Chapter 46

I was back at the school gates in less than ten minutes.  

I rode straight into the school grounds, where bicycles were prohibited, standing up on the pedals to pick up speed.  

A couple walking home flinched and moved aside in a hurry. I overtook a group of students jogging in gym uniforms. I thought I heard a teacher shouting for me to stop, but I ignored it and kept going.  

I ditched my bike in front of the second gym, kicked off my shoes, and stepped inside.  

Immediately, I climbed the narrow staircase on the side, heading to the second floor.  

When I reached the landing, I heard a noisy commotion above—many voices, a crowd of people.  

The air grew hotter as I ascended the last few steps.  

On the upper floor, a group of students sat in a circle around a filthy-looking ring.  

There were around a dozen of them, dressed in a mix of school uniforms and gym clothes.  

I recognized most of the faces.  

A bunch of dumbasses I’d seen around before.  

Some of the guys I fought on the staircase yesterday were here too. A couple of girls sat among them.  

But Miki was nowhere to be seen.  

Instead, I spotted Smahiko, curled up alone in a corner.  

His eyes, along with everyone else’s, were fixed on the ring.  

No one had noticed me yet.  

“Bwahaha! Oi, Kaneko! Throw a punch! At least fight back!”  

“They’re gonna call you a snitch again!”  

Jeers rang out from the crowd.  

Inside the ring, two students faced each other, wearing gym shirts and boxing gloves.  

One of them was Kaneko—the guy I’d clashed with before.  

“He got him! That one landed!”  

“Damn, no mercy! Oi, don’t go for the face too much.”  

This wasn’t a match.  

It was a one-sided beating.  

Kaneko had his arms up, shielding his head, but his legs were wobbling.  

There wasn’t a trace of fight left in him.  

“You even trying, Kaneko?! I swear, I’ll kill you!”  

A plastic bottle flew from the crowd, smacking Kaneko in the back.  

More angry shouts and jeers followed.  

Laughter from a couple of girls mixed into the noise.  

No one was stepping in to stop it.  

This wasn’t how Miki or Smahiko had described it.  

That so-called “Princess Royale” thing must’ve fallen apart.  

Not that I could imagine many people actually signing up for that crap.  

Kaneko had probably been dragged in against his will.  

Miki had mentioned that they kept pestering him to join.  

But looking at him now, there was no way he had agreed to this himself.  

Maybe they’d just found a new way to amuse themselves—like using fights as an excuse to gang up on someone and beat the crap out of them.  

A sharp smack echoed through the gym.  

Kaneko’s body crumpled.  

The crowd let out a mix of laughter and gasps.  

The guy who took him down raised his arms in victory.  

Amid the commotion, I stepped forward, pulling off my socks as I climbed into the ring.  

I stepped over the sagging ropes and approached Kaneko, who was hunched over, gasping for breath.  

“Lend me this. Just the right one.”  

I wasn’t sure if he even heard me.  

His eyes were unfocused, his mind barely clinging on.  

I undid the tape and pulled the glove off his limp arm.  

“The hell, man? What do you think you’re doing?”  

“Get lost.”  

The crowd hurled insults.  

I ignored them and slid the glove onto my right hand.  

“Who’s that guy?”  

“No idea. Just some idiot with a death wish.”  

A strange sense of déjà vu hit me.  

This had happened before.  

Back before I even started middle school.  Back when my old man threw me into a fight, shoving me into the ring.  Back then, the crowd had jeered at me just like this. But it never bothered me.  

Because I was way more afraid of what would happen afterward—of getting beaten by my old man.  

We were hated.  

Because my father was hated.  

Stubborn, inarticulate, with no respect from anyone.  

Yet, in some childish way, he had a strong sense of justice.  

Even when he found a job, if something didn’t sit right with him, he’d get into fights with the higher-ups and quit.  Then he’d come home, complain about work, drink, break things, and sometimes take it out on my mother and me.  

It wasn’t like he loved drinking. It was more like he had to drink just to get through the day.  I never knew what he looked forward to. I never knew what kept him going.

But once, I had the chance to look inside a truck used for work. Inside, there were a lot of novels and manga about reincarnating into another world. They all had phrases like “invincible,” “unstoppable,” and so on.  

