Straight Punch. -- chapter 2.

[yakiseop]

Title: Straight Punch.
Group: U-Kiss, KAT-TUN.
Pairing: Soohyun/Ueda.
Rating: Eventually R.
Warning: AU, crossover, violence (but not that much...).
Summary: Running away from the past, Shin Soohyun is living illegally in Tokyo when he accidentally stumbles across one of the city's shadiest and most mysterious gangs. It's given to him a choice: death in the cold waters of Tokyo Bay, or life under Ueda Tatsuya's commands and intense training.
N/A: So... I don't actually have notes to add but I have to make this a bit warmer. Please enjoy! The fic's still terrible.

chapter 1.



Within half an hour of training, Soohyun realized that, in fact, he had not been made for boxing.

The beginning of the end was when he spent two minutes trying to figure out how to tie the hand wraps around his hands, and one more minute even after Ueda explained it in detail. Eventually, the tutor just lost his patience and wrapped them around Soohyun’s wrists himself, sighing.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said simply, getting up after his job there was done. Soohyun also got up, looking down embarrassedly. “For some time, you’ll have to wear normal shoes to train, until we can buy you stuff. Because of that, I advise you to take care while you run,” then, he tossed his head. “Thirty leaps around the room. Now.”

Soohyun took no longer than a second to start running, not wanting to look like a slacker. He had the feeling that Ueda was rightfully looking down on him, and that he had to make up for it, so he ran firmly, determined to change that situation. The Korean man knew well that he was only alive because Ueda had interfered when the other men were about to throw him away - he ought to show his gratefulness properly.

The thirty leaps weren’t a problem for him, but the subsequent twenty leaps backwards and twenty skipping proved to be a bit tricky.

“Twenty more,” Ueda added when they finished the skipping. “Now stretching your arms. Stretch them well or you’ll go through bad times later.”

Obediently, Soohyun promptly started running, copying the stretching movements his tutor made like a shadow. That was when he started to feel a bit weird. His lungs turned ice cold for some reason, as well as his throat, which made him a bit anxious - was that normal? He still completed the leaps dutifully, trying not to make much noise when breathing. Ueda didn’t seem to notice his pain.

“Now, I’m going to teach you the basics of boxing,” Ueda said, adjusting his wrist bands. “The first thing is your posture.”

And that was when he concluded he was absolutely inapt. His fingers, to begin with, curled in all the wrong direction, and his fist was never perfectly straight. In fact, when Soohyun punched the air with his right hand, Ueda covered his eyes with his hand in embarrassment.

“That’s the most crooked straight punch I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, and it sounded like he was torn between laughing and giving up. “Please observe it closely. Your thumb is sticking out again, your body is twisted in a way it really shouldn’t be, and you’re going to break your wrist badly if you ever punch someone with your hand like that.”

Ueda corrected each one of the mistakes with small shoves, putting Soohyun in place. He held Soohyun’s shoulder tightly while explaining what would be the right move, and what would be the wrong, guiding the Korean man’s body forcefully along his instructions. Soohyun found that technique very effective. After twenty minutes or so, he found himself doing the punch right, to Ueda’s relief.

“Okay, now that you got this,” he sought for something in the apparel box - two small 2kg dumbbells. “Do the one-two combo while holding this. Don’t drop them, and don’t lower your arms fast, or you’ll get injured.”

Soohyun promptly started, but Ueda shoved his hip a bit to the side again, lips tightened in irritation. Apprehensive, the pupil carried on, paying attention on each part of his body and positioning them like Ueda had taught him to. Eventually, the shorter man went away to the heavy bag, turning his back to Soohyun: it made him feel motivated. Apparently, he was doing it right.

However, after a minute and a half of that, he felt like he could no longer move his limbs. He resisted to the urge of just dropping everything (including himself) to the floor, but damn, it was harder and harder to keep on; his eyebrows were twitching involuntarily with the effort. Well, at least he was pretty sure he was doing the movement properly...

“Watch your wrist. You’re bending it again,” Ueda commanded from the bag, watching Soohyun’s moves through the mirror. The Japanese man had been punching the bag vigorously, and wasn’t even sweating; Soohyun, in the other hand...

“You’re slacking!” Ueda shouted, startling his pupil. Soohyun promptly gathered all his strength and began punching seriously, ignoring the burning pain in his arms and lungs. “The wrists! Watch the wrists!”

He felt his muscles cramping as he fixed his punch, closing his eyes when some sweat got in them. His whole body burned in pain, and it felt like an eon until Ueda said, “put them down slowly”.

