arc1 · 023-ep23

Episode 23: Kirise Fumino's Notebook★

When Kirise Fumino picked up the magic stone of the first monster she had ever felled with her own hands, the feel of the instant she'd driven her dagger in was still lingering, warm and diffuse, at her fingertips.

With the pad of her thumb, she traced gently over the surface of the magic stone—about the size of a pebble. It ought to have been the same as the sample she'd handled in the classroom during the preliminary course, and yet this one—left behind now as the wolf turned to mist right before her own eyes—had a weight to it, heavy and certain.

"That's your very first one, huh. Tuck it away in that pouch as a keepsake."

"Oh—yes! Thank you very much!"

Nodding at the mild voice of Fukazumi Iori, who had walked over beside her, Fumino undid the clasp of the pouch at her hip and stowed the magic stone away.

The clasp snapped shut, and Fumino let out a long, relieved breath from deep in her chest.

To tell the truth, right after she had pressed her point in that strong tone in the very middle of the corridor—"『Slip in and whap』 doesn't tell me anything!" "Please explain it properly in words!"—Fumino had secretly gone cold inside, thinking, Oh, I've done it again.

Ever since she was small, whenever there was something she didn't understand or a procedure she couldn't accept, she'd never been able to just swallow it—a habit of stacking up questions like "Why is that?" "What's your basis for that?" And every time, her high school teachers and the adults around her would pull bothered faces and call her "too argumentative," "contrary."

And her partner today was a seasoned explorer so far off the charts that yesterday's clip video had set the whole internet abuzz. It wouldn't have been strange at all for her senpai's mood to sour over a "Don't you dare talk back, newbie"—and when she'd heard that first slapdash bit of advice, 『slip in and whap』, she had honestly been on the verge of clutching her head, convinced she'd been saddled with an instructor of the type who barreled ahead on gut feeling alone.

Fumino had her circumstances: no matter what, she had to become able to earn money safely and steadily as an explorer. That was exactly why she couldn't afford to get hurt leaning on vague hunches—she wanted rock-solid technique from the very first step.

"Um, senpai? May I ask just one more question?"

"Mm, sure. What is it?"

As they set off walking toward the deeper corridor and Fumino called out, timid as could be, Iori slowed and turned around at once. On that face there wasn't the faintest shadow of anyone finding a question-bombarding junior a nuisance.

"Earlier, when I fought the third wolf, you fell back not directly behind me but against the wall just diagonal behind my right, senpai. Was there some reason you chose that spot, too?"

"Hm? Ah, the wall dips in a little there, so it was an easy place to stand, that's all."

"......『Easy to stand』—that's all?"

"Mm. Directly behind you, I'd have been in the tracking drone's camera line, you see—and from that dip in the wall, if you ever got into real danger, Kirise-san, I could step out in front of you straight away from the side without blocking your field of view."

Said so breezily, like it was nothing at all, and Fumino's eyes went round before she knew it.

It meant that what had looked like merely stepping back at a convenient spot had actually been the drone's sight line, Fumino's own field of vision, and even the shortest route to cut in from if the worst should happen—all weighed up in a single instant before settling into that dip in the wall.

"That's incredible—you were taking up position with all of that worked out!?"

"Hmm, 'worked out' is a strong word—it's more like, standing there just feels right, I guess? You really do watch everything so closely, Kirise-san..."

Iori laughed, a little sheepishly.

It seemed this senpai, whenever trying to explain in words unprompted, simply bottomed out at sensory expressions like 『it feels right』 and 『it goes grip』—while every single one of the movements actually performed had an astonishingly solid basis behind it.

For the rest of the dive, too, the back-and-forth between the two of them kept up that exact rhythm.

When they came up on a fork in the corridor, Iori said at first, "The left path somehow seems like it'll be noisy—let's take the right," sensory once again. But when Fumino dug in—"How can you tell it'll be noisy!?"—Iori, without the least sour look, pointed at the entrance of the left passage and actually crouched down on the spot to show her: several sets of wolf tracks freshly layered over one another at the edge of the flagging, and a presence drifting from deeper in, laced with that smell particular to beasts.

Over the two hours or so they spent walking the shallow layers, Fumino went on to fell four more monsters with her own dagger under Iori's watchful eye.

As ever, Iori's opening advice was gibberish drowning in onomatopoeia—『When its back goes MOOSH, slip away sideways, okay?』『The moment its shoulders go CLENCH-tight is your opening, y'know』—but when Fumino fired questions back and ground it into shape—『So you mean the instant the tendons in its forelegs go taut!?』—and moved her body just as she'd been told, she could slip inside a monster's guard safely, like it was all some kind of lie.

The words made so little sense, and yet when she did exactly as told, her dagger landed clean to a degree that was almost uncanny—and somehow that was as vexing as it was delightful, and she couldn't get enough of it.

　　　　　＊

Early afternoon came around, and with the first accompanied dive finished, they returned to the prep space on the surface—the bright sunlight outside was a touch dazzling.

When Iori worked the terminal and ended the stream, the white tracking drone that had been floating behind them sank slowly in altitude and tucked itself back into the black hard case on the bench, all on its own.

"Good work today, Kirise-san. For a first dive, your feet had stopped freezing up entirely by the second half. You've got real aptitude for this."

"It's thanks to you, senpai, showing me the real movements again and again. If I'd been alone, I'm sure I would have frozen up at the very first monster and gotten hurt."

Straightening her spine, Fumino bowed deep, gratitude packed into every inch of it.

"Next time's the day after tomorrow, right? Once you've gotten used to a few monsters in the shallow layers like today, next time let's try walking a section just a little deeper in, too."

"Yes! Please take care of me again the day after tomorrow, senpai!"

Hard case hanging from one hand, waving—"See you again the day after tomorrow, then"—and heading back toward the Association's reception desk: Fumino stayed where she stood, watching Iori's back for a while.

Sitting down on the bench of the prep space, now that she was alone, Fumino drew out of her bag a single college-ruled notebook and a ballpoint pen.

She opened to the first page of the still-brand-new notebook and, before her memory could fade, set down at a furious pace everything she'd been taught on today's dive—how to read a four-legged beast's hind-leg claws and center of gravity in the instant before it leaps, the layering of tracks at path forks, and the meaning of the wall-side standing position her senpai had taken.

As she gazed at the words she'd translated out into her own phrasing on the notebook's page, her mouth tightened with resolve of its own accord.

The explanations were astonishingly all-feeling, but no matter how minutely she pressed with questions, this was a person who would face her head-on without ever once finding it a bother. In this stretch until the newcomer training came to an end, she would take every single usable technique that senpai possessed—not one left over—absorb it, and make it her own.