Chương 24: Chapter 6 Footsteps Left Behind(Part 3)

The reason I started karate was simple. When I was in kindergarten, I saw it on television and thought it looked cool. Honestly, that was how most of my hobbies started. Something caught my attention, and I gave it a try. Dad used to take me to the dojo when I was little. A few months after I started, training became difficult. I complained that I wanted to quit. Dad got furious. Not the loud, screaming kind of furious. The scary kind. The kind that made you think. So I kept going. Years passed.

Then, right before I entered high school, the problem returned. My friends were spending their time dating, hanging out, and enjoying their youth. Meanwhile, I was sweating alongside a bunch of guys in a dojo. The truth was simple. I liked karate. I was just tired of sacrificing everything else for it. So one day, I approached Dad.

"Dad. I think I want to quit karate." He sat up from the couch and looked directly at me.

"How long have you been doing it?"

"About eleven years."

"... I see." Then he asked a strange question.

"Have you accepted it?"

"What?"

"Eleven years isn't something you casually throw away." He held my gaze.

"Have you accepted the decision you're making?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Not regret. Not surrender. Acceptance. I couldn't answer. Dad continued.

"You can quit." His voice was calm.

"You can take a break." He shrugged.

"You can even run away if you want. There are things I hate too." Then his expression hardened.

"But if you're going to quit, make sure you've accepted it first." He pointed at me.

"If you haven't, think about it again and come back tomorrow." That night, I thought. And thought. And thought. Dad rarely got angry. But whenever he did, he always said the same things.

'Do you know what you're supposed to do?'

'Have you done everything you should have done?' Instead of giving answers, he forced us to find them ourselves. So I spent the entire night thinking. And eventually, I reached a surprisingly simple conclusion. If I wanted to play, I could play. If I wanted to do karate, I could do karate. The real problem wasn't karate. It was how I managed my time. The next morning, I found Dad.

"I'm staying." He looked up from his coffee.

"I'll keep doing karate." I scratched my head.

"Maybe not as intensely as before, but I'm staying." Dad nodded once.

"Then you've accepted it." That was all he said. Because that was enough. I loved karate. That was the answer. Which was why the phone call two days ago hit me so hard. I was running laps during club practice when my name suddenly came over the school intercom. The teacher on duty handed me a phone. Mom was on the other end. She sounded completely panicked. Normally, Mom was dependable. But when it came to Dad, she turned into a disaster. I could barely understand her.

From what I gathered, Dad had become trapped inside something. Some kind of giant ring. Even Mom didn't seem to know exactly what had happened. She told me to stay at school and finish club activities. I ignored that advice completely. What if something happened? I left early and rushed home. Mom wasn't there. Dad wasn't there. The house felt wrong. The only person I could reach was my older sister. Haruka. Unlike me, she attended university outside the prefecture. She wanted to become a fashion designer.

For some reason, she also loved motorcycles. Apparently, Dad had taken her riding when she was little, and she'd never gotten over it. As a result, she became the kind of woman who could look elegant in traditional Japanese clothing one day and ride across the country in a leather jacket the next. When she answered, engine noise echoed in the background.

"Hey, Nayuta. What's up?"

"Where are you?"

"Shikoku." Of course she was.

"Can you come home?" A pause.

"What happened?" I explained everything I knew. Which wasn't much. Dad had disappeared. Mom was panicking. Something involving a giant ring. That was about it.

"Mom's involved?" Haruka sighed.

"Then the details are probably a mess."

"Pretty much."

"Got it." The engine noise changed.

"I'll head back as soon as I can." After hanging up, I spent the evening glued to the news. That's when I saw footage of Dad's workplace. Helicopter shots. Emergency vehicles. Reporters. And confirmation that someone had emerged from the Ring alive. That had to be Dad. Right? Afterward, I searched the internet for hours. The deeper I looked, the stranger things became. Apparently while I had been running laps and sweating through practice, the entire world had gone insane. Giant Rings had appeared everywhere.

Roads. Cities. Random locations across the globe. Nobody knew where they came from. Nobody knew what they did. Nobody knew why they were there. The internet was exploding. Experts argued. Conspiracy theories multiplied. People livestreamed themselves standing next to them. Governments scrambled for answers. And through all of it, one question kept repeating in my head. What the hell is a giant Ring?