Soohyun did as told, feeling his biceps trembling as he slowly lowered the dumbbells. Ueda left the bag and walked closer to Soohyun, analyzing his face as the taller man panted.

“I guess we better stop here today,” was what he said in a resigned voice. “Leave the dumbbells there. You’re dismissed.”

Holding his breath, the Korean man bowed and exited the studio, only releasing the air in his lungs once he was already outside. The training had barely lasted half an hour… Soohyun squeezed his eyes shut, disappointed with himself. That was a bad start. If he weren’t feeling as if his muscles were about to turn into dust, he would have gone back in and asked Ueda for one more chance. Being dismissed so soon was a bit shameful.

“Soohyun sshi!” he heard Maru’s voice, and looked up, wincing. The house master was peeking from behind the door, as if he had been searching for something. “So the training is over already? How quick. How was it?”

In response, Soohyun tilted his head to the side, shaking it negatively. Maru made a small, sympathetic ‘oh’ sound.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll get better,” he said, smiling complacently. “The boys aren’t back with your things yet, but I can lend you some clothes so you can take a shower, and then I can help you with Japanese. What do you think?”

“Sounds great. Thank you, Nakamaru sshi,” Soohyun thanked, bowing, and letting himself be guided to the baths.

After getting thankfully cleaner, albeit confused by the house’s bathroom (why was there a stool? And why did the bathtub have five different taps?), Soohyun went back to his new bedroom and found his roommate holding an armful of books and two small notebooks.

“I think we should start with the thing you absolutely shouldn’t mess up around… our kind of people,” Maru made a face. “Honorifics.”

Those proved to be a tad bit more difficult to Soohyun than he expected. The informal ones were almost the same as in Korean, and he was able to learn them easily; however, as soon as it got to the polite and formal ones, Soohyun’s tired mind began to clutter them up.

“Is ‘danna’ the same as ‘dono’?” he asked, clumsily writing the hiragana down.

“No. ‘Dono’ is used in business letters,” Maru explained, inspecting one of the books cautiously. “’Danna’ is used to address the master of a house or a shop, and it’s one of the ways a woman addresses her husband.”

“Aah,” Soohyun nodded, enlightened. “Then I should call you Nakamaru danna?”

“Oh, no,” Maru laughed, brushing it off. “As I said, everyone calls me just Maru, so feel free to do the same.”

“Maru,” the door was open abruptly, revealing a non-sweaty Ueda. Maru looked at Soohyun as if saying, see?. “There’s a sulking Akanishi in the back garden.”

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m the one responsible for that,” the house master admitted. “So I can’t really do anything about it. Let him be for a while.”

“Okay then. I’m going now,” Ueda answered, and Soohyun noticed he had a backpack thrown over his shoulder. “I have a match against Kiriyama tonight. Taguchi is going too.”

“A fight tonight? I want to see it!” Maru objected, closing the book on his lap.

“M-me too,” Soohyun weakly added in Japanese.

“Well, you can go with us. We’re about to leave. Not you,” Ueda turned indicatively to Soohyun, looking at him reprovingly. “If you have time to watch fights, use it to study Japanese instead.”

Soohyun lowered his head and nodded obediently, feeling embarrassed. He saw Ueda make a turn and leave, but he also noticed Maru didn’t follow him immediately.

“Nakamaru! Are you coming?” Ueda, noticing the absence of the house master as well, shouted from the hallway.

“I’ll go later! I’ve got an errand to run now,” Maru answered; and yet, he was piling the books already, as if he was about to leave. “Where will the match be?”

“Subaru’s bar. I think it’ll start in an hour, maybe two,” Ueda warned, and the sound of steps on the wood was heard again. “See you there then.”

The sound of a door sliding, and Ueda was gone.

Resigned, Soohyun grabbed the book and his new notebook to carry on with his studies, but Maru called his name.

“Yes?” he raised his eyes from the notebook.

“I’m going to shop for some stuff, and right after I’ll head to the bar to watch the match,” he said, putting the perfectly piled books beside his futon. “Do you want to come along?”

“Huh?” Soohyun blinked. “But-Ueda sshi-“

“I’m sure Tatsuya won’t mind if I’m the one to take you there,” Maru brushed off, grabbing a bag from a wooden chest. “Well, he might become a bit upset with me, but I’m sure you won’t be punished. So,” he turned to Soohyun and smiled. “Do you want to come?”

