The referee's voice cuts through the haze.
"Two… three…"
Kaga is on one knee, glove pressed against the canvas, the other arm hanging uselessly at his side. His chest rises and falls too fast, too shallow. Air goes in, but it doesn't seem to reach anywhere that matters.
Physically, the damage is not catastrophic, nothing feels broken, no single punch screams for attention.
Satoru has never been a boxer who ends things with one crushing blow. He does not carry that kind of violence in his fists.
But what he did just now with his punches; five punches, hitting five different points; the ribs on both sides, then the jaw, the solar plexus, the base of the chin.
It was clean, precise, and unforgiving. Each one lands without warning, without waste. And together, they do something heavier than pain. They dismantle certainty.
"He doesn't look broken," the lead commentator says. "But there's no way those shots didn't hurt."
