Johan was almost at the door when Gun's voice came from behind him.
"Thank God. I almost fainted there. I almost couldn't enjoy it anymore." Gun was still lying on the ground in the same spot. "No, we can't have that happen. I have to enjoy the fight. I FIGHT TO ENJOY."
Johan turned around.
Gun was already on his feet and right in front of him, bloody smile and all. "You're the best, Johan Seong. You're the damn best! You're no longer 2nd generation. You have surpassed the whole 2nd gen on your own! Do you know what that means, Johan? Do you kn—"
Johan kicked him in the midsection before he could finish.
Gun's feet dragged marks across the ground as he skidded back. He stopped, steadied himself, and slowly walked forward again. "Come on, Johan Seong! Come on, can you win?!"
He stopped.
His instincts fired.
Johan had already shifted into a CQC stance and was moving. 'I don't have time for a long fight. Someone must have injured Gun's left hand before. I'll go for the weak spot.'
He dashed straight for Gun's left side.
Gun threw a punch with his broken left hand and caught Johan clean across the face. Johan's head snapped to the side. Before he could recover, Gun drove a punch into his stomach, then another into his jaw, then grabbed him by the back of the head and drove him face-first into the ground.
BOOM!
Johan rolled back and came up on one knee, breathing hard. 'His left hand is definitely broken. How is he using it like that? Could it be an adrenaline rush? If it is, he can't feel pain right now.'
Gun rolled his broken wrist and smiled. "You definitely got stronger, Johan. But you can't win anyway!"
He came forward, and the next exchange was different from everything that had come before it.
Johan moved well. He slipped a right hand, rolled away from a body shot, and ducked under a wide swing. But Gun kept coming, adjusting after every miss, and the punches that got through hit like something else entirely. A straight right clipped Johan's temple and his vision blurred. A low kick landed before he could check it and his leg buckled briefly. A short elbow caught him across the cheek and split the skin open instantly.
Johan countered whenever the opening appeared. A hook to the jaw, a body shot, a straight right that landed flush. Good hits, clean hits.
Gun blocked the next one at the last possible moment and smiled with blood on his teeth. "You're too obvious. It won't work anymore."
'He's reading everything,' Johan thought. 'Every pattern, every angle. He's already three steps ahead.'
Johan drove a knee into Gun's midsection and followed with an elbow to the side of Gun's head. Gun took the knee and caught the elbow on his forearm and pushed it aside.
BOOM!
Gun's counter punch hit Johan square in the chest and sent him skidding back two meters.
Johan caught himself and reset. His ribs ached. His temple throbbed. He looked at Gun and Gun looked back at him, and the gap between them was clearer now than it had been at the start of the fight.
Gun closed the distance and grabbed Johan by the throat with one hand, lifting him slightly, and drew his other fist back. "Johan Seong. You must have started to feel it too." His voice was calm now, almost quiet. "Copy's limits."
BOOM!
His fist drove into Johan's stomach.
BOOM!
Again.
BOOM!
Again. Johan's body seized with each impact, his feet barely touching the ground, Gun's grip on his throat keeping him exactly where he wanted him.
"An imitation can never defeat the original," Gun said.
---
The small restaurant was warm and smelled of grilling meat. Baki sat across from Johan with the portable grill between them, turning slices of pork belly with his chopsticks. The soju bottle on the table went untouched by both of them.
Baki flipped a piece of meat and set it on Johan's side of the grill. "Eat."
Johan picked it up and chewed. Then he set his chopsticks down. "Why do you want me to stay at White Tiger Job Centre?"
Baki turned another slice over without looking up. "I don't want you to stay there. I want you to go back to living normally. Your mother is healthy now. That's what all of this was for." He pushed a finished piece onto Johan's plate. "Go back to your life."
Johan shook his head. "I can't do that. I owe you too much. I want to stay and help you."
Baki laughed, loud and genuine. "Help me?" He pointed at Johan with his chopsticks. "Are you even strong enough to help me right now?"
"No," Johan said. "I'm not."
Baki stopped laughing and looked at him.
"But if you teach me," Johan said, "I'll get there."
Baki was quiet for a moment. He picked up another slice of raw pork and laid it on the grill. The fat hissed against the heat. He watched it cook, then looked at Johan. "You're a river that hasn't found its course yet. No one can dig that path for you. The moment someone tries, it stops being yours." He turned the meat. "A river that follows someone else's channel never reaches the sea."
Johan looked at the grill and said nothing.
Baki served himself and ate for a while. Then he refilled Johan's plate without being asked. "Do you get it?"
"I do. But I still don't like the idea of staying at White Tiger Job Centre. Especially after knowing that they betrayed you," Johan said.
"Betrayal is very normal in our line of work. Why? Are you afraid that they will betray you too?"
Johan remained silent.
Baki picked up his chopsticks again. "Johan, you need the world to teach yourself, not me. And White Tiger Job Centre is the best place for it." He chewed and swallowed. "Every person who walks through that door has a story. Every fight has a lesson. You'll grow faster there than anywhere else." He looked at Johan directly. "So stay there. Watch. Understand. Learn. Your path will come, find you when you need it the most. I know it will. Because Johan it's you. You're the beginning of a new legend."
---
Gun released his grip and let Johan go.
Johan stood still at his spot. Blood dripped from his face onto the concrete beneath him.
Gun looked down at him and smiled. "It was a good fight."
Just then, Johan moved. He punched Gun in the jaw.
CRACK!
Gun's head snapped sideways. He took one step back and touched his jaw with two fingers. He looked at Johan, who had pulled himself back to his feet with his fists up and his legs barely steady beneath him.