Soohyun nodded effusively, thanking Maru effusively.

“But first, a question for you. If you answer it wrong, you can’t go,” Maru crossed his arms and looked at Soohyun very gravely, which made the Korean man instinctively straighten his posture. “Which honorific would you correctly use to address Tatsuya, considering his position?”

He blinked.

“A-Aniki?”

Maru bit down a chuckle.

“Good answer,” he commented. “Let’s go.”

From the grocery store, they had to catch buses - a lot of them - until Maru recognized the vicinities as the bar’s neighborhood. It was not a place you could find by accident, apparently, as it was hard enough to find it when you were looking for it de facto; Maru himself didn’t look so certain about its location until he recognized some nearby stores. Soohyun had no idea if they were still in Tokyo.

“I’m pretty sure it’s here,” Maru mumbled, peeking inside through the narrow wooden door. “Ah, indeed, it’s here. The fight is about to begin already.”

As both of them went into the crowded establishment, Soohyun saw the ring. It was quite above the level of the rest of the bar, so as the people nearer to the ring couldn’t see much more than the fighters’ legs, and people sitting on the stools by the counter could watch every movement very well, only a bit far away. Maru, and consequently Soohyun, who was merely tagging along, chose to stay in a midterm. The MC had been introducing Kiriyama, who had broad shoulders and a somewhat silly smile.

“So indeed, we are the challengers,” Maru commented distractedly, frowning lightly. “That’s weird. I thought Tatsuya was tired of having to fight by himself.”

“That’s why he’s training me, isn’t it so?” Soohyun added. “He said something like that at the storehouse.”

“I guess. He has been complaining about it for months,” and then, Maru gave an amused smile. “You’re good at understanding Japanese, Soohyun sshi. I didn’t think you’d hear what I said.”

“Ah… I studied Japanese for a while before coming,” Soohyun explained, embarrassed. “But it was for a short time. That’s why I’m not good at speaking.”

“I see. The phonetics is completely different, right?” Maru said in Japanese. “But then, from now on, I’ll only talk to you in Japanese. Maybe you’ll learn faster this way.”

The chat was interrupted when the bell rang; both of them turned their attention immediately to the starting match.

At first, nothing much happened; Ueda and Kiriyama just analyzed each other, hunched in a defensive pose, hopping to keep the muscles moving. Then, Kiriyama made a move, aiming for Ueda’s head - wait, wasn’t that illegal? Soohyun was pretty sure it was - but in no more than a blink Ueda had dodged, hitting the other’s stomach with a powerful hook. Both Maru and Soohyun cringed, the punch had looked pretty painful.

Kiriyama seemed to think the same, since he stumbled back, coughing, allowing Ueda to lower his guard for a moment. The moment Kiriyama got back in the fight, however, Ueda hopped to the side and started punching him again - what was the name of that punch?, Soohyun didn’t know - eventually making the opponent back away in quick hops. Ueda’s eyes were keen. He not once missed the sight of Kiriyama’s fists, always ahead him when he moved swiftly, aggressively. He dodged a hook and was about to hit Kiriyama’s temple with full force, but ended up dropping his defense and getting punched on the stomach instead. Maru and Soohyun made the same worried noise as they watched a tall man unknown to Soohyun talk to Ueda while wiping the sweat off his forehead and helping him to recover. The bell rung, and Ueda was back on his feet as if nothing had happened.

He looked-he looked supernatural. Soohyun had never seen someone that cool, someone who moved as quickly, as precisely, with the carefulness of a snake and the confidence of a lion, with the calm of an elephant but the stamina of a tiger. He was unable to look away from his master as he jumped around Kiriyama, dodging the man’s innumerous punches - that Kiriyama was a hardworker, indeed - eventually managing to hit the opponents kidney. Kiriyama stumbled back, obviously in pain. Ueda gave him enough time to recover, sitting down for a moment and listening to his companion’s words again. Eventually, the bell rung again, and they were back to the fight; it hadn’t gone by a single minute before Ueda, avoiding a series of menacing punchs, hit Kiriyama with a powerful straight punch, knocking the opponent unconscious. The bar was filled with uproar.

“That was quick!” Nakamaru shouted, clapping. Soohyun did the same, happy for his master’s victory. “That boy was really good as well, I was really worried. But he ended up winning anyway… I wonder how much he’s going to get for that one.”

“Get?” Soohyun was confused by those terms.

