Shelby's first boxing training

Shelby's first boxing training is a decisive encounter between trauma and controlled physical action. Jungkook brings her to Ares Garden intending to offer exercise, self-defense, and a way to release emotions that she cannot easily express in words. Instead, the punching bag becomes a trigger: the training draws buried images and rage to the surface, forcing Jungkook to recognize the depth of Shelby's distress and to respond not as a fighter seeking victory, but as someone learning how to keep another person safe.

Invitation and Arrival

At Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Jungkook approaches Shelby in the parking area while she is carrying her skateboard and listening to music through earphones. He asks whether she has boxing gloves and then invites her to come to the training hall, suggesting that it might help her release some of what she is carrying. Shelby considers the proposal for both emotional and practical reasons. The prospect of physical exertion seems useful, and learning to defend herself offers a measure of independence after the violence that has shaped her life.

Jungkook supplies the immediate means for the visit. He gives Shelby a sports bag, places his helmet on her head, and drives her to Ares Garden on his motorcycle. She rides behind him, holding tightly around his waist before loosening her grip when she realizes how hard she is clinging to him. At the venue, Chen greets her and assumes that she has come to watch the champion. Jungkook corrects that assumption: Shelby has come to train with him. The distinction matters. She is not merely entering his world as an observer; he is deliberately making space for her within it.

Learning the Physical Grammar of Boxing

Inside Ares Garden, Shelby and Jungkook change separately before going to his usual training room. Jungkook finds gloves and bandages in the changing area and first asks to see her hands. Her hands are delicate and show no evidence of previous blows or ink. He wraps them carefully, allowing her to watch and absorb the technique, then fits the gloves over the bandages. The preparation establishes boxing as a practiced discipline rather than a spontaneous act of violence: the body must be protected before it is used, and technique precedes force.

Jungkook demonstrates which movements to make and which to avoid. Shelby watches closely, including the movements of his tattooed body, and begins to imitate him. She works at the punching bag while Jungkook steps away to perform sets of push-ups and sit-ups. At first she remains focused, repeating hooks and straight punches with caution. The scene gives her a temporary structure: gloves, wraps, instruction, repetition, and a clearly defined target. Yet that structure cannot contain what the exercise releases.

The Bag as Trigger

Images that Shelby does not want to remember begin to pass through her mind. Her disgust and distress intensify as she continues striking the bag, and the punches become harder and more violent. The training changes value in the middle of the session. What began as an invitation to exercise and acquire self-defense becomes an uncontrolled confrontation with the memories connected to her abuse. The punching bag no longer functions simply as equipment; it becomes the physical surface on which suppressed rage is acted out.

Jungkook notices the transformation immediately. He rises, breathless from his own exercises, and sees the destructive anger taking hold of her. Shelby struggles and screams when he pulls her away from the bag, refusing to stop hitting. Her cries express both pain and rage, while her increasingly rapid breathing and sense of suffocation reveal that the episode has moved into panic. Jungkook had not anticipated that the training would place her in such a state, and the scene forces him to confront the limits of his original solution: physical release cannot be treated as automatically therapeutic when the body is already carrying unprocessed trauma.

Jungkook's Response and the Recovery of Safety

The struggle ends with Jungkook against the wall and Shelby pressed against him, finally breaking down in tears against his chest. The violence that she has held inside emerges through both blows and crying. Recognizing the crisis, Jungkook lifts her and carries her to the showers in the changing room, where he sets her gently on the floor. Before he can decide what to do next, Shelby stops him and explains that she needs to regain a calm breathing pattern. Her refusal directs the care she is receiving; she identifies what she needs instead of being treated as passive or incapable.

Jungkook crouches in front of her, holds her face gently in his tattooed hands, and asks her to follow his breathing. Shelby nods and tries to match him. The process lasts roughly ten minutes before she is able to calm down. His response is significant because it replaces force with synchronization. He does not attempt to overpower the panic or demand an explanation while she is overwhelmed. He offers his own breathing as a stable rhythm and remains physically present until she can recover control of her body. Once she thanks him, he answers with light humor, reminding her not to be allowed near a punching bag again. The humor does not erase the seriousness of the episode; it gives the aftermath a less threatening shape.

Afterward, Jungkook asks whether she is angry, and Shelby confirms that she is. He helps her stand and proposes that they shower before leaving. The suggestion marks the end of the immediate crisis and a return to ordinary sequence, but it also acknowledges that the session has not produced a simple cure. Shelby has not been cleansed of her anger; she has survived its eruption with another person's help.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

The consequences of the training extend beyond Ares Garden. Jungkook later regrets taking Shelby there, especially after seeing how badly the experience affected her. When she looks at herself in a mirror, recognizes the severity of what has happened, and slides down the bathroom wall in tears, he approaches, crouches, and places a hand on her knees. The contact offers comfort rather than control, and Shelby seeks that reassurance instead of rejecting it. The training therefore becomes one of the early scenes in which bodily contact is negotiated through distress, caution, and response.

Namjoon observes that Jungkook's decision to care for Shelby is striking because the two have formed a close bond while both remain lost within their own struggles. Their connection is expected to be tumultuous, but they continue to remain together by a mixture of chance and mutual need. That judgment places the boxing session within a larger relational pattern: Shelby's pain draws out a protective tenderness in Jungkook, while Jungkook's presence gives her a form of support that does not depend on verbal disclosure alone.

The episode also gains force from the characters' histories. Shelby's panic and self-harm belong to a wider pattern of trauma responses. Dorcas later discovers Shelby harming herself and sees the emptiness in her expression, while Sunmi recognizes that Shelby is psychologically broken and provides a calming, careful therapeutic presence. Jungkook, meanwhile, carries his own history of domestic violence. As a child in Seoul, he tries to break free while his brother Ye-jun holds him back from the escalating conflict between their parents. Sunmi remembers that Jungkook once returned home badly beaten by his father, later fled his home at sixteen, and sought refuge with her. His knowledge of fear and bodily danger does not make him automatically skilled at care, but it helps explain why Shelby's panic unsettles him and why he remains beside her rather than abandoning her.

The first training session consequently functions as more than a lesson in boxing. It shows the danger of confusing discharge with healing, while also showing how a structured activity can become the beginning of trust when another person responds attentively to its failure. Jungkook's attempt does not solve Shelby's trauma, and the book continues to depict recurrent panic, avoidance of touch, and the need for professional support. Yet his intervention establishes a recurring contrast between violence used to dominate and physical strength used to protect. In the broader arc of Shelby's recovery, the session is an early movement from isolation toward connection: not a victory over pain, but a moment in which pain is witnessed, survived, and met with care.