“Haaah…”
I was eating breakfast in the dining hall.
But I just couldn’t seem to shake this gloomy feeling.
The reason was what had happened yesterday—in my inner world during Jinzen.
After that, I ended up trying basketball, kickball, softball, rugby and golf…
I mean, searching all sorts of places in my inner world.
But I never found the true form of my Zanpakutō.
If I couldn’t even meet it and talk to it, then Shikai would still be nothing but a distant dream.
In the end, I searched for what felt like several hours and came away with nothing.
When I woke up, though, only about an hour had passed.
Apparently time flowed differently between what I experienced there and the real world.
My internal clock was not completely broken.
Definitely not.
“Maybe the problem was that I didn’t play baseball…?”
I prodded the grilled fish from breakfast with my chopsticks, going over everything again and wondering what I’d done wrong.
“Or maybe pétanque?”
I’d really rather not believe my Zanpakutō was demanding something that obscure.
“Good morning, Airi-san!”
While I was sitting there worrying, Ayase-san and Renjōji-san arrived.
“What’s wrong, Yukawa-san?
You look rather down…”
“Huh?
Do I?”
Hmm.
Was it really showing on my face that much?
…Oh!
That’s right.
Both of them were far more experienced than I was when it came to communicating with their Zanpakutō.
I might as well ask them.
“Actually—”
With that preface, I told the two of them about what had happened the night before.
Naturally, I blurred the details of all the man-made structures in my inner world, describing them as things like houses, storehouses and castles instead.
I mean, even if I said there were office blocks and trains, they probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about.
“—And that’s what happened.
In the end, I never managed to meet my Zanpakutō itself.
I was planning to ask a teacher I know after breakfast.”
“Mm-hmm, I see.”
“…Haaah.”
Once I’d finished, Ayase-san nodded along.
Renjōji-san, meanwhile, silently pressed a finger to her forehead before eventually letting out a small sigh.
Erm…
did I do something wrong?
“Ayase-san, do you think Yukawa-san is actually being serious about this?”
“It might be a little unusual, yes!
But I honestly thought she’d realise it herself halfway through telling us!”
H-Huh?
What do you mean??
“I’ll be blunt.
That black sphere was probably your Zanpakutō itself.”
“Yes!
That’s what I think too!”
“…What!?
That rubber ba— I mean, that black ball was!?”
“It’s generally accepted that, when communicating with a Zanpakutō, there are no living beings in the inner world besides the Soul Reaper and the Zanpakutō itself.
And if your relationship is already good enough for you to enter your inner world through Jinzen, then the Zanpakutō itself should show itself to you of its own accord.
Even if it doesn’t, there should at least be some sign that it tried to make contact.”
“Ah…
Now that you mention it…”
Right.
That possibility had never even crossed my mind.
“…So you’re saying I was throwing my Zanpakutō around and smacking it like a ball!?”
“That would appear to be the case.”
“P-Please don’t be too discouraged!
You can still make things right from here!!”
My shoulders slumped as the full weight of what I’d done finally hit me.
Ayase-san could usually cheer me up just by trying, but even her encouragement only felt like a small consolation this time.
We decided to change the subject, and the conversation gradually drifted into ordinary chatter.
“Oh?
So there are juniors that talented?”
“Yes!
I think you’ve probably seen them too, Airi-san.
Those two are amazing!”
“One of them is rather frivolous, but his instincts are absurdly sharp.
It’s almost as though he can see straight through to the truth.
The other seems physically frail, but somehow it just feels natural for everyone to gather around him.”
The two juniors they were talking about had enrolled at the Academy this term.
Apparently, despite being first-years, both were so exceptionally capable that people were already saying skipping grades was a given.
At this rate, they were practically guaranteed to join the Gotei 13 before graduation.
Some even thought it wouldn’t be strange for them to awaken Shikai while still at the Academy and enter a division as seated officers.
“But isn’t it a good thing to have such talented juniors?”
“I know that!
But I have my pride as their senior too!!”
I took a sip of tea after breakfast as I answered, but apparently things weren’t that simple.
I suppose the advanced class and high-ranking nobles have worries and struggles that the likes of us down below can’t understand.
Me?
Fifty years of training just to pass the entrance exam burned most of that sort of feeling out of me.
It’s not that I have no pride at all, but these days I’m much quicker to acknowledge when someone else is genuinely impressive.
“Haaah…
Talking about all this has made me tired.
Oh, Yukawa-san—could I ask for that again?
It’s been a while.”
“Ah, that?
Of course.
You helped me with my problem too, so I’ll give you the full treatment as thanks.”
From my point of view, there was no reason to refuse Renjōji-san’s request.
By ‘that’, she meant a massage.
Over the past few years, massage had slowly caught on among my fellow Academy students.
I didn’t spend fifty years doing bodywork in Rukon District for nothing.
