Shiraki Uke

Author: Muyin Hongchen

Synopsis:

[Thrilling fights][Sage arts][Lunatics][Divine realm][Scum][Appraisal][Pickled plums]... and of course, [women fighting]!

Shiraki Uke transmigrated to Tokyo. He had a sister and a house.

But his sister had two close friends whose names sounded familiar. One was Kure Karura, and the other was Kozue Matsumoto.

Bad news: he started out thirty million in debt, with his family facing ruin and death;

Good news: heaven never seals off all paths;

In fact, several paths lay before Shiraki Uke—

Go beneath the Tokyo Dome and keep order for a bloodthirsty car man, preventing Yujiro Hanma from going on a rampage;

Go to the Kengan matches, beat Kuroki Gensai, and have his old debts wiped clean;

Play a few rounds of mahjong and eliminate a white-haired middle-aged man named Akagi Shigeru;

Escape an abandoned building before Baku Madarame and face the out-of-control Lodem;

Shiraki Uke: "..."

Fortunately, he could see a group of masters, the fighters from Street Fighter;

More importantly, he wanted to live a little more freely.

Unified timeline setting and creative approach

Because the timelines of some of the original works differ greatly, I've adjusted them as needed—

Unified timeline:

"Baki": after the Great Raitai Tournament, before the invasion of the five death row convicts;

"Kengan": before the main story begins;

"Star: Strike It Rich": the main story begins, and Nozomi Tenma is fired and becomes unemployed;

"Gambling Apocalypse": before the main story begins;

"Tenkaichi Street Wanderer" / "Legend of Mahjong": Akagi Shigeru is thirty-five. In the original, he first retired at thirty-nine; at this point, his interest in the mahjong world is waning;

――――――――――

Hongchen's level on the "Baki" forum is pretty high too. There's an opinion I've shared there, and it's also my creative approach for this book.

First of all, I'll do my best to make this enjoyable even for readers who haven't read the original works, so please don't worry~!

I was very dissatisfied with the "Baki" and "Kengan" crossover, because the producers forcibly matched up characters with similar settings—people who followed the same "path." That made it less interesting and less fun.

Fighting is a contest in pursuit of "what is strength" and "what is the path," not simply stacking power-scaling boxes.

Even experts can lose because of a momentary error in judgment, and seemingly weak people can have a chance to show their strength.

I can accept Baki, out of curiosity, taking Saw Paing's Burmese headbutt head-on and losing after being knocked unconscious—that's absolutely something Baki would do. I can also accept Ohma coming up short against masters of other techniques.

But if you forcibly match up two people on the same "path" and make one defeat the other, that proves one person's "path" has lost, which makes it uninteresting.

So whether it's battles of wits or fights, I'll do my best to make them more interesting. I won't elevate one path by putting down an identical one, and I especially won't stack power-scaling boxes.

I wanna smell that delicious bloody smell, rawr!

I wanna watch women fight too!

Also, there won't be any Hong Kong comic settings like "magnetic fields."

The power system for the Street Fighter cheat draws on "Street Fighter V," the World Tour mode of "Street Fighter 6," and some comic crossovers, and fits the worldviews of the various original manga.

PS: The gambling arc (15–36) has a somewhat slow pace when it comes to the gambling, so you can skip it for now. Probably, maybe, perhaps, it shouldn't affect much. I've carefully adjusted the pacing afterward, so it should flow much more smoothly.

PPS: Still, it wouldn't hurt to skim it; it's all about introducing the characters~

That's about it. Please enjoy. Muah~

Chapter 1: Shiraki Uke

Tokyo, on the border between Bunkyō City and Toshima City.

Two temporary sheet-metal shelters had been erected on a vacant lot beside a freestanding, dangerously dilapidated building.

"Bro, I'm off to school! I have the night off from my part-time job, so I'll be back early. Don't go wandering off!" His sister, who had just started her second year of high school, gave her older brother a serious reminder before leaving.

Shiraki Uke's head was splitting at the moment. He waved a hand instinctively. "Be careful on your way! Besides, why would I wander off..."

"...No, wait, I really would!"

Watching his sister walk away, Shiraki Uke suddenly came to his senses. Memories of his previous life flooded into his mind, making everything seem both familiar and strange.