Gun stared at him. Then he laughed. "You still want to go?"
Johan didn't answer. He steadied his breathing and looked at Gun, and something shifted behind his eyes.
He moved.
The first strike came out of a Kyokushin base. Gun read it and shifted his guard to cover.
BOOM!
It landed anyway. Even though Gun had his guard moved, the strike had already changed into something else entirely, and the angle it arrived from had nothing to do with where it started. Gun's head snapped to the side.
'What,' Gun thought.
Johan was already moving again. His moves seemed exceedingly ordinary, but impossible to predict. Even a simple kick is imbued with countless techniques.
BOOM!
A straight right hit him across the cheek and split it open.
BOOM!
A knee drove into his midsection before he could cover it.
CRACK!
An elbow caught his temple and his vision went briefly white.
Gun stumbled back two steps and his hand found a bent car frame behind him. He held himself up and looked at Johan. Blood ran freely from his cheek and his broken nose. His chest was heaving.
'I can't isolate it,' Gun thought. 'I can't find the pattern because there is no single pattern. It's everything at once. Every style he's ever copied, merged into one. The moment I read one thing, it's already become something else.'
He pushed off the car and came forward anyway.
Johan hit him three times before he closed the distance. Clean hits, all of them, landing from directions that didn't follow from each other. Gun took all three and kept moving.
"So you found it," Gun said, blood on his teeth. "Your own path."
BOOM!
Another hit landed before he finished the sentence and drove him sideways into the car frame. Metal buckled.
Gun straightened up slowly. His legs were unsteady. He looked at Johan and his expression had gone somewhere past the smile, somewhere quieter and more genuine. 'Absorbing and integrating others' techniques, into an unpredictable technique. The Infinite Technique. Just as I thought... You really are the best, Johan Seong!
Johan stepped in and the next sequence was total.
BOOM!
BOOM!
CRACK!
Every hit landed. Not even one of them was predictable. Gun's body absorbed each impact. His body was becoming a mess.
BOOM!
A straight punch drove into Gun's sternum with Johan's full body weight behind it. The concrete cracked under Gun's feet from the force.
Gun's legs went out.
He went down one knee at a time, then his hands hit the concrete, and his arms shook badly beneath him. He tried to push himself up. His body didn't respond.
'But if I let go now,' Gun thought, his vision darkening at the edges. 'then that monster might come out...'
His elbows buckled. He went the rest of the way down and lay still on the cracked concrete, chest pulling in slow, uneven breaths.
His eyes closed.
The junkyard went quiet.
Johan also fell on the ground, on his back as his legs gave out. 'Gun Park... I defeated him...'
Johan's senses screamed at him before his mind could process what was happening.
Gun's body rose from the concrete in one smooth motion. His eyes had opened and they were glowing faint green. The bloodlust coming off him was physical, like pressure against the skin.
'What is this,' Johan thought. 'I am sure I knocked him out. How is he still standing?'
Gun stood straight. The cuts and bruises were still there, the broken nose still bleeding, but none of it registered on his face. His breathing had evened out completely. He looked at Johan with no expression on his face.
He moved.
BOOM!
Johan barely got his arms up and the hit drove him back. His boots left streaks across the asphalt.
'How does he still have such strength,' Johan thought.
Gun came again before Johan had fully stopped moving. Johan slipped left out of reflex and the punch grazed his ear. He countered immediately with a hook to Gun's jaw.
Gun's head didn't move.
Johan's eyes went wide.
BOOM!
Gun's elbow caught him across the chest and the air left his lungs completely. Johan's feet left the ground and he hit a car frame sideways. Metal bent around his back on impact.
He slid down and hit the ground on one knee. His arms shook as he pushed himself up.
'Damn it,' Johan thought. 'My body is slowly failing.'
Gun crossed the distance in an instant.
BOOM!
A straight punch to the face snapped Johan's head back. Blood sprayed across the concrete.
BOOM!
A body shot folded him forward.
BOOM!
A knee drove up into his lowered face and straightened him back up.
Johan staggered sideways and caught himself on the bent car frame. His legs were shaking badly. He looked at Gun through the blood running into his eye.
Gun stood a few meters away. He wasn't speaking. He wasn't smiling. He just watched Johan with those green eyes and waited.
Johan straightened and raised his fists. His body was running on empty but his eyes stayed on Gun. He exhaled slowly and let everything go loose, every muscle releasing at once until there was nothing left to read.
He moved.
Gun's body immediately began to shift away from the first strike.
But it landed anyway.
CRACK!
Johan threw the second strike immediately. Gun's body tried to flow around it the same way.
It landed too.
BOOM!
Johan drove a knee into Gun's midsection and followed with an elbow to the jaw. Both connected clean. Gun took a full step back from the elbow.
But Johan felt it immediately. His muscles had no power left to give. The strikes were finding their mark and doing almost nothing with it.
'I can reach him,' Johan thought, his breathing ragged. 'But I have nothing left to hurt him with.'
BOOM!
Gun's attack caught Johan across the jaw and dropped him to one knee.
Johan put his fist on the ground and breathed. He looked up at Gun standing over him. He tried to push himself back up and his arms gave out halfway.
Gun raised his fist.
A hand closed around Gun's wrist.
Gun stopped.
Park Jin-cheol stood beside him, one hand gripping Gun's wrist with a calm, firm hold. He wore his military uniform and his glasses sat straight on his nose. He looked at Gun without any change in expression.
"Hoho~ is this how kids have fun these days!" Park Jin-cheol smiled.