chapter01 · 017-ep17

Episode 17: "Back to Being a Student"

That line sat like a rock in the middle of the waterfall of comments.

【Shishiomaru · Official】"Pops, it's me. I wanna start over as your student."

A few days after the exam uproar, we'd gained tens of thousands of first-time viewers. So this week was "Review Everything from Lesson One Week," and we were revisiting the dull lessons in our usual dull fashion. Today: how to tie a rope, the review edition. We hadn't even gotten started.

【The third one! The third one is here!】

【HUMANITY'S HARDEST SHIELD LET'S GOOOO】

【First Rei, then Mio, and now Shishiomaru】

【He calls him 'Pops'...?】

"Um... Maru-kun, it's been a while. Glad to see you're doing well, but we're in the middle of a lesson—"

【Shishiomaru · Official】"im good"

【Shishiomaru · Official】"im at your door"

"...Huh?"

The doorbell rang.

【AT THE DOOR lolol】

【He moves way too fast】

【I get it. He didn't comment and then come over. He came over and THEN commented】

I left the stream running and opened the front door.

Half the light from the outside corridor disappeared. An enormous man stood in the dimness, tall enough that I had to look up at him. His shoulders were nearly as wide as the doorframe. On his back was a large shield—no, something the size of a large shield, carefully wrapped in a cloth bundle. The hardest man in the world bent deeply at the waist on the doorstep of my thirty-two-year-old apartment building.

"Pops. I'm home."

"...Not sure 'welcome home' is quite right. Well, come in. Watch your head."

"Yeah. Rei gave me your address."

◇

This time, roughly twice the mass sat seiza on the cheap cushion in my six-mat room. The tatami groaned. The camera frame couldn't fit anything above his shoulders.

【He doesn't fit on screen】

【Humanity's hardest shield is in a six-mat room now, too】

【That cushion's becoming the dedicated seat of humanity's strongest】

"I'm Shishiomaru. I use a shield. —Starting today, I'm a student here again."

That was his whole introduction. He'd always been like this.

"Maru-kun. This is a beginner course."

"Yeah. That's why I'm here."

Maru nodded his thick neck.

"I don't get complicated stuff. So I'm doing it all over, starting with the basics. That's what beginners do, right?"

"You're S-rank, and—"

"Pops."

Even the way he cut me off was straight to the point.

"I've gotten stronger these last two years. Made my shield thicker, too. But something happened recently. For the first time, I couldn't figure it out."

"...Figure what out?"

"We got a new kid in my clan. Sixteen. Big and nothing else. Just like I was. So I tried teaching him. 'Bite the ground,' I said. ...Didn't get through to him. 'Move the stone in your belly' didn't either. Three days I tried, and not one thing got through."

Maru looked down at the fist on his knee.

"That's when I finally got it. Those weren't words everybody knew. You made 'em up just for me, Pops."

The comments slowed to the pace of a classroom ready to listen. I checked one thing, just in case.

"Maru-kun, you know we're live, right?"

"Don't mind. That's why I came."

Maru looked right into the camera. He had the same look in his eyes as when he raised his shield.

"I grew up in an orphanage. Couldn't read properly till I was fifteen."

【...】

【He hardly ever talks about his past】

"The first dojo handed me a textbook. Couldn't read it. Fell asleep in class. They wrote me off as 'stupid.' Same at the next dojo. Everywhere I went, they said I was big but useless. It was like that when I first got to Genbu's training wing, too. ...Then Pops showed up."

Maru's voice was flat, like he was giving a report. That made it hit harder.

"Pops threw the textbook out. Drew me pictures instead, on a sheet of paper as big as a tatami mat. Pictures of the soles of my feet. Drew arrows to show where my weight had to go to make me hardest. Not a single technical word. Not 'weight distribution,' but 'bite the ground.' Not 'shift your center of gravity,' but 'move the stone in your belly.' He only used words I already knew."

"He taught me my letters after that. ...Because I wanted to read his notebooks. The first book I ever read from start to finish had 'Shishiomaru — Load-Bearing' written on the cover."

【Hey】

【Hold on】

【He taught humanity's hardest shield to read and write, too?】

【'Change the way you teach'—so this is what that means...】

"Pops changed the whole way he taught for me. Didn't know how big a deal that was till I went independent and started teaching someone myself. —I read Rei's message when I came up from a long-term expedition. Spent about two months down in the earth with no signal. Then I spent three days and nights watching every archive. Watched Hina's exam, too. And I decided."

Maru put both hands on the tatami. The hardest head in the world bowed low.

