chapter01 · 020-ep20

Episode 20: "The Saint Who Hasn't Come"

The world noticed the "empty seat" the week the student roster passed a hundred and ten thousand.

It started, as usual, in a verification thread.

"[Verification] Where Shin-Sensei's Five Students Are Now"

【Rei Kenjo: barged in. Legendary】

【Mio Hyodo: added notes. Correction fiend】

【Shishiomaru: back as a student. Teaching aid】

【Yagarasu: no idea, his photo's blacked out in the rankings. Hey, verification guy, is it you?】

【Kokoro Shirose: —Nothing. Never appeared on the stream. No comments. No public mention】

【Come to think of it, the Saint's the only one who hasn't done anything】

【She's the greatest healer alive. She's probably just the busiest person in the world】

【But still. Rei, Mio, and Maru all 'came home' in such obvious ways】

【Hey. Anyone remember the article about that transfer press conference two years ago?】

Three days later, the headlines were all in place.

"The Saint Kokoro Shirose, Alone in Her Silence—What Happened Between Student and Mentor?"

"The Transfer Press Conference's 'That Remark' Resurfaces: Why Won't the Fifth Student Come Back?"

"Sources Say 'Rumors of a Rift Have Been Around for Some Time'"

As for me, I looked at three headlines and turned my terminal face down.

Cook rice, flip through notebooks, prepare for the night's stream. What I had to do hadn't changed. —The fact that I'd reminded myself three times since morning not to change it, well, probably said enough.

◇

"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."

【We know】

【Will the fifth one come tonight?】

【Leave it alone】

"Lesson thirty-nine: 'First-Aid Basics—The Five Minutes Until Help Arrives.' In a dungeon, it takes an average of five minutes for someone who can heal you to reach you. Today we'll cover everything an amateur can do in those five minutes."

Stop the bleeding. Keep them warm. Talk to them. Keep the airway clear. Dull procedures, in a dull order.

"To finish, one thing that might sound like a magic trick. The difference between someone good at first aid and someone bad at it isn't in the hands. —It's in the eyes. The bad ones look at the blood. The good ones look at the person. Your hands can only reach where your eyes go first."

I held up one of my older notebooks for the camera.

"This is something a student of mine taught me. No one in the world was better at healing people. When I first met her, her healing only reached as far as her palm. Watching her, I saw why right away. The whole time she healed someone, she looked down at her own hands. She must have been scared. At fourteen, she was doing a job where a mistake meant the person in front of her would die."

"So we changed just one thing in her practice. Don't look at your hands. Raise your head and look at the person you want to heal. —Just that doubled her healing range. Magic follows your gaze all the way to where it goes."

The flow of comments changed.

【The Saint】

【He's talking about Kokoro Shirose...】

【First time we're hearing how the 'Saint of Healing Range' got her start, isn't it?】

【But she's the only one who hasn't come】

【Did you see that article? The one where she said, 'I'd reached the limits of what Coach Hiiragi could teach me'】

【She said it herself. Of course there's a rift】

【In the end, even his student gave up on him—】

I set down my teacup. Then I addressed everyone.

"I'm adding one rule to this classroom. —Don't speak for someone who isn't here. That's all."

【...Yes, Sensei】

【First time I've seen Sensei make a classroom rule】

【Sorry】

"I'm not telling you not to ask questions. You have good eyes. They've helped me out with every verification you've done. I just want you to choose where you point them. ...And I watched that press conference two years ago live, too."

I didn't have to think about whether to say it. It was simply an observation about someone I'd watched for eight years.

"That girl is the worst liar in the world. I don't know anyone else who looks down at their cue card three times while speaking. —End of observation. Today's assignment: how to fold a blanket. See you next time."

【Huh?】

【Did he just say something HUGE?】

【The man who observes things said she looked down at her cue card 'three times'】

【So that remark was—no, classroom rule. Let's stop there】

【S-Sensei...! I won't say anything, but I don't know what to say...!】

Hina-chan had managed to say nothing at all. The usual classroom.

◇

At that moment, a white cloak stood at the site of a shallow-layer collapse in the Seventh Managed Labyrinth, in a regional city up north.

Whenever a stretcher arrived, the very air around Kokoro Shirose seemed to change color. She raised her head and looked at the injured person. Just that, and a nearly severed arm rejoined, a crushed lung swelled full again. Every time someone bowed to her as "the Saint," the twenty-one-year-old dipped her head with a faintly troubled look.

The seventeenth casualty was a seventeen-year-old D-rank explorer. He'd crushed his left leg shielding his partner. Throughout his treatment, he talked in a voice more excited than pained.

"I took that course. Shin-Sensei's. I'm the one who stopped my partner's bleeding like he taught in lesson six—and Sensei says to look at the person, not the blood. Saint-sama, do you know the course?"

Her hands didn't stop. She'd trained longer than anyone at not letting them stop.

