chapter2 · 017-ep17
Episode 17: Appraisal
Kujō Masaomi's briefing continued right along.
"What we're about to do is neither training nor lecture. First, we confirm where things stand."
The hall quieted a little.
Everyone, most likely, was waiting to hear what came next.
"The staff waiting in the room beyond have a Skill called Appraisal."
Kujō's gaze went to the door at the back of the hall.
"We have a lot of people today. First we'll look at your current Levels and sort you into groups, roughly."
The air rippled with a buzz.
What do you mean, "roughly"?
The explanation got sloppy there all of a sudden.
"Front rows, in order. Follow the guidance."
Maybe because of the forceful delivery, there was no confused milling about — the front rows simply obeyed the ushers and filed toward the back room.
First row done, second row done, and the line kept flowing smoothly after that.
Still — this is way too fast, isn't it?
The throughput is abnormal.
I don't think even idol handshake events move along this briskly.
And before I knew it, it was our turn.
We started walking, caught in that current.
The participant at the head went inside.
"Beginner... beginner... you're Intermediate... next, beginner."
A voice like that drifted out.
A young woman, sounded like.
Inside, the room had yet another kind of air.
It wasn't spacious.
But it was workspace-like, in proportion.
Desks set side by side, staff seated beyond them.
Among them, one woman stood out absurdly.
Long blonde hair.
Highly refined features.
No — past "refined."
Just straight-up beautiful.
A body line clear even through the suit, and a shirt worn loose enough at the chest that her cleavage was barely visible.
Office-lady hotness, straight out of my dreams.
For the average high school boy: one word — "unbearable."
There might even be guys who'd want to get stepped on.
"Next row, please."
The call came.
A composed voice.
We lined up at her desk.
"Kashiwazaki Yura. I'll be checking you now."
That was all she said.
She worked down the row from the end.
Look.
A short pause.
Staff recording beside her.
Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced.
That was all it was.
Each sorted participant got something like a guidance sheet and moved on farther in.
The appraisals went by like flowing water.
And at last, the turn was nearly on us.
Sōsuke.
Kashiwazaki Yura looked at him for only a few seconds.
"Beginner."
Short.
Sōsuke's face said Huh, that's it? but he was already being waved along.
Well, that figures.
Next, Mibu.
When we were listening to Kujō Masaomi earlier, she'd been behind me.
Somewhere along the way she'd gotten ahead.
Yura looked at Mibu and opened her mouth at once.
"Advanced."
Yeah. Of course she is.
Mibu looked entirely unsurprised and headed off down the Advanced-side guidance.
And then — me.
My eyes met Kashiwazaki Yura's.
Being stared at straight-on like this really does make you self-conscious.
Blue eyes, so clear I felt pulled in.
Her name is extremely Japanese, but her features lean somewhere overseas.
Half?
I thought — but that name, however you slice it, is pure Japanese.
That would leave quarter as the remaining option, but even then, the foreign blood is showing way too hard.
Makes you wonder where the Japanese blood went.
...Also, isn't this eye contact running long?
I'm being stared at this entire time?
Her expression didn't move a millimeter.
What? What is it?
This is scary, okay.
The very next moment, mid-those-thoughts—
"Intermediate."
Yura said it like nothing had happened.
Done.
And I was waved along, just like that.
Wait, what was that?
I mean, she didn't say anything to me.
Didn't stop me, either.
But for one instant, there'd been a strange pause.
Imagination?
No, but that would bug anyone, right?
Thinking that, I moved on down the Intermediate side.
It was only there that I registered how cleanly we'd been split up.
Sōsuke: Beginner.
Me: Intermediate.
Mibu: Advanced.
Spectacularly, all three of us different.
Farther in, there were stairs.
A simple signboard pointed the way: "Intermediate to the second floor, Advanced to the third."
Even this far in, no sign of Sōsuke or Mibu.
They'd moved on ahead, naturally.
"Well, whatever."