Apparently, it gets rid of fatigue, leaves you feeling refreshed, and for some mysterious reason people even claim their grades improve.
At the moment, I turn down male Soul Reapers.
Back in Rukon District I treated everyone, young and old, men and women alike, but I’m allowed to be a little choosy now, right?
I’ve worked on Renjōji-san about twice before as well.
Maybe those two juniors we’d just been discussing had been piling on the stress lately.
Besides, she’d just given me a hint about my Zanpakutō.
I would repay the favour with the utmost sincerity.
“What about you, Ayase-san?
I don’t mind working on both of you at once…”
“Eeeh!?
Me too!?
Hmm…
What should I do…?”
“Why not?
You’re here anyway.
Go on and have one.”
“U-Umm, but…”
With Renjōji-san giving her that extra push, Ayase-san thought about it even harder.
Though from the look of things, she’d already made up her mind.
“Phew…
That was a wonderful massage…”
I spent plenty of time loosening up both of them.
By the time I looked outside, the sun had long since passed its highest point.
We’d started after breakfast, and now it was almost time for lunch.
Still, it had been a wonderful use of all that time.
“Right, before I forget, I suppose I should try Jinzen again.”
I sat down in meditation, placed my Zanpakutō across my lap and focused my mind.
I poured my thoughts into the sword, slowly and patiently drawing my awareness towards a single point—
And before I knew it, the same chaotic scene I’d seen yesterday was spread out in front of me.
Maybe getting in once had helped me understand the trick, because this time it was easy.
It made me feel like an idiot for taking three whole years to manage something like this.
“Now then, last time it was somewhere around…
There!”
But there was no time to sit around feeling depressed.
If Renjōji-san and Ayase-san were right, that rubber ball was the true form of my Zanpakutō.
Luckily, once I started looking, I quickly spotted the distinctive pitch-black ball.
I hurried over and crouched down, peering closely at it.
“I ask of you—are you my…
Ah, wait!
Don’t go!!”
The moment I spoke, the rubber ball seemed to sense something and began rolling away from me.
An ordinary rubber ball couldn’t possibly move around on its own like that.
So the two of them had been right after all.
I rushed after it and, this time, gently lifted it with the sort of care you’d use for a delicate piece of glasswork.
“I got things in the wrong order.
I’m sorry I used you as a ball when I came here last time.
Really, I’m sorry.”
A tall woman standing there apologising to an oversized rubber ball while holding it in her arms.
If a stranger saw this, it would look incredibly surreal.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me just because I apologised.
But I want to become stronger together with you.
So please…
let me hear your voice.
Will you talk to me?”
I hugged it tightly against my chest as I pleaded.
I understood that what I’d done the first time we met had probably left a terrible impression.
I understood that it might hate me for it.
But please.
I wanted to start over from the beginning.
…
…
…
There was no response.
It seemed to be just a rubber ball.
“Heave-ho!”
Rubber Ball-san went sailing through the air in a beautiful arc.
Author’s Notes
● The Two Exceptional Juniors
Just who could those two juniors possibly be…?
Somebody-raku-san and Somebody-take-san, perhaps…
● Where’s the Important Scene!?
You Skipped It!?
Calm down.
Keep a cool head and wait for the next chapter.
More specifically, about sixty minutes.
More importantly, it isn’t really anything worth getting that excited about.
● Writing This Down as a Memo Before I Forget
– Yamamoto’s statement that “Kyōraku and Ukitake were the first graduates of Shin’ō Academy to become captains.”
– My assumption is that Kyōraku and Ukitake became captains no earlier than around five or six hundred years ago.
(Kyōraku seeing a picture of Zanka no Tachi as a child + enough time to grow up + enough time to rise through the ranks to captain = probably about that long.)
↓
– I do think one reason was that the Soul Reapers of old were ridiculously strong, making it difficult for Academy graduates to reach captain level.
But I’m also assuming that plenty of people became Soul Reapers without graduating from the Academy at all.
– To become a Soul Reaper, you need to pass the recruitment examination → therefore, as long as you can pass the exam, that’s enough.
Attending the Academy isn’t necessarily mandatory.
(Like getting a driving licence by going straight to the driving-test centre and passing there, rather than going through driving school.)
↓
– Children from noble families who wanted to become Soul Reapers may have trained at home with private tutors before joining the ranks.
– They would have been trained under a better curriculum than the Academy and ended up more capable as a result.
(Naturally, the teaching methods would have been kept secret rather than shared with the Academy.)
– A noble family wouldn’t want positions like captain, lieutenant or the higher seated ranks handed over to the riff-raff.
– Only the eldest son—the heir—would really need this education.
The younger sons were supposed to become the eldest son’s hands and feet, so letting them grow too powerful would be inconvenient.
Hence sending them to the Academy instead.
My assumption is that this sort of boring noble pride may have been another reason so few Academy graduates became captains.
The problem is that I probably won’t have any chance to make use of this theory in the story.