Vol 1 Chapter 4: Strong-and-Cute Boys and Strong-and-Cute Girls (Prologue: Encounters Arrive with a Sense of Déjà Vu)

“Wow, amazing! You’re insanely strong!”

Rurei suddenly clung to me and affectionately rubbed her cheek against mine.

“Hey… wait a minute, Rurei-san? It’s still dangerous.”

Not sure if it was perfume or shampoo, her sweet scent so close made my heart race as I said this to her.

“Huh? But hasn’t that already shattered Ooki-kun’s heart?”

When Rurei looked in the direction she nodded toward, Aida was still on the ground, clutching his stomach.

In a match, he would have been given a ten count by now.

“It’s a good thing this was before the match. If even I, an amateur bantamweight, got beat up like this, imagine what would have happened if you fought a pro super lightweight fighter.”

Can you really go pro like this? Despite such a disparity in build, he hadn’t taken a single hit yet.

I hardly felt like I could beat a professional kickboxer.

That Aida was just too weak.

Maybe ROSE’s promoter was banking on Aida being so detestable as a way to draw attention, but this hype is just over the top.

“Ugh… shut it! …What the hell are you doing, you bastard? Lend me a hand!”

Was it because Aida had been taken down so easily? The two men, looking dazed, turned their attention back to me and stood in front of him.

“Tch! Aida… you always brag about being a pro, but you’re no good at all! Fine then. My brothers and I box, so I’ll show you we’re better than you!”

Like a scene straight out of that famous boxing manga, the two brothers—one with long, spiky bangs and the other sporting a crew cut—looked nearly identical in build aside from their hairstyles.

Both of them were shorter than Aida, but they stood in the mid-170s, probably in the lightweight division.

This is bad.

Even though Aida turned out to be surprisingly weak, fighting an opponent so much taller than me had worn my nerves down more than necessary.

In this state, even though my own skills were still unproven, facing two boxers might be too much—

“Heh… so you’re boxers, huh?”

No sooner had those words left his mouth than Rurei stepped in front of me.

“Wait! It’s dangerous, so run away!”

“It’s fine! Just like you’re a strong-and-cute guy, I’m pretty strong-and-cute too, you know♪”

Looking at Rurei’s raised fists, I noticed that before I knew it, she had on a pair of faux leather fist guards—the kind used in full-contact karate matches.

“Fist guards? No way, you also use martial arts?”

“Who knows? What do you think?”

Even as she said that, Rurei stepped her left foot forward, placed her right fist by her chin while keeping her arms tight, and bent her left elbow at a right angle, assuming an aggressive forward stance.

“Are you playing at martial arts too, little miss?”

“Just come at me already, you fake boxer♪”

“You punk!”

Before I could stop him, the guy with the boxing-manga hairstyle closed the distance to Rurei and suddenly threw a right straight.

“Watch out!”

I imagined a pretty girl getting beaten bloody, but I doubt even I, Aida, the buzz-cut guy, or—most of all—the guy attacking Rurei could believe what had just happened.

“Gyaaah!…”

With just one hit on Rurei, the attacker clutched his mouth as he tumbled across the ground.

“Huh… a cross counter?”

Rurei slipped under his punch with a head slip, and in the very moment she dodged, she delivered a lightning-fast cross counter.

As far as I know, the only girl who can pull off such a brilliant counter is someone like Katsuko.

It was that beautiful a counter.

“Damn… you bastard!”

The buzz-cut guy attacked Rurei with a left hook that looked like it was going to slice her neck.

But Rurei, with a graceful U-shaped weaving motion, dodged. She then bent her knees, pulled her elbows in compactly, and using the spring of her legs, rotated her waist to the right. With a sharp snap of her shoulder, she drove a left body uppercut straight into his solar plexus.

“Ugh!”

The almost vertical blow made the guy let out a gagging sound, but Rurei showed no mercy.

After retracting her punch, Rurei pivoted on her left foot and rotated her upper body backward. Slipping through a gap in his guard, she drove her punch straight upward toward his nose, striking it and snapping his jaw upward.

Normally, fighters pull their chins in during combat, so landing an uppercut directly to the jaw is difficult. But by aiming the uppercut at his nose, the pain caused his jaw to reflexively lift.

Not yet finished, Rurei further utilized the spring in her hips to deliver another blow—driving a left uppercut into his raised jaw—and at the moment of impact, she snapped her wrist decisively.

“Gah…”

The guy arched his back dramatically and collapsed like a doll with its strings cut.