No use worrying about other people.
Focus on yourself.
With that little speech to my heart, I climbed the stairs to the second floor.
The sorting finished, all of it.
The participants were led off, group by assigned group.
Beginner.
Intermediate.
Advanced.
The room that had held all those people now held not one participant — only Kujō Masaomi, Kashiwazaki Yura, and a few staff starting cleanup remained.
"Hey, Kashiwazaki."
Masaomi spoke up, half to the air.
Yura, gathering the papers in front of her, lifted her head slightly.
"What."
"During the orientation — was I too harsh?"
"Huh?"
Yura's hands stopped for a beat, then went back to squaring the papers.
"Eh. That's about standard, isn't it?"
"You think?"
"I do."
"But compliance is cutthroat these days, right?"
Masaomi put a little force into his brow.
"One bad read and it's power harassment this, moral harassment that. There might even be guys who quit the program over it."
"If there are, then when it happens, it happens?"
"That would be a problem."
"It would. But if someone's at 'your briefing felt too intense, I'm going home,' I think no wording was ever going to save that."
Only there did Yura finally look at Masaomi.
"If anything, you overdid the kid gloves. You literally said 'if you don't like it, you can leave,' remember?"
"But if I don't say it up front, it's guaranteed hassle later."
"Is it, though?"
"It is. Even the young guys in the police these days have to be that careful..."
Yura cut him off without ceremony.
"Honestly though, Kujō-san — delicate, for how you look."
"What's that supposed to mean, 'for how I look'?"
"What it sounds like. I figured you were more the 'everyone who shows up shuts up and follows' type."
"...No, no. It's not that kind of era anymore."
Masaomi said it with a straight face, and Yura let out a small breath of a "fair enough."
"Still — a finer crop than I expected."
This time, half to himself, Masaomi went on.
"Didn't expect this many to have raised their Levels in dungeons already."
"It's the Kanto region. Feels about par?"
"No. Even accounting for that, it's a lot."
"Hm-mm."
Yura's reply was light.
But Masaomi was still turning it over.
"I assumed most Awakeners would sit at the baseline — but close to thirty percent Intermediate or above? They really did grind those Levels during the two days between the Gates appearing and entry getting banned. Do people these days just not have a sense of crisis? Or fear?"
"Um. Could you go do your theorizing alone?"
"I'm not theorizing."
"You absolutely were."
Sighing, Yura stood up from the desk.
"My workday ends now. Everything past this point is personal time!"
"Kashiwazaki. Ours is the work of protecting the nation. Keep drawing that hard a line between on and off, and we won't even manage to protect what we're supposed to—"
"Working long isn't automatically better, you know?"
At that, Masaomi went briefly quiet.
"Kujō-san. Keep talking like that and I don't think you'll ever get a girlfriend, you know?"
"Wh...! Hey, Kashiwazaki! That is completely beside the point right now...!"
"Heh heh. Later, then. Goooood work today~"
Yura flashed Masaomi a mischievous grin, and then she was out of the room.
Appraisal work done, Kashiwazaki Yura headed straight out of the facility.
"Still — well. He had a point."
In fact,
Yura had been thinking the same thing as Masaomi.
There had been so many Awakeners that the second half turned into pure assembly line, but there'd been more high-Level people than expected.
And.
In the back of Yura's mind, one particular high school boy flickered past.
There was a kid with more Skills than she'd ever seen... wasn't there?
No. Surely not.
Skill manifestation had only been confirmed at reaching Level 10 so far — beyond that, the other timings weren't well understood yet.
Yes. Just her imagination.
Probably tired from appraising too many people.
Definitely that.
Honestly, it had to be.
Otherwise it meant she'd made a mistake — and it meant there was a way to learn Skills nobody knows about.
"...That would be an absolute pain."
She didn't want more work.
She didn't want more responsibility.
And out of that earnest wish, Kashiwazaki Yura declared the familiar memory to have never happened.