Nakahara walks the deliverymen all the way to the door. The men bow lightly, step out, and Nakahara watches until the door shuts behind them.

He exhales, dragging a towel across his face and neck. When he turns back toward the gym floor, Ryoma is already at the Pallof station. Gloves still on, but he's already testing the cable like a curious animal, pulling it out once, feeling the resistance, letting it snap gently back into place.

"Didn't even wait five minutes…" Nakahara snorts.

He walks past him without another comment, heading to the equipment rack. He picks a pair of mitt pads, and carries them toward the ring.

"Kid. Get up here."

Ryoma turns immediately. With gloves still on, he heads toward the ring, and beside him, and the Fake Okabe still trudging along.

He shoots a glare at him, silently question why you are still here. And the Fake Okabe just shrugs lazily.

"Don't look at me," the phantom mutters. "I'm just here because you haven't dismissed me."

Ryoma gives a command in his mind. "System, deactivate the Phantom Mode"

And soon, the Fake Okabe disappears from his sight.

"I saw you trying to mimic Aramaki's punches," Nakahara says simply. "But copying the form isn't enough. If you want the same output, you need to understand the mechanics underneath."

Ryoma opens his mouth, but Nakahara lifts one mitt slightly, a gesture telling him to wait. Then he shifts his stance and delivers a short, compact hook into the air.

Not toward Ryoma, not fast, just enough that Ryoma can see the structure: a tight hip shift, weight transfer, shoulder drop, the punch ending almost as soon as it begins.

"Isn't this what you were trying earlier? The Dempsey Short Hook?" he smirks.

Ryoma blinks. "Oh… so that's what they call the Dempsey short hook?"

"So you've heard the name," Nakahara says. "And I saw you got the shape right. But if you want real weight behind it, power in a phone-booth distance, you need to understand the fundamentals."

He rolls his shoulders once, and then demonstrates the motion again, slower, breaking it into phases:

First phase: feet. He widens his stance half a step.

"Look. You've already learned to use calves, thighs, hips to build momentum. But for this…" He taps the mitt against his side. "…you need more room in the base. A little wider outward. Or a half-step backward. Either way is fine. But not big. Small enough you can still move."

Second phase: the weight shift. Nakahara rocks gently from rear foot to lead foot.

"This is where your power comes from. Not the swing. The weight transfer is rear to lead… or the opposite if you're chaining into the other hand."

Third phase: the upper body. Nakahara twists, not a full rotation, just a tiny, sharp click of the hips.

"Hip rotation is minimal," he continues. "Two, maybe four centimeters. Compact. Everything you've got, but in the smallest movement possible. That's the key to the short hook."

Ryoma watches every centimeter, and his Vision Grid does the rest; capturing the form, dissecting it, and pinning detailed notes into the edges of his awareness like quiet annotations.

"So it's not just copying the form," he says slowly. "I have to make sure the muscles are actually working inside this tiny rotation?"

"Yes," Nakahara nods. "Calves, thighs, hips… and your lats. Those are the engines. You train them to fire in compact movement. No big swing. Just a short, explosive shot. Enough to break ribs up close."

Ryoma exhales through his nose. "Show me again," he says, just in case he missed some tiny detail.

Nakahara does, one more slow demonstration, stance widened, weight shifting, tiny hip snap.

But Ryoma's eyes hadn't missed a thing. The moment Nakahara finishes demonstrating, Ryoma is already mirroring the movement.

Nakahara clicks his tongue. "Smaller. Don't open your stance like you're trying to squat the earth."

On the second attempt, Ryoma generates a faint whip of air, a clean compact snap. Nakahara's eyes narrow, not in disapproval but in quiet recognition.

"Hm. You really do learn fast."

Ryoma repeats it again, and again, and again. Each repetition shaves the motion down; smaller, tighter, and cleaner. Even the system embedded in his mind takes notice.

<< …That's actually unsettling. With that form, you could land a real punch even inside a clinch. >>

Nakahara raises the mitts finally. "Alright, try it on me."

Ryoma steps in front of him, plants his feet, and Nakahara positions the mitt just inside Ryoma's shoulder line, barely any space to work with.

"Short hook only. Rear foot to lead foot. Small rotation. Breathe."

