School Cafeteria — Late Afternoon
Sunlight bled through the shattered windows, illuminating the dust motes drifting lazily in the stagnant air…
slow…
so slow.
The room was nearly empty.
But this silence wasn’t peaceful.
It was thick.
Suffocating.
An overturned chair lay abandoned.
A metal tray had slid across the linoleum, coming to a dead halt—krrr…
clack.
Spilled juice pooled across the floor, catching the light with a sticky, sickly gleam.
In the center of the wreckage—
Ikumi.
Aoi.
Both were slumped on the ground.
Their breathing was ragged, heavy—hah…
hah…
Shoulders rising and falling with every desperate gasp…
fists still half-clenched, refusing to let go of the tension.
Near the entrance—
Tap…
tap…
tap…
Ren stepped into the room.
His footsteps were calm.
Measured.
But his eyes—they were perfectly still.
Bottomless.
Like something volatile was being violently suppressed just beneath the surface.
He stopped, maintaining his distance.
His gaze shifted between the two—from Ikumi to Aoi.
A suffocating pause.
Then—
“What exactly… are you two doing?”
His voice was low.
Frighteningly controlled.
“Someone could have been seriously injured because of you.”
Ikumi cracked his neck—krrk—before slowly raising his eyes to meet Ren’s.
His lips curled into a cold, arrogant smirk.
He lifted a finger, pointing it dead center at Ren.
“The only person I’m trying to hospitalize here… is you, Ren Fujimiya.”
The air instantly grew heavy.
It felt as if the temperature in the room had plummeted.
Ren’s expression finally shifted.
The forced calm dissolved.
His eyes narrowed, focus sharpening to a razor’s edge.
His right hand slowly curled into a fist—krrk—knuckles turning bone-white.
His left foot slid a half-step forward.
Stance set.
Weight distributed perfectly.
Ready.
Zero warning.
Ikumi’s shoulder snapped forward.
A blistering straight punch launched toward Ren’s face—whsshh.
The speed was clean.
The weight behind it, deadly.
A microscopic tilt of Ren’s head—a flawless slip.
The fist sheared through the air, grazing past his cheek—fsshh.
But in that exact fraction of a second—
Movement from the blind spot.
Aoi.
He spun into motion, clothes whipping in a tight arc—whsshhh.
Full rotation.
A devastating spinning kick aimed straight for Ren’s torso.
Ren reacted purely on instinct.
Arms crossed.
Guard locked.
Impact—THUD!
The force was massive.
A shockwave traveled from his forearms straight through his core.
His shoes dragged viciously across the linoleum—chrrrrk.
He was shoved backward, balance breaking, until his back slammed into an overturned table—CRASH!
The splintered wood vibrated under the impact.
A fleeting, tense silence followed.
Aoi stood upright, posture flawless.
Breathing controlled.
Eyes locked onto his target.
“Get up… Ren.”
Ren remained utterly still against the floor for a heartbeat.
His chest tightened.
He pulled in a sharp breath—haah.
Pressing a hand against the cold floor, he pushed himself up.
Rising…
slow…
methodical.
He casually brushed the dust off his clothes—tap…
tap.
Rotated his neck—krrk.
And locked his eyes back onto them.
A sudden flash—memories of his previous fights.
The impacts.
The timing.
The fatal mistakes.
It all flickered through his mind in less than a microsecond.
The thought crystallized into absolute clarity.
‘They’ve both gotten stronger…’
His breathing steadied into a rhythmic flow.
‘…But if I want to take them both down at once…’
His stance dropped lower.
Center of gravity sinking closer to the floor.
‘…I need to wear them out first.’
The room fell silent once more.
But this time, it wasn’t a peaceful calm.
It was a pressure cooker.
The suffocating stillness right before the storm breaks.
Ikumi rotated his wrist, popping the joints—krrk.
Ren leaned slightly forward.
Coiled like a spring.
Ready to move.
Cafeteria — Ruined Floor, Rising Tempo
The sickening crunch of broken ceramic underfoot…
tables forming an uneven wasteland…
the discarded metal tray still spinning lazily on its axis—trrrrr…
trrk.
The air was thick enough to cut.
In the epicenter—
Ren.
Ikumi.
Aoi.
The distance between them was razor-thin.
Sudden movement.
Ikumi dropped his hips and unleashed a brutal low kick—whsshh—aimed directly at Ren’s lead leg.
Ren’s reaction time was nonexistent.
