In my room at the Academy dormitory.
I was sitting in meditation, concentrating.
I straightened my back and focused more deeply, deeper still, until nothing else could distract me.
Even if someone punched me, I mustn’t lose my concentration.
Clear your mind, and even fire feels cool.
Ignore every last distraction.
Deeper, deeper—
With my Asauchi resting across my lap, I directed every thought towards the sword alone.
What I was doing was called Jinzen, a method developed over a great many years to allow Soul Reapers to communicate with their Zanpakutō.
You enter your inner world and deepen your connection with it.
So this is what it takes just to become friends, is it?
But unless you get along with your Zanpakutō like this, you can’t grow stronger as a Soul Reaper.
Apparently, becoming more attuned to it increases your own spiritual power as well.
By speaking with your Zanpakutō again and again, you can earn its recognition and learn its name.
Once you do, you can unlock the first stage of its power: Shikai.
Call its name and release it, and the blade changes shape, allowing you to use whatever special abilities are unique to that particular Zanpakutō.
The shape might change into a spear or claws, for example, while the abilities might let you control fire or cold.
…Then again, apparently some Zanpakutō just change shape and don’t have any special abilities at all!
And you have absolutely no way of knowing what yours will do until you achieve Shikai.
It’s like Schrödinger’s cat: you won’t find out what’s inside until you open the box.
No wonder people call it the ‘Zanpakutō gacha’.
Though maybe that’s more of an insult than a nickname…?
Most seated officers—Soul Reapers who hold an official rank—have mastered Shikai.
So I’ve heard that if you manage to awaken yours while you’re still at the Academy, you could become a Soul Reaper with the standing of a seated officer right from the start!
All the more reason to learn it, then.
And that’s why I’m sitting here with my eyes shut, cutting myself off from every bit of information coming from the outside world, lost in meditation, thinking of nothing but my sword—
…Hah!
I wasn’t asleep!
I wasn’t asleep, I swear!!
…Ahem.
Pour my heart into the sword.
Think of nothing else.
Concentrate.
Concentrate—
“Huh?”
A moment ago, I was definitely performing Jinzen in my dorm room.
So what was going on?
Before I knew it, I was somewhere utterly strange.
But this place…
how on earth should I describe it?
Everywhere I looked, there were buildings and structures from a modern civilisation.
Railway tracks and trains.
Expressways.
Department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, tower blocks, an enormous radio tower, and rows upon rows of office buildings.
And yet, as though they’d grown together with everything people had built, there were enormous trees, grasses and flowers too.
Giant trees like the cedars of Yakushima, looking hundreds of years old—perhaps even a thousand?—twined around the buildings.
Flowers bloomed quite happily straight through the asphalt roads.
Imagine Tokyo and a jungle mashed together.
That might be the best way to put it.
If I wanted to sound charitable, I’d say everything had become one.
If not, I’d call it absolute chaos.
“…Is this my inner world?
I finally made it here…!!
I’m not dreaming, am I!?”
Was it some sort of metaphor?
A sign of something?
I was curious, but right now—just this once—I pushed those questions out of my mind as unimportant.
I was so, so happy that I couldn’t help pinching my own cheek.
“…Ow.
So it really isn’t a dream!”
YEEEEESSS!!
Three long years of struggle, and I’ve finally entered my inner world!!
Renjōji-san and Ayase-san both reached this stage in their first year!!
I hadn’t made any progress at all, so I’d started to think I’d reach graduation without even getting as far as having a conversation!
Now I could finally say goodbye to the days of quietly slipping away, pretending I hadn’t heard when everyone else complained about things like, ‘I still can’t hear its name,’ or ‘Mine has such a cheeky personality.’
“Right, so next I need to talk to my Zanpakutō itself, don’t I?
It must be around here somewhere…”
If I remembered the original story correctly…
didn’t Ichigo enter a place like this when he was becoming a Soul Reaper?
What did he do back then?
I think it was…
“Ah, never mind.”
Remembering wouldn’t necessarily help me anyway.
As I said before, Zanpakutō are all different.
Even if I copied what someone else had done, it’d only be useful as one possible example.
“More importantly, something feels…
off?”
I looked around and around until it finally hit me.
“That’s it!
There’s no sound!
All this stuff is here, but I can’t hear a thing!!”
In a city, you’d hear crowds, trains and cars passing by, and, depending on where you were, sounds coming from screens or speakers like the ones on street-side televisions.
It’s the same in a forest.
Sure, it’s quieter than a city, but when the wind blows, leaves and grass rustle.
If there are insects or animals around, you’d expect to hear their calls, or at least sense that they’re there.
But there was none of that here.
Every sound I could hear was one I’d made myself.
Is this what a world with time standing still would be like?
“Hello?
Is there anyone here?”
If I looked around, I should be able to find the true form of my Zanpakutō somewhere.
First I’d find it, then we could introduce ourselves and get to know each other.
“…Now then…”
There were so many blind spots with all these buildings and trees.
Searching every single one would be—
“Hm?
Did something just…?”
Something moved at the very edge of my vision.
“A pitch-black…
rubber ball?
No, what do you call those?
A superball?”
I approached the spot rather cautiously, and there was no better way to describe what I found.
It was a beautifully formed sphere, as perfectly round as a ball could be.
It was jet-black, with what looked like a matte finish that reflected no light at all.
In fact, it was almost as though it swallowed the light.
There was something both frightening and beautiful about it.
As for its size, it was about as big as a volleyball.
No, perhaps a basketball?
Large enough to hold in both hands, anyway.
When I picked it up, it was surprisingly soft and springy, yielding under my fingers.
I could almost get addicted to that feeling.
“But why is something like this here?
Did somebody roll it over?
Or did it fall from somewhere and come bouncing down?”
I looked around, but there was nobody in sight.
Just me and the rubber ball in my hands.
“…Receive.”
The idea came to me for no particular reason, and I lightly bumped the ball into the air.
I hadn’t meant to use much force, but it went surprisingly far.
“Toss.”
I moved ahead to where it was going to land and sent it up again, this time concentrating on accuracy.
“Attaaack!”
Then I jumped to meet it as it fell and smacked it with all my might!
The rubber ball shot off in an instant, flying about three hundred metres away.
It really could travel farther than I’d expected.
That was proof my physical abilities had improved, too.
“Now, next up…
Serve!!”
I picked up the ball where it had rolled and this time struck it upwards from below with all my strength!
“Oooh.”
Watching it climb much higher than I’d expected, I made a rough estimate in my head.
Whether I’d sent it sideways or straight up, there had still been plenty of room to spare.
In other words, this space was much larger than I’d imagined.
It stretched a considerable distance both across and upwards.
For all I knew, it could be something like ten kilometres square.
Still, while I’d learned something about the size of this place, there was one rather important problem: I hadn’t made any progress at all towards talking with my Zanpakutō.
But using that thing as a ball brings back memories of my school days.
…Even though I was never any good at volleyball.
This is completely beside the point, but how long will that joke about there always being a ball stuck in the gym ceiling keep making sense?
At my school, it wasn’t just balls.
There was even a skipping rope caught up there.