Chapter 118: Albert Payne (Patreon)

Walking behind the others, listening to Yang trade idle chatter back and forth with the old men playing chess, Kozue's expression gradually shifted from her initial nervousness into confusion.

Without quite meaning to, she tugged at Baki's sleeve and asked in a low voice, "Senior Yang... does he know everyone around here?"

"Senior Yang's only had his shop open here a little while," Baki said, scratching his head and lowering his voice to answer her. "But it's like the whole street already knows him."

Beside them, Kure Fusui overheard their whispered exchange and slowed her pace to fall in alongside them.

Though she came from the Kure clan, with a school bag slung over her shoulder, Kure Fusui looked no different from any ordinary high schooler at the moment — except for the way her dark irises caught and refracted the sunlight, which made Kozue instinctively straighten her back a little.

"Yang's shop sells set meals at lunch — two hundred fifty yen a plate," Kure Fusui said without missing a beat.

"The grilled meat set alone comes with rice, miso soup, and two side dishes. Never mind the taste — just the portion size would go for at least seven hundred yen at the school district cafeteria."

"Two hundred fifty yen?" Kozue repeated the number without thinking, already running the math in her head. Young as she was, she'd handled Baki's food budget before, which made her far more sensitive to ingredient prices than the average high schooler.

Two hundred fifty yen came out to roughly ten yuan.

"Pork alone runs... that price wouldn't even cover the cost."

"Yang didn't open the shop to make money in the first place," Kure Fusui said with a shrug.

"Most of Old City's residents are elderly folks who can't bring themselves to leave the place they've always lived. Public order's a lot better now, and there are more young people doing odd jobs around here too, but lunch is often the only proper meal they get in a day. So Yang doesn't charge much for it... Of course, in the evenings he charges normal prices."

That wasn't really "normal pricing," though — after eating there just once, Kure Raian and the others had simply tossed a bank card onto Yang's counter.

They never said how much money was on it, and Yang couldn't be bothered to ask — the proceeds from the contract auction after his Kengan match alone were more than enough to keep his little charity operation running.

But the first time Kozue learned about it, she'd stared at Yang's back in surprise, unable to find anything to say.

Two hundred fifty yen wouldn't even buy you a discounted convenience-store bento — maybe the cheap chicken kind. Even a bargain-basement pork cutlet bento ran at least three hundred fifty yen, something like fifteen yuan.

And more importantly, what Yang was selling clearly wasn't a simple bento — it was a proper set meal.

They might sound similar, but from what Kozue had just heard, Yang's set meals were fully complete — a main dish, a bowl of miso soup, a side dish and an accompaniment, plus rice. It matched the classic ichijū-sansai standard (one soup, three dishes) to the letter.

A meal like that, even a mediocre one, would run over fifteen hundred yen. Two hundred fifty wouldn't even cover the cost.

He looked big and fierce, but he was, unexpectedly, kind of a nice guy?

Thinking that, Kozue relaxed considerably.

A little while later, they reached the school district. Kure Karura and the others split off toward Koo Girls' Academy, and soon after, Kozue headed for her own building too, leaving only Baki at Yang's side.

Seeing that Kozue had gone, Baki let out a breath of relief.

Yang raised an eyebrow at that. "Looks like you've had something on your mind you haven't said out loud?"

"Yeah." At Yang's question, Baki nodded firmly, then admitted, a little helplessly:

"It's mostly... Kozue. She doesn't want me to keep fighting."

"Because it's dangerous, right?" Yang said, unhurried. "That girl clearly knows a lot about fighting — underground fighting especially."

"...Yeah." Baki fell briefly silent, then nodded quietly.

Kozue's father had once been a fighter in the Tokyo Dome Underground Arena, and that was part of why she couldn't understand fighting the way Baki did.

The most important reason: for a long stretch of its history, the Tokyo Dome Underground Arena had offered no prize money at all.

In other words, even a reigning champion of the underground arena like Baki had to cover every cost of preparation and recovery for each match entirely out of his own pocket.

