Jungkook–Chen mentor relationship

The Jungkook–Chen mentor relationship is rooted in underground boxing and tested when Jungkook’s destructive impulses collide with the rules of Ares Garden. Chen’s care for his protégé is real, but it is not unconditional permission: when Jungkook fights while intoxicated, uses cocaine, and harms people around the ring, Chen makes accountability part of the relationship. Their bond therefore joins personal loyalty to the limits of a mentor’s authority—and shows how difficult it is to guide someone whose violence extends beyond the sport.

A mentor within the boxing world

The story identifies Chen as Jungkook’s mentor and places their relationship inside the underground boxing scene at Ares Garden. The available scenes do not show how they first met or how Jungkook began training under him. Instead, the relationship becomes visible through the responsibilities Chen assumes: he watches Jungkook’s conduct, knows the club’s rules, and intervenes when Jungkook’s behavior puts both other people and his place in the boxing world at risk.

Chen’s concern is apparent before he disciplines Jungkook. During a bout, Jungkook attacks his opponent with a frightening, glassy-eyed rage, repeatedly striking the man and knocking out one of his teeth. Chen recognizes that something is seriously wrong. Namjoon, equally alarmed, goes to find Jungkook’s phone and calls Shelby to ask her to come to Ares Garden urgently. Chen’s reaction places the fight beyond ordinary competitive aggression: the people who know Jungkook see a change in him and fear what it may lead to.

The crisis also follows a longer history of vulnerability that Chen cannot simply erase. Jungkook grew up amid violence at home; as a child, he tried to intervene in his parents’ arguments despite his older brother Ye-jun’s efforts to hold him back. Later, Sunmi recalls that Jungkook had concealed his father’s violence and, at sixteen, fled to her home. She also remembers his early exposure to things a teenager should not have had to face. This background does not excuse the harm he causes at Ares Garden, but it helps situate Chen’s role: the mentor is confronting dangerous behavior in a young man whose capacity for self-destruction predates their conflict.

Ares Garden’s rules and the rupture

After the fight, Jungkook is alone in the changing area with cocaine scattered on the floor. He cleans it up, washes, and dresses before meeting Chen at the bar. Chen is waiting with an angry expression, and the conversation turns from concern to a firm sanction. He tells Jungkook that he is no longer allowed to set foot in Ares Garden until he has taken the necessary steps to address what happened. Jungkook accepts the ban and says he will not return.

Chen makes clear that this is not a personal whim or a punishment detached from the club’s standards. He plans to alert the other clubs so Jungkook cannot take the same disruption elsewhere. Even underground boxing has rules, Chen insists: a fighter cannot compete drunk or while using cocaine, and cannot strike members of the audience who pay to watch. Jungkook knows these boundaries; his agreement that he will not return confirms that the breach is not simply a misunderstanding. Chen’s authority rests on enforcing limits that protect the event as well as the people around it.

The exclusion is paired with a demand for repair. As Jungkook is about to leave, Chen stops him with a hand on his shoulder and tells him to apologize to Shelby, adding that he will make sure Jungkook does so. The instruction connects Jungkook’s conduct in the club to its consequences outside it: the people around him cannot be treated as collateral damage from his anger. Jungkook nods, leaves, and drives toward campus with tears in his eyes. Chen’s intervention does not immediately undo the harm or settle Jungkook’s crisis, but it directs him toward an obligation he would otherwise have to face alone.

Loyalty after discipline

Chen’s firmness does not cancel his concern for Jungkook. His intervention distinguishes mentorship from indulgence: he does not protect Jungkook from the consequences of violating the rules, but he does not respond as though the young man is beyond care. The ban is severe precisely because Chen takes Jungkook’s conduct seriously and refuses to let the boxer’s talent or history excuse endangering others. Their relationship is strained by that refusal, yet Jungkook does not openly challenge Chen’s authority in the scene; he accepts the decision and leaves.

A later crisis changes the balance between mentor and protégé. After Jungkook fights Bruce Wilson and Bruce pays bail, Chen realizes that he will no longer be allowed to manage Ares Garden. He is given the remainder of the day and evening to announce the change at the venue and say goodbye. When Chen and Jungkook meet outside the police station, Chen questions whether Jungkook really had to fight. Jungkook answers sarcastically that helping him was a pleasure. The exchange carries both resentment and recognition: Jungkook’s violence has helped Chen in this immediate situation, but it has also arrived amid the loss of Chen’s position at the club.

Chen warns Jungkook not to hurt Shelby again and asks whether he understands. Jungkook repeats that he does. The warning recalls the earlier demand for an apology, but now it is framed as a continuing responsibility rather than a single act of repair. Jungkook privately resolves that he does not want to hurt Shelby again. Chen then embraces him and thanks him for intervening, even though the gesture was excessive, because it has kept Chen from going to prison. Chen must now say goodbye to everyone and look for work that is entirely legal. Before they part, he asks Jungkook to take care of himself and Shelby; Jungkook promises that he will.

What the relationship represents

Chen’s mentorship is defined less by an account of technical instruction than by the moments when he draws boundaries. At Ares Garden, he insists that boxing does not license intoxication, cocaine use, or violence against spectators. In his personal dealings with Jungkook, he similarly refuses to treat the young man’s actions toward Shelby as irrelevant to his conduct as a fighter. The mentor’s practical authority—excluding Jungkook, warning other clubs, and requiring an apology—makes the cost of crossing those boundaries immediate.

The relationship also contains mutual dependence without becoming a simple story of rescue. Chen tries to restrain Jungkook’s destructive choices, while Jungkook later helps Chen avoid prison, an intervention Chen openly appreciates. Their final exchange binds that gratitude to a charge for the future: Chen is leaving the role that connected them to Ares Garden, but still urges Jungkook to care for himself and the woman he loves. The mentorship’s lasting significance lies in that combination of discipline, loyalty, and limitation. Chen can confront Jungkook and ask him to change; he cannot make that change on Jungkook’s behalf.