice low, “then maybe he was never meant to win an OPBF title in the first place.”

He turns toward the screen, eyes burning. “And instead, you handed that fight to that fucking cocky brat. Soon this whole country will be full of his bragging, talking like he owns Japanese boxing.”

Fumihiro is quiet for a beat. And then…

[Noya… you’re being arrogant. Ever since Shinichi won his first title. I’ve known you a long time. You weren’t like this.]

The silence that follows is thick.

“What did you just say?” Yoshizawa asks, voice dropping.

[I met the kid. And he’s nothing like what you told me.]

[Listen… Even without replacing Sagawa, he already had an agreement with McConnel’s camp for a title shot later. But he still took this fight on short notice, so OPBF wouldn’t punish me, so the event wouldn’t collapse.]

“Bullshit,” Yoshizawa snaps.

[And he actually promised me something else. If he won, Sagawa would get priority to challenge him.]

Yoshizawa’s grip tightens around the phone.

On the screen, Ryoma’s profile card fills the frame, ending on that same unguarded smile of his image that lately often used by Aqualis as their brand ambassador.

Something in Yoshizawa finally gives. He roars and hurls the phone straight at the television.

BRRAK!!!

The screen explodes into cracks, Ryoma’s face splitting into jagged shards as the room falls dead silent, the call severed mid-breath.

***

Within hours, the fight is everywhere. Clips spread faster than commentary; first across Japan, then through the Pacific, and soon far beyond it.

Feeds refresh endlessly, the same moments looping on different screens: the fifth round, the collapse, the stretcher, the referee stepping in.

Fans argue through the night. Boxers watch between rounds at their own gyms. Promoters and businessmen replay it with numbers already in mind.

“They stopped it too early.”

“He could still fighting.”

“If the ref didn’t stop it, Jade McConnel should win it.

Others answer just as fast.

“You don’t see the damage.”

“His corner didn’t want him going back out.”

Screenshots appear. Links follow.

-McConnel’s camp asked the ref to stop it.

-Hospital report’s out; broken ribs, shattered nose, fractured jaw.

The argument shifts, but it doesn’t slow.

“No way he survives another round like that.”

“That wasn’t a robbery. That was mercy.”

By the time the threads burn themselves out, the conclusion has already spread further than the debate itself.

There is a new OPBF champion. And the world is still trying to decide what it just witnessed.

***

By the time the arguments burn through themselves online, the noise has already reached further than any of them realize.

It reaches the world champions themselves.

Across time zones and continents, men who rule their divisions watch the same sequence again; not the stoppage, not the stretcher, but the fifth round.

The scene in the corner. The guard dropped. The way a champion unloads everything and finds nothing but air.

Some watch it on phones between meetings. Others alone, long after their own gyms have gone quiet.

Lightweight. Super lightweight. Welterweight. Super welterweight.

No names are spoken, no messages sent. But attention is given.

And then, in one living room, the clip rewinds again.

This time, the WBC Lightweight Champion sits back on a leather couch, cheek resting against his knuckle, remote loose in his hand.

The room is dim, lit mostly by the television as it replays the moment Ryoma stands in the corner, grinning wide, unguarded, inviting disaster.

The man is Caleb “Stonewall” Mercer. Nine defenses in five years. Zero loses record. Undefeated.

American. Methodical. Boring, they used to say, until no one could take the belt from him.

He pauses the screen just as Jade hesitates.

“Yeah,” Mercer mutters. “That’s the tell.”

And soon, his phone rings. The name ’Graves’ flashes across the screen. Mercer picks it up and answers without looking away.

“Elliot. Yeah… it’s me.”

[You watchin’ the OPBF lightweight fight just now?]

Elliot Graves speaks on the phone, his accent unmistakable, vowels stretched, tone casual but alert.

“I’m still watchin’ it,” Mercer replies. He hits play again. “Good fight.”

Then, there’s a brief laugh from the other end.

[That’s one way to put it.]

[Listen… I know the kid. Met him when I was in Japan a while back. Had a spar with him, actually.]

Mercer’s eyebrow lifts. “You did?”

[Yeah. He was sharp then. Really sharp. But what I saw tonight… That’s somethin’ else, yeah? You know what I mean.]

Mercer lets the clip run to the moment Jade stops throwing.

“I do,” he says quietly.

[Feels like he’s comin’, doesn’t it?]

Mercer finally turns the screen off. “Sooner or later… He’s gonna knock on my door.”

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