"Teach me again. From the start. This time I can read. I can take notes. —I'll pay tuition."

"...The course is free."

"Rei said you told him the same thing."

【We've seen this bit before lolol】

【All his students want to pay tuition】

【Rei quietly sent superchats. Maru said 'tuition' to his face. Their personalities really show】

◇

Well. I suppose that expression on my face is what people call being embarrassed. I hid the lower half of it behind my teacup, then gave in and opened a cardboard box by the wall. From under two years' worth of dust, I pulled out that notebook. "Shishiomaru — Load-Bearing."

"All right. You can start over as a student. —So, Maru-kun, stand up for a moment."

"Yeah."

He stood. His hair brushed the ceiling. My six-mat room had its limits.

"Take your usual stance. You can leave the shield in its bundle."

I watched silently for thirty seconds. The oldest procedure in the work I'd been doing for twenty years. Observe, break it down, put it into words.

"...Maru-kun. You hurt your right shoulder about a year ago, didn't you?"

Maru's brow moved.

"I never made that public."

"I don't need you to. Your right heel told me. The habit you picked up protecting it has made its way all the way down to your sole. Your right side's three centimeters thinner than it used to be."

【Terrifying】

【He had him stand up for thirty seconds and spotted an undisclosed injury】

【This is 'observation and putting it into words'...】

"The shoulder's healed, so all we have to fix is the habit. Right—"

I turned to a new page in the notebook. I talked as I wrote. Coaching's a funny job: put a student in front of me, and my head starts working all on its own.

"A back-to-basics curriculum, just for Maru-kun. Week one: take stock of your soles. We'll redraw the picture of how your feet are now together, on a sheet as big as a tatami mat. Week two: get those three centimeters back on your right side. Week three—let's make this homework. Go back to that sixteen-year-old kid and say 'bite the ground' again, but in his words, not yours. This time, you'll learn and teach at the same time. You're a teacher now, too."

Maru's eyes went wide, then he smiled. It looked like a rock cracking open.

"...You're still a monster, Pops."

"I'm a coach for a beginner course."

【Wait, did Sensei just put together a whole curriculum on the spot?】

【In seconds】

"Oh, and everyone, it's nothing special. There's only one kind of fundamentals. But there are as many ways to make them click as there are people. Some kids start with words, some with notebooks, some with pictures. Get the way in right, and the fundamentals can reach anybody. —'Personalized instruction' sounds grand, but it just means looking at the keyhole before making the key."

【Do you realize dojos all over the world aren't doing that 'just'?】

【That's how kids get written off as 'stupid.' Like Maru-san at fifteen】

【We shouldn't be getting this for free (I say this every week)】

A line with a familiar sort of bounce tumbled into the flood of comments.

【S-Sensei! Um, does that mean Shishiomaru-san and I are in the same classroom...!?】

Maru nodded at the camera.

"You're Hina, huh? Watched your exam. —That was a good half-step."

【Y-yes! Thank you so much...!】

"And no, we're not classmates on equal footing. You're my senpai. In a classroom, the one who got there first is the senpai, right?"

The comment section boiled over.

【B-rank senpai, S-rank junior】

【A model of dojo hierarchy】

【Hina-senpai is born】

【Bet Hina-senpai's standing at attention in front of her screen】

At the end of the stream, Maru signed up for the "student roster" right there. It was nothing more than a free registration feature I'd made for submitting assignments. His student number was a little over eighty thousand. The world's hardest new student read the number out twice and nodded, satisfied.

"Pops. Homework's due next week, right?"

"Yeah. Use plenty of paper."

"Yeah. —See ya, senpai."

That last part was for someone on the other side of the screen. Humanity's hardest shield bowed his head as directly as when he'd arrived and left the classroom in my six-mat room.

◇

By the next morning, the whole world knew.

Humanity's hardest shield sitting seiza on a cheap cushion. A tatami-mat-sized sheet of paper. A diagnosis in thirty seconds of standing. "You're my senpai." Subtitled in languages around the world, the clip raced around as a meme under the title "The World's Hardest New Student." An S-rank taking a beginner course—by now, the image needed no explanation.

As for me, I cooked rice, flipped through notebooks, and bought two sheets of the biggest paper in the art store. On a new page, I'd written just two lines.

【Shishiomaru — starting over. Three centimeters on the right. Learning while becoming a teacher.】

【And—time to think about the size of the classroom.】

The roster passed ninety thousand before the weekend.

And on the morning the new week began, the counter quietly turned to six digits.

—One hundred thousand students.

The classroom grew a little bigger again.