chapter01 · 011-ep11

Episode 11: "The Alt Account"

The spark began smoldering quietly, somewhere Shinichi knew nothing about.

A major anonymous message board, explorer category.

"[Verification] The Mystery Account That's Been in Shin-Sensei's Likes Since the Beginning"

The thread starter's argument went like this. Since the uninvited guest episode, the analysis crowd had turned its attention to whether the other four students might be watching the course, too. Someone compared the public lists of likes on every archive and found a single strange account.

Account name: "m_0".

・Registered the day after the first lesson

・Zero posts. Zero comments. Follows only the course channel

・No icon set. An entirely silent account

・And yet it's liked every lesson, from the first to the latest

・What's more, every time stamp anyone can check falls in the four o'clock hour of the morning

【Just a fan who's an early riser】

【Wait, though. m_0. An m and a zero. ...Couldn't you read it as "Mio"?】

【Huh?】

【Mio Hyodo. "The Witch of Dawn." You know, the one who's been spotted training alone at daybreak over and over】

【That's a stretch... wait, but the registration date...】

The thread grew and grew overnight, and by the next day it would find its way into the live broadcast.

◇

"Okay, then. Last up, our usual question time."

We'd reached lesson twenty-two. Picking up a few viewer questions at the end had become a routine since around lesson three.

"'Should beginners start exploring solo or in a party?' —Good question. The short answer is a party. But not because 'it's safer.' A beginner exploring alone has no way to notice their own mistakes. A mistake only becomes a mistake when there's someone beside you to see it. ...Well, that was my job."

【He says it so casually, but that's heavy】

【That's the heart of the whole course】

"Next. 'Sensei, I watch your course sitting seiza.' That's not a question. Make yourself comfortable. If you ruin your knees, you'll be in trouble on the third layer. All right, next—"

As I started reading, my hand paused for a moment.

"Question. People are saying the 'm_0' account that's liked every archive belongs to Mio Hyodo-san. Does Sensei know anything about it?"

The comment section visibly sped up.

【There it is】

【You're really asking that?】

【Don't bring the identification crowd's worst habits in here】

【But I was wondering too】

Now, there was no way I could know whether it was really her. No way at all. But the moment I saw the line about four in the morning, nostalgia reached me before any answer did.

"Know anything... Well, only the person herself would know if it's her."

I think I was smiling a little.

"Mio-chan always liked reviewing things at daybreak. If she still does, that'd make me happy."

【Oh】

【OHHHHH】

【Sensei, isn't that basically confirmation??】

"You see, she wouldn't use what she'd learned on the same day. She'd let it sit overnight, then go over it again by herself at daybreak. No one taught her to do that. She found the best way to make a lesson stick all on her own. So all I taught her was how to borrow the key to the training hall at dawn. That's about what a coach's job amounts to."

【She'd cry if she heard that】

【What if she's watching?】

【She is watching (stares at the likes)】

【W-wait, does that mean I'm taking the same course as Mio Hyodo-san...!?】

"Hina-chan, do your assignments. ...And sorry if I've got the wrong person. m_0-san, thank you for always leaving a like. Whoever you are, reviewing at daybreak is good for you. It's quiet, and things sink in."

◇

She was watching.

In fact, Mio Hyodo had been waiting with her breath held in her darkened room, as usual, since thirty seconds before the live broadcast began.

"Mio-chan always liked reviewing things at daybreak."

The terminal slipped from her hand.

The stream went on as if nothing had happened inside the screen on the carpet. Mio sank into a crouch without picking it up. Her heartbeat was loud. It hadn't sounded this loud even at the climax of her S-rank certification exam.

—He knows.

No, he doesn't. Sensei hadn't confirmed anything. He hadn't, but the way he'd said it. His voice.

"If she still does, that'd make me happy."

"~~~~!"

An inarticulate noise escaped her. Mio Hyodo, humanity's strongest mage, the woman who had rewritten modern magical theory three times, age twenty-three, had only hazy memories of what happened next. When she came to, she was on her bed with the covers pulled over her head, kicking her feet. Her reason said, Stop that. Her feet wouldn't stop. Magic control: S rating. Foot control: E.

At sixteen, Mio Hyodo was a child who couldn't talk to anyone.

Endless diagrams of magical theory unfolded in her head, yet when she tried to speak, she couldn't get a single line across. She couldn't join her peers' circle. An instructor wrote "lacks cooperation" in his assessment. The empty training hall before dawn was the only place she could breathe.

One daybreak, a plain middle-aged man was standing in that hall.

"Oh, sorry. I don't mean to interrupt," he said. "It's just... you rearranged the spell formula from yesterday's lesson, didn't you? Yours was better than the one they taught. Could you write out how it works in a notebook sometime? You don't have to say it aloud. Just write it."

You don't have to say it aloud.

He probably still didn't know how much those words meant to her.

For the next two years, she wrote and he read. With hardly a conversation between them, notebooks passed back and forth, and a silent washout became humanity's strongest mage. On the morning of her first high-difficulty mission, he gave her a little, clumsily hand-sewn pouch. "A good-luck charm. Just for peace of mind, though." Inside was a scrap torn from one of his notebooks.

"Mio Hyodo's strength isn't that she struggles to speak. It's the sincerity that more than makes up for it. She's the only one who doesn't know that."

That scrap of paper, pouch and all, was still in the top drawer of her desk.

Under the covers, Mio pulled her terminal close. There was a thread she'd opened and closed hundreds of times over the past two days. Rei's first group message in two years.

【Sensei's all alone. How long are you going to keep pretending you haven't noticed?】

She'd marked it read within a minute. She'd been looking at the screen that night, too. But she still hadn't replied. She wasn't pretending not to notice. She noticed every morning at four. Even after all these years, she just couldn't write a single line to tell him so.

She'd hung up after eleven seconds on the call she'd made with her number withheld, just because he'd said her name.

She still couldn't write the words. Couldn't make a call, either.

But.

Mio reached one arm out from under the covers and opened the settings for her alt account. Then she opened her desk drawer and photographed the old hand-sewn pouch with the utmost care in the world.

◇

The next afternoon, someone posted a screenshot in that verification thread.

【Hey】

【Hey hey hey hey】

【"m_0" has an icon now】

The default gray circle now held a picture. A photograph of a plain, clumsily hand-sewn little pouch. Old and worn at the corners, but clearly treasured.

None of the identification crowd knew what it was.

The only thing certain was that an account silent since lesson one had "said" something for the first time.

【Wonder what it is】

【Don't know, but somehow I get it】

【Don't pry. This is progress. Let's watch quietly】

【By the way, there are like three other suspicious silent accounts that have been in the likes forever】

◇

That same week. Kasumigaseki, Dungeon Agency Safety Statistics Division.

A young staffer putting together the monthly report frowned at a graph.

The rate of deaths and injuries inside dungeons among mid-tier explorers—the C- to B-rank bracket—had plainly fallen since last month. There'd been no revision to equipment standards. No discovery of a major new strategy. Three reruns of the figures to check for a tallying error left the line sloping downward at the same angle.

"...What is going on with these numbers?"

People were no longer dying, and no one knew why.

Nobody had yet noticed that the date the line began to fall coincided with the start of a certain beginner course stream.