The Tenth Division’s Western Boundary Post was paradise.
It consisted of a lopsided wooden watchtower, a small shack with a dry tatami mat, and a long stretch of quiet forest where nothing had happened in forty years.
Kazuma lay flat on his back along the wide branch of an ancient pine tree, his straw hat tilted over his nose, hands folded behind his head.
The morning breeze was cool, the sun was warm, and his division issued monthly food vouchers like clockwork.
“Hey!
Kazuma!
Wake up!”
A pebble bounced off the tree trunk.
Kazuma pushed the rim of his hat up by half an inch.
Standing below in the dirt was Ren, an unseated recruit who had graduated in the same class.
Ren was clutching a wooden spear, sweating through his black Shihakushō, and looking like he hadn’t slept in three days.
“Shift change isn’t for four hours, Ren,” Kazuma mumbled, not moving an inch.
“Conserve your energy.
The tree is very comfortable.”
“We got an alert from the Seventh Seat!” Ren hissed, looking around the empty woods in a panic.
“A stray Hollow slipped past the outer Rukongai barrier near the ravine!
They want us to hold the line until a seated officer arrives!”
Kazuma let out a long, miserable sigh.
‘A seated officer is going to take thirty minutes to get here,’ Kazuma thought.
‘Which means thirty minutes of shouting, paperwork, blood on the grass, and having to explain why I was sleeping in a tree.’
“What kind of Hollow?” Kazuma asked lazily.
“Big!” Ren squeaked.
“Four legs, bone armor, and claws like scythes!
It already took out two scouts from the Ninth Division!”
Right on cue, a deep, guttural roar shook the pine needles off the branches.
CRASH.
The underbrush fifty yards down the slope exploded.
A massive beast tore through the thick timber—twelve feet tall, covered in jagged white bone plating, with a horned skull mask and six red, dripping eyes.
Thick purple saliva sizzled as it dripped onto the grass, eating through the moss.
“It’s here!” Ren yelled, dropping his spear, his knees locking up in pure terror.
“Kazuma, draw your sword!
We have to chant Bakudō #1!”
“Right, right.
Chanting,” Kazuma muttered, slowly rolling off the branch.
He dropped out of the tree, landing on his sandals with zero sound.
He didn’t even draw his sword from his sash.
The Hollow locked its six red eyes onto Ren, letting out a deafening screech that split the bark on nearby trees.
It coiled its muscular hind legs and launched itself forward like an iron catapult, claws outstretched to tear both guards into ribbons.
“Look out!” Ren screamed, shutting his eyes and throwing his arms over his face.
Kazuma took one calm step to the side.
Inside his chest, Jakumetsu didn’t even flare; it simply pulsed once, pulling the kinetic energy from the rushing air in front of him.
The charging monster hit the invisible dead zone.
In a fraction of a second, the beast’s massive forward momentum vanished.
But because Kazuma stripped the kinetic energy from only its upper torso while leaving its trailing legs untouched, the Hollow’s own center of mass betrayed it violently.
Its front half came to a dead halt.
Its back legs flipped upward over its head in an absurd, clumsy arc.
Kazuma stepped in, tapped the back of the monster’s neck with the tip of his scabbard, and released a tiny, concentrated pinprick of absolute zero straight into its nervous core.
SNAP.
The internal spirit pathways of the Hollow froze solid, shattering like thin glass inside its body.
The twelve-foot beast flipped completely upside down, slammed face-first into a sharp, pointed granite boulder by the ditch, and cracked its own mask clean in half with a dull, hollow thud.
The monster twitched once.
Its body dissolved into black spiritual particles, blowing away into the quiet mountain wind.
The forest went dead silent.
Ren slowly opened one eye.
Then the other.
There was no blood.
No grand duel.
No high-level Kidō scorch marks.
Just a cracked boulder, a patch of crushed weeds, and Kazuma standing nearby with his hands tucked into his loose sleeves, looking down at the empty dirt with an expression of mild disappointment.
“W-What happened?” Ren stammered, scrambling to his feet and picking up his spear with shaking hands.
“Where did it go?
Did you kill it?”
Kazuma let out a slow, heavy sigh and shook his head with deep solemnity.
“It was terribly tragic, Ren,” Kazuma said, his voice completely flat.
“Tragic?”
“Yes,” Kazuma pointed a finger at the sharp rock.
“It charged with too much enthusiasm, slipped on a patch of wet pine moss, hit its head directly on that stone, and broke its own mask.
A freak accident.”
Ren stared at the rock.
Then at Kazuma.
Then back at the rock.
“It…
it tripped?” Ren whispered, his brain struggling to process the scene.
“A twelve-foot armored Hollow slipped on moss and died?”
“Happens all the time in the mountains,” Kazuma nodded wisely, patting Ren on the shoulder.
“The moss here is very treacherous.
Make sure you write that in the official incident log.
‘Hollow eliminated via self-inflicted blunt force trauma on geological terrain.'”
“Geological terrain…” Ren muttered, writing it down on his clipboard with wide, glazed eyes.
“Good man,” Kazuma said, already turning around and jumping lightly back onto his wide pine branch.
He pulled his straw hat down over his eyes, crossing his legs comfortably.
“I’ll take the first watch.
Wake me up if any other monsters decide to slip on the rocks.”
Ren stood alone in the clearing, staring at the empty dirt and wondering if he should submit a request for non-slip sandals for the entire division.
Up in the tree, Kazuma closed his eyes, a small, satisfied smile tugging at his lips.
No questions.
No reports.
No medals.
Just another quiet afternoon in the Gotei 13.