Ryoma nods once.

Nakahara signals.

And Ryoma fires.

PAP!

The sound is sharp and compact, no windup, just weight. Nakahara's expression flashes in approval before he masks it.

"Again."

Ryoma shifts his weight again, and…

PAP!

"Again."

PAP!

"Again. Try it on both side."

PAP! PAP!

"Again, shifts your weight between legs."

PAP, PAP!!!

With each sharp crack of leather on leather, Ryoma's movement tightens. The arc of his punches grows smaller, the center of gravity lower, the weight transfer sharper.

What began as raw effort at the riverbank now shows the beginning of structure, the kind that can only emerge when instinct and instruction finally meet in the middle.

Nakahara crosses his arms, watching the rhythm settle into something cleaner.

And finally…

"That's enough for now," he says, stepping closer. "You've got the fundamentals down. But there's a lot more you can do in tight space, things even Aramaki never learned."

Ryoma straightens, attention sharpening immediately. Nakahara raises his fist and demonstrates a downward-angled punch, and back upward scooping through the air like someone driving a shovel into packed dirt. The motion is compact, brutal, and unmistakably purposeful.

"This is the shovel shot," he says. "It looks ugly until you understand how it works. It's built for infighters who can't afford wasted motion."

Then he shifts his stance slightly, torso rotating just a few degrees, spine flexible but controlled. In an instant, he snaps a short punch that seems to appear out of nowhere, shoulder and oblique firing together like a single muscle.

"And this one," he continues, "is the short corkscrew shot. Small room, but deep penetration. The rotation gives you momentum, even when someone's crushing your posture."

Ryoma studies the movement with that familiar intensity, the kind that has unnerved more than one coach before Nakahara.

Seeing that focus, Nakahara moves to the next technique without hesitation. He brings his forearm close, elbow tight to his ribs, and fires a compact hook driven by a sudden crunch through the lats and chest. The punch snaps through the air with a low, startling snap.

"You've used a version of this before," Nakahara says. "The forearm piston shot, but not the jab. This one's the hook version. Short, compressed, driven by the elbow crunch and the lats and pecs firing together. It's tight, efficient, and it digs into the body like a hammer."

Ryoma nods, slow and thoughtful. The more Nakahara shows, the clearer it becomes that the old man isn't simply recalling old lessons. He is demonstrating things his body remembers intimately.

The precision, the flow, the way his frame shifts to generate power, it's all the proof Ryoma needs to know that Nakahara once lived inside the same kind of grim, close-range battles he is now preparing him for.

"You see the form," Nakahara says, lowering his hands. "I'll train you on each one properly later. But every technique I just showed you relies on the same engine. Hip drive. Oblique control. Thoracic rotation. If you want all of that to hold up under pressure, we need to build the muscles first."

Ryoma glances toward the new equipment. "That's why you bought that Pallof setup?"

"Yeah," Nakahara replies, nodding once. "Everything else we can do with what we already have. But for torque, spine rotation, and making power in cramped space? That's the tool we needed."

He gestures toward the Pallof setup. "Come here. Before we touch punches, your core needs to work like an infighter's."

Ryoma follows without complaint, removes his gloves and unwraps the soaked tape from his hands. When he joins Nakahara, the old man grabs the cable handle and shows the stance; feet grounded, hips square, wrists locked.

"This is the basic Pallof press. Three sets of fifteen." He shifts into a small controlled rotation. "For your corkscrew shots, four sets of eight each side."

Then a high-to-low diagonal press. "For stabilizing the hips when your spine twists. Two sets of ten."

Ryoma takes the handle and starts. The first reps are stiff, the next smoother. Soon his diaphragm moves in clean, steady cycles, breath syncing with the tension in his core.

Nakahara watches, not the strength, but the breathing rhythm, the rise and fall under load. And that's when something clicks in his mind.

"Hold still."

Ryoma barely lifts a brow before Nakahara taps his solar plexus at the exact moment he inhales. Ryoma's breath snags instantly, his lungs stuttering for a beat.

"That," Nakahara says, lowering his hand, "is how you drain an opponent. The breathing attacks. Disrupt the breathing…"

His eyes sharpen.

"…and you ruin the whole of their body mechanism."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.