Chapter 1: Blood in the Snow - The Son's Burden
The snow didn’t just fall; it attacked. It drove sideways on a wind that felt like it was stripping the skin right off Baki’s face. Every step forward was a negotiation with gravity, the deep powder sucking at his boots. But the real weight was on his back.
Yujiro Hanma was a mountain. Conscious, he was an unassailable force of nature. Unconscious, he was just a massive, dead weight of bone and muscle, a sack of wet cement in a torn coat. Baki had him in a fireman’s carry, his arms screaming, his legs burning with a fatigue he hadn’t felt since he was a kid. The red bloom on the pristine snow wasn’t just from his father—Baki’s own knuckles were split and leaking, painting the white with little dots of crimson.
“Should’ve… killed more of them,” Baki grunted into the wind, the words ripped from his lips.
The scene played on a loop behind his eyes. The cabin’s quiet. The hiss of the stove. His father, standing out on the jagged cliff face like he owned the sky, a silent, immovable statue. Then the first thwip sound, so out of place it took a second to register. Not a bullet. A dart. It had lodged in the Ogre’s bull neck. Yujiro had plucked it out, stared at it with an expression of profound disappointment, like a chef finding a hair in his soup. Then five more hit him in rapid succession, a pink mist of tranquilizer puffing into the air with each impact.
They’d emerged from the tree line in white camo, a dozen of Japan’s best, armed with hypodermic rifles. An extraction team. Their commander’s voice, amplified, had echoed off the cliffs: “Yujiro Hanma! By order of the National Security Council, you are to be subdued and contained!”
Subdued. Contained. They talked about his father like he was a rogue bear.
Baki had been moving before the echo died. The tranquilizers were strong, they had to be. They’d brought down elephants, probably. They were starting to slow the Ogre, turning his furious roar into a slurred growl. That’s when the first soldier had made his move, rushing in with carbon-fiber bindings.
Baki had met him halfway. The memory was fractured, vivid. The crunch of a jaw under his elbow. The wet pop of a shoulder dislocating. He’d moved through them not like a martial artist, but like a threshing machine. No technique, just pure, funneled rage. One tried to bring his rifle around; Baki kicked it, and the stock shattered the man’s collarbone. Another fired a dart at him; Baki caught the projectile mid-air and threw it back, burying it in the man’s thigh. He’d broken limbs, shattered ribs, turned their clean operation into a screaming, groaning mess in the red-stained snow. They’d retreated, dragging their wounded, leaving their equipment behind.
By then, Yujiro was on his knees, swaying. His eyes, those terrifying pinpricks of absolute domination, had gone hazy. He’d looked at Baki, a flicker of something—not recognition, maybe just assessment—and then pitched forward into the snow.
“Idiot,” Baki muttered now, heaving his father’s bulk higher. “Could’ve dodged. Could’ve just… left. Had to stand there and take it.”
He wasn’t sure who the insult was for.
The cabin appeared through the blizzard like a ghost ship, a dark hull of pine and stone. He shouldered the door open, the warmth inside hitting him like a wall. He stumbled across the worn rug to the bedroom, its space dominated by a single, king-sized bed made of rough-hewn logs. He dumped his father onto the heavy bearskin cover with a grunt of relief.
For a long minute, Baki just stood there, hands on his knees, sucking in air that smelled of pine tar and wool and blood. His own breathing was ragged. His father’s was slow, deep, unnervingly quiet.
He forced himself to move. He lit the kerosene lamp on the bedside table. The yellow light painted Yujiro in sharp relief.
He looked… smaller. It was an illusion, Baki knew, a trick of the limp stillness. But seeing the man who defined the limits of power laid out like this sent a cold wire of fear down Baki’s spine that no opponent ever had. His coat was torn. His neck was the worst of it.Six needles.
They jutted from the side of his throat and the trapezius muscle, thick veterinary things, not little darts. The skin around each entry point was already an angry, hot-looking red, puffing up. Infection. They’d shot him with filthy poison.
Baki’s hands, which had just shattered composite rifles, began to shake. He clenched them, swallowed hard against a dry throat, and went to work.
He boiled water on the woodstove, found a clean cloth and Yujiro’s stash of high-proof whiskey. He sat on the edge of the bed, the old frame groaning.
His fingers hovered over the first needle. He took a breath, held it, and pulled. It came out with a sick, soft slurp. A bead of dark blood welled up. He did it again. And again. Each extraction felt like a violation. This was Yujiro Hanma. His skin was supposed to be impervious. His body was a fortress. This was… wrong.
