The view was absolutely beautiful.
When I looked up, there was a bright half-moon hanging in the sky, with stars sparkling all around it.
I could see them so clearly.
Incredibly clearly.
Because there was no artificial light to get in the way of the moon and stars.
At most, there were a few candle flames here and there.
There was no such thing as a city nightscape.
Everything was pitch-black, as though the curtain of night had hidden the whole world away.
At the moment, I was in the World of the Living for practical training.
Shin’ō Academy has field exercises where students travel to the World of the Living and perform Konsō—Soul Burial, in other words, sending the spirits of the dead on to Soul Society.
Normally, violent spirits that have become Hollows are also included among the targets for Konsō.
But, well, we’re still only students doing practical training.
So for Konsō, we limit ourselves to ordinary, non-hostile spirits known as Pluses—souls that haven’t become evil spirits.
The method is very simple.
You take the hilt of your Zanpakutō and press it against the spirit’s forehead like you’re stamping a seal.
“Wow, nice!
You’ve got the hang of it!!”
I gave the spirit a little *stamp*, and a classmate nearby cheered.
Then the Plus faded away smoothly, like smoke dispersing into mist.
Well, I used to be a modern Japanese person.
I’ve stamped my fair share of seals in my time—far more than a mere hundred or two.
After that much practice, you’d get good at it whether you wanted to or not.
Apparently, when someone who’s bad at it performs Konsō, the soul can actually cry out in pain just as it’s passing on.
As for this Konsō practicum, students in the advanced classes get to do it much earlier.
Unfortunately, I’m in the regular class, so ours kept getting pushed back and delayed.
We’re fifth-years already.
Normally, when you do this for the first time, senior students are supposed to guide you through it.
In our class’s case, though, students from Class One are acting as the instructors.
“All right, next.”
And while I was thinking about all that, my turn came to an end.
Everyone normally gets two or three tries.
Students who aren’t very good at it apparently get a few more.
“That was pretty easy.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded at Ayase-san’s comment while looking around.
We’d come to the World of the Living through a Senkaimon, the gate connecting this world and Soul Society, with a Hell Butterfly guiding us so we wouldn’t get lost inside.
But the World of the Living around me looked nothing like the one I knew.
Like I said at the start, it was dark.
Completely dark, despite being night.
Yes, I know night is supposed to be dark.
But the nights I knew had streetlights, brightly lit shops and car headlights.
I’d grown up with the impression that you could get around perfectly well without carrying any light source of your own.
But when I actually came here, it was pitch-black.
I could see settlements, but I couldn’t see any lights anywhere.
When I really strained my eyes and studied the buildings, every one of them looked far, far older than anything I knew.
Judging from appearance alone…
the Edo period?
No, perhaps even earlier?
Azuchi-Momoyama—or maybe the Muromachi period!?
Yeah, there’s no way I can work it out just from the buildings.
I don’t have enough knowledge for that anyway.
In the end, all I’d managed to do was reconfirm something I already knew: I was a very long way in the past.
“Come to think of it, could this Konsō technique be useful when fighting Hollows?”
“Huh?
Erm…
What do you mean?”
“Well, like…
in the middle of a fight, you could smash them with the pommel like this—”
“How would that be any different from just hitting them normally?”
“…Oh.”
Now that she mentioned it, she was right.
I’d been wondering whether using the principles of Konsō might let me inflict some kind of especially sharp pain on an opponent.
But if that was all I wanted, simply hitting them probably wouldn’t be much different.
“All right, everyone’s finished.
Let’s head back.”
The student acting as our instructor called out, and a Senkaimon opened nearby.
That seemed to be the end of today’s practicum.
Goodbye, World of the Living.
I’ll come back again.
“Good work.
How was your first practical exercise?”
“Hmm…
It just felt kind of normal, I suppose.”
“Same here.
Oh, but they did praise me for being good at Konsō.”
—The following morning.
The usual three of us were chatting over breakfast.
Renjōji-san was in Class One, so she’d already done the Konsō practicum several times.
She hadn’t come along as one of last night’s instructors either, so for now she was mostly listening to our stories.
“That’s right!
Airi-san was really good at it!”
“Ahaha.
But it doesn’t matter how well I do in training if I mess it up when it actually counts.”
“When it actually counts, huh…”
As I mentioned yesterday, we’re fifth-years now.
Next year we’ll graduate, and we’re planning to take the recruitment exams for the Gotei 13.
Apparently there are plenty of people who spend a few years retaking the recruitment exam before finally passing.
Even so, wanting to pass straight away without losing extra years is probably the same in any era.
“Come to think of it, which divisions were you two hoping to join again?”
