Baek San smiled.
It wasn't a smile of mockery. It was a slow twitch of his lips, as if his broken ribs were merely a signal to begin working.
Before Ji Hun could pull his hand back, Baek San's left arm came down like a block of lead, clamping onto the back of Ji Hun's neck.
The grip was cold, hard as an iron vise. In a single motion, Baek San lifted Ji Hun's body off the ground and shoved him with all his might against the edge of the cage.
His back slammed into the metal chain-link. The rusted wires bit into his bare flesh, and the air was suddenly knocked from his lungs.
The monster didn't give him a chance to fall. He lunged with his massive weight to pin him against the fence, raising his right forearm to deliver a direct strike to the dislocated left shoulder.
The forearm crashed into the joint.
There was no white flash; it was a black pain, deep and slow, like wet wood tearing under pressure. The damaged nerve screamed, and the coldness of death traveled from Ji Hun's neck all the way to his fingertips, which froze completely.
Ji Hun tried to breathe, but Baek San's chest was grinding into him. The smell of old sweat and chemically burned skin wafted from the opponent, suffocating him.
Through the gaps in the rusted mesh, and over Baek San's broad shoulder, Ji Hun's bloodshot eyes caught a glimpse from above.
In the illuminated glass balcony, one of the men was raising a glass of red wine, smiling as he pointed his finger down at the cage. They were watching him choke, like an insect being crushed under a boot.
Fear, which Ji Hun thought he had banished forever, crawled back into his stomach. The fear of dying here, in the bowels of a ship, as cheap entertainment for the men who killed his mother.
If he were in a sports ring, he would look for distance to recover.
But the boxer who looks for distance had to die now so the man could survive.
Instead of trying to push the mountain crushing him, Ji Hun let his left arm drop completely dead at his side. He eliminated the remaining distance. He dove his head down, and in a desperate motion closer to the instinct of a cornered animal, he drove his forehead violently into Baek San's throat.
It was an ugly collision. Ji Hun felt the rough skin scrape off his forehead, and he heard Baek San's muffled gasp as he staggered half a step back, clutching his neck.
The ship tilted slightly with a deep wave.
The tremor transferred through the steel floor to Ji Hun's bare feet. He didn't regain his balance; he slid with the tilt. He folded his right arm and drove his elbow with every ounce of strength left in his body into the right side of Baek San's ribcage.
It was a strike devoid of any athletic honor. A strike banned in every ring in the world.
As the elbow sank into the flesh, Ji Hun didn't feel the thrill of victory; he felt a sudden nausea. He had bypassed the man's defense, striking a vital organ without protection.
Baek San's eyes widened. That dead smile vanished.
For the first time, Ji Hun saw something human in his opponent's eyes. A flash of pure, naked pain. The survival signals in the massive man's body shut down, and he bent over involuntarily, gasping with a sound that tore the throat, as if his lungs had turned to ash.
Ji Hun remembered Seung Woo Park's voice in the old gym: *"We box to drop the opponent, Ji Hun, not to destroy him. Boxing is honor."*
But honor doesn't pay debts, and it doesn't burn factories.
While Baek San was bent forward, searching for air, Ji Hun raised his right knee with desperate cruelty, smashing it into the man's face.
Drops of blood flew, splattering Ji Hun's gray chest and his pale face.
Baek San staggered, taking heavy steps backward, before dropping to one knee, his hands trembling on the steel floor.
Ji Hun stood in his place.
His chest rising and falling with agonizing difficulty. His left arm hung down like a worn rag, entirely numb. He looked at his blood-stained right fist. It was trembling violently. It wasn't trembling from adrenaline, but from the horrifying realization that he had lost another piece of his soul in this cage.
He looked at the blood on his knuckles, and at the massive man groaning on the floor before him.
He had succeeded. He had become worse than them.
The smell of ammonia he had been catching wasn't just a memory from his mother's coat anymore. It was radiating from him. The smell of hot iron was the smell of his own blood, and the blood of the man he had just broken