Before the Return is Round 1073 of Jōji Morikawa's Hajime no Ippo manga series.
Details[]
- Title Page Character(s): None
Summary[]
The morning after Ippo and Itagaki's loss against Alfredo and Imai respectively, Umezawa helps with the work at the Makunouchi Fishing Boat. Afterwards, Umezawa eats breakfast with Itagaki, Aoki, and Kimura. Umezawa asks if Aoki and Kimura stayed with Ippo all night long. They answer that they are experts at dealing with losses, and that it is easy for accidents to happen after a match like Ippo had. Umezawa expresses his shock when he watched the match and expected Ippo to win and then go to the world title match, wondering if Ippo is going to give up. Kimura tells him that Ippo claimed that he would go back to the ring one day, which relieves Umezawa. Itagaki reminds everyone that he had a match as well, but Aoki and Kimura comments that it was over so fast and it isn't like Itagaki is hurt badly or tired. Aoki and Kimura realise that Ippo is not home, asking Umezawa what happened. Umezawa explains that Ippo woke up and went to go walk to sort out his feelings. Aoki, Kimura, and Itagaki rushes out the door when they realise that Takamura is most likely doing roadwork, so he might run into Ippo and make fun of the fact he lost. Outside, Ippo is walking on his usual roadwork path, which Ippo wanted to run on, however, his head is spinning and his body hurts all over. Sitting down, Ippo can only remember flashes of what happened in the match, and thinks it is easy to see the reason why he lost: he wasn't determined enough to win nor had the drive to pull it off as he just wanted to see how effective his boxing would be. He realises that he doesn't train to see how well he can do, he has to build up the desire to win, so he spent the entire time leading up to the fight the wrong way. He dislikes the fact that he made the same mistake as to when he lost against Date and disappointed the people around him, not wanting to lose again. Aoki, Kimura, and Itagaki sees Ippo from afar, relieved that they made it in time, however, they realise they didn't as Takamura is running towards Ippo, greeting him.