chapter01 · 019-ep19

Episode 19: "Yagarasu's Monologue"

The job was finished before sunrise.

His report took three lines. "Designated specimen eliminated. Time taken: four minutes, eleven seconds. No losses." A state-designated emergency assignment—he couldn't disclose the case number. The earliest the public would learn about this night was ten years from now, when its classified status was lifted. Probably nobody would read about it anyway.

Riding a local train on the first run of the day, the man checked the three accounts on his terminal, one after another.

The first was for posting long verifications.

The second was for short wisecracks.

The third, his oldest account, was just for silently leaving likes.

He switched connections and behavior with every login. Never used the same face twice. The same routine as his job.

Yagarasu, twenty-four. The man who killed monsters more efficiently than any other human was probably also the most efficient operator of alt accounts in human history.

◇

Yagarasu had a reason he couldn't come out in public.

A state-controlled explorer. Aptitude classification: stealth. Officially, his organization didn't exist, and the photograph beside "Yagarasu" in the S-rank standings was covered with a black square. No one had forgotten to take it. His very existence was classified.

So he couldn't do what Rei had done. Couldn't sit down like Maru. That cheap cushion in the six-mat room was further from Yagarasu's line of work than anywhere else in the world.

Two years ago, when he went independent—or rather, transferred to the state—Yagarasu hadn't thought much about it. The terms were extraordinary, and the work suited him. Sensei prepared the transfer documents with his usual expression and said, in his usual voice, "Take care of yourself." Yagarasu thought that was the end of it.

He read Rei's mass message three days late. He'd been working deep underground, without a signal.

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

He wrote a reply twelve times and deleted it twelve times.

He was absolutely not pretending he hadn't noticed. For proof, his third, silent account had been registered—the night of the course's very first lesson.

◇

That night, too, the stream went on as usual.

"Good evening, this is Shin. If anyone's new, here's the usual: this is a course for beginners. No flashy techniques. No talk about the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull. —Lesson thirty-six: 'How to Place Your Footsteps.' ...We're talking about walking. Footsteps aren't something you erase. They're something you place."

Three screens glowed in the dark room. Yagarasu had opened the same stream in three windows.

【'Place' your footsteps?】

【Here comes another dull one】

【Teaching beginners the basics of stealth...?】

"This isn't stealth. It's just that even in the shallow layers, forty percent of monsters are drawn to sound. Halving your footstep noise makes a noticeable difference in how many you encounter. Safety cheaper than equipment. There are three tricks: don't come down on your heel. Don't rush the next step. And—don't walk with your knees. Or your ankles. Walk from your hips."

His fingers moved to the verification account on their own.

【Verification: correct. The main source of walking noise is the impact of the heel landing. Leading from the pelvis extends the time your foot is in contact with the ground and spreads that impact out. The same principle applies on mud, rubble, and ice. Worth remembering】

He posted it. Seconds later, the usual responses rolled in.

【There he is, verification guy】

【Weirdly knowledgeable again today】

【This guy's definitely a fairly high-level active explorer. You can tell by how he writes】

He didn't mind them recognizing the writing style. He kept it consistent so they would. Switching to the wisecrack account, he added:

【Verification guy's the type I wouldn't wanna meet in a dark alley】

Nobody told him not to talk about himself like that. A flawless job.

"All right, last up, question time. 'My companions say the way I do things is cold. Should I prioritize efficiency or getting along?' —Good question."

Sensei fell silent for a moment. The pause when he put down his teacup.

"'Efficiency' is a word that gets a bad rap. I had a student who was more efficient than anyone in the world. Not one wasted motion. People around him called him cold. But I never thought so. Finishing a fight as quickly as possible means keeping other people out of danger for as little time as possible. ...Well, when I called that 'kindness' to his face, he looked at me like I'd said something revolting."

【A student who's 'more efficient than anyone in the world'...】

【Yagarasu? The one with the black square in the rankings?】

【Sensei might be the only human alive who'd call the man behind that black square 'kind'...】

【S-Sensei has five students and every single one of them is beyond belief...!】

In front of his three screens, Yagarasu froze for about ten seconds.

Then he left a like with his silent account. He'd almost done it with the wisecrack account. It was the first time he'd nearly slipped up since taking up this line of work.

◇

Seven years ago, in Genbu's training wing, seventeen-year-old Yagarasu was the most hated student there.

In mock bouts, he "finished" faster than anyone else, never teamed up with anyone, and answered people with sarcasm. The instructors' assessments all agreed: "dangerous," "cold-blooded," "uncooperative." What else could they have written about a kid who'd been running jobs for an illegal monster-extermination outfit since before he could remember? He thought the same things about himself.

