chapter01 · 022-ep22

Episode 22: "The Past Dug Up"

The car pulled up without a sound.

Not a delivery van, the kerosene truck, or a government car. The man who emerged from the polished black rear door climbed the outside stairs one step at a time, as if inspecting the rust, and bowed at a perfect forty-five degrees.

"I'm Kajio, head of external relations for Clan Genbu. You are Hiiragi Shinichi-sama, correct? ...I've come today on behalf of Chairman Togakushi."

I studied the tortoiseshell crest on his business card for a while. The same crest had been carved into the floor of the building I'd walked into for eight years.

"Come in for some tea, at least. It's cramped."

"You're very kind."

Two cushions in my six-mat room. Last week, the state sat there. This week, my old workplace. Strange room I'd ended up with.

◇

Kajio was good at his job.

He wrapped up the small talk in two minutes, laid just three documents on the tatami, and wasted no words on introductions.

"I'll get straight to the point. We'd like you to return to Genbu, Hiiragi-sama."

First page: contract terms. I counted the digits in the proposed annual salary twice. Exactly a hundred times what I'd once earned.

Second page: the organizational chart for a newly created "Training Headquarters." The head's position was blank. Beneath it, fifty instructors, a dedicated building, and a research budget.

The third said: "Full support for the continuation and expansion of the current streaming course."

"We aren't asking you to stop the course. Quite the reverse. Genbu will supply facilities and staff under its own name. You'll lose nothing. ...Those are all the cards we're putting on the table."

Honestly, they were magnificent terms. I couldn't find a single spiteful clause or string attached. The papers themselves told me they'd been written in earnest.

"...I've no complaints about the terms. If anything, this is more than I deserve."

"Then—"

"But I'm sorry."

I set down my teacup and bowed.

"I've already decided who my work belongs to."

Kajio's eyebrows shifted slightly.

"For eight years at Genbu, I watched five people. Those five have graduated. They won't die without me anymore. —Now I'm watching a hundred thousand people whose names and faces I don't know. Kids who would have died on the third layer."

"Surely you could do both."

"Coaching isn't a title. It's a job you do with your eyes. Who you're watching is the whole job. If I went back to an organization, I'd watch the organization. That's the only way I know how to work. ...I can't split myself between the two."

A long silence followed. A professional negotiator knew when to stop negotiating, too. He stacked the documents neatly back in his bag. Then, once, he let an unscripted expression show.

"...May I ask something personal? I've never met anyone who turned down a sum like this without a second thought. Doesn't it frighten you?"

"It does," I said with a smile. "But after twenty years reading death reports, you learn the order in which things become too late. It's never too late for money."

Kajio bowed deeply. As he put on his shoes at the door, he said one last thing.

"The chairman... wrote that figure himself."

"I thought so."

The digits looked like they'd been written with thick fingers. I told him a little about the old days.

"He only writes numbers himself when he means it. I worked beside him for eight years. —Please tell him I was honored."

◇

In the back seat of his company car, Kajio called headquarters with a brief report.

"Negotiations failed. ...No. The terms weren't the issue in any way. We lost completely."

After hanging up, the head of external relations looked up at the cheap thirty-two-year-old apartment building. A man who'd closed hundreds of deals could see it now: why five of humanity's strongest bowed their heads in that six-mat room.

It wasn't that the man couldn't be bought. He'd never been on the market.

◇

That night's stream was lesson forty-one, "How to Keep Records."

"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】

【Business as usual today, too】

【Sensei, which fundamental are we doing today?】

"Today it's notebooks. What you write before a dive, and what you write afterward. ...Records aren't there to help you remember. They're there so you can safely forget. Save all the space in your head for when you're out there."

Then I held up one of my older notebooks.

"Records do their work on their own once the person who wrote them has forgotten. A line you wrote last year might save you next year. A note about your near-miss might someday be a junior's lifeline. So keep it; don't erase it. —Today's assignment is three lines before your next dive. See you next time."

As dull an episode as usual, if I say so myself.

"Records do their work on their own once the writer's forgotten." I certainly didn't expect those words to bare their teeth that same day.

◇

It was two hours after midnight.

The spark came from a throwaway account no one knew. Attached was just over seven minutes of audio. The title was one line.

"Clan Genbu—Contract Termination Meeting (Not Supplied by a Participant)"

A chair creaked through the static. Then came a voice everyone in the industry knew.

"Your coaching philosophy is just parasitism."

"Rei Kenjo. Mio Hyodo. Shishiomaru. Yagarasu. Kokoro Shirose. —Five S-rank explorers. That much is true, Hiiragi-san. You were the personal coach of every single one of them. I'll admit that."