He cleaned each hole with the whiskey-soaked cloth, the sharp scent mixing with the iron smell of blood. Yujiro didn’t flinch. His pulse beat strong and slow under Baki’s fingertips. The vulnerability was devastating. Baki found himself studying his father’s face—the harsh lines seemed softer in unconsciousness, the perpetual scowl absent. He looked almost like any other man. It was the most frightening thing Baki had ever seen.
He got the roll of gauze, shifted to carefully lift his father’s head, to support the neck as he began to wrap the bandage.
The eyes snapped open.
No drowsy confusion, no slow return to awareness. They were instantly, terrifyingly clear and focused, locking onto Baki’s with the intensity of twin lasers.
A hand shot up, moving faster than Baki could process. Iron fingers clamped around his wrist with a pressure that threatened to splinter the bones. The grip was absolute.
“And just what the fuck do you think you’re doing, boy?” Yujiro’s voice was a rasp, but no less deadly for it. It vibrated with pure, undiluted menace. “I don’t remember saying you could touch me.”
For a second, Baki was frozen, caught in that gaze. Then the fury, the cold, the exhaustion, the sheer worry of the last few hours erupted.
He yanked his wrist back, breaking the hold through sheer explosive force. “What the fuck am I doing?” His voice was low, shaking. “I’ve pulled out all the needles buried in your throat. I’ve been cleaning your wounds for the last hour. I dragged you all the way back here through a damn blizzard after I beat the shit out of the entire Special Forces unit that put you down.” He stood up, looming over the bed. “Heaven forbid I bring you to safety because I didn’t want to leave you for dead! God forbid I don’t want to see my father suffer! I bet that makes me weak too, huh?”
He let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Ha. I know you wouldn’t do the same for me.I know that. But I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, you’d have it in you to thank me. I guess I was wrong.”
Yujiro stared up at him, propped on his elbows. The red, inflamed punctures on his neck stood out livid against his skin. He didn’t touch them. He just looked at Baki, his expression unreadable. The wind howled outside like a dying beast, testing the cabin’s walls.
Slowly, deliberately, Yujiro swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. He was still a giant, towering even in the low room. He took a single step towards Baki, who stood his ground, fists clenched at his sides.
Yujiro stopped. He tilted his head, the movement animal-like. He didn’t thank him. He didn’t apologize. He just said, his voice now a low rumble that matched the wind,
“You left one alive to tell the story. That was a mistake.”
That was a mistake.”
Baki stood there, the heat of his own outburst cooling into something raw and exposed. His knuckles ached. His father’s gaze was a physical pressure. He didn’t blink.
“‘Thank you’?” Yujiro finally said, the words like stones dropped into the quiet. He let out a sharp, dismissive grunt. “Little bastard.Fine. Go nuts.”
The permission, sarcastic and gruff, hung in the air. Baki just stared, then gave a single, tight nod. He turned back to the medical supplies. The tension didn’t leave the room, but it changed, becoming a brittle, shared space.
He worked in silence. The gauze was clean and white. He lifted his father’s head again, more deliberate this time, and began wrapping the thick bandages around the massive neck, over the inflamed puncture wounds. His fingers were careful, methodical. Yujiro sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the far wall where shadows danced from the kerosene lamp. The only sound was the rasp of cloth and the eternal groan of the wind outside.
“How’d we get here?” Yujiro’s voice cut the quiet, flat and devoid of inflection.
“I carried you.” Baki didn’t look up, securing a piece of tape.
“And the uniforms?”
“I beat the shit out of all of them.” Baki’s tone was matter-of-fact. He finished the bandage, patted it once. “Then I dragged you back here.”
Yujiro said nothing. He touched the bandages, probing the edges with his fingertips. He gave no indication of pain, no sign of approval or displeasure. He just absorbed the information. The silence stretched again, thicker now, filled with the unsaid.
Baki cleaned up. He put the whiskey away, washed the cloth in the basin. He moved around the small cabin, banked the stove, checked the door. He felt his father’s eyes on his back the entire time. It was a familiar sensation, but tonight it felt different. It wasn’t the predatory stare of an opponent sizing him up. It was… assessment. Pure, cold calculation of a different kind.
He sat in the old chair by the stove, letting the weariness sink into his bones. The adrenaline was gone, leaving him hollowed out. He watched the flames flicker behind the iron grate.
“The way you did it,” Yujiro’s voice came from the bed, low and abrupt in the dark. Baki’s head snapped up. His father wasn’t looking at him; he was staring at the ceiling beams. “Taking them down. Getting me out. It was… efficient.”
He paused. The word seemed to hang, unfinished.
“Impressive,” Yujiro finished. The word was expelled from him, like it was foreign. Then he turned on his side, his back to the room, and his breathing deepened almost instantly into the slow rhythm of sleep.