"...Yes. I know it."

"It's incredible, isn't it? It's free. Even people like us don't have to die."

"It is," the Saint said, smiling. "He's a very—good teacher."

The more perfect that smile, the less anyone noticed what kept bleeding beneath her white cloak.

◇

Kokoro Shirose, fourteen. The youngest ever admitted to Genbu's training wing.

She'd broken the magic-reserves measuring device twice, but despite being "off the charts," she was no use in practice. Her healing reached only as far as her palm. The instructors scratched their heads and eventually called it a waste of talent.

Only the dull middle-aged coach looked at her eyes instead of the readings.

"You keep looking at your hands while you're healing, don't you?"

"...Because. If I mess up, they'll die."

"Yeah. You're right to be scared. Someone who isn't scared when lives are in their hands is a lot scarier," the man said with a smile. "But your gaze is the sight your magic aims through. As long as you look at your hands, your kindness can only reach as far as your palms. Let's practice raising your head and looking at the person you want to heal. —It'll be okay. Your magic will follow your eyes, all the way to where they go."

In six months, her healing range doubled. In two years, she was S-rank. The world called her the Saint; Sensei kept smiling and saying, "All I did was turn the mirror a little."

The summer she was nineteen, Hakujikai, the country's largest medical relief organization, approached her about a transfer. While she wavered, Sensei took an envelope from his desk drawer. A draft recommendation letter. The steps for the transfer. The order in which to make farewell visits to the departments that had helped her. —She found out later that the drawer had held one for each of the five of them.

"Your healing is too great to keep only inside dungeons. Outside, there are disasters, accidents, and places hospitals can't reach. ...Go on."

So she didn't regret the transfer itself. The choice they'd made that day had become seventeen lives saved in the northern city today.

She had only one regret.

The night before the press conference, the adults in Hakujikai's PR office handed her a sheet of paper.

"Shirose-san. The public needs a 'story.' She felt she'd reached the limits of her old mentor's teaching and chose somewhere new—one line like that, and your transfer becomes an inspiring tale."

"...But Coach Hiiragi's teaching didn't have any limits."

"It's for your sake. And for the patients you'll save from now on. We need the image of a nineteen-year-old Saint with no ties holding her back."

At nineteen, she couldn't find the words to argue. All she had in her hands was the script.

The next day. Before hundreds of camera flashes, Kokoro Shirose looked down at her cue card three times and read.

"I felt I'd reached—the limits of Coach Hiiragi's teaching."

That night, she posted only "Hope you're all well" in the five-person thread, then turned off notifications. It was the last honest thing she'd been able to write.

◇

Two years later, that article was still doing its work in places she knew nothing about.

Whenever a course clip gained traction, someone would post it. People who doubted Sensei used it as their final piece of evidence. After all, they were "his own student's words." Rei barging in, Mio adding notes, Maru returning to class—they could all be dismissed as "three touching stories" in the face of that article. —Because the fifth student had said otherwise.

Her name was engraved on the blade cutting Sensei down.

That was why, whenever the uproar started again, she thought: I'm the only one who has no right to go home like the other three.

The thread had been a little more active since Maru came back.

【Shishiomaru】"Kokoro. Pops's classroom has a low ceiling, but the door's wide."

【Rei Kenjo】"You don't have to rush. Just don't carry it alone."

Tonight, too, she silently marked them read. Her reply drafts had long since passed fifty. Some started with a greeting. Others, an apology. Every one stopped at the second line.

Late that night, in her room at the lodgings, she opened the archive again. She'd already watched the moment Sensei introduced the new classroom rule three times. "That girl is the worst liar in the world." —Sensei. If you knew, why won't you get angry with me? If you got angry, I could come apologize.

She switched screens. Student roster. New registration. She typed "Kokoro Shirose" in the name field, then deleted it. Typed a false name, then deleted that too. The roster had passed a hundred and ten thousand. That seventeen-year-old from this afternoon was among them.

Her finger stopped above the Register button again tonight.

"...I can't face you, Sensei."

The six-mat classroom was the most distant place in the world.

◇

At that same hour, in a room lit by three screens, Yagarasu finished linking the threads about the supposed rift.

The fire had started at the same sixteen sets of footprints again. This time they were going around feeding the blaze with the two-year-old article.

"...They're even using her article as fuel. I see."

His application hadn't been approved yet. But now he had one more reason to hurry. —And more interest to collect.

◇

The next morning, as I was washing rice, an unfamiliar engine stopped outside my window.

Only two kinds of vehicle parked in front of this apartment building: delivery vans and the kerosene truck making its rounds.

I peeked through the gap in the curtains. It was neither. A black official car. On the door were the national crest and—the words "Dungeon Agency."

"...Doesn't look like they're here to deliver the neighborhood circular."

Two men in suits got out and headed straight for the outside staircase of the thirty-two-year-old building.