Le combat sous cocaïne de Jungkook is the decisive relapse in which Jungkook Jeon’s unresolved trauma, rage, and dependence on underground violence erupt into a near-fatal assault at Ares Garden. The incident changes the meaning of his apparent control: the fighter who has made aggression into a discipline becomes, under cocaine, a danger to his opponent, the spectators, Shelby Anderson Barnum, and himself. It also marks the point at which the boxing world stops treating his violence as a usable talent and begins treating it as a breach requiring exclusion and accountability.

Causes and Background

The fight follows an emotional crisis rather than an ordinary sporting decision. Jungkook leaves the university library abruptly and returns to Ares Garden in Ellensburg, a place he had not expected to revisit so soon. The setting carries the weight of his earlier life in underground boxing, where physical punishment, secrecy, and destructive forms of belonging have reinforced one another. His return therefore represents a retreat into an old coping mechanism at the exact moment when his attachment to Shelby has begun to unsettle him.

The relapse is also connected to a much older history of violence. As a child in a house in Seoul, Jungkook was restrained by Ye-jun Jeon while their parents fought downstairs; at eight years old, he was already trying to intervene in violence that exceeded his power to stop. Later, Sunmi Eun remembers that Jungkook first appeared at her home with a badly injured face and falsely claimed that he had fought at school. She eventually learned that Dong-hyun Jeon had beaten him, and that Jungkook fled his family home at sixteen to seek refuge with her. His later involvement with substances and dangerous fighting is thus presented not as an isolated lapse but as part of a repeated passage from helplessness into self-endangering force.

The immediate emotional pressure is intensified by Shelby’s presence in Jungkook’s life. Namjoon Kim has already recognized that the two troubled young people have formed a close, volatile bond, each searching for a way toward the other while remaining unable to escape personal darkness. Jungkook’s later claim that he took cocaine in order to drive Shelby from his mind turns the drug use into a cruel act of emotional displacement: intimacy becomes the trigger, and aggression becomes his attempted defense against it.

What Happens at Ares Garden

The incident takes place at 00:10 on Saturday, 23 November, at Ares Garden. Jungkook strikes his opponent repeatedly with his right fist, breaking one of the man’s teeth. His eyes appear filled with an unfamiliar, almost glassy rage, while Namjoon and Chen Wu watch with growing alarm. Namjoon searches Jungkook’s belongings for his phone and calls Shelby because the violence has exceeded the limits of a fight and appears to be connected to cocaine use.

Namjoon tells Shelby that he believes Jungkook has taken drugs and is beating his opponent to death. Shelby immediately leaves her room, puts on her shoes, and rushes toward Ares Garden with her skateboard. She falls on the way but continues into the establishment, using the secret passage from the bar to reach the underground venue. The frantic journey makes her response concrete: despite their uncertain relationship, she treats Jungkook’s collapse as an emergency rather than as a spectacle.

Inside, Shelby sees Jungkook above an opponent who is already completely inert. Jungkook is drooling as anger and hallucinations overwhelm him, while the crowd encourages him to continue until the unconscious man dies. The scene reverses the supposed order of the boxing ring. A place governed by rules becomes a collective pressure toward murder, and the audience’s approval confirms how easily entertainment, money, and violence have fused. Shelby’s cry of Jungkook’s name finally reaches him.

When some spectators turn on Shelby and tell her to leave, Jungkook abruptly shifts his violence toward protecting her. He grabs a man who is about to touch her, head-butts him, and pushes him to the floor. The gesture does not undo the danger he has created, but it reveals the contradiction at the center of the incident: Jungkook is capable of defending Shelby even while his intoxication makes him the source of a wider threat.

The Confrontation with Shelby

After leaving the ring, Jungkook confronts Shelby in a state of intoxicated cruelty. He mocks her tears and rejects the possibility that their kiss meant they were together. He then admits that he took cocaine because he wanted her out of his head, claiming that she occupied too much of his thoughts and ordering her to leave him alone. His words transform private confusion into deliberate humiliation.

Shelby asks why he kissed her if he feels nothing. Jungkook answers that he does not know and tells her that she is foolish to think she matters to him. The exchange gives the relapse its most intimate consequence: the cocaine-fueled assault is not confined to the ring. Jungkook uses the same language of domination and contempt against the person whose presence has made his emotional defenses unstable.

