The Punching Bag of Nerima

Renji knew exactly what was happening before he even opened his swollen eyes. The muffled sound of the referee's count seemed to be coming from inside an aquarium.

"...four! Five! Six!"

The floor of the amateur ring, a rough canvas smelling of old sweat and cheap disinfectant, scraped against his cheek. Get up, his brain commanded. You saw that left hook coming. You knew it was coming. Your mind saw it.

But his body didn't obey. It was always like this. Renji's mind was a martial arts encyclopedia; he studied champions, analyzed video frames on YouTube until dawn, dissected the biomechanics of every strike. He knew how to fight.

His body, however, was a cheap vehicle that couldn't keep up with the driver.

"...nine! Ten! It's over!"

The bell rang. It wasn't a sound of glory, but of mercy.

The small crowd in the community gym of Nerima district released a collective sigh of indifference. There were no boos, which in a way hurt more. To be booed, the audience needs to expect something from you. From Renji Sato, no one expected anything other than a quick fall.

He felt the ropes being pulled down, and the ringside doctor—a tired man smelling of stale tobacco—leaned over him, shining a flashlight into his pupils.

"Can you hear me, Sato?" the doctor asked, lacking much concern. "Yeah," Renji's voice came out raspy. "I'm fine." "That's the third time this month. You should consider a new hobby. Fishing, maybe."

Renji forced himself to sit up, ignoring the sharp stab in his ribs. Across the ring, his opponent, a university brute with more muscle than technique, had his arm raised by the referee. The guy was grinning at his girlfriend in the audience, not even looking winded. To him, Renji had just been a warm-up. An irrelevant obstacle.

Renji climbed down from the ring, his legs still shaky. He walked down the narrow concrete corridor toward the locker rooms, keeping his head low to avoid the gazes of the other fighters waiting for their turn.

"Hey, look over there," someone whispered. "It's 'Canvas Sato'." "Why does he still sign up? It's free money for whoever gets matched against him."

Renji clenched his fists. The shame burned hotter than the black eye starting to form. Shame was a cold heat that crept up his neck and settled in his chest, heavy as lead. He wanted to turn around and scream that he knew ten ways to counter that hook, that his theoretical technique was flawless. But what good would that do? In the fighting world, theory without execution is just fantasy.

In the locker room, silence was his only comfort. He opened his dented metal locker and took out his civilian clothes: the uniform of a 24-hour convenience store. This was his main reality, but not the only one. The store wages barely covered rent and tournament entry fees. To survive in Tokyo, Renji accepted anything.

While splashing ice-cold water on his face in the filthy sink, he stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror. Shaggy black hair, a plain face no one would look twice at on the street, and eyes carrying a deep exhaustion.

"Twenty-two years old," he muttered to the reflection. "And you're the worst fighter in your weight class in the entire Kanto region."

His phone buzzed on the wooden bench. It wasn't a supportive message. It was a calendar reminder: "Koganji Temple Cleaning - South Annex - 8PM".

Renji sighed, feeling his ribs protest. He had forgotten about the side gig he'd picked up last week. The old priest needed someone to clear out an ancient storage, and he was paying in cash.

"No rest for the failures," he said, slamming the locker shut harder than necessary.

Koganji Temple sat in an older, quieter part of the city, where the shadows of modern skyscrapers seemed to swallow the traditional wooden structures. The "South Annex" was, in reality, a dilapidated storage shed, isolated from the main temple by a poorly maintained rock garden.

The priest, a hunched man who seemed in a hurry to be done with the task, simply pointed to the dark entrance.

"Everything rotten goes to the trash. Whatever looks antique, stack in the corner. Here is the key. Lock up when you finish."

And he walked away, leaving Renji alone with the smell of mold and old wood.

The work was brutal. Even with his body aching from the fight, Renji dragged boxes of books eaten by moths, headless stone statues, and rolls of fabric that crumbled at a touch. With every movement, he imagined he was training. Lifting the box is like a clinch. Pushing the rubble is like gaining space in the ring.

It was a lie he told himself to keep from falling apart.

Near midnight, only one wall of the shed remained. It was covered by a massive bookshelf of dark wood, so tall it touched the ceiling beams. It was empty, but it looked like it weighed a ton.

"Come on... just this last one," Renji grunted.

He planted his feet on the dusty floor, engaged his core—as if preparing to take a hit—and pushed.

The wood groaned, a sharp sound that echoed like a scream in the empty shed. The bookshelf moved an inch. Then two. Sweat poured down Renji's forehead, stinging the cut above his eyebrow.

"Move!" he shouted, channeling all the frustration of his defeat into that piece of inanimate furniture.

With a dry crack, the bookshelf gave way and slid to the side.

Renji stumbled forward, coughing in the cloud of dust that rose up. He expected to see a moldy wooden wall behind the shelf. Maybe rats.

Instead, he saw a door.

It wasn't a door that belonged in that shed. The wood was a deep black, polished and flawless, contrasting violently with the ruin around it. There was no handle, only a white paper seal pasted in the center, featuring calligraphy Renji couldn't read, but which made his eyes ache if he focused on it for too long.

"What was the old man keeping in here?" Renji whispered, wiping sweat from his eyes.

Logic told him to call the priest. It told him to leave, take the money tomorrow, and forget it. But there was a draft coming from the cracks of that door. Air that smelled of ozone, cold metal, and... flowers that didn't exist in Tokyo.

Curiosity won over exhaustion. Or perhaps, deep down, Renji was looking for anything that would change his gray reality.

He reached out. As soon as his fingers grazed the black wood, the paper seal caught fire—a cold, bluish flame that vanished in the blink of an eye.

The door slid open on its own, silent as a ghost.

Renji took a step back, his heart skipping a beat.

Behind the door, there was no wall, nor the temple grounds. There was a path of floating stepping stones, suspended over a thick white mist that looked like an ocean of clouds. The path wound its way toward a traditional Japanese house, elegant and lit from within, floating in the middle of nowhere under a sky that held no stars, but rivers of colorful light.

Renji looked back at the dirty shed full of trash. Then he looked forward, at the impossible.

His body ached. His dignity was wounded. His future was carrying boxes and getting beaten in the ring.

With a shaky sigh, Renji Sato took a step forward, leaving the dust of the real world behind and stepping onto the first floating stone.