The first time Mitsunari Tokugawa — that bloodthirsty gearhead — broke with tradition and had a solid gold championship belt worth a billion yen made, it had been for the Strongest Creature on Earth elimination tournament.

Kozue's father, as a former member of the Tokyo Dome Underground Arena, had likewise fought there purely as a martial artist chasing the thrill of battle, without any material reward at all.

By comparison, the money the Kengan Association paid out was solid, honest gold.

"Then try talking to her about why fighting matters to you — what it means," Yang said. "If she can come to believe in you the way you believe in yourself, she'll be the best girl you could ever hope to find."

"...Yeah." Baki fell quiet again for a moment, then nodded.

Then, scratching his head a bit sheepishly, he said, "This is the first time anyone's ever talked to me about this stuff... Feels like you really know your way around this kind of thing, Senior."

"Of course. I'm practically a master of the heart," Yang said, nodding as if it were obvious, then clapped Baki on the shoulder.

"Come ask me whenever you're stuck on something. Well — assuming I can actually help."

"Oh, thank you so much!" Baki flashed a brilliant grin.

For all that he'd become the reigning champion of the Tokyo Dome Underground Arena at such a young age, when it came to emotional matters and human relationships — unfortunately, unlike his peerless gift for combat —

at least until the Strongest Creature on Earth elimination tournament, no elder had ever really taught Baki how to handle matters of the heart.

His father, Yujiro Hanma, went without saying — as the "Strongest Creature on Earth," what he cared about was strength, not Baki's emotional growth, and the only language the two of them ever really spoke to each other in was fists.

As for Baki's mother, Emi Akezawa, she'd seen him as a "tool" to one day challenge Yujiro, pouring money into his training while she was alive purely so he'd grow stronger. After her tragic death, the only way Baki knew how to answer her love was by growing stronger still, without end.

As for the other adults in his life — whether it was Mitsunari Tokugawa, the man who ran the underground arena, or Retsu Kaioh, who hadn't appeared yet but would one day become both rival and friend — every exchange they'd ever had with Baki revolved around fighting and martial arts, never once touching on matters of the heart.

Baki's inner emotional world had developed in near-total isolation, entirely through self-guided trial and error.

Wrapped up in that were a boy's confusion, the first stirrings of feeling, a longing for something beautiful, a pull toward instinct...

But... none of that needed dwelling on right now.

"Anyway, quit being so wishy-washy about it," Yang said, heading toward the school building.

"Once you've made up your mind, just do it. If Kozue doesn't know, then let her know. Whatever happens after that — win or lose — just accept it with a clear conscience."

"Right!" Baki answered with an enthusiastic shout.

Never mind whether the advice was actually any good — the point was, someone had finally given him some.

Parting ways with Baki, Yang followed the information on his student ID to find his own classroom.

"First Year — Physical Therapy Program."

Staring at the plaque, Yang sighed and shook his head — some strains of chuunibyou, he decided, were simply baked into a nation's culture. Just reading the name plate left him at a loss for words.

Though he'd found his classroom, Yang didn't go in — instead he headed for the faculty office to find his advisor.

"Oh, oh, so you're Yang. Pleased to meet you."

An elderly professor who looked uncannily like Einstein, his hair white as snow, lit up the moment he laid eyes on Yang.

"I'm Albert Payne. You can call me Professor Albert. If there's no objection, I believe I'll be your academic advisor."

As he spoke, Professor Albert looked Yang up and down with unmistakable relish.

"Ha! No wonder — a martial artist mighty enough to defeat both Sagat and Vega! Just looking at you, I can already sense it — that vibrant, teeming vitality coursing beneath your skin!"

At Albert's words, a flicker of surprise crossed Yang's face. He thought it over for a moment, and it quickly came back to him who this old professor was.

Albert Payne — though he'd struck Yang as familiar at first glance, resembling Einstein and even sharing Einstein's first name — was in fact a character built as a half-homage to the real scientist, across name, appearance, and profession alike.

By design, he was a Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine with no combat ability whatsoever — purely a mad scientist. In the Baki storyline he never fought; he only observed and researched.

And... his sense of scientific ethics ran thin.