Shelby responds physically and verbally. She slaps Jungkook, shoves him against the wall, grabs his black hair, and rejects the idea that she is one of his disposable sexual partners. She calls him self-absorbed and pitiful, tells him that she never wants to see him again, and refuses to let him define her place in his life. Her reaction is an act of dignity and boundary-setting within a scene otherwise structured by Jungkook’s aggression.

Outside, Shelby breaks down in Namjoon’s arms and explains what happened while he listens and comforts her. Jungkook, left alone upstairs, also collapses into tears. He cannot believe that he has treated Shelby this way after only a few days in which she was the person with whom he felt most at ease. The emotional aftermath therefore exposes a value reversal: the drug was intended to suppress attachment, yet it proves how deeply attachment has already taken hold.

Consequences and Discipline

Chen confronts Jungkook after he cleans the cocaine from the changing area and showers. He bans Jungkook from setting foot in Ares Garden and warns him that other clubs will be informed. Chen makes clear that underground boxing still has rules: fighters cannot compete while drunk or using cocaine, and they cannot attack spectators who provide the money that sustains the venue. Jungkook acknowledges the ban and says that he will not return.

Chen’s response separates mentorship from indulgence. He has previously been connected to Jungkook through boxing, but he refuses to protect the fighter’s place when Jungkook’s conduct threatens the opponent, the audience, and the institution itself. The ban is both punishment and containment. It interrupts the environment in which Jungkook has been rewarded for escalating pain and prevents the relapse from being normalized as merely another spectacular performance.

Chen adds a further condition: Jungkook must apologize to Shelby, and Chen intends to ensure that he does so. This demand links public accountability to private repair. Jungkook’s offense has damaged the rules of Ares Garden and Shelby’s sense of safety, so neither the venue nor the relationship can be restored through silent regret. His tears and remorse matter, but the event insists that remorse must be followed by action.

The incident also alarms Namjoon, who says that Jungkook has completely lost control and refuses help despite needing it badly. Namjoon later visits Sunmi, who immediately notices that something is wrong and learns that Jungkook has caused trouble again. The crisis thus moves through Jungkook’s social network: Chen responds through institutional discipline, Namjoon through protective concern, and Sunmi through the history of refuge and psychological care that already binds her to Jungkook.

Narrative Significance

The fight condenses the book’s recurring contrast between violence and care. Jungkook’s childhood shows violence being learned inside the family, while his life at Ares Garden turns that learned response into a public identity. Against it, the surrounding narrative places forms of intervention that do not rely on domination: Namjoon calls Shelby rather than entering the ring blindly; Shelby interrupts the crowd’s demand for death; Chen imposes a boundary; and Sunmi remains the adult figure who recognizes the depth behind Jungkook’s behavior.

The same contrast appears in the treatment of Shelby. During her own panic and self-harm crises, Cassiopée Smith and Jungkook learn to approach her carefully, while Sunmi uses gentle contact and guided breathing to help her regain stability. Later, when Madison Jefferson finds Shelby in a panic attack, she seeks Jungkook, who calms Shelby through presence and reassurance. These scenes do not erase the damage caused by the Ares Garden incident, but they sharpen its significance: care is shown as a practiced alternative to coercion, while Jungkook’s relapse demonstrates the consequences of returning to force when emotional pain becomes intolerable.

The event also changes the trajectory of Jungkook and Shelby’s relationship. Their bond is not presented as a simple cure for trauma; Jungkook’s relapse temporarily converts intimacy into rejection and fear. Yet the crisis makes his attachment impossible to deny. His attempt to destroy the feeling only produces a more devastating confession of its power, while Shelby’s refusal to accept humiliation establishes that any future closeness must involve respect, consent, and responsibility.

Jungkook’s exclusion from Ares Garden is therefore more than a plot punishment. It is the collapse of a former identity built around endurance, secrecy, and violent mastery. The event leaves him unable to pretend that underground boxing and cocaine are harmless extensions of his personality. It forces the story toward apology, recovery, and the possibility of a gentler form of strength, while preserving the fact that such change must begin after real harm has occurred.