“I’m aiming for the Fourth Division.
That’s what I put on my career preference form too.”
“For me, it’s the Eighth Division, at least for now.
Erm, Kosuzu-san, you were…”
“The Sixth Division.
I’d be happy if I could get in.”
“Ah, right.
The Sixth Division has strong ties to the nobility, so it’s especially popular, isn’t it?”
Looking at the career preference form we’d submitted the other day suddenly reminded me of my school days.
Conversations like this really were a lovely part of being a student.
“That’s right.
People connected to the Kuchiki family have served as captain for generations, so even if I rise through the ranks, lieutenant is probably as high as I could go.”
“No way!
Kosuzu-san, you could become a captain too!!”
“You certainly have that much talent.
But we’re talking about one of the Five Great Noble Families, aren’t we?
I imagine the people around you would make quite a fuss…”
“I’m happy you think so highly of me, but Yukawa-san is probably right.
Lieutenant—or perhaps Third Seat—may be my limit.
Besides, if I were ever going to become a captain, I’d probably need to have mastered Shikai by around this point already.”
Renjōji-san let out a small sigh as she said it.
Come to think of it, those incredibly talented juniors everyone had been talking about had skipped grades.
Rumours were already piling on top of rumours that they’d awakened Shikai—or were just about to.
Apparently they were both boys, though, so I hadn’t been paying all that much attention.
“By the way, what lesson do we have today again?”
“Mock battles.
We’re getting to the point where it’ll be too late if we don’t start seriously preparing for graduation and the recruitment exams, so there’ll be more lessons in practical combat conditions from now on.”
“Mock battles…
I’m not very good at those.
Everyone’s taller than me…”
“I’m not exactly fond of them either.”
“Oh?
Why not?”
“I get paired up with boys all the time…”
“Ah…”
“A-Airi-san, you’re tall!
I think it can’t really be helped!!”
The two of them hurried to reassure me after my muttered complaint.
I understood the logic.
I was tall, so they often matched me against the boys.
But there was another problem too…
Haaah.
I knew what was coming, but that didn’t make me any happier about it.
“Next!”
“Please treat me well!!”
“…Likewise.”
At the teacher’s call, the next pair in the mock battle bowed to one another.
One was Yukawa Airi.
The other was a male student from the same class.
Airi wore a distinctly gloomy expression.
Her opponent, apparently unconcerned with whatever inner turmoil she might be suffering, stared at her so intensely that it seemed he had no intention of missing even the slightest movement.
Once Airi noticed, her mood sank even further.
“Begin!”
“Raaaaagh!!”
“…Haaah.”
With an energetic battle cry, the boy charged.
Airi met the attack—and, despite her sigh, knocked it aside.
“I’m not done yet!!”
He recovered his stance and launched a second strike.
Calling that single-minded determination would certainly make it sound better than it was.
In reality, he was simply charging in recklessly, full of openings.
More importantly, beneath that clumsy fighting style, it was painfully obvious what he was really after.
Her chest.
Of course, directly aiming at her chest would be sexual harassment—though that phrase didn’t exist in this era.
No matter how respectable a person otherwise was, doing that would earn him a reputation as a groper.
So instead, the boys had come up with another method.
Make her move around.
No matter how tightly Airi bound herself with a sarashi to make movement easier, there were limits.
The more violently she moved, the more her chest moved with her.
And because Airi’s height meant she was often paired with male students, they naturally had plenty of opportunities.
For the boys living their lives at the Academy, she had become the perfect target.
“Hah!”
“Gweh!”
“That’s enough!”
Being turned into this sort of spectacle felt wrong, even to Airi.
Then again, she couldn’t claim she didn’t understand how the boys felt.
So, as a little treat for them, she had fallen into the habit of spending two or three exchanges doing nothing but dodging before landing a clean hit on an opponent who had inevitably left himself wide open.
Somewhere along the line, that had simply become the norm.
Another way of putting it was that she was just going along with the flow.
Get a grip!
In any case, her strike landed cleanly and the teacher called a stop.
The boy had been so focused on *something else* that he’d apparently forgotten defence altogether.
The direct hit knocked him unconscious, and the boys watching from the sidelines dragged him away.
“Well done!”
“You’re a hero!!”
“Don’t worry!
They were practically bursting at the seams!
We kept watching for you too!!
Leave the rest to us!!”
One after another, they praised him with the sort of farewell words you’d give a hero who’d fallen before completing his mission.
This was supposed to be an important period for graduation and recruitment, and these idiots were doing *this*?
“Should I report them…?”
Airi’s mutter dissolved into the wind and vanished into the sky.