This ferocious young man bounded up to the youth. Thinking he was being attacked, the youth instinctively flinched. But just as his opponent came within striking distance, the man leaped away. His opponent, legs wide apart and swaying back and forth, would approach within an arm’s length and jump back, approach and jump back, over and over again.
Watching his opponent do this made the youth feel dizzy. When the opponent, in the midst of this swaying and keeping distance, suddenly hit him in the cheekbones, the youth, who had not even tried to avoid him much less deflect the blow, fell sluggishly to the ground. The people standing around the fence booed him.
He managed to get up. His opponent bounded up to him and kicked his stomach, hard. He managed to break his fall somewhat by stretching out his arms, but the liquid he had drunk suddenly surged from his stomach. When his opponent kicked him one more time, he fell forward and threw up the rest of it.
The green liquid pooled on the ground and dirtied his mouth. For some reason, the crowd roared.
Struggling, he got to his feet. This time, his opponent did not attack but merely waited for him—swaying back and forth like before, watching him.
The youth stared back at him. Having vomited, his insides felt much better. No more dizziness. A little more confident now, he swiftly swung a fist the next time his enemy approached. But the opponent was quicker. The young man with the fierce expression moved as if he were gliding on his feet, dodged under the youth’s arm, and slammed the youth’s throat with his thumb and forefinger, a quick but effective blow. The wind knocked out of him, the youth began to fall forward. His opponent, seizing the opportunity, sidestepped and made to jab the youth in the neck with his elbow.
Right before the opponent’s elbow struck, the youth heard the sound of rocks shattering and steel tearing. For some reason, it wasn’t as painful as before.
His opponent’s elbow hit something unbelievably hard. The youth heard the sound of the young man’s elbow joint breaking and his screams.
The youth sprang to his feet. Reaching out with his right arm to attack, he saw that he still had a cuff on his wrist. So he lowered that arm and with his left arm, grabbed his opponent’s neck. The left arm stretching out before him was covered in something hard and glistening, like gray scales, and his hand and fingers looked like they were hewn from rock. That gray hand, looking nothing like a human’s, was now wrapped around the ferocious-looking young man’s neck, and squeezing.
All these things happened in what felt like a strange slowness. His hand holding up his opponent by his neck, the man’s face looked fit to burst, at first turning red, then white, and soon, blue. The youth watched these changes like he were a spectator of the fight.
From the opponent’s side, an old man with white hair jumped into the arena. The bald man also came sprinting. This was the first time the youth had seen the bald man without a smile for him. He couldn’t make out what the voices of the people shouting at him were saying, but following the orders of the bald man, he dropped his opponent.
His fingers, oddly slow, loosened their grip one by one. His opponent, eyes rolled so far back in agony that the youth could see only the whites, whimpered as he collapsed to the ground. The white-haired old man kept shouting as he dragged the opponent out of the arena. Throughout all this, the audience was in a crazed frenzy, unintelligibly screaming.
Alone in the arena now, the youth stood staring at the chaos outside the ring. The bald man came up to him again, grabbed his right hand, and raised his arm up.
A thunderous roar from the crowd was accompanied by a pelting of small, shining objects into the arena. The man was all grins again as he picked up these sparkling pieces while the youth stared down at his own hands.
They were back to being his normal hands. His arm was back to being what it used to be.
But in that moment, he could finally connect the sound of breaking, the bone-shattering pain, and the gray, stony scales that appeared from the triangular scars along his limbs and back and ribs. He couldn’t quite explain what he had understood, but he had a feeling that a very big question of his had just been answered.
The bald man stuffed into his hip pouch the small and sparkling bits and pieces that the people had thrown and still had fistfuls in both hands as he led the youth out of the arena. In no time, the bald man’s people had packed up their things and they were on their way out of the village. Even as they made a run for it, the bald man was all smiles.
At the inn where they arrived after a long day’s journey, they unpacked in their rooms then ate a large, jovial supper. On the luggage rack of their carriage tied outside, the youth dozed on a pile of straw.