Chen

Chen is the owner and controlling force of Ares Garden, a bar whose ordinary public face conceals an illegal boxing operation. His importance lies in the contradiction he embodies: he provides Jungkook with belonging, status, and a route into underground boxing, while maintaining the violent system that repeatedly endangers him. Through Chen, Ares Garden becomes both a workplace and a coercive social world, one sustained by secrecy, corruption, fear, and personal loyalty.

Identity and Power

Chen presents Ares Garden as a bar, but the establishment is designed to protect the fights taking place inside it. Police officers who come to drink are treated well and often watch the bouts; their participation makes them complicit, while Chen’s reputation ensures that they understand the danger of speaking openly. The venue therefore depends on more than hidden rooms or a cover story. It is supported by a network in which hospitality, bribery, intimidation, and silence reinforce one another. Chen is described as dangerous, and the policemen who know him have no real freedom to challenge the arrangement.

His authority is practical as well as symbolic. He controls access to the arena, oversees its fighters, and acts as the person who can stop a bout when violence exceeds even the brutal expectations of the ring. The evidence repeatedly places him at the boundary between organized spectacle and uncontrolled harm: he encourages Jungkook from outside the ring, watches his condition, and intervenes physically when his champion can no longer calm himself.

Manager of Jungkook and Ares Garden

Jungkook prepares his sports bag, drives to Ares Garden, and enters the building as a regular combatant under Chen’s management. Before one fight, Chen encourages him while Namjoon remains unusually silent. Jungkook enters the ring with a murderous look, studies Andrew Wilson, and treats the confrontation as a familiar performance of dominance. Chen’s presence helps establish the routine behind the violence: preparation, arrival, spectators, encouragement, and the public identity of a champion.

That routine becomes unstable when Jungkook is no longer fully himself. Namjoon notices his worrying state, but the change initially escapes both Namjoon and Chen. Jungkook reaches the ring, receives the usual cheers and applause, greets his opponent, cracks his neck, and readies himself to fight, while the opposing fighter recognizes that something is wrong. The scene reveals the limit of Chen’s control. He can manage the arena’s procedures and cultivate a champion’s reputation, but he cannot reliably contain the damage accumulated inside the fighter he has built into the venue’s symbol.

When Jungkook refuses to calm down, Chen climbs into the ring and grabs him, bringing the younger man down onto the floor. Jungkook struggles like an animal, but Chen is stronger and restrains him. The intervention is protective in its immediate effect because it prevents further escalation, yet it also preserves the arena’s logic: the crisis is handled through force rather than through a language of consent, treatment, or emotional disclosure. Chen can stop Jungkook’s body, but the scene does not show him resolving the anger that produced the danger.

Encounters with Shelby and the Limits of the Arena

Chen becomes indirectly involved in Shelby’s trauma when she reaches the Ares Garden changing rooms after an assault. Jungkook finds her trembling and crying while water is already running, despite knowing that the other underground boxers usually shower only after the fights. Chen’s earlier departure leaves Jungkook alone with her, and Jungkook turns off the water, crouches beside her, and waits without knowing what else to do. The venue that normally displays male physical power is transformed into a place where the urgent task is simply remaining beside a terrified person.

Later, Chen is present while Jungkook and Namjoon attend to Shelby. Namjoon returns with a first-aid kit as Jungkook turns off the water and cleans Shelby’s face before treating her injuries. Jungkook then approaches her, crouches, and places his right hand on her knees; the contact matters because Shelby is actively seeking comfort. Chen’s arena thus becomes the setting for an unexpected form of care, although that care comes from the people around him rather than from the institution’s normal practices.

Chen’s relationship to Shelby is also filtered through Jungkook’s growing attachment to her. Shelby’s friends later observe that she has become more open and less cold, and they attribute much of the change to the collective support around her, especially Jungkook. Chen belongs to the environment from which Jungkook comes, but the emotional transformation associated with Shelby requires a movement beyond its rules of aggression and concealment.

Sale and Reopening of Ares Garden

Chen eventually tells Jungkook and Shelby that he has signed the papers selling Ares Garden. He explains that he can no longer manage the business and reassures them that the buyer is a friend who will take care of everything with his daughter. The sale changes Chen’s position from proprietor and gatekeeper to departing figure. It also separates the arena’s future from his personal capacity to sustain it.

The venue is not simply erased by the transaction. Spencer Jenkins later introduces himself to Jungkook, identifies him as Chen’s champion, and announces that Ares Garden will reopen the following week. The change in ownership therefore preserves the institution and its boxing culture while altering its leadership. Chen’s influence survives through the reputation he has given Jungkook and through the continuing value of the champion he cultivated.

Narrative Significance

Chen is neither a simple villain nor a neutral employer. He is the human face of a corrupt underground economy: he offers fighters recognition and a place to belong, but his business depends on violence, compromised police, and the normalization of physical danger. His interventions show genuine command and a capacity to prevent immediate catastrophe, yet they remain embedded in the same structure that produces the crises.

For Jungkook, Chen functions as a source of identity and a dangerous form of mentorship. Ares Garden gives him a ring, an audience, and the title of champion, but it also rewards rage and makes bodily injury part of his social value. Chen’s eventual sale of the arena opens a transition in the story, while the reopening under Spencer Jenkins demonstrates that leaving one proprietor does not automatically end the system. Chen’s decisive legacy is therefore ambivalent: he helps make Jungkook visible, powerful, and connected, even as the world he controls forces Jungkook to confront how much of that power has been built from trauma and violence.