In the academy dining hall, Moriyasu was viciously shoveling a huge plate of chicken meatballs and pork meatballs into his mouth.
He chewed a few times, throat working, and swallowed it all down in one go.
Something wasn’t right here.
Why, after a full month, had the nobility shown no reaction at all?
The so-called Noble Registry hadn’t shown up even once.
And Ounahara seemed to be treating him like he didn’t exist at all, still showing up to teach every day, assigning homework, then hurrying off.
As for enemies, there wasn’t a single one in sight.
Strangest of all, even Aizen hadn’t shown up once this whole month.
The classmates around him seemed to have completely forgotten about his supposed noble impersonation.
Not one of them had brought it up again.
What on earth was going on?
Honestly, being left hanging like this, ignored entirely, left Moriyasu a little annoyed.
He’d even considered heading straight out to the countryside to absorb a wave of Reishi and push his spiritual power rank all the way up to rank five.
Applying straight for graduation, just to shake things up a little.
But doing that would expose far too much, too fast, revealing that he could raise his spiritual power rank at will, whenever he wanted.
He might end up written onto some hidden list somewhere.
From someone worth a little attention, to a target that needed erasing outright.
Sure, he could quickly push his own spiritual power rank all the way up to the very peak of rank one.
But that wouldn’t actually accomplish much.
Because a Shinigami’s real strength was never just about spiritual power rank alone.
Even someone as powerful as Head Captain Yamamoto had been ambushed twice over, in the end, and died a frustrating, undignified death.
He had no intention of ending up like that.
He’d been treading carefully along a certain line this whole time.
For instance, while he’d let his skill with Reishi manipulation show through clearly, he’d deliberately kept his spiritual power rank suppressed.
Nowhere close to someone like the genius Gin Ichimaru.
Not even among this year’s own students, either.
The ones in the so-called Advanced Class all looked like they had far more potential than he did.
So in most people’s eyes, he was, at best, “not bad.” Moriyasu felt his thoughts starting to drift and gave his head a shake, setting the whole noble-clan business aside for now.
No reaction was fine too.
In a few days he’d pay a visit to the Kuchiki estate and ask Rukia whether she’d turned up any leads.
He looked down at the long blade hanging at his waist and couldn’t help letting out a small sigh.
There was another reason he’d been keeping such a low profile all this time.
He wanted to properly, steadily bring his Zanpakuto into being.
It had been over a month since he’d received his Asauchi, but every time he sat in Jinzen, he still hadn’t managed to form any real connection with his Zanpakuto.
Let alone anything like unlocking Shikai, or Bankai.
So what mattered most right now was finding a way to properly develop his Zanpakuto.
That was the real priority.
He tossed his chopsticks down without ceremony and headed out toward the river past the edge of town, to keep working at his Jinzen practice.
…
A month earlier, right after Moriyasu had publicly declared himself a member of a great noble clan, word had spread through the entire Seireitei fast, exactly as he’d expected.
Him coming right out and calling himself a great noble was an entirely different matter from any ordinary claim.
The great clans stood at the very top of power and status in the whole Seireitei.
As people said, even an ordinary captain couldn’t be spoken of in the same breath.
Word reached Shunsui Kyōraku, Captain of the Eighth Division and overseer of Soul Society’s intelligence corps, almost immediately.
After looking over Moriyasu Tokoyo’s file, even he found himself puzzled.
Going by his subordinates’ reports, Moriyasu came across as a talented, good-natured, genuinely solid student, and a sharp one at that.
With the Advanced Class impersonation incident so fresh, someone with Moriyasu’s head on his shoulders would never claim to be a great noble for no reason at all.
Kyōraku had even gone out of his way to pay the First Division a personal visit over it.
But once there, he hadn’t found Head Captain Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto in.
“Lieutenant Sasakibe, I honestly don’t recall ever hearing of a great clan called Tokoyo.
Does the old man have anything to say about it?” Kyōraku said this to Lieutenant Chōjirō Sasakibe, out on the First Division’s courtyard.
That a single piece of news about a great clan was enough to bring an Eighth Division captain out in person said everything about just how much weight nobility carried in Soul Society.
Kyōraku himself came from a noble house, which made him especially sensitive to this Moriyasu Tokoyo who’d suddenly turned up claiming great-clan status.
A great clan carried far too much weight to ignore.
If the claim turned out to be genuine, the entire balance of power in Soul Society could shift dramatically.
Sasakibe answered him, his expression grave: “Lord Genryūsai has been aware of Moriyasu Tokoyo for some time now.
He’s said, in his own words, that among Soul Society’s five great clans, there really was one called Tokoyo.
He instructed me to keep an eye on the boy’s movements, but not to interfere.” Kyōraku’s eyes went wide.
“So it’s actually real?
Then this just got complicated.” Sasakibe paused a moment before answering: “Truth be told, Lord Genryūsai still hasn’t confirmed whether the boy is genuinely a member of the Tokoyo clan.” “Lord Genryūsai says he only ever heard the family’s name, back when he was young.
He never once laid eyes on any of them himself, so there’s no way for him to say for certain whether the boy is genuine or not.” Kyōraku nodded, understanding dawning.
“So there really is a Tokoyo clan among the five great houses, but this Moriyasu Tokoyo who’s suddenly turned up is a little suspicious.” He frowned, rubbing at his chin, when something from a while back among the nobility suddenly came to mind.
Of course, “a while back” for someone his age, several centuries old, meant decades ago.
Back then, something had gone wrong within the Tsunayashiro clan, one of the great noble houses, and he’d been the one to handle it.
He knew the Tsunayashiro clan had grown a little unhinged since.
If some great clan had put forward a stand-in to pose as a member of the Tokoyo family, the payoff in power and influence would be enormous.
It might even be enough to bring a declining house’s fortunes roaring back.
Impersonation, using someone else’s name to hatch your own eggs, both were solid strategies.
In an instant, Kyōraku’s mind had already run through a dozen possibilities.
He turned back to Sasakibe.
“So what’s the old man’s call?” Sasakibe answered evenly.
“Watch and wait.” Kyōraku nodded and left the First Division.
Once back, he passed the file straight along to the Sixth and Second Divisions.
The Sixth Division handled noble security, so anything involving nobility was safe in their hands.
As for the Second Division, that was the covert mobile force.
Handing off a surveillance target like this to them would take some of the load off his own shoulders too.
Kyōraku climbed up onto a rooftop, poured himself a cup from his sake jug, and sat looking up at the moon for a long while without drinking a drop.
Ever since that batch of captains had turned traitor decades ago, a shadow had sat quietly in the back of his mind.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that Soul Society was wrapped in some hidden darkness, an enemy tucked away somewhere inside it, one he’d never once managed to find.
Could this sudden appearance of the great Tokoyo clan be connected to that, somehow?