chapter01 · 003-ep3

Episode 3: "Humanity's Strongest Was Watching"

The twelve seconds born at 2 a.m. had been played tens of thousands of times by morning.

【What is this dodge? That's E-rank gear, right?】

【The ash hound's leap is the kind of thing even C-ranks eat on first contact】

【I ran it slow. She's reacting to the sink of the hind legs before it jumps. She's dodging it "on sight."】

【No way. Coincidence.】

【And on a coincidence, she cuts the flank on the shortest possible line the instant after dodging?】

At some point, the clip had acquired a title.

"[Verification Wanted] This Is Not an E-rank's Movement"

By late morning, the girl herself had been identified.

【This girl is Amaha Hina. The four straight D-rank promotion exam failures】

【That running joke? You're kidding】

【Compare it with the official footage of last month's exam. Different person】

【Can a human change this much in a month?】

And by evening, one of the self-styled verification squad posted the decisive find.

【Traced her. Her account has been posting questions in the same stream's archives for days now】

【Shin-san's Beginner Dungeon Course. A no-name course with next to zero viewers】

【Went and watched. An old guy going on forever about how to stand】

【So dull I closed it after three minutes】

【I watched it to the end. ...Hey, something's off about this. The explanations are too specific】

◇

As for me, that day was another peaceful one.

Cooked rice, flipped through notebooks, prepped for the night's stream. A perfectly wholesome unemployed life, day six.

I had noticed the anomaly, in my own way. Past noon, the archive view counts had gone strange. Lesson one, which had been stuck in two digits until yesterday, climbed every time I refreshed the page. Somewhere past a thousand, I arrived at a conclusion.

"...A malfunction, maybe."

It's secondhand gear that cost 30,000 yen. If a number or two was on the fritz, I had no grounds to complain.

That night. I hit the Start Streaming button like always, and did a double take at the corner of the screen.

Viewer count: 【112】.

"........."

The number kept climbing while I watched. The comment section had already started flowing, though I hadn't so much as said hello.

【He's here】

【Is this the course?】

【It really is just an old guy】

【Is this seriously Hina-chan's master?】

I see. Apparently not a malfunction. No idea what was going on, but—the viewer count doesn't change what I do, however many of them there are.

"Good evening, this is Shin. A lot of you seem to be new, so let me say it up front: this is a course for beginners. No flashy techniques. No talk about the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull."

【He says it himself】

【Good of him to be honest】

"Lesson six. Today we're covering 'how to retreat.' —Everyone practices moving forward, but nobody practices moving back. And the thing is, more explorers die retreating than pressing forward."

Like always, I put the contents of my notebooks into words. Why, when people step backward, they drop onto their heels and land on their backsides. Why turning your toes fifteen degrees outward is enough to keep you from falling. Where to set your chin so that your gaze alone never lowers while you back away.

The comment section started out rowdy.

【Dull】

【Too dull】

【I came because they called it a legendary course】

But thirty minutes in, it had changed, in a strange sort of way.

【...Whoa. I just tried it where I was and I seriously stopped falling over】

【Tried it in the hallway. What is this】

【Five years as an explorer and I never once thought about how I back up】

【Why did nobody ever teach us this?】

【Sensei, another day of learning. Um, by the way, why are there suddenly all these people...】

Hina's comments were washing away in a flood of unfamiliar names. The one person who should have been the owner of the classroom seemed to be the most bewildered of anyone, which struck me as a little funny.

At stream's end, the viewer count was 【317】.

"...Well. By tomorrow they'll lose interest and go back to whatever they usually watch. That's it for today."

I said so and cut the stream.

Even I had to admire how thoroughly I understood nothing.

◇

Same night. In the lodge of a joint expedition to an unconquered dungeon, on a continent nine thousand kilometers from Japan.

Rei Kenjo lay on his bed, staring at his terminal.

Humanity's strongest swordsman. Twenty-five years old. S-rank, first in the standings. On this expedition too, he was the core of the assault, with deep-layer surveying scheduled from first thing tomorrow morning. He should have been asleep already.

That he couldn't sleep was nothing new. Two years since going independent, his pillows had kept changing, and he had decided to blame it on that.

Even the social networks of a foreign country had those twelve seconds.

"[Verification Wanted] This Is Not an E-rank's Movement"

Half thinking, he played it.

On screen, a small girl slipped an ash hound's leap by half a step and cut its defenseless flank.

Rei watched, expressionless. He played it again. And again. On the fourth replay, he lifted the terminal right up to his face and narrowed his eyes at the screen as if pasted to it.

The so-called verification squad was carrying on about her "reacting to the sink of the hind legs." To an amateur's eye, sure. But wrong. That's not where to look.

It's before the leap—at the moment she faces it.

The instant the girl came face-to-face with the ash hound, her toes were already gripping the floor.

Heel kept on the floor until the very end. So the upper body never goes first. Because the upper body never goes first, the eyeline never wavers once. Because it never wavers, she sees the first motion. Because she sees it, half a step is enough.

—Like making a fist, inside the shoe.

Eight years ago. The first instruction a seventeen-year-old sword trainee ever received, at the place he washed up after failed promotion exams left him nowhere to go—it matched that down to the last millimeter.

"Before we get to lunging, let's start with how you stand. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull. —But you'll stop dying."

Rei shot upright.

He traced the clip to its source. Streamer "Gamma's" archive—no. That was just someone who happened to film it. Where did the girl's movement come from? He scrolled back through the verification squad's posts. There.

Shin-san's Beginner Dungeon Course.

Streamer name: "Shin."

His heart gave one heavy beat.

He opened lesson one of the archives. The boxed-in sound of a cheap mic. Calm, a little languid—the voice he had listened to almost every day for eight years.

"Lesson one: 'Before we talk gear—please let me start with how you stand.'"

"...!"

Rei pressed a hand over his mouth.

There was no mistaking it. If every last person in the world misheard it, he alone would not.

Two years since the day he went independent. The owner of the number where his finger had stopped, hundreds of times over the contact list, and which he had never once managed to press. When he'd asked after the man through the clan, the only answer that came back was "under contract with Genbu," and then the trail went dead. That man—had been here.

In a classroom with zero viewers. Giving one lone washout the same lesson he himself had received that day.

Rei stepped out into the midnight corridor, woke the terminal linked to expedition headquarters, and began rebooking his flight home. The time difference, tomorrow's deep-layer survey, the duties of the number-one rank—all of it had vanished cleanly from his head.

What he got was a seat three weeks ahead of schedule.

He pressed the confirm button. Rei looked out the dark window—toward the eastern sky nine thousand kilometers away—and in a voice no one could hear, for the first time in two years, used that name for him again.

"—I found you, Sensei."