The annual recruitment registry was held in the grand hall of the Shin’ō Academy.
Every Captain sat behind a low wooden desk, flanked by their seated officers, receiving the graduation applications of the top-ranked students.
The Sixth Division wanted noble swordsmen.
The Eleventh Division took anyone who looked like they enjoyed breaking bones.
The Fourth Division was busy testing basic healing Kidō on nervous candidates.
Kazuma sat at the Tenth Division’s table, his straw hat tilted over his eyes, leaning his cheek on his fist while casually flipping through a stack of blank stamp sheets.
His criteria for recruitment were simple:
1.
Low ambition.
2.
Moderate swordsmanship.
3.
A strong desire to go home early.
“Captain Kazuma,” his Third Seat whispered from behind his shoulder, holding a stack of four applications.
“We have four candidates from the Fourth Class.
Their scores are remarkably mediocre, and their primary hobbies are fishing and afternoon naps.”
“Accept all four immediately,” Kazuma mumbled without looking up.
“Give them signing bonuses and tell them our barracks are strictly quiet zones.”
“Understood, sir.”
*Tap.
Tap.*
The sound of neat, measured footsteps stopped directly in front of the Tenth Division’s low table.
Kazuma didn’t move.
He kept his eyes closed beneath his hat, but the sudden shift in atmospheric density told him everything he needed to know.
The air in front of his desk had cooled by three degrees—not from his own power, but from an immense, perfectly suppressed reservoir of spirit energy standing two paces away.
Kazuma pushed his hat up by a fraction of an inch.
Standing before his desk was the kid with the glasses.
Sōsuke Aizen wore the clean, pressed uniform of the Academy’s top graduate.
His brown hair was combed neatly, his posture was textbook-perfect, and he held a formal, gold-crested application scroll with both hands.
“Good morning, Captain Kazuma,” Aizen said.
His voice was soft, gentle, and utterly respectful.
“I have come to submit my division preference.”
The entire recruitment hall seemed to pause.
Nearby, the Vice-Captain of the Fifth Division turned his head in shock.
The Third Seat of the Second Division dropped his ink brush.
Aizen was the undisputed top genius of his generation. The source of this chapter is g.com.
He had mastered Hadō up to the 60s without incantations, scored perfect marks in Zanjutsu, and possessed a theoretical understanding of spirit particles that baffled the academy instructors.
The Second, Fifth, and Sixth Divisions had already prepared open officer seats for him.
And he was standing in front of the Tenth Division—the division famously known across the Seireitei as the “Lazy Retirement Home.”
Kazuma didn’t take the scroll.
He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms into the wide sleeves of his white Captain’s haori.
“You’re at the wrong table, kid,” Kazuma said, his voice flat and bored.
“The Fifth Division is two desks to the left.
They love bright young geniuses who want to write essays and save the world.
We mostly do gardening and sweep leaves.”
“I am aware of your division’s duties, Captain,” Aizen replied, not losing his polite smile for a second.
He took half a step forward, setting the scroll gently on the polished wood.
“I have reviewed the Gotei 13’s historical archive logs over the last fifty years.”
“Fascinating,” Kazuma deadpanned.
“I hope they cured your insomnia.”
“On the contrary, I found them quite thrilling,” Aizen said smoothly, adjusting the bridge of his glasses with a single finger.
“In the last forty years, the Tenth Division has responded to sixty-two Hollow incursions near the outer Rukongai borders.”
“Lots of walking.
Very tiring.”
“Indeed,” Aizen continued, his dark eyes locking onto Kazuma’s face with razor-sharp intensity behind the glass lenses.
“Yet, across sixty-two encounters against Adjuchas and Gillian-class Hollows, your division has suffered precisely zero casualties.
Even more intriguing…
forty-one of those beasts were officially recorded as having died from ‘unfortunate terrain collisions,’ ‘freak kinetic misfires,’ or ‘self-inflicted blunt trauma.'”
The Third Seat behind Kazuma chuckled nervously.
“Our Captain has exceptional luck with mountainous terrain!”
Aizen didn’t look at the Third Seat.
He never took his eyes off Kazuma.
“A Gillian choking on its own Cero is a statistical anomaly with a probability of less than one in ten thousand,” Aizen spoke softly, his tone conversational, like a scholar discussing the weather.
“For it to occur twelve times in the same quadrant…
suggests that the terrain is either cursed, or someone in the Tenth Division possesses an extraordinary talent for ensuring that accidents happen exactly when and where they are needed.”
The air between the two men went dead still.
Kazuma didn’t flinch.
He didn’t let a single drop of spiritual pressure leak from his soul.
He looked into Aizen’s eyes with the dull, glassy expression of an overworked clerk who just wanted his lunch break.
Inside, Kazuma’s mind was running cold calculations.
‘The kid is already testing me,’ Kazuma thought.
‘He figured out the statistical impossibilities in the public records. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
If I accept him, he’ll be snooping around my office day and night, trying to figure out my Bankai.
If I reject him, he’ll know I have something to hide.’
Kazuma reached out, picked up the application scroll, and looked at the name.
“Sōsuke Aizen,” Kazuma read aloud.
“Yes, Captain.”
Kazuma set the scroll down, pulled out his official red ink stamp, and hovered it over the rejection box.
“You’re too smart for this division, Aizen-kun,” Kazuma said, looking up with a lazy, disarming grin.
“Smart people ask too many questions.
Questions lead to investigations.
Investigations lead to overtime.
And in the Tenth Division, overtime is considered a severe moral failure.”
*THUMP.*
Kazuma stamped the scroll with the bright red seal of **REJECTION: TRANSFERRED TO 5TH DIVISION.**
Aizen didn’t look angry.
If anything, the faint smile on his lips widened by a millimeter, his eyes gleaming with intense curiosity.
“A pity,” Aizen murmured, bowing politely as he took back the stamped scroll.
“I was hoping to learn the art of ‘terrain accidents’ from a master.”
“Try the Fifth Division,” Kazuma waved his hand dismissively.
“Captain Hirako loves giving lectures.
He’ll talk your ear off until sundown.”
“I shall keep your advice in mind, Captain Kazuma,” Aizen said softly.
He turned on his heel, his white-and-blue student robes swaying gracefully as he walked toward the Fifth Division’s table.
As the boy walked away, Kazuma’s Third Seat let out a huge breath of relief.
“Phew…
that kid gave me the creeps, Captain.
Why was he staring at your hands like that?”
Kazuma looked down at his own fingers resting on the wooden table.
Underneath the timber, a tiny circle of white frost had formed where his knuckles touched the grain—a subconscious reaction to suppressing his killing intent.
With a slight flex of his fingers, Kazuma absorbed the thermal energy back into his skin, melting the frost away instantly.
‘He didn’t just look at the records,’ Kazuma thought, leaning back and pulling his straw hat over his face once more.
‘He wanted to see if I would flinch.’
The brat had taken the bait and gone to the Fifth Division, exactly where canon dictated he belonged.
But the game had started a century early.
Kazuma closed his eyes, letting out a long, silent sigh.
‘I’m definitely going to need a longer nap this afternoon.’