VISION GRID SYSTEM: THE COMEBACK OF RYOMA TAKEDA

Meanwhile, Ryoma is watching the fight alone in his apartment. The broadcast is delayed, and he knows that this is already past somewhere else.

Round five is just beginning when he settles in, posture loose, attention unforced, the way he watches any match without expectation.

At least, that is what he tells himself as Shimamura rises from the stool and moves toward the center of the ring.

>

The system’s voice feels close, familiar, as if someone is sitting beside him instead of inside his head.

“Why not?” he answers quietly. “I’m still a boxer. I need to know who’s moving around my weight class, especially fighters like them.”

>

“Not really,” Ryoma exhales, eyes fixed on the screen. “I’m chasing a world title now. Unless they stand between me and that, there’s no reason for me to fight them.”

>

In the ring, Shimamura slips a punch and answers with a short hook to the body, clean but restrained, lacking the snap of earlier rounds.

Yanagimoto barely reacts, turning his shoulder and resetting with a calm that borders on dismissive.

>

Ryoma ignores it. His gaze sharpens as something in the TV steals his attention.

Yanagimoto traps Shimamura by switching stance to orthodox, and punishes him with a heavy punch to the face.

And during the madness that follows, he sees that grin in Shimamura’s face, crooked and faint, lingering longer than it should after a failed counter.

His chest tightens before he realizes why, fingers curling slightly against his knee as memory stirs without shape or name.

>

The slugfest continues, and Shimamura eats a few shots to the face. But the grin doesn’t fade; if anything, it sharpens, as if something inside him has settled into place.

>

“The hell are you talking about?”

>

Ryoma swallows, eyes never leaving the screen as the commentators’ excitement gives way to unease.

It takes him back to that round five in the OPBF title fight. He has watched the recording enough times to know how he moved, even if he cannot remember moving that way.

And back then, he had that same manic face, the similar face Shimamura shows right now on the screen.

***

In the later rounds, Shimamura’s form shifts, and the way he boxes changes to that drunken rhythm.

Ryoma leans forward, eyes narrowing as Yanagimoto begins to miss punches he should be landing cleanly.

Shimamura looks slow, sloppy even, yet the blows slide past him by margins too precise to be coincidence.

“No,” Ryoma murmurs under his breath. “It’s not the rhythm. It’s something else.”

Shimamura isn’t dodging early or wildly; he’s moving at the last possible moment, again and again.

>

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Ryoma’s jaw tightens as he watches Shimamura absorb another body shot and chuckle through the pain. The picture sends a chill through him, not because it’s unfamiliar, but because it feels too close.

He doesn’t reach for a conclusion, doesn’t name what he’s circling, only letting the unease settle deeper.

***

The sight of Shimamura’s grin pulls Ryoma back to a night he doesn’t like revisiting, the night he accused the system of stealing his body from him.

He doesn’t voice the accusation this time. But the system can read his mind.

>

Ryoma doesn’t answer. His eyes stay on the screen as Shimamura weaves through another exchange, posture loose in a way that feels disturbingly familiar.

>

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Ryoma’s brow twitches despite himself. The thought lodges in his mind for half a second before collapsing under its own absurdity.

“Shimamura? Having something as irritating as you rattling around in his head?”

He almost snorts at the idea, brushing it off as nonsense.

But the similarity lingers longer than it should. It isn’t personality, or temperament, or even intent that feels familiar. It’s the symptoms, the timing, the causes, and the way Shimamura slips into something sharper the moment pain should have slowed him down.

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“Dangerous?” Ryoma scoffs quietly. “With punches that sloppy? Give me a break.”

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“I know,” Ryoma mutters. “You don’t have to shout.”

Ryoma exhales tiredly, and keeps watching until Yanagimoto knocks Shimamura down near the ropes.

“Oh, look what happens to the man you called dangerous,” Ryoma jeers.

>

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Ryoma’s face tightens. “Enough with that. I’m a boxer, not a psychopath.”

Then it happens. After beating the count, Shimamura creates the opening himself, takes the risk, and the counter lands clean enough that Yanagimoto’s legs finally betray him.

>

The champion collapses in a way that makes the arena freeze before sound catches up.

>

Ryoma’s breath catches, but the feeling never lands. The screen erupts into confusion, the camera lingering on the towel sprawled on the canvas by the blue corner.

Shimamura’s face twists in agony, and something in Ryoma’s expression darkens with it.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Ryoma snaps, anger flaring at the TV.

He still hates Shimamura, and that hatred hasn’t vanished.

But watching a fighter endure everything, reach the answer at last, and have it taken away by his own corner feels too familiar to dismiss.

Back then with Renji, it was only sparring, and Nakahara’s towel had felt like theft even without stakes.

But this is a title fight. For Shimamura, at this point in his career, it could mean everything.

Ryoma’s jaw tightens, and his eyes wide and glassy with tears. But the system scoffs him openly.

>

>

Ryoma doesn’t respond. But he can’t simply ignore the mounting anger building up in his heart. He reaches for the remote and shuts the television off.

That’s when the front door open, and his mother’s voice carries in from the entryway.

“I’m home…”

Ryoma blinks hard, turns and greets casually. “Back early today?”

Fumiko lets out a tired sigh, stretching her arms as she walks toward the kitchen.

“No customers. I just sat there for hours doing nothing.”

She pauses by the fridge, taking out a bottle of Surge Blue drink, and takes a few long gulps.

“Aaah… being an Aqualis ambassador really pays off at home, huh?”

Then she ambles toward her room with the bottle in hand, fatigue dragging softly at her steps.

Ryoma watches her go, expression softening despite himself. As the apartment settles back into silence, he pushes the earlier unease aside and focuses on what matters.

He has a second chance to chase a world title, to raise the gym with him, and to do it without leaving his mother behind.

That alone is already hard enough. There’s no time to worry about anything else.