Baki sat frozen in the chair. The words echoed in the space between the crackling of the fire and the howling wind. Impressive. It wasn't praise. It was an observation, a data point. From Yujiro Hanma, it was a seismic event. A warmth, entirely separate from the stove, bloomed in Baki’s chest. It was stupid. It was pathetic. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and let the unfamiliar feeling carry him into a hard, dreamless sleep.
The noise woke him hours later.
It wasn't loud. It was all wrong. A low, wet, rattling growl, punctuated by the sharp gritting of teeth. Baki was on his feet before he was fully awake, the fighter in him instantly alert.
In the dim ember-glow from the stove, he saw his father. Yujiro was curled slightly, trembling. Not the fine tremor of cold, but a deep, systemic shudder that moved through his huge frame. Sweat soaked the blankets. His face was clenched, teeth bared in a silent snarl of pain even in unconsciousness.
“Shit,” Baki breathed.
He lit the lamp again. His hands were steady, cold. He leaned over the bed and carefully peeled back the bandage.
The smell hit him first—sickly sweet and rotten. The wounds, inflamed before, were now raging. The skin around them was a swollen, violent purple, stretched tight and shiny. Thick, yellow-green pus oozed from the puncture sites, leaking down the column of his neck. The heat radiating from the infection was like a furnace.
Not even Yujiro Hanma was immune. The needles had been dirty, the wounds deep, and whatever cocktail they’d used had compromised something, just enough for biology to take its vicious hold.
Baki moved fast. He got the whiskey, the cloth, a basin. He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight making the old frame complain.
“This is going to hurt,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t know if his father could hear him.
He pressed the cloth, soaked in alcohol, against the hottest part of the swelling. Yujiro’s whole body jerked. A raw, guttural groan tore from his throat, a sound of pure animal distress. Baki’s stomach twisted. He’d never heard that sound from this man.
He had to drain it. He placed his thumbs on either side of the worst puncture, his touch as firm as he dared. He pushed inward and down.
The pus came out in a thick, hot stream. Yujiro snarled, his head thrashing on the pillow. One hand came up, fingers hooking like claws, but they didn’t strike out. They dug into the log headboard, the wood splintering with a crack. Baki kept working, methodically squeezing the poison from his father’s body, his own jaw clenched tight against the visceral horror of it. Each burst of infection was a betrayal of the man's mythic invincibility.
Finally, it was done. Clearish fluid mixed with blood. The swelling had gone down, the angry purple receding to a fierce red. Yujiro’s thrashing stopped. He went utterly limp, his breathing a ragged, exhausted drag. The silence felt deafening.
Baki cleaned the area again, hands trembling now from the aftermath. He was suddenly terrified. The stillness was too complete.
“Dad?” The word was out before he could stop it, small and meek in the vast, dark room.
No response. Baki leaned closer. His father’s hair was matted with sweat, stuck to his forehead. Almost without thinking, driven by a need he couldn’t name, Baki reached down. He gently brushed the damp hair back, his fingertips just grazing the scorching skin.
The reaction was instantaneous.
A hand, impossibly fast even in this state, shot up. But it wasn't a strike. It hooked around the back of Baki’s neck. The other arm wrapped around his shoulders. In one powerful, fluid motion, Baki was yanked down, pulled off balance and sprawled across the massive chest.
He was held there, locked in an iron embrace. Yujiro’s heart hammered against Baki’s ear, a frantic drumbeat of fever and survival. His breathing was harsh, wet, his whole body radiating a sick heat.
“You.” The word was choked, forced out between gritted teeth. A shudder ran through the man holding him. “Stay.”
Then the tension snapped. The rigid arms didn’t let go, but they loosened, becoming a heavy, possessive weight. Yujiro’s breathing evened, deepening once more into sleep.
Baki didn’t move. He was pinned, crushed against the source of all his striving, all his pain, all his definition. The smell of infection, sweat, and blood filled his nose. His mind was a white noise of shock.
Thrilled.Confused. Terrified. A child’s longing colliding with a warrior’s caution. He tried to shift, to find a better angle, and the arm tightened possessively. A low, unconscious growl vibrated through the chest beneath him.
Slowly, carefully, Baki stopped fighting it. He let his body relax. He turned his head slightly, his ear pressed over that pounding heart. He brought one arm up, awkwardly, and rested it across his father’s ribcage. A reciprocal hold.
The howling wind outside was just a sound now. The cabin’s creaks were just the house settling. In the heart of the storm, in the eye of the infection, Baki Hanma closed his eyes. He curled into the unexpected, bewildering fortress of his father’s embrace, and for the first time in his life, he allowed himself to be small.