Serving under Shunsui Kyōraku was not a job.
It was a lifestyle.
For forty years, Kazuma held the post of Eighth Division Vice-Captain, and in those four decades, the division set an unbroken historical record: zero disciplinary hearings, zero training accidents, and the highest consumption of premium sake per capita in the Gotei 13.
The division’s daily dynamic was simple:
If Shunsui was drinking under the cherry blossoms, Kazuma was napping on the veranda.
If Shunsui was flirting with the female officers from the Fourth Division, Kazuma was at the tea shop charging pastries to the division’s operational expense tab.
Whenever Yamamoto sent down an urgent mission scroll demanding boundary patrols, Captain and Vice-Captain would look at each other, nod in perfect understanding, and immediately assign the task to an enthusiastic third-seat officer who wanted combat credit.
It was an era of pure, unadulterated peace.
Until the Grand Hollow Surge of the 80th District.
The incident started when a massive subterranean nest of Adjuchas-class Hollows broke through the outer crust of Zaraki District, slaughtering two entire exploration squads from the Ninth Division.
When the Captain of the Tenth Division was fatally wounded during the containment effort, the Gotei 13 found itself with an empty Captain’s seat and a severe shortage of qualified senior officers.
Yamamoto called an emergency Captains’ Assembly.
Kazuma stood quietly on the veranda outside the First Division hall, leaning against a lacquered pillar and chewing on a piece of candied ginger.
Inside the grand chamber, the muffled shouts of senior Captains arguing over division replacements leaked through the shoji screens.
*Slide.*
The heavy doors opened.
Shunsui strolled out, his pink flowered haori draped loosely over his shoulders, his woven straw hat tilted low.
He was grinning, spinning a small wooden token between his fingers.
“Rough meeting, Captain?” Kazuma asked, not bothering to straighten his posture.
“Oh, terrible,” Shunsui chuckled, tossing the wooden token through the air.
“The old man was spitting fire.
The Tenth Division has no Vice-Captain left alive, the seat has been empty for three months, and Central 46 is breathing down his neck.”
Kazuma caught the token casually with two fingers.
He looked down at it.
Carved into the polished white oak was the black crest of the Tenth Division: the snow narcissus.
Kazuma’s hand froze.
The candied ginger dropped from his mouth.
“What is this?” Kazuma asked, his voice dropping into a flat, terrifying whisper.
“Your new job, Kazuma-kun,” Shunsui smiled warmly, clapping a heavy hand on Kazuma’s shoulder.
“I recommended you to the Captain-Commander myself.
I told him nobody understands the value of preserving squad lives quite like my trusted Vice-Captain.”
“You…
“We had an unspoken pact!
We slept through the quarterly budget reviews together!”
“And you were magnificent at it,” Shunsui laughed heartily.
“Look at the bright side!
A Captain gets an entire private estate.
You don’t have to answer to anyone except the old man, and as long as your paperwork is turned in once a month, you can sleep for sixteen hours a day.
Plus, Captain’s pay comes with unlimited access to the noble culinary markets.”
Kazuma paused.
“A private estate?”
“With high walls and its own hot spring bath,” Shunsui nodded.
“And I don’t have to go on routine boundary patrols anymore?”
“Captains only deploy for high-grade emergencies.
Which happen maybe once every ten years.”
Kazuma slowly tucked the wooden token into his sash, his eyes narrowing into cold calculation.
A Captain’s haori carried authority.
Nobody questioned a Captain who locked his office doors for three days straight to “meditate.” It was the ultimate shield against everyday interference.
“I suppose,” Kazuma sighed, adjusting his collar, “someone has to step up and carry the burden of this peaceful era.”
“That’s the spirit,” Shunsui grinned, pulling a flask of sake from his robes.
“Let’s drink to your promotion before the old man calls for your proficiency exam.”
The Captain’s proficiency exam was a formality.
Kazuma showed up at the First Division dojo, demonstrated a carefully throttled, utterly boring version of a defensive Shikai that simply “dampened sword impacts,” and answered three basic tactical questions with the most generic textbook answers possible.
Yamamoto, desperate to fill the empty roster and satisfied that the Eighth Division’s Vice-Captain had survived fifty years without causing a scandal, stamped the approval scroll without a second thought.
The next morning, Kazuma wore the white Captain’s haori for the first time.
The Tenth Division under Captain Kazuma quickly earned a Seireitei-wide reputation: the “Silent Division.”
Kazuma instituted three core division rules:
1.
Loud shouting in the barracks before noon is punishable by lawn duty.
2.
If you encounter a Hollow stronger than you, run away and let the Eleventh Division handle it.
If an incident can be written off as a freak accident, do not request additional troops.
For nearly thirty years, the system worked like a dream.
Kazuma’s division had the lowest casualty rate in Gotei 13 history.
Every strange incident that occurred within their jurisdiction was neatly closed with reports of Hollows slipping on wet grass, choking on debris, or mysteriously vanishing into thin air.
Kazuma was content.
He was rich, respected, entirely unbothered, and possessed a Bankai that could freeze half the Seireitei to absolute zero if anyone ever tried to disturb his retirement.
Then came the spring intake of the Shin’ō Spiritual Arts Academy.
As part of the mandatory Captaincy duties, each Captain was required to sit on the observation pavilion once every five years to view the graduating Class One students.
Kazuma sat in the shaded pavilion, leaning back in his velvet armchair, a porcelain bowl of sweet bean jelly in his lap.
Below in the sunny courtyard, dozens of young, ambitious students were performing flashy sword katas and shouting high-pitched Kidō incantations to impress the visiting Captains.
Kazuma was half-asleep, his eyes drooping behind the brim of his low-tilted straw hat.
Until he felt a gaze.
It wasn’t a flare of hostile spiritual pressure.
It wasn’t the arrogant glare of a noble student looking for recognition.
It was a cold, calculating, intensely analytical stare.
Kazuma pushed the rim of his hat up by a fraction of an inch and looked down into the courtyard.
Standing near the back of the student formation was a quiet boy with neatly parted brown hair.
He wore the standard blue academy uniform, plain cloth sandals, and thick, round-rimmed glasses.
While every other student was looking up at the Captains with awe, nervousness, or fierce ambition, this boy wasn’t looking at the haoris or the shiny Zanpakutō.
He was staring directly at Kazuma’s relaxed wrists.
He was watching the way Kazuma breathed—the complete lack of wasted kinetic movement, the impossible stillness of the air around his chair, and the microscopic frost forming on the edge of Kazuma’s bean bowl.
The boy tilted his head slightly, a faint, polite smile touching his lips.
Kazuma picked up the student roster lying on the low table beside him.
His thumb slid down the list of Class One honors students until it hit the name at the very top:
*Sōsuke Aizen.*
Kazuma looked down from the parchment to the kid in the courtyard, who had not broken eye contact for five straight minutes.
Underneath his white haori, Kazuma’s jaw tightened.
‘You have got to be kidding me,’ Kazuma thought, setting his spoon down into the sweet jelly.
‘I built this perfect retirement, and now this bespectacled little menace is looking at me like I’m a puzzle.’
The peaceful era was officially over.