Hello there.
I’m Yukawa Airi—first-year, Class Two, and the woman who failed to make the advanced class.
It’s been about a month since the opening ceremony ended and classes began in earnest.
The way lessons work at Shin’ō Academy is something of a cross between secondary school and university.
There’s a certain amount of compulsory coursework, and the rest is elective.
You get to choose which lessons you want to take, according to your own interests.
If you’re worried about your swordsmanship, you can devote more time to training in Zanjutsu.
If you want to improve your Kidō, you can take more Kidō lessons.
Everyone has different aptitudes and preferences, so that part is entirely up to the individual.
Of course, you do have to learn at least the basics of all four disciplines—Zanjutsu, Hakuda, Hohō and Kidō.
But apparently, you can just about get by if you neglect the others and concentrate on mastering a single one.
…Though I have no idea how useful a Soul Reaper who neglects Hohō would be in a fight.
Oh, and when I say the electives are flexible, I mean *really* flexible.
You can decide, ‘I took Zanjutsu last week, so I’ll study Kidō this week,’ and nobody will tell you off.
In fact, you can even skip lessons if you want.
Not just electives, but compulsory ones too.
With a system like this, attendance apparently isn’t considered all that important.
In exchange—or perhaps I should say, on the other hand—
They don’t seem to do any coordinated training, either.
Nothing like, ‘Let’s all work together to defeat one powerful Hollow.’ Is that something to do with a Soul Reaper’s pride?
They do have a bit of a tendency to insist on one-on-one fights.
And here’s something else that might surprise you: there are hardly any written exams.
At Shin’ō Academy, the tests are all practical.
After all, just about everything they teach is directly connected to the work Soul Reapers actually do.
Apparently, if you watch someone perform the techniques, you can tell at a glance whether they’ve absorbed the necessary knowledge.
The thinking is that no matter how much you know, that knowledge is worthless if you can’t put it into practice.
When I first heard there wouldn’t be any written tests, I was absolutely astonished.
Everyone around me just looked at me as though to say, ‘What are you talking about?
Of course there aren’t.’
That difference in reactions stung a little.
Anyway, that’s enough about that.
Right now, I’m in the middle of a compulsory lesson.
And some of these compulsory lessons are…
pretty far out there.
“There you are!”
I dodged my classmate’s attack with my eyes firmly shut.
It might only be a wooden sword, but getting hit with one would still hurt.
I was grateful he’d shouted and given away his position, too.
“Hah!”
“Whoa!?”
As we passed each other, I struck down from above and knocked his wooden sword out of his hands.
He hadn’t expected the blow, and dropped his weapon in no time at all.
In a real fight, an opening like that could be fatal.
“That’s enough!”
At the teacher’s command, I sensed the light go out and darkness return.
“Next!”
“Right!!”
Another opponent stepped up without a moment’s delay.
This one was a bigger male student than the last, about as tall as I was.
At the moment, he had his wooden sword resting on his shoulder rather than holding it in a proper stance.
I could see that quite clearly…
Have you worked out what kind of lesson this is yet?
The answer is *combat training in the dark*.
It’s training for fighting Hollows in the pitch-black darkness of a night without even moonlight.
Since you can’t see anything in conditions like that, they also teach ways around it, such as creating light with Kidō or training your eyes to see better at night.
But the main idea is to sharpen your spiritual-pressure sensing so you can work out where your opponent is and how they’re moving.
Yes.
Just *work out how they’re moving*.
Make no mistake: this isn’t training to fight perfectly well in complete darkness.
For some reason, though, when I sense spiritual pressure, I can practically *see* what the other person is doing.
Forget merely locating them—I can pick up every little movement.
It’s gotten to the point where even the teacher made the unreasonable request, ‘You’re moving around in the dark better than I can.
Would you mind acting as the other students’ training partner?’
And that’s how I ended up here.
I’m keeping my eyes closed in case an opponent decides to make some light.
Since I can already sense them, I might as well take the opportunity to practise that ability as much as possible.
“Hey, the exercise has already started, hasn’t it?
If you’re not going to take a stance, does that mean I can attack you?”
“…!?
Y-You can see me!?
In this darkness!?”
I made it sound a little threatening, and he hurriedly brought his wooden sword up into a proper middle guard.
Come to think of it, he was the last opponent for today’s lesson, wasn’t he?
In that case, perhaps I’d give him a little extra mischief, free of charge.
“You’re taking a stance but not making any light.
So you’re happy to carry on like this, right?
In that case…!”
I deliberately let out a loud breath, giving him an indirect warning that I was about to attack.
Well, well.
It seemed to work.
He flinched and tensed up.
So I leapt high into the air.
Even if he couldn’t see a thing in the dark, he could still hear.
He must have heard the sound of me jumping.
And if he was relying on his hearing to find me, that gave me something to exploit.
“W-Where’s it coming from!?”
He was looking all around, searching for me.
Perhaps he hoped to catch the slightest movement in the darkness.
