"Baki Hanma," the chef said, his voice a dry rustle. "I am Chef Ryumon. These are my four sons. We are not fighters. We are food critics . And we have a problem."
Chef Ryumon bowed his head. The four sons stood and applauded silently. "You have passed," the old man said. He slid a scrap of parchment across the table. "The master's name is Ogasawara. He lives on a mountain in Hokkaido. He never taught Yujiro to fight. He taught him to cook . Yujiro failed this very meal, you see. He broke the table on the third course. He called the stew 'weakness.'"
The location was an abandoned subway station beneath Roppongi. Baki went alone, leaving Kozue with a kiss and a lie about a light workout. Baki Hanma
The challenge was simple: five courses. Each dish was designed to break a different kind of man. If Baki finished all five, he would gain a secret—the location of a reclusive master who had once taught Yujiro Hanma a lesson in humility. If he failed, he would forfeit his title as "World's Strongest" in the underground press.
A platter of glistening white fish arrived. It looked like fugu, but the texture was wrong. Chef Ryumon’s eldest son leaned forward. "It's not the fish that cuts you. It's the knife." The sashimi had been sliced with a blade forged from a shattered piece of Miyamoto Musashi's actual katana. Eating it, Baki felt a phantom slash across his psyche—the ghost of the legendary swordsman's killing intent. It wasn't physical pain; it was the terror of being cut. Baki’s imagination conjured the image of his own severed head. He grabbed a piece with his chopsticks. A ghost can't kill me. My father is real. He ate the entire platter in three bites, the spectral cuts healing as he swallowed. "Baki Hanma," the chef said, his voice a dry rustle
A black iron bowl. The broth smelled of ginger, soy, and something deeply, disturbingly familiar. Baki sniffed. His pupils dilated. It was his own mother's recipe—Emi Akezawa’s special winter stew. The one she made when he was five, before the tragedy, before Yujiro. "How...?" Baki whispered. "We have our sources," said the second son. "We extracted the memory from a chef who knew her." Baki lifted the spoon. As the broth touched his lips, he wasn't in the subway. He was a child. Warm, safe, loved. The taste was a weapon sharper than any punch—regret. Tears welled up, hot and unbidden. He wanted to stop. He wanted to stay in that memory forever. Instead, he drank the whole bowl, letting the tears fall into the empty vessel. Strength isn't about forgetting. It's about carrying the weight and still moving forward.
It was a humid Tokyo night when the letter arrived. No return address. Just a single, thick sheet of black paper with silver kanji that read: "You are invited to the Last Supper. Come hungry." We are not fighters
Placed before him was a single, glistening, raw oyster. But it wasn't normal. It was alive, and its shell had been fused with a minute amount of pufferfish venom . Not enough to kill, but enough to send the nervous system into a panic. The second Baki put it in his mouth, his tongue went numb, his throat tried to close, and every nerve screamed stop . His hands, which had crushed skulls, trembled. Baki closed his eyes. He remembered the quietest moment in the Hyper-Grappler Arena—the silence before a death blow. He forced his body to ignore the alarm, chewed once, and swallowed. The numbness spread, but he smiled. Pain is just information.
At the head sat a gaunt, elderly man with the calm eyes of a temple monk. He wore a chef’s apron stained with a hundred different sauces.