For a brief moment, Kirizume actually tries to read it properly. Not the surface meaning, not the polite phrasing, but the intent underneath Nakahara's words. Just for a second, his thoughts run clean, almost rational.
It sounds like a structural suggestion, a managerial direction, a possible long-term adjustment for Serrano's path if taken without emotion attached. It almost makes sense, almost, at least until Kirizume's pride takes over.
Because in front of him is still Nakahara, the same man who spent three decades running a struggling gym that only survived because of borrowed opportunities and occasional help from Kirizume's own network.
A man whose fighters once only appeared as undercard names, fillers between real bouts. That history doesn't disappear just because the present has changed.
And now that same man is sitting here, speaking about Serrano, his Serrano, a fighter built inside Kirizume's system, not someone elevated by it from the outside.
