VISION GRID SYSTEM: THE COMEBACK OF RYOMA TAKEDA - Chapter 360: On the Edge of Sanity

Chapter 360: On the Edge of Sanity

The arena tightens, sound layering over itself until it feels almost solid. A pocket of voices on the blue side starts calling out Kenta’s name, hesitant at first, then louder as confidence creeps in.

“Mo-ri-ya-ma!”

“Mo-ri-ya-ma!”

A few rows down, foreign accents cut through it from ringside seats, sharp English, urgent and demanding.

“Come on, Liam!”

“Fight back!”

Between those calls, Liam stands uncertain, gloves high, eyes tracking that sway again. The shoulders. The head. The feet.

He is in the dilemma now. Read it too much, and you’re trapped. Ignore it, you get hit.

Across from him, Kenta offers no solution. No feint, no setup that explains itself. He just moves.

His lead foot slides in.

Two punches come fast, short and snapping…

Dug. Dug.

…then he’s already stepping back, weight floating.

Before Liam can breathe, the lead foot slides again, the rear coils, and another two punches fire from a new angle.

Bug!Thud!

Both land.

Liam tries to answer with a sharp cross, cutting straight through the space Kenta just vacated.

Kenta catches it on his left forearm and pivots his rear foot outward, slipping off the line. In the same motion, his hips and spine unwind together.

A hook drives into the body.

Liam drops his elbow in time, blocks it…

DUGH!!!

…but the sound is brutal. The impact shudders through him, knocks his balance just off-center.

Kenta steps out again as Liam fires a hook.

A single bounce. Then back in, throwing a flurry: Jab. Jab. Lead hook.

Dug. Dug. Thud!

Liam only blocks the first two, tight and disciplined, but as he fires back after the third, Kenta is already sliding away.

The punch cuts air.

Then Kenta slides forward again with a cross crushing Liam’s guard.

DUGH!

It’s blocked, but the force pushes him back to the ropes.

“He never stops moving,” a commentator says, awe threading into his voice. “That flow, sliding in, sliding out… Moriyama’s rhythm just keeps breathing.”

“Exactly,” his partner adds. “Even when he’s pressuring, he’s still gliding. There’s no pause, no reset.”

Kenta steps deeper now. His stance lowers, widens. No space, no patience. Hooks swing in tight arcs, compact and violent.

Dug. Dug. Dsh!

Dug. Bug! Dsh! Dug. Thud! Dug.

Liam shells up.

Elbows flare wide to bend the punches off course. Chin buried. Torso rolling, shoulders taking the brunt. He yields ground inch by inch until the ropes bite into his back, absorbing the storm entirely in defense.

“That’s a change,” the commentator snaps. “Moriyama’s not flowing around him anymore… he’s sitting down on these shots.”

“And those body punches are brutal,” the other adds. “He’s anchoring his feet and trying to break Kuroda right there.”

Up in the press row, Tanaka leans forward, eyes locked on the ring. There’s a crease in his brow that wasn’t there before.

“…He looks different tonight,” he says quietly.

Sato doesn’t answer at first. He watches Kenta drive another punch into the body, feet planted, intent unmistakable.

“He always had clean technique,” Tanaka continues. “Good rhythm. Smart movement. But this…” he gestures faintly toward the ring, “…this level of force wasn’t there before.”

Sato exhales through his nose. “Yeah. He’s aggressive. Almost too aggressive.”

They fall silent for a beat, listening to the thud of leather on flesh.

“I don’t know if it’s because he’s fighting someone like Kuroda,” Sato says at last. “Maybe the pressure’s forcing it out of him. Maybe he knows he can’t afford to be careful tonight.”

Tanaka’s jaw tightens. “That’s what worries me.” He doesn’t look away from the ring. “He’s pushed himself like this before. Against Park Hyun-seok. And we all remember how that ended.”

Sato nods slowly. “If he burns this hot again…”

The sentence trails off, unfinished, as another heavy exchange explodes below them.

“…he might not make it to the later rounds,” Tanaka finishes under his breath.

Meanwhile, Kenta doesn’t stop. He interrupts the flow for only a single heartbeat, shifts the angle, and then pours the flurry back in.

Inside the storm, a thought slips through Liam’s mind.

He flows too smoothly.

In and out. Fast, then slower. Angle, tempo, shift.

There’s no clean way through this.

The truth settles hard.

I have to break it.

Even if it hurts.

Finally, he grits his teeth.

And fires.

BLARR!!!

Both punches collide at once, raw, simultaneous impact.

Heads snap back, and the crowd gasps, then erupts.