“The loser’s team pays the winning team an amount of money, and there’s a percentage of bets that goes to the winner as well,” Maru explained. “It’s usually not much… today must have been worth about twenty-one hundred yens, I think. Probably a bit less.”

“T-Twenty-hundreds?!” Soohyun gaped like a fish. Twenty-one hundred yens? Twenty-one hundred yens?! How much was it in won? About-about thirty hundred? For one fight?!

“Yes… it’s not much, you know that, right?” Maru blinked at him in a confused fashion. “I mean, you can barely live for a month on twenty-one hundred yens…”

“I earned nine hundred yens in the job I got when I first came to Japan,” Soohyun said. Maru raised his eyebrows incredulously. “Besides, if you get paid twenty-one yens by fight and have a fight every week, by the end of the month-”

“-about eight-four hundreds yens. That’s not ignorable,” Maru finished the sentence for him. “It’s still not enough to make a decent living, though, but it’s useful to buy things like a house, or a car.”

“Or to pay a debt,” Soohyun muttered as he saw Ueda approaching them, being effusively greeted by many of the men who had been watching and talking to them with an unfazed, calm glance. Indeed, Ueda Tatsuya was an amazing man…

“You did good today,” Maru said as Ueda got to them, high-fiving the boxer. Ueda nodded as if thanking him.

“Taguchi’s talking with Kiriyama’s manager. We got eight hundreds from them, but about fifteen hundreds in bets alone. These losers are clinging to every fight they get to watch, it seems. Too much money circulating, few good things to spend it on. And you,” Ueda turned to Soohyun angrily, which made Soohyun flinch. “What the hell are you doing here?! Didn’t I tell you to stay there?”

“I asked him to come with me. We bought some groceries,” Maru lifted the groceries bag so Ueda would see it. Soohyun had almost forgotten about that. No longer angry but annoyed, Ueda clicked his tongue, eyeing Soohyun in a way the younger man found menacingly.

“Whatever. It’ll take some time for us to get the money, so you don’t need to wait,” now Ueda was talking to Maru. “Besides, Taguchi still wants to set me another match in a week. Subaru’s new boxer got a broken ankle.”

“Okay. I’ll leave this kind of business to you,” Maru said simply, pulling the plastic bag from its resting spot. “We’re going then.”

“’Kay. Take care. And you,” Ueda directed a pointy glare to Soohyun. “Study hard to make up for this.”

“Y-yes! Ah,” Soohyun could feel his hands sweat. It happened every time he tried to speak in Japanese. “Aniki, you-you were c-c-“

“Cool,” Maru whispered the right word in Japanese.

“You were really cool!” Soohyun said a bit more confidently. Since his pronunciation had been bad, he tried smiling. Ueda made a face, and Soohyun couldn’t tell what kind of face that was.

“Oi, Maru,” he turned to the housemaster. “Did you teach him to call me ‘aniki’?”

“Mm? Me? Teach him? No, of course not,” Maru was obviously cynical. “We’re going now. Bye bye!”

“Bye,” Soohyun flinched again when Ueda looked at him, but it wasn’t less of a glare and more of an analyzing glance that time. Had he done it right? That situation was really confusing but, as they left the bar and walked in the deserted streets, he could see Maru found it amusing.

“I guess Tatsuya wasn’t expecting that. No one has ever called him aniki before. Yoko only called him ‘Ueda’,” Maru told Soohyun when the latter asked if he had said something wrong. “But it wasn’t wrong or anything. If he tells you to stop, though, it might be better to stop.”

Soohyun nodded obediently. If he were to choose an honorific for Ueda… ‘aniki’ still seemed to fit him the best. Even though Ueda was short and slightly feminine, he was strong and extremely cool, and someone Soohyun would end up looking up at; if he could be like an older brother to Soohyun, it’d be the best.

“So, Soohyun,” Maru asked after a moment of silence, pausing for a second as if hesitating. “May I ask you something?”

“Mm,” Soohyun hummed in confirmation, curious.

Maru took another second. He then asked, “Why did you come to Japan?”

Soohyun dropped his eyes to the sidewalk. He knew that question would eventually come, but it didn’t make answering any easier. None of his roommates had asked there before, nor had his landlord; they all assumed he had came for the same reason of the others, for the same reason why so many men like him entered Japan illegally, becoming faceless gypsies in an unknown, strictly organized society that wouldn’t cast them more than a censoring glance with some of condescending compassion - or, perhaps, fear. Maybe it was the same reason. Maybe it wasn’t.

“It’s a long story,” Soohyun finally confessed, and he started to tell.