Shokunin: Omakase Master

Your finger is the blade. The ticket decides where it lands.

A customer sits down and orders a dish. Food comes off the counter and you cut it out of the air — but only what that order actually needs. The salmon flying past when someone asked for tuna is somebody else's dish. Let it fall. Cutting it wastes a fillet, costs you points, and breaks your streak.

That one rule changes everything about how you play. You are not clearing the screen. You are filling an order, under a patience clock, while the wrong ingredients keep coming.

THREE SEATS, NOT ONE Up to three orders sit at the counter at once, and a party of two or three orders together. Each ticket keeps its own patience. Nobody waits while you decide.

A SHELF THAT RUNS DOWN The day opens stocked, and orders only come in for dishes you can still make. Every cut spends something. Waste enough of the wrong fish and the dishes you were counting on stop being offered — sell out entirely and the day closes, which is what a good day looks like.

MASTER KENJI SETS A TRIAL Clear your first day, and every third day after it, and he puts a dish in front of you to build, in the order it is really built. Nigiri starts by shaping the rice. A roll starts with the nori on the mat. Gunkan is wrapped before it is filled, and getting that backwards is the mistake every apprentice makes. He grades you on knowing, not on speed — there is no timer in the trial.

A KNIFE THAT DULLS Eight blades, from a training knife to a katana that has no business behind a sushi counter. A sharper knife does not raise your ceiling; a clean cut scores the same on any of them. What changes is how much of your own inconsistency it forgives. Every cut wears the edge, and sharpening costs coins.

SIX STATIONS Dishwasher to Living Treasure. Each rank hands over knives, opens new dishes, and changes the room you work in — a rained-on street stall, a smoky izakaya, a silent omakase counter.

THREE LOST DAYS CLOSES THE COUNTER Run out of misses three services running and it shuts for twenty-four hours. Wait it out, or spend 200 coins to open early. Clearing a day wipes the slate.

Every knife sold in the shop is granted free at its rank, and the sake allowance refills daily for nothing — buying only makes them arrive sooner. The closed counter is the one thing coins skip, and a day's patience skips it too.