"8th Up to Bat" is the eighth chapter of the Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens manga and the second chapter in volume 2.
Synopsis[]
The next morning, Kazuki Saitoh wakes up in a hotel hungover with an unknown woman in bed next to him. He rolls her over to discover that she is dead. Panicking, he quickly dresses and flees.
That morning, Zenji Banba visits Enokida in futaba@cafe, the internet cafe on the fifth floor of the Gate's building in Nakasu where the informant has been staying lately. Banba asks him to look up the identity of the young crossdressing hitman, and Enokida, who had performed the same favor the day before for Yamato, pulls up Xianming Lin's information.
When Banba returns to his apartment, Lin is awake and dressed and has a would-be assassin tied up on the floor. Banba unties the man and forces Lin to let him go with a warning. After revealing that he knows Lin's name and employer, Banba offers Lin enough money to cover his remaining debt for information on the Kakyuu Association. Lin has no qualms about betraying the organization further, and he readily informs the private detective that the growing multinational mafia's main source of income comes through trafficking humans. Lin himself was a human the organization had trafficked, raised in a facility and trained as a killer, and he had been hired by that very organization upon his graduation. When Banba shows Lin the photo Shigematsu had given him, Lin immediately identifies the remaining man in the photo as Zhang, his boss and a Kakyuu Group executive. With photographic evidence of the mayor's ties to the mafia, Banba thanks Lin and offers his business card. Lin turns him down, takes his money, and departs.
When Lin returns to his apartment, Zhang calls, and Lin informs him that his debts are covered and he is now free. Zhang mentions the news, and Lin turns on the television to see the news about the body of a young woman found in a hotel in Nakasu, recognizing her immediately as his own younger sister, Qiaomei. Zhang informs Lin that his mother died five years prior, and the money that Lin thought was going toward his family's debuts had been going in the Kakyuu Group's pockets. Furious, and with all hopes of being reunited with his family dashed, Lin heads straight for the Kakyuu Association offices and slaughters the five men inside before confront Zhang.
Character Debuts[]
- Feilang (flashback)