An instant hop—tap—his body lifting lightly off the ground.
The kick swept harmlessly through the empty air beneath his shoes—fsshhh.
But the ground wasn’t safe.
Aoi had already moved in sync.
His hand shot forward like a viper—snap.
Target: Ren’s ankle as he landed.
Mid-air, Ren’s core tightened like a steel cord.
He twisted his spine, reversing his momentum into a sharp, blinding back kick—wham!
Direct impact on Aoi’s forearm.
THUCK!
Aoi’s arm recoiled from the force, his body sliding a step back—chrrk—but his balance held firm.
Their eyes remained dead-locked.
Ren landed perfectly—tap—his knees acting as shock absorbers.
Zero hesitation.
He launched into a backflip—whsshh—cleaving through the air to create two steps of distance.
His shoes screeched against the floor to a halt—chrrrkk.
Ikumi and Aoi exchanged a half-glance.
No words were needed.
Just pure synchronization.
A coordinated, deadly advance—tap-tap-tap.
Their speed spiked drastically.
Ikumi engaged first.
Left jab—tak—Right cross—THUD—Left hook—whsshh.
Aoi caught the exact same beat.
Alternating knee strikes rushing in from below—thump, thump.
Upper-body and lower-body assaults blending into one terrifying rhythm.
Ren remained in the eye of the storm.
Body loose.
Fluid.
But his control was absolute.
The left jab—he executed a half-slip.
The right cross—deflected with a rigid forearm—tak.
The hook—he leaned back just enough to let it miss—fsshh.
The first knee strike—he turned his hip to absorb the brunt of it—thud.
The second knee—redirected downward with a sharp elbow block—tak.
Every single parry…
wasn’t flawless.
But it was enough.
He wasn’t fully dodging.
He was conserving energy.
Minimizing the damage while letting them burn through their stamina.
The metal tray nearby finally lost its momentum—trrr…
trrk…
clack.
The background noise dropped to absolute zero for a microsecond.
And then—a critical mistake.
Ikumi launched a ferocious straight jab—whsshh.
Ren leaned out of the trajectory.
The angle was clean.
He should have evaded it perfectly.
But—
Their timing overlapped.
Aoi had already slipped into his inner guard.
A right hook, loaded with full rotational torque—
WHAM!
The impact landed dangerously clean.
Ren’s head snapped violently to the side, the violent jerk straining the tendons in his neck.
The sheer force lifted his body.
The momentum carried him off his feet, throwing him backward—chrrrrkk—his shoes dragging futilely before he crashed squarely into a broken chair.
CRACK!
Wood splintered under the heavy blow.
Silence blanketed the room once more.
Ren laid perfectly still amidst the wreckage.
Only the rapid, ragged rise and fall of his chest betrayed that he was conscious—haah…
haah.
Slowly, lethargically, he brought a finger to his lower lip.
He rubbed it, feeling the wetness.
A smear of blood—a thin crimson line.
He wiped it away with the pad of his thumb.
When he finally raised his eyes again…
They weren’t calm anymore.
They weren’t cold, either.
They were sharp.
Lethal.
Like a blade that had just been freshly honed.
The entire cafeteria floor had been reduced to a battlefield.
Shards of shattered glass.
Smeared food.
Twisted metal.
Ren pushed himself up from the wreckage.
A palm pressed flat against the floor—ffth—his body rising.
But—
For a fraction of a second, his right leg visibly trembled.
The accumulated damage was finally registering.
Even so—
He reset his stance.
Unbroken.
Ikumi and Aoi advanced.
Brimming with dangerous confidence.
Tap…
tap…
The distance was just about to close completely—
THWACK!
An explosive impact shattered the heavy air.
Ikumi’s body violently lifted off the ground, as if he had been blasted from his blind spot by a cannon.
He was sent spinning backward through the air—
WHOOOM!
Scattered tables flipped out of his way—CRASH!
In that exact same millisecond—
Aoi was flipped forcefully in the opposite direction.
Thud—CRACK!
A wooden chair splintered under his weight.
A metal tray spun high into the air, ringing out—ting…
ting…
ting…
A cloud of dust plumed upward.
Then, dead silence.
Between Ren and his attackers…
someone else was now standing.
A tall figure.
Posture completely relaxed.
Shoulders hanging loose.
Souta.
He gave his jacket a light tug—ffth—smoothing out a crease.
Like obliterating two fighters was just a part of his daily routine.