I was surprised that my old man was reading books like that.  

“Why do you have so many?” I asked him. He grinned and said, “It’s fun to smash those annoying bad guys. It’s so satisfying.”  

After the divorce was officially settled, my old man came by the house in a truck to pick up his things. After loading everything up by himself, he said, “Don’t turn out like me,” and left. The last time I saw him, he had his back hunched, and he looked unusually small.  

After he was gone, I found a few books stacked on a shelf near the entrance. My old man had tied up a large number of books with string, but apparently, he had forgotten them.  

They seemed to be his favorites, and it looked like he’d read them several times. The books weren’t recent; they were rather old.  

For some reason, I didn’t throw them away. I even brought them with me to my apartment. I thought if I left them at home, my mom or someone would throw them away.  

I picked one up recently and actually read it properly for the first time. The reading I did, which was totally out of character for me, was this. After finishing it, I thought to myself:  

Maybe my old man wasn’t just a drunken truck driver. Maybe he wanted to be the strongest knight, someone who stood for justice.  

Did my old man, who died saving a child, get to reincarnate into another world, just as he’d hoped? By now, maybe he’s become the strongest knight. But, considering you need to get hit by a truck to do that, well, it might be tough.  

Besides, someone who hits women and children wouldn’t get to reincarnate—if anything, they’d be heading straight to hell. He really made my mom, the person he was supposed to protect and love for life, terribly sad.  

He also said he was pretty rebellious when he was young. He must have done a lot of bad things, even when he was a kid.  

Just because he did one good thing at the end doesn’t mean everything’s forgiven. I’m sure my old man knew that very well himself.  

That’s why he probably tried to make me into a knight.  

Someone who wouldn’t lose to the bad guys, the strongest knight.  

He really was a terrible jerk. A piece of shit who tried to force his unfulfilled dreams onto his kid.  

――That’s not how you get strong! You need to eat more meat!  

But I’m also a shitty son who couldn’t make any of his wishes come true.  

I just ate food, grew bigger, but what good did I do? Did I ever do anything to make my old man happy, just one thing?  

Even his face, which used to be so scary, is starting to fade away now.  

The anger I felt then, the pain, the resentment—over time, it will all fade away. It will be replaced by something else.  

The old man, who seemed like he’d be forgotten even while alive, will probably be forgotten by everyone now.  

I’ll probably forget too. Even those things I hated, I’ll strangely romanticize and twist them.  

He left almost nothing behind when he died.  

So I thought that I, the one who did nothing for him, had to prove his existence. I had to figure out what he lived for before it didn’t matter anymore.  

I needed to prove that I had a shitty old man.  

“Hey? You’re that coward from before, right?”  

The guy who had been responding to cheers in the ring approached. I wondered who it was, and then I realized—it was that two-block guy I ran into in the courtyard with Yuki. We cross paths a lot.  

And yet, despite having a cute girlfriend, here he was picking on someone weaker. So the girl shouting down there must be his cute, charming girlfriend, huh?  

“What’s up with you? Putting on gloves without permission… Oh, still holding a grudge about what I said last time? You just couldn’t be satisfied being a fake, huh?”  

“I don’t care. Just come at me already.”  

“You really want to do this? Hahaha, you’re joking, right? Hey, it’s an impromptu match, so can I just take him out too?”  

Cheers went up from the crowd.  

It seemed like the crowd was getting hyped up because an interesting prey had just jumped in.  

“Then get out of the way already, you’re in the way.”  

He started kicking Kaneko, who was crouched nearby. He was trying to push him out of the ring.  

As I moved closer to stop him, the guy suddenly turned and swung his arm at me.  

My body reacted instinctively. I dropped my hips diagonally to dodge it and delivered a right body blow into his wide-open side. There was a satisfying sound, and the guy leaned forward. He kneeled down, clutching his stomach.  

“There, come at me already.”  

I looked down at the two-block guy, who was still crouched.  

He grimaced, not even attempting to stand up. After coughing a few times, he let out a scream that sounded more like a howl of pain.  

“…W-what the hell, you just showed up out of nowhere! What’s your deal?”  

“Me? I just think it’s fun to smash annoying bad guys. It’s so satisfying.” 

(TL: GO GO GO! Knight-kun~!)