During the Pickle the Caveman arc, he'd become obsessively fixated on Pickle, treating him as a one-of-a-kind scientific treasure unmatched in human history, and completely disregarded Pickle's violent, injurious, and downright inhuman behavior.

To keep Pickle in peak condition, he'd even proposed hunting down Siberian tigers and feeding him fighters, all to make sure Pickle's body stayed tuned for prehistoric-style hunting.

And during the Musashi arc, he'd even drawn a gun to threaten Musashi in an attempt to stop him... only to have Musashi snap his wrist and disarm him in an instant.

As the old saying goes, no madness, no mastery.

It was precisely this brand of fanatic madness that had won Professor Albert the appreciation of quite a few people — Mitsunari Tokugawa, for one, regularly invited him to get hands-on with things ordinary people would never have access to.

Still, Yang couldn't help feeling a bit puzzled...

Someone with Albert's credentials showing up at a school like this simply didn't add up.

Never mind anything else — his status alone, as a laureate of the Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Biology, would have countless major corporations and government bodies lining up to build an entire research team around him.

After all, thanks to the existence of martial artists, medicine and biology were among the hottest fields in this world, bar none.

In Yang's previous life, the Cold War-era boom in research on superhumans, psychic phenomena, and superpowers had died out early, right along with the Cold War itself.

This world was different — even now, research in that vein showed no sign of slowing down. If anything, as the information age advanced and more and more people took notice of martial artists' formidable power, investment in the field had only kept climbing...

Looking Yang over, Albert needed only a brief once-over before excitement lit up his face.

Without a word, Professor Albert rose from his seat, circled Yang twice, and finally stopped behind him, staring for a solid ten-odd seconds at the trapezius and latissimus dorsi visible through the collar of his tank top. Then he pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket, put them on, took them off, put them on again — as if trying to decide whether what he was seeing called for a more precise optical instrument.

"...Is something wrong?" Yang asked, curious.

"Nothing... it's just that I've met Sagat before," Professor Albert said, clearly delighted at the question.

"In scientific circles, martial artists' qi has always been a focal point of research for every biologist, physician, and scientist alike. According to a great deal of evidence — archaeological finds included — we can say with certainty that qi existed long before human civilization itself. It's a mysterious quantity older than the human race, and yet one that can still be cultivated and mastered through training."

"Along the way, I've met a great many people — and quite a few powerful martial artists among them, including the Muay Thai Emperor Sagat himself.

Albert looked at Yang. "And from what I've observed, powerful, measurable qi — and intent, which ordinary people can't grasp and which can't be observed at all — both have a real, physical effect on a person's growth and development."

"According to historical records, along with measurements I took myself afterward, Sagat's arm span, leg length, bone density, and other figures all came in about thirty percent above the theoretical maximum.

"Unfortunately, given his status and schedule, I never got the chance for any sustained, targeted research on him...

"But fortunately, I heard about you!"

A blazing light burst into Albert's eyes.

"So young, and already able to defeat Sagat! Whether through chemical stimulation or some burst of dormant potential in your body, it's undeniable proof that you're hiding extraordinary capability inside you! So I pushed past every objection and came here myself! Ha ha, and now I can see — my decision was absolutely the right one!"

With that, Albert added:

"The adduction angle of your scapula is nothing short of perfect. The origin and insertion points of your latissimus dorsi sit lower than on any cadaver I've ever dissected — and this isn't some pathological low attachment. It's pure biological growth, accelerated development, and superior gene expression at work!"

Yang blinked, caught off guard.

Even with the understanding of human anatomy and physiology his training had given him, Albert's barrage of technical jargon left him thoroughly lost.

"What... are you even talking about?"

"I'm talking about your body!" Albert said, brimming with enthusiasm. "I came back to this school specifically for you! And now I can see I was right all along!

"The angle of your scapular adduction, combined with where your latissimus dorsi attaches, means your shoulder joint's range of motion is at least seven to nine degrees beyond the standard human range. That translates to four to five percent extra reach in your arms — more agility, more power, more unpredictability, more crushing weight behind every strike!"