His eyes shifted sideways, locking onto Ren.
A faint, easy grin pulled at his lips.
“Didn’t keep you waiting too long, did I… Egret?”
His tone was casually light.
But his presence…
was overwhelmingly heavy.
Ren cracked one eye open slightly.
His erratic breathing was finally stabilizing.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward.
“If you were any later…”
He stood up straight, his posture fixing itself.
“…they would’ve turned me into a rice ball.”
Souta let out a quiet scoff of amusement.
“Heh.”
Ren rolled his shoulders backward—krrk.
Tilted his neck—system reset.
He stepped up, standing right by Souta’s side.
The two of them stood in a perfect line.
Shoulders aligned.
Feet placement identical.
Breathing rhythms instantly syncing up.
A subtle shift rippled through the air.
The atmospheric pressure completely changed.
The fight was no longer uneven.
Now—
Ikumi and Aoi scrambled back into their positions.
Ikumi dropped low into a predator’s crouch, while Aoi spread his stance wide—a pure, unadulterated taunt.
“Round two…” Ikumi spat, a feral edge returning to his voice.
“…No holding back now!”
Aoi moved first.
A high-speed kick, blurring into an arc aimed straight for Souta’s ribs.
Souta pivoted away with clean, effortless grace, while Ren flawlessly intercepted Ikumi’s follow-up punch with a tight, iron-clad cross-arm block.
For a brief, cinematic moment, they stood completely back-to-back.
Ren covering the left blind spot.
Souta guarding the right.
A seamless, perfectly coordinated fortress of defense.
Souta spoke, his voice completely calm amidst the chaos.
“I’ll take the right.”
Ren gave a singular, sharp nod.
“The left is mine.”
Aoi fired off a vicious roundhouse.
Souta absorbed the blow head-on, using the opponent’s own momentum to snap a brutal side-kick counter right into Aoi’s gut.
The heavy impact sent Aoi skidding backward across the floor for a full meter.
Simultaneously, Ikumi launched a desperate jumping knee at Ren.
But Ren read the trajectory perfectly.
He caught Ikumi’s leg mid-air, hijacked the aerial momentum, and slammed him mercilessly down onto the linoleum.
Ikumi bounced back up like a coiled spring, but Ren was already a step ahead.
A devastating combo: low sweep—swish—into a crushing elbow strike—thwack—finishing with a lightning-fast short uppercut.
Ikumi staggered wildly.
Ren capitalized instantly, pivoting into a heavy reverse kick that launched Ikumi straight into Aoi’s path.
Aoi had barely managed to catch the stumbling Ikumi to regain his balance—
When Souta materialized right between them.
He unleashed a devastating dual palm strike.
One driving directly into Aoi’s sternum, the other crashing into Ikumi’s shoulder.
BAMM!
The explosive kinetic force blasted them both backward.
Discarded trays went airborne, and the heavy metal benches violently rattled against the floor.
Refusing to stay down, Ikumi charged once more with a roar.
Ren and Souta moved in absolute, terrifying sync.
One gliding left, the other shifting right—like lethal mirror reflections.
Souta lazily parried Aoi’s desperate right hook and drove a punishing short jab deep into his ribs, while Ren spun into Ikumi’s guard, burying a vicious elbow strike right near his collarbone.
Both hits landed at the exact same millisecond.
A perfectly synchronized double strike.
The kinetic shockwave was too much.
Both opponents collapsed backward, the air completely knocked out of their lungs.
Aoi braced himself against the cracked linoleum, desperately gasping for oxygen.
Beside him, Ikumi let out a strained, defeated chuckle.
“Tch… these two…”
Souta cracked his wrists, glancing lazily at Ren out of the corner of his eye.
“Looks like things are finally balanced out.”
Ren calmly brushed a speck of dust off his shoulder, his cold eyes staring down at the fallen duo.
“Not balance…” he replied, his voice chillingly calm.
“…Dominance.”
—Chapter 10 End—
Author’s Note
I also want to mention something about the martial arts and fight choreography shown in this story.
The combat styles, movements, and action sequences are written mainly to express the characters’ skill, intensity, and emotions during battle.
Since this is a word-based story and not a sketch, manga, or webtoon, there may be many mistakes or unrealistic moments in the choreography.
I’m simply trying to create action through words and imagination.
I hope that, through these scenes, I was able to help you visualize the fights and experience the energy of this world alongside the characters.
Thank you for reading and supporting my work.