Night fell.
In a clean and tidy guest room, Makoto Ito lay resting on a tatami mat.
He was enjoying the luxury of a private room specially prepared for him by Granny Mihana.
As for Eri Iwasaki, she was sharing a room with the old woman.
The other long-term residents of the boarding house obviously did not receive this kind of special treatment.
Makoto held up the tiny, sand-like particle that continuously radiated a faint blue light.
Combining this with Kaname Tosen’s suspicious actions during the day, it was incredibly obvious that this little crystal was directly connected to Sosuke Aizen’s experiments.
“Could this be…” The 5th Squad Barracks.
Inside the Vice-Captain’s private quarters, Sosuke Aizen was writing something at his desk by the light of a single oil lamp.
Swish.
Another figure suddenly appeared in the room.
He had dark skin and wore his hair in long dreadlocks.
It was the current 5th Seat of the 9th Squad, Kaname Tosen.
“Lord Aizen, the stray Hollow appears to have wandered into a residential district in the Rukongai before completely dropping off the radar.
No one has seen it since.
I suspect the missing Hogyoku fragment it was carrying has fallen into the hands of a Rukongai civilian.” Hearing this, Aizen simply smiled a faint, indifferent smile.
He did not seem to care about the lost fragment of the Hogyoku in the slightest.
“It does not matter.
It was merely an unstable, defective product to begin with.
At most, its power can only be drawn upon once; it poses absolutely no threat to us.
We will simply forge a new one later.” Hearing Aizen’s calm, breezy tone, Tosen felt his anxieties ease.
With a flicker of Shunpo, he vanished from the room.
Seven days later.
Makoto stepped out of the boarding house bright and early.
Today was the day of the Shin’o Academy’s monthly enrollment exam.
A petite figure had already been standing by the front gate of the residential compound for quite some time.
Approaching her, Makoto realized it was Eri Iwasaki.
The young girl was holding a bundled cloth in her hands.
Watching Makoto walk toward her, her face flushed completely red, looking exactly as bashful as she had on the first day they met.
“Makoto-kun, this…
I used the wages I earned working for Granny Mihana over the past few days to buy some fabric, and I sewed this robe for you…” Looking at the young girl’s blushing face, which resembled a sky painted with sunset clouds, Makoto couldn’t help but smile.
Having lived two lifetimes, how could he not see through Eri Iwasaki’s feelings?
But his ultimate goal was to ascend to the absolute summit and achieve true transcendence.
He naturally wouldn’t halt his footsteps for a delicate flower on the side of the road.
He accepted the bundle from her hands, maintaining a gentle smile as he spoke softly.
“Thank you for the gift.
I really like it.
Take good care of yourself.
Until we meet again, Miss Eri.” Eri had rehearsed countless things to say in her head, but staring at this man who had completely captivated her heart after only a few short days, she suddenly found herself at a loss for words.
She could only watch Makoto’s retreating back and call out, “Have a safe trip, Makoto-kun!” Makoto did not turn around, simply raising a hand to wave goodbye.
He didn’t notice the young girl standing behind him with tears welling up in her eyes.
“So this is the Seireitei?
It’s way more imposing than it looked in the anime!” Looking up at the magnificent, sprawling fortress walls ahead of him, Makoto couldn’t help but marvel.
The sheer opulence and grandeur of the Seireitei formed a stark, almost sickening contrast to the endless rows of low, rundown shacks in the Rukongai.
It felt as if the two places belonged to entirely different worlds.
“I guess the divide between the elite and the slums is the same in every universe,” he mused.
Located in the exact center of the Soul Society, the Seireitei served as its political and military headquarters, housing the elite Shinigami forces and noble clans.
Makoto arrived at the Shoryumon, the Blue Stream Gate guarding the eastern entrance to the Seireitei.
A massive line of young hopefuls was already queued up outside, clearly here to participate in today’s Shin’o Academy entrance exam.
After waiting for quite a while, it was finally Makoto’s turn.
He handed his identification tag to Jidanbo, the nearly ten-meter-tall gatekeeper with twin axes strapped to his waist.
Only after the giant thoroughly inspected the tag was Makoto granted entry into the city.
Following the crowd’s directions, Makoto soon arrived at his ultimate destination: the Shin’o Academy.
He joined the massive horde of applicants in yet another long queue to submit his registration.
When he finally reached the front, Makoto handed over both his own identification tag and Granny Mihana’s recommendation letter to the Shinigami sitting behind the registration desk.
Looking back at the seemingly endless line winding out the gates, Makoto muttered to himself, “How long is this going to take?” Just as he was dreading the wait, a burly, middle-aged Shinigami wearing a Shihakusho, a pair of sunglasses, and a spiky topknot walked out from a side corridor.
“You, you, you, and you.
Follow me!” The middle-aged man pointed to several people in the crowd, including Makoto, pulling them out of the main queue and leading them directly through a side door into the academy grounds.
“Because you lot brought tokens of recommendation, you get the privilege of taking the exam early.
But don’t celebrate just yet.
If you lack actual talent, you’ll still fail the exam!” The man glared at the group impatiently, grumbling under his breath the entire time.
“Damn higher-ups.
Always forcing me to babysit you connected brats.
It’s such a pain!” Makoto immediately realized this must be Yu Oda, the Shinigami Granny Mihana had told him to find.
Judging by Yu Oda’s bitter resentment, the bribes and tributes flowing up from the Rukongai must not be distributed very evenly.
Otherwise, the man wouldn’t be complaining this much.
Makoto and the others listened to Yu Oda’s endless complaints as he led them into a grand hall.
A sizable number of candidates were already waiting inside.
These people clearly possessed recommendation letters just like Makoto, or were directly related to minor noble houses within the Seireitei, granting them the privilege of testing in the very first batch.
The unprivileged masses without connections were still stuck waiting outside the main gates.
Scanning the room, Makoto noticed four bizarre machines lined up at the front of the hall.
Each machine was equipped with a meter-high measuring scale, backed by rows of Reishi storage crystals.
“These are Reiatsu measuring devices built by the Department of Research and Development,” Yu Oda announced loudly.
“All you have to do is grip the handle to test your Reii, your Spiritual Class.
Reii is divided into twenty classes.
You must register at Class 9 or above to qualify for the next round of the exam!
Ugh, why am I even wasting my breath explaining this?
I highly doubt any of you will even make it to the next round.” Yu Oda crossed his arms, scanning Makoto and the other recommended candidates with unconcealed contempt.
In his experience, the vast majority of applicants who relied on recommendation letters to skip the line failed the very first test.
Meanwhile, the candidates lined up behind the four machines began whispering nervously among themselves.
Tension filled the air.
Everyone knew that the first stage of the Shin’o Academy exam weeded out the vast majority of applicants.
Every single person in the room looked anxious.
Every person, of course, except Makoto Ito.
“Silence!
Anyone who dares make a racket will be disqualified immediately!” Perhaps irritated by the growing noise, the two Shinigami guards standing by the walls shouted in unison.
The exam hall instantly went dead silent.
A few moments later, a figure wrapped entirely in a flowing white robe slowly walked out from the back doors of the hall.