He had been struck from behind with a club last night!

He had been taken to the hospital and given a simple bandage, but worried that the medical bills would be too high, he had stumbled all the way home and collapsed unconscious on his bed.

"Hiss..."

His head hurt.

Shiraki Uke went outside, turned on the tap, and washed his face. Then he raised his head and looked at himself in the mirror.

Gauze was wrapped around his head, and the blood that had seeped through had already dried.

Shiraki Uke touched it lightly with his hand.

"Hiss!"

His head... no, his brain hurt!

He remembered—

Once, there had been a kindhearted old man who had adopted the homeless Shiraki Uke, then a younger girl whose parents had died in an earthquake. The three of them had pieced together a family.

As he lay dying, the old man had left the siblings his ancestral plot of land and the old dojo on it.

They had thought they could make a modest living by running children's hobby classes and doing other odd jobs. But after one training session, Shiraki Uke had suffered a headache and gone to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a disease—

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as "boxer's disease."

It was common among professional boxers. Repeated impacts to the brain caused diffuse small hemorrhages, brain atrophy, and degeneration of nerve fibers—in other words, brain damage.

Early symptoms included sluggish movements, an unsteady gait, and slurred speech. Parkinsonism appeared in the middle stage; in the late stage, it could develop into dementia, epilepsy, personality changes, and other conditions.

At present, there was still no effective treatment for boxer's disease, only recuperation.

According to the doctor, decades ago, a rising boxing star named Joe Yabuki had been on the verge of making his mark on the world stage, only to collapse after a match. Boxer's disease had been one of the reasons.

After falling ill, Shiraki Uke's health had steadily deteriorated, and he could no longer run the hobby classes. The dojo, already quiet, had fallen further into disrepair.

Over the past two years, Shiraki Uke's illness had progressed to the middle and late stages. Sometimes he would even lose awareness and wander off.

To treat her brother—or at least slow the progression of his illness—his sister, Sakurai Arisa, had tried to raise money wherever she could. After spending what little they had in savings, she had been tricked by the local yakuza into taking out a loan at exorbitant interest.

The medical bills were already extremely expensive, and with interest piling up on interest, the debt had long since become astronomical. The local yakuza had proposed using the dojo's plot of land to pay it off.

But Shiraki Uke knew full well that those yakuza were thugs at heart, with no credibility whatsoever. Even if he handed over the land, the siblings would never have a good day again.

Rather, once he signed the transfer papers, those thugs would have nothing left to hold them back and would surely strip the siblings of everything they had!

Shiraki Uke had refused to sign, and in retaliation, he had been struck from behind with a club while walking at night.

Shiraki Uke widened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror.

Amid the sharp pain and dizziness, he felt as though everything before his eyes was slowing down, and the "himself" in the mirror was writhing and shifting.

How could this be...

Was his illness acting up again?

Strangely, though, Shiraki Uke's mind was perfectly clear. He could hear his heart beating, but the intervals between beats were growing longer.

Everything around him seemed to be slowing down.

Only the "himself" in the mirror changed like a cloud of ink, becoming another person—

He was a muscular middle-aged man, with a dark red monk's robe draped over his upper body, white gi pants on his lower body, and a red headband tied around his forehead.

He had thick eyebrows and large, fiercely wide eyes, with sparse stubble on his face. Yet he did not look unkempt; instead, he looked like ink splashed onto rice paper, bold and forceful.

...Ryu?

As memories surged, Shiraki Uke instinctively thought of that name.

The man before him was a fighter who did not exist in this world—he came from the world of "Street Fighter."

Ryu was a pure "seeker of the martial path." He practiced a fighting art derived from an assassination fist and had integrated many fighting techniques. His fundamentals were especially solid, and his fighting style was highly versatile.

In the mirror, Ryu's figure seemed to be drawn in ink, flickering and indistinct.

There were more blurry figures: a hulking wrestler, a sumo wrestler wearing face paint, a drunken fist master with a wine gourd at his waist, a soldier with a strange broom-shaped haircut...

Only a second seemed to have passed, yet Shiraki Uke could think about many things, remaining conscious during that brief second while his thoughts raced at an explosive pace.

"Time has slowed down, and I'm still thinking."

"That's a fighter who doesn't exist in this world—Ryu? He's... staring at me."