“OH—MY—GOD!” one of the commentators leaps to his feet. “They just ran into each other like two trucks with no brakes!”

“That’s insane!” the other shouts, hands on his head. “You don’t see that at this level so early in the second round… neither man blinked!”

For a split second, both men stagger.

Liam recovers first, steps in immediately, refusing to let the moment die. His hands are firing as he presses forward.

But Kenta slides back just enough, drifting out of range, then stops. The rear foot plants, coiling, and he comes forward again with a body hook.

And Liam abandons caution.

“Bring it on.”

He times the entry and snaps a tighter left.

Dsh!

Both punches land, almost together.

But Liam is first to continue. A sharp one–two follows, fast and clean, stealing the initiative by force.

Still, Kenta doesn’t retreat into theory. He doesn’t reset, ignoring all strategy.

Liam’s jab lands first. Dsh!

But Kenta still throws, the hook digs in. Thud!

But a compact cross answers it, snapping Kenta’s head back. Then a sharp left hook, this one driven with full weight…

Dhuack!

Kenta’s head whips to the side. His lead foot slides back desperately to keep balance.

“That’s it!” the commentator bursts out. “Kuroda finally breaks through! He’s taken control of the exchange!”

Liam swings again, but…

Ding!

The bell explodes through the moment.

The referee steps between them instantly, arms wide, separating two fighters still burning with intent.

“What a round!” a commentator shouts over the roar. “That was pure willpower… both men throwing everything they had before the bell!”

“This fight has turned savage,” the other adds. “Neither one backing down, neither one blinking!”

Kenta turns his head slowly toward Liam.

Blood has crept to the corner of his mouth, staining his lip red. He doesn’t wipe it away. He doesn’t seem to notice it at all.

Liam feels it before he fully understands it.

His breath comes heavy now, chest rising fast, hair plastered to his forehead and hanging loose around his eyes. Sweat stings where skin has split at the corner of his mouth, a dark smear already forming there.

Anger burns hot in his chest, but it’s fractured, disrupted by something colder.

Confusion.

He stares at Kenta, jaw tight, eyes narrowing as if trying to reframe what he’s seeing. The man across from him doesn’t look triumphant. He doesn’t even look hurt.

There’s no calculation there, no rhythm to read anymore. Just a stare that feels too fixed, too intent.

For the first time tonight, Liam has the uncanny sense that he isn’t facing a boxer at all.

***

They hold the gaze a beat too long, that it actually draws people’s attention. But the referee snaps first.

“Corner,” he says. “Both of you. Back to your corners.”

Liam exhales sharply through his nose and turns away, shoulders tight, walking back toward the red corner where Masahiro waits. His focus narrows again, forced back into structure, into something he can still control.

Kenta walks back to his corner as well, but his eyes never leave Liam. Not as he reaches the corner space, not even when he stops in front of the stool.

Nakahara watches it unfold, his expression unreadable.

“Kenta. Sit down,” he says calmly.

But there’s no response.

Kenta’s jaw is clenched hard enough to show through the muscle of his cheek. His chest rises and falls evenly, but his body refuses stillness. His gaze remains locked across the ring, sharp and burning, as if the fight hasn’t paused at all.

Nakahara and Sera exchange glance. It’s the first time any of them have seen him like this.

Kenta has always been quiet between rounds, reserved and methodical.

But tonight, he seems different.

Nakahara had noticed it even before the first bell; the way Kenta’s attention narrowed too early, too deeply.

And now there’s no mistaking it.

Hiroshi steps in carefully, holding out the water bottle. “Kenta…”

But there’s still no response.

He tries again, more insistently. “Sit down. We need to check you. Rinse your mouth, there’s blood…”

Nakahara lifts a hand, and Hiroshi stops mid-sentence.

A small shake of the head follows. Not a rebuke, but a warning: don’t pull him out of it.

Hiroshi withdraws, uneasy, eyes darting between Kenta and Nakahara.

Around them, the crowd begins to sense it too; the unusual stillness, the way Kenta hasn’t sat. The way his eyes remain fixed across the ring like something unfinished.

The murmur rises, scattered at first, then spreading. And up in the booth, the commentators lean forward.

“Uh… take a look at Moriyama in the blue corner,” one of them says, voice edged with surprise.

“Yeah… He hasn’t sat down yet,” the other notes. “And he hasn’t taken his eyes off Kuroda since the bell.”

“That’s not intensity,” the first adds, half awed, half unsettled. “That’s something else entirely.”

The camera lingers. The round is over.

But whatever Kenta has stepped into tonight…

It doesn’t seem interested in stopping.