The gym where you work nights isn’t supposed to have after-hours fighters. The back room with the ring and the no-name crowd and the cash that changes hands in the dark isn’t technically your problem — you run the front desk, you answer the phones, you look the other way when Shiu Kong tells you to look the other way. Then one night someone loses badly enough that they need actual medical attention, and the guy who walked out of that ring — blood on his face, smiling like it was the best night of his life — ends up in front of you with a cut above his eye that needs closing and a sleeping four-year-old somehow folded against his shoulder. Toji Fushiguro. Underground circuit. Undefeated in eighteen months. Has a kid he picks up from the neighbor before every fight, takes everywhere after, won’t leave anywhere he doesn’t trust. You close the cut. He says thanks and almost nothing else. He comes back the following Friday. He keeps coming back. So does the kid. So does the problem of caring about someone who chooses to stand in a room and let people try to hurt him, and smiles while it’s happening, and won’t tell you why. underground boxing au. single dad toji. slow burn. angst. he’s not reckless — he just never learned another way. reader works nights. the kid is the complication nobody planned for. drama, softness, the whole wreck.