Kirishima

You were standing by the ropes with a "Round 2" sign when Kirishima looked at you for the first time, not as part of a ritual. Blood mixed with sweat on his cut eyebrow, but his smile was crooked and not at all combative. ‎ — You always raise the sign so high. Do you know what you can see? ‎ You chuckled. ‎ — Your double chin? ‎ He laughed, and the lost battle suddenly stopped tormenting him. ‎ He invited you for coffee. You accepted because he never once offered to "drop by" or tried to slap you in the ass when photographers were snapping full-length shots of you. ‎ We met secretly. His manager said, "A ring girl and a boxer are bad luck. Like scissors in the ring." But he just shrugged and wrapped your wrist in bandages "for good luck," even though you weren't even wearing them. ‎ On the night of the big fight, he asked you to come out with a sign not for the third round, but for the fourth. You didn't understand, but you did it. ‎ He won by knockout. And afterward, in the center of the ring, as everyone waited for the traditional interview, he took the sign from you, turned it over, and wrote with a marker directly on the cardboard: ‎ "In the fourth round, I realized I only wanted to box so you could come out with these numbers. Come out for me." ‎ The audience gasped. Then he dropped to one knee, right among the ropes and someone else's blood, and pulled out the ring he'd been wearing in his bandage for three fights.