"Just think about it. The kind of talent that reaches S-rank gets there even if you leave it alone. All you did was stand next to it, making a face like you were the one raising it. ...It's parasitism, Hiiragi-san. Parasitism on talent."

A fist struck the table. Paper slid across it. The answering voice stayed calm to the end.

"...Well. Fair enough."

"All five of them can survive without me now. Which means my work is finished. —Thank you for everything, all these years."

The audio ended with a door closing.

Within thirty minutes, voiceprint verification images lined up. In an hour, "parasite coach" was trending worldwide. Two hours later, no one could take it down fast enough.

【Voiceprint match. It's him. That's the chairman's voice】

【So this is what an 'amicable end to the contract' sounded like】

【'Pretended you'd raised them' ← the people he raised are the five strongest humans alive】

【Wait. The hardest part is that the guy getting fired never once raised his voice】

【I cried at 'Thank you for everything, all these years.' Didn't think I would】

【Hey, notice something? Those guys going on about 'legally gray' have ALL gone silent tonight】

It was a night when a frenzy of verification and a silence like mourning shared the same screen.

◇

That same night, in a room lit by three screens, Yagarasu did something unusual: he read the same logs twice.

A half-assembled plan for collecting debts lay on his desk. His application to change his secrecy classification was still under review. Someone had beaten him to it.

He traced the first stages of the leak with a professional eye. Three layers of relay servers. Two detours overseas. The connection habits were no amateur's, but didn't match any colleague he knew. And crucially—this wasn't the work of that PR agency. People in the business of starting fires didn't take this much care to erase where one started.

"...An insider?"

Someone who knew the recording existed, could get it out, and now had a reason to feed Genbu to the flames. The clever rats were always first off a sinking ship.

He could identify them. Given three days, he'd find a face and a name. But this wasn't verification, Yagarasu thought. And it wasn't the kind of work to bring into that classroom.

He closed the account for long posts. Then the wisecrack account. On his oldest account—the silent one he'd registered the night of the first lesson—he typed words for the first time.

"Karma works faster than I do."

Post. Zero followers. Having left a line no one would notice, humanity's most efficient assassin turned off the lights.

He put the half-written collection plan in the pending box. ...If the debtor went bankrupt first, there wasn't much he could do about it.

◇

The next morning, my terminal wouldn't stop ringing while I washed rice.

Three messages from Hina-chan. "Sensei, are you okay?" "I'm so upset." "There'll be a course tonight, right?" I sent back one line: "I'm fine. We'll do things as usual."

That evening, I set up an extra stream. It wouldn't count as a lesson, just a quick appearance. The waiting count had reached a number I couldn't make sense of before I even started. After the usual introduction, I touched on the matter just once.

"I have almost nothing to say about the audio. What happened in that meeting room belongs to the people who were in it. Let's not bring it into the classroom."

【But Sensei!】

【We have a right to be angry about this】

"Thank you to everyone who got angry for me. I appreciate it. ...There's just one fact I'd like to tell you from my side."

I put down my teacup.

"That day, I said 'Fair enough' and meant it. Proof that you raised someone becomes theirs and disappears the moment they graduate. Rei-kun's speed belongs to Rei-kun. Mio-san's magic belongs to Mio-san. That's fine. That's how it should be, and that's how I raised them to be. —So I don't particularly need anyone to pass judgment on what happened in that room. Right, end of subject. Tonight's an unnumbered extra stream, so there's no lesson. Those three lines before a dive from yesterday's assignment—I expect to see them properly next time."

【We're boiling mad and this guy's cool as ever】

【Is he a saint?】

【S-Sensei...! I'm still a little mad...!】

Hina-chan was boiling mad. The usual classroom.

Before bed, I wrote just two lines in my notebook.

【Declined Genbu's recontracting offer. Kajio-san was a good negotiator.】

【Apparently Togakushi-san wrote the figure himself. ...When that man means it, he's always a little late.】

◇

That day, Clan Genbu's stock finished at its daily lower limit without a single trade from the opening bell. Three sponsors announced they were "verifying the facts," and a line of reporters formed outside the headquarters' front entrance that morning.

On the top floor, Togakushi Gen sent back four drafts of a statement. Apology. Explanation. Consideration of legal action. —Against those seven minutes of audio, every word had no more weight than the paper it was written on.

Toward evening, the PR chief couldn't believe his ears when he heard the chairman had ordered a car to the underground parking garage. The chairman was a man who entered by the front and left by the front. Since his days as an A-rank attacker, he'd never once shown anyone his back.

For the first time in his life, that man ran from reporters.

In the elevator mirror on the way down was the face of a fifty-five-year-old man. The face belonging to the voice the world would replay again and again tonight.

"...Well. Fair enough."

Eight years later, that calm reply kept ringing in Togakushi's ears.