Only the dull middle-aged coach watched every recording before writing an assessment.

"You've never missed a vital point, have you?"

"...Got a problem with that?"

"The opposite," the man said, rewinding the recording. "Your hunts cause your prey less suffering than anyone else's in the world. They keep your companions in danger for less time than anyone else's, too. You've got that look on your face like killing is all you're good for, but—what you do is kindness that gets it over with as fast as possible."

Made him want to puke. In Yagarasu's world, using words to win someone over was the most basic trick there was.

"I don't trust what you say. I only trust a balance in an account. Numbers don't lie."

The man didn't get angry. He smiled and wrote a title on a new page of his notebook. "Yagarasu — Balance."

"Sure. Then I'll make a small deposit every day. One line a day about something good in you, written here. You can withdraw it or close the account entirely. Your choice."

Ridiculous, Yagarasu thought.

Five years later, on graduation day, the notebook had become three volumes. Eighteen hundred lines. The man hadn't missed a day.

He could still recite the final line by heart.

"Yagarasu's kindness always takes the shortest route. He's the only one who mistakes it for coldness."

◇

Around midnight, Yagarasu made his usual rounds of the verification thread.

"[Verification] Correlation Between Shin's Course and Shallow-Layer Accident Rates, Part 41"

There were more new faces than usual.

【Could the drop in fatalities just coincide with the update to equipment standards? It's too early to call it an effect of the course】

【Isn't it weird that the opponent for that Hina girl's promotion exam was changed right before the match?】

【An uncertified private individual giving safety instruction at that scale is apparently in a legal gray area. Heard it from an explorer I know】

At a glance, these looked like healthy questions. Verification meant doubt. Doubt itself fit the customs of this classroom.

But—Yagarasu's real job was erasing traces. To eyes that knew every way to erase them, the traces someone had failed to hide shone like footprints on a dark road.

The accounts had all been created within the same ten-day span. Their activity fell neatly between nine and six on weekdays. They all had the same habit of disguising their sources with "apparently" and "someone I know." When disproved, they didn't argue. They dropped the point and moved to the next question. They weren't trying to win. It was a seed-sowing technique, going around leaving sparks behind.

Over three hours, Yagarasu linked the sixteen core accounts using quirks of writing style, activity hours, and the degradation of reused images. He narrowed their source down to one PR agency. The biggest in the industry. And the lead client on its annual contract was—Genbu.

Was this the chairman's doing or had PR gone rogue? That much he couldn't tell. He didn't much care, either.

A campaign to damage someone's credibility. It had been running for about two weeks. They were probably planning to reap the full results later.

"............"

There is a kind of quiet, professional anger. Your heart rate doesn't rise at all. Only the procedure begins putting itself together.

Crushing this would be easy. Easier than his actual job. After all, nobody would die.

But Yagarasu looked again at the classroom on his screen. A hundred thousand people earnestly practicing how to place their footsteps. A like left at four in the morning. Paper the size of a tatami mat. A cheap cushion. —That was a place in the sun. Protect it from the shadows, and the shadows would be left on its floor.

There was only one answer, then.

◇

Yagarasu picked up his terminal and called his contact for his day job. They answered on the first ring. He stated his business and nothing more.

"It's me. —The thing I brought up before. Go ahead with it formally. Apply to change my classification level. And I'm taking all my accrued leave. I should still have three favors owed me, too."

His contact started rattling off objections. The process would take weeks; there was no precedent for reviewing this; at least give them a reason—

"I'll put the reason on the form."

He ended the call and opened the five-person thread. It had been a little more active since Maru's report that he'd gone back. The Saint had silently marked the messages read again tonight. Her last post was still "Hope you're all well," two years ago. ...She's got it bad in her own way, he thought. Not that he could talk.

He spread the application documents he'd just received across his desk.

"...Trust builds up like a bank balance whether you notice it or not, Sensei."

The words fell into the darkness.

You probably haven't noticed, but every night you make deposits into a hundred thousand people's accounts. Far more than one line a day. The interest alone has started changing the world.

—And now there are thieves trying to get their hands on that balance. Fine by me. Recovering what's owed and collecting debts—that's been my specialty for a long time.

His pen paused for a beat before the occupation field. State-controlled explorer. Aptitude classification: stealth. There were any number of titles a man who officially didn't exist could write there.

Yagarasu smiled faintly and wrote the three Japanese characters that were the least lie of all.

—Student.

And so humanity's most efficient assassin quietly began preparing to break his silence.