No use.
Because right now, I was running through the air.
By using spiritual pressure to solidify the spirit particles floating in the air, you can make a path where there isn’t one.
That’s the technique that allows Soul Reapers to run across the sky.
And I can also apply what I learned from Bala about solidifying spiritual pressure with spirit particles.
If he’d looked very, *very* carefully above his head, perhaps he would have seen the path of spirit particles.
“Where are you looking?”
“Eek!?”
I landed silently behind him and spoke softly.
He’d been expecting an attack from the front, so the shock must have been considerable.
He practically jumped out of his skin, but perhaps his pride as an aspiring Soul Reaper wouldn’t let him back down.
He swung at me anyway, in a wild, erratic arc.
—Blut!
I silently activated Blut to give my physical abilities a little secret boost, timing it to his attack.
Suddenly, it felt as though his swing had slowed to a crawl.
I struck at the same moment, meeting his attack with a blow of my own.
“Guaaaagh!?”
“Ah…
Oh?”
“Th-That’s enough!!”
Perhaps it was because he couldn’t see the blow coming, and hadn’t been able to brace himself for it.
Whatever the reason, he went flying.
The teacher must have been able to follow the general situation through spiritual-pressure sensing, at least.
A hurried order to stop came a beat too late.
“A-Are you all right!?”
“I’m sorry!
I went a bit too far!”
The people who knew what had happened came rushing over, including the assistants who’d been standing by in case anything went wrong during the training in the dark.
I had the clearest idea of what had happened, of course.
I was the one who’d done it.
“U-Ugh…!?”
I hurried over to the student I’d sent flying and immediately chanted a Kaidō healing spell to treat his injuries.
“Oh?
Impressive.
You can already use Kaidō?”
“I’m still a long way from being good at it, but I can manage this much.”
Kaidō is the healing Kidō used by members of the Fourth Division.
Shin’ō Academy also offers lessons in first aid and medicine—though they’re electives, and hardly anyone takes them.
You may have forgotten, but I’m hoping to join the Fourth Division myself.
Naturally, I’m taking those lessons, and guess what?
I’m top of the class when it comes to first aid!
…Mostly because there are so few of us, and the really talented students aren’t taking it.
“I’m sorry.
I overdid it.”
“N-No, it’s all right.”
“What I’ve done is only first aid, really, so please make sure you visit the infirmary afterwards.”
After a little while, he sat up and answered me.
It looked as though his injuries had healed.
He was fully conscious, and he wasn’t moving awkwardly or favouring any particular part of his body.
Still, the treatment had been done by a trainee.
I advised him to get a proper doctor to look at him.
“Airi-san!
Good work today!”
“Yukawa-san, that was incredible…
I thought I was reasonably capable myself, but I can’t come close to that…”
Despite the commotion at the end—which was my fault, admittedly—that brought today’s special lesson to a close.
This was a training session for everyone, so Class One and Class Two both attended.
That meant Renjōji-san was here as well as Ayase-san, of course.
Neither of them seemed to have done particularly well this time.
They both looked a little downcast.
“Ahaha, I just got lucky.
Besides, the way I did it isn’t really how we’re supposed to do it.”
“Even so, if you can fight without any light, that’s an approach you ought to be proud of in its own right.”
“Exactly!
Even the teacher couldn’t move around like that!!”
Our classmates standing nearby nodded in agreement.
Hearing them say that made me feel a little proud.
Perhaps all that time training with Master Danzomaru hadn’t been wasted after all.
But I thought the point of that lesson wasn’t to teach us *how to fight* in the dark.
It was to teach us how to think our way out of the disadvantage of being in darkness and turn the situation in our favour.
Should they really be using my ‘Bring on the moonless night!
I’ll turn the tables on any assassin who comes after me!!’ approach as an example…?
Some time later—
Apparently, the boy I’d sent flying at the end was fairly well known in the advanced class for being good at Zanjutsu.
Maybe getting knocked about by me had shaken his confidence.
Or perhaps he’d developed some peculiar new fetish.
Either way, whenever he saw me after that, he started calling me “Boss Lady!”
…I could do without that.
Author’s Note
● Shin’ō Academy
There’s no description in the original series of how lessons at the Academy are organised, so I’ve made up a system that seems plausible.
The idea that practical skills are the main focus comes from the novel *BLEACH: Letters from the Other Side – New Edition*.
I see.
That makes sense.
(Though it would be quite a funny image to see the roughnecks of the Eleventh Division sitting politely at desks, taking a written exam and saying things like, ‘This is how you divide fractions.’)
The ‘combat training in the dark’ comes from the novel *BLEACH: Can’t Fear Your Own World III*.
It was a compulsory subject at least as far back as when Kyōraku was a student.
Normally, the idea is to sense through spiritual pressure that ‘the opponent’s over there, and they’re about to attack,’ then put some distance between you and retreat somewhere with light.
But, well…
It seems having her backside groped over and over wasn’t entirely for nothing.