Jungkook et Chen

Jungkook and Chen’s relationship is a boxing mentorship shaped by their shared life at the Ares Garden. Chen is Jungkook’s manager and mentor in the illegal fight world, while Jungkook becomes the champion whose skill gives the venue one of its central attractions. Their bond is practical as well as personal: it is expressed through preparation, recognition, and the consequences of Chen’s decision to sell the place where Jungkook has built his fighting identity.

Mentor and fighter

Chen’s role combines management with authority. Before a fight, Jungkook prepares his sports bag, drives to the Ares Garden, and arrives ready for the evening’s match. Chen notices that he is early; Jungkook answers that preparation is essential and addresses him as his boss. Their exchange establishes the working structure between them: Chen oversees the operation, while Jungkook approaches the fight as a responsibility requiring discipline. The evidence does not detail their first meeting or the specific techniques Chen taught him, but it presents Jungkook as a fighter acting within Chen’s organization and under his direction.

The Garden’s public cover helps explain the risks and conditions of that bond. Chen presents the illegal fight venue as a bar, treating police officers who come there to drink and watch the bouts. Their attendance protects the operation through corruption and silence. Chen is therefore not simply a boxing coach: he runs a dangerous business in which the fights depend on an arrangement that exposes everyone involved to the threat of law enforcement and violence. Jungkook’s status as Chen’s fighter places his athletic role inside that compromised system.

Chen’s authority does not make the relationship purely transactional. When Jungkook and Shelby meet him outside the Garden, Chen turns toward the two younger people and embraces them. The gesture sits alongside his managerial role, making visible a familiarity that the fight-night exchange alone would not convey. The narrative does not define Chen as a relative or specify the full extent of their private life together; it shows a mentor and protégé whose connection has acquired warmth beyond the terms of employment.

The Garden and Jungkook’s identity

For Jungkook, the Ares Garden is more than a venue where Chen arranges fights. When he explains the imagery on his tattoos, he connects the two koi on his left arm with resistance in adversity and specifically with his own time fighting at the Garden. The reference makes the bouts part of the story Jungkook tells through his body: the place has become a measure of endurance as well as a workplace. Chen’s mentorship is consequently tied to a formative identity, though the evidence does not suggest that Chen chose or designed Jungkook’s tattoos.

That significance becomes clear when Chen tells him the Garden has been sold. Chen has just signed the sale papers, and he explains that he can no longer manage the business. He adds that the buyer is a friend who will take over with his daughter. The decision is presented as a change in ownership rather than as a rejection of Jungkook, but it still strikes the fighter with unexpected force. The narrative describes his chest tightening and the news breaking his heart: the venue where he spent much of his time is passing out of Chen’s hands.

Jungkook asks why Chen sold it. Before he can respond to the explanation in any sustained way, he releases Shelby’s hand and walks away without greeting his mentor. His withdrawal gives the news a consequence beyond the business transaction. Chen has not announced the end of their relationship, yet the sale abruptly loosens the shared structure through which their bond has operated. Jungkook’s immediate aim is to find somewhere to expend his anger; Shelby struggles to follow him, falls, and aggravates the pain in her left leg. The scene makes the cost of the announcement visible not only in Jungkook’s departure from Chen, but also in the distress his reaction creates around him.

Separation and the Garden’s return

The separation is not final, but the relationship changes with the institution. Later, Jungkook encounters Evie near the closed Ares Garden after leaving an appointment with Sunmi. She confirms that her father has bought the venue from Chen, and Jungkook recognizes her as the woman who previously fought Shelby. The closed building marks the interval between Chen’s ownership and its next phase: the old arrangement has ended, leaving Jungkook face to face with a place that once organized his fighting life but is no longer operating under his mentor.

The new owner, Spencer Jenkins, tells Jungkook that the doors will reopen the following week. He also says Chen has praised Jungkook and that he hopes to see him fight. Spencer makes Jungkook the first person on his list and describes people as waiting for the champion’s return. Jungkook responds by looking toward the venue with eager anticipation. Chen is absent from this encounter, but his endorsement travels ahead of the new management. His confidence in Jungkook becomes a form of continuity: the fighter is welcomed into the Garden’s future partly because his former mentor has vouched for him.

This continuation does not undo the hurt caused by the sale or establish that Chen and Jungkook resume their former working relationship. Instead, it distinguishes their personal bond from Chen’s ownership of the venue. Chen can no longer manage the business, while Jungkook may return to fight under Spencer’s management. Their association therefore persists as a source of recognition and professional history even as its institutional basis changes.

Significance of the bond

The relationship links care, authority, and the costs of belonging to a dangerous enterprise. Chen’s mentorship gives Jungkook a recognized place in the boxing world, but that place depends on an illegal business sustained by police corruption. The Garden offers a durable identity—Jungkook’s own tattoos recall his perseverance there—while remaining vulnerable to Chen’s decision that he can no longer manage it. The sale reveals how deeply Jungkook’s sense of attachment has become bound to the venue and to the person who led it.

The aftermath gives Chen’s role a quieter form. He does not personally bring Jungkook back to the ring; instead, his praise reaches the new owner and helps keep the possibility open. The relationship thus shifts from active mentorship inside the Garden to a legacy carried beyond Chen’s ownership. Jungkook’s eager response to the reopening shows that the fighting identity Chen helped cultivate remains powerful, while the circumstances of the sale show